Don’t expect the Federal Reserve to even tap on the brakes anytime soon, says Bob Iaccino, editor of the Stock Think Tank.
On Thursday, Fed Chairman Jerome threw cold water on any talk of raising interest rates soon, despite some chatter from others that it was nearing time to “start talking” about increasing rates.
“They essentially were talking about potentially or when it might be appropriate to pull back bond buying,” Iaccino said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
“Jerome Powell brought it back to rates and I think that was interesting because a lot of people took (the statements) as if the Fed was starting to talk about talking about raising rates.”
Powell made it clear. “Not only is it not time to talk about raising rates, but it’s not time to talk about talking about raising rates.”
Central bankers begging for fiscal policy help for 10 years now, since the original financial crisis, Iaccino pointed out.
“I think Powell’s finally getting it both from outgoing President Trump and now potentially larger from incoming President Biden, and I think he’s going to wait and watch that play out,” he said.
Nevertheless, it’s been a stock picker’s market, Iaccino said.
“Since about the fourth quarter of last year we’ve been looking at a couple of themes and a few of them really depend on reopening,” he said.
“Like Live Nation (LYV), for example, that’s a stock that depends on reopening,” Iaccino said.
“We think that’s starting to leak in and they also they adjusted their business to the pandemic doing online concerts and the like and learning to sell tickets to people that couldn’t really go anywhere.”
Tapping that pent-up demand depends on getting millions more Americans vaccinated. “But we’re already starting to see that play out as the stock is up double digits as people begin to sort of look at the same way as us,” he said.
“PayPal (PYPL), I think the move into crypto currencies was genius,” Iaccino said. “PayPal is reportedly buying most of the Bitcoin or more of the Bitcoin that’s being created right now for their clients.”
PayPal is just a trusted online payment name, so if somebody who’s nervous about cryptocurrencies is going to go in, they’re likely to go in through PayPal, he said.
Teledoc (TDOC) is another. “I believe telemedicine is going to be permanent. And I believe Uber (UBER) is going to be the first self-driving ride service. I’m just I’m huge on self-driving technology, whether it’s Uber anybody else,” Iaccino said.
Uber is going to benefit from people coming back out after the pandemic is over, he said. “They are already benefiting on Uber Eats and then if they can actually be the first autonomous ride sharing service, that’s to the moon for that stock in my opinion,” Iaccino said.
