“The market is always betting forward,” Emil Michael says. “I think what is happening now is investors are looking at South Africa and the U.K. and some of the countries that got omicron first and now they’re looking at the case counts and hospitalizations and they’re saying this might be over very fast. That’s why you saw since the beginning of the year this run-up that doesn’t seem to be slowing down because people are saying, ‘Maybe everyone gets this, it’s not as bad as we thought, it goes away quickly, and we’re into this new era post-COVID.’”
Emil Michael Advises: We’ve Seen This Before
Emil Michael isn’t buying into any doomsday prophecies on either side of the political spectrum. Michael says he’s seen what’s happening now before. He’s been a frequent market expert appearing on CNBC’s TechCheck and Bloomberg TV.
“The market’s used to gridlock. The market is used to slow, steady progress and divided government so I don’t think that the market looks at this and says this is something that is out of the ordinary from what we’ve seen in the last 20 years,” Emil Michael says. “And if they did, I think you would see a visible correction in a way that would be shocking.”
CNBC’s Jim Cramer gave a market prediction on “Mad Money” that things can and do go right, and it can be different this time. “Sometimes you have to suspend your short-term skepticism to make long-term money,” Cramer says.
Although the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has released data stating prices for used cars and trucks have gone up 40.5% from January 2021 to January 2022, Emil Michael says he doesn’t see those price hikes lasting forever, especially for some industries.
“At some point, the cars will come off the assembly lines and they’ll be bought and the prices will normalize,” Emil Michael says. “And then the use of Zoom will moderate because people aren’t using it every day for every meeting so you’ll have an adjustment back to some sense of normalcy. But I don’t feel like this particular market rally is going to end like ’08 or ’01 because the fundamentals are pretty strong.”
CNBC States Many Americans Are Unhappy With the Current Economy
According to a CNBC survey, three out of four Americans say the economy isn’t good, while the National Economic Council Director Brian Deese states, “We have some of the strongest economic growth underlying this economic recovery that we’ve seen for decades.” Deese also says, “We have the strongest labor market that we have seen in quite some time and we have household incomes in a historically strong position, even when taking into account price increases.”
Yet according to Vittert, so much of Main Street still isn’t buying it. Emil Michael says he understands the plight of the average American consumer and the dilemma they currently face.
“Main Street goes out every day and looks at that gas station price banner and they go to the supermarket and see prices go up and that hasn’t happened for 30 years. People haven’t seen these kinds of price increases, so that alone could cause a large number of Americans to think that the economy is not doing well and for them in those particular situations they’re right.”
Emil Michael Explains How Carter’s Stagflation Differs From Today’s Market
While some analysts have compared the Biden administration to the Carter administration of the 1970s due to this current inflationary period, Emil Michael says there are some major differences.
“My view is the main difference between now and the Carter administration in the 1970s is there are a lot of jobs open now that are not being filled. In the late ’70s, that wasn’t the case,” Emil Michael recalls. “There weren’t enough jobs and there was inflation, so you had this stagnant economy that wasn’t creating jobs and inflation. Now we have jobs they can’t fill plus inflation so it’s a little different in that way. How you treat it, we don’t know yet. I don’t think anyone has the answer.”
Meanwhile, Fintech Is Booming
The fintech market is also on track to be on fire this year, according to TechCrunch.
To that end, Michael is helping move the needle forward. He recently made headlines because his SPAC, DPCM Capital, did a major merger with D-Wave. The $1.6 billion deal will result in the company being called D-Wave Quantum Inc. D-Wave, which was founded in 1999, caught Emil Michael’s eye due to its mission to commercialize quantum computers. The market-savvy executive also says he likes that D-Wave currently has products in the market.
