Nationwide's Bostjancic: The economy is now set up for 'a softer soft landing'

Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide, says that despite the recent fears over economic numbers that sent the stock market scrambling last year, the economy is now set up for "a softer soft landing," especially if the federal Reserve cuts rates by at least 0.75 percent by the end of the year. Phillip Carlsson-Szlezak, global chief economist at BCG, says there is "nothing in the numbers today that is consistent with recession," and he notes that the big sell-off at the start of the week did not signal any sort of change in the fundamentals; that's part of a broader discussion of his new book, "Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms: How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk," in which he says that current fears look most like a false alarm. Jim Welsh, author of “Macro Tides” and the “Weekly Technical Review,” expects the market to rally for one more new peak before trouble arrives; he notes that 2024 is part of a 17-year cycle of trouble that dates back to 1939, which he says is setting up a recession for 2025. Plus, in the NAVigator segment, Kimberly Flynn, managing director of alternative investments at XA Investments, discusses the state of interval funds and responds to a recent Wall Street Journal article critical of interval funds and their fee structure.