With the US economy still perked up with trillions of dollars created during the Covid-19 pandemic to stimulate the financial system, with inflation easing, and expectations of interest rate cuts in 2024, the markets are responding in kind. The S&P 500 is hot, rising 8.9% in November, investment banking is booming, and there's a feel-good nationwide ripple effect. Homeowners too, are enjoying a surge in home equity values, an average of $95,900 in the past three years. That's on top of earlier gains fuelled in part by stimulus payments, and outlays during the Covid-19 pandemic

Still, it is a tale of two economies. "The rich are really getting richer now, and the poor are up against significant issues," says DICK BOVE, chief financial strategist at ODEON CAPITAL GROUP. "Are the consumers with the most money going to continue to drive the game? Or, is it now the consumers who are unable to pay their loans? Will they drive this game?"

Meanwhile, interest rates cuts are the buzz of Wall Street. Many investors see a series of rate cuts by the US Fed in 2024. MAT VAN ALSTYNE, ODEON co-founder and managing partner, says it may not be that straightforward. "The Idea that the Fed commences an easing cycle voluntarily," he says, "by preemptively cutting rates because they think they have gone far enough [and] now want to engineer a soft landing - that is phenomenal news." But Van Alstyne warns it may not be that simple.

Elsewhere, BOVE doubles down on his research on US housing trends, repeating his expectations for a housing bust based on demographic and census trends. BOVE is highly critical of new research on housing by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing. "The university should be ashamed of itself for producing this dribble," he says. JOHN AIDAN BYRNE, our host, questions BOVE on his basic assumptions from regional trends to evidence of vast tracks of ghost towns across America.

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