our next guest says the fed should move the 2 inflation target and stop trying to crash the economy joining us is carol pepper ceo of pepper international the economy is doing ok right there is still an opportunity for this to be a soft landing you think investors are running out of time to reposition in case things dont turn out as optimistically as they would hope carol no i dont think investors are running out of time the fed is running out of time because if they dont reconsider this 2 inflation target in light of what is happening in the world today they could cause really serious problems to the real estate and the banking market completely selfgenerated problem it is unrealistic at this point in the cycle to be looking for 2 we have major changes coming naturally ai will naturally increase productivity without additional massive hiring new climate technologies are naturally reducing the input and energy prices over the next few years and we have a war going on that hopefully at some point will get solved say in the next year so i dont see the point of going for this artificial number  who said it has to be 2 inflation i think that some ridiculous if they were going for 3 or 4 the entire conversation might be more different and they might be more tolerant i just dont see the ability of the banks and the real estate sector to be able to absorb this artificial and frankly dangerous number that somebody made up that they feel they have to stick to postpandemic i dont think it is necessarily the right way for the economy to go shery how are you positioning at this point carol well i think a great place to hide until we know what the fed is going to do is keeping your powder dry in money market account yielding 4 or 5 a nobrainer that many corporations and individual investors are doing i still think growth will be value this year the largecap growth index is up 28 versus largecap value of 4 i dont see the value stocks catching up because again they are big macro drivers those being artificial intelligence more technology integrated in everything defense spending they are a lot of things becoming more technology oriented on the defense side climate technology being implemented not only here that in europe those are all growth ideas it is difficult for a value to do well in the high inflation environment with high interest rates because the slower growth means there margin compression is even more painful than it is for growth stocks so i say stick to the growth stocks buy on fear days  today was a fear day for example and hide in cash until we see what the fed is going to do and when they are going to come to their senses i think they are being too reactionary shery the tech bounce we saw in the first half of 5 trillion that does not concern you carol know because we are at the beginning of some major major revolutions i manage money for family offices and people with over 100 million we have five year and 10 year time horizons sometimes longer so you shouldnt be in equities if you are daytrading if you are investing technology is a story that will continue to churn and power through the next 20 or 30 years or more that is still the case older industries will continue to die out so be careful where you look at value there is a lot of dead dogs in value that cant come back because the world has changed too much shery going back to the jobs numbers today and the job numbers we will go tomorrow this chart on bloomberg shows how the adp numbers closely match the payroll numbers that we might get later in the week does this give you an indication of if we still have a strong labor market of how healthy us consumers will be and what are the implications for markets carol i think because us consumers are employed they will continue to spend money the spending from consumers has not really slowed down all that much given the fact they are paying higher mortgage rates and given the fact that inflation gas prices have come down a bit this summer so as long as the consumer is healthy markets will stay healthy what will change is that margins will compress but they will compress across the board so on a relative basis the corporation will continue to have to pay the high interest rates they will all face that same headwind and then growth will continue to win as long as consumers are buying they will continue to stay healthy the us market is healthy when the consumer is pending and they will continue spending because they are employed you look at it that way the consumer numbers are good news it is not realistic to think they can crash the market by raising interest rates and there will be more massive layoffs i dont see that happening because there isnt enough slack in the economy to do that people still are looking for more workers and longterm workers shery is the idea that we dont need to get to that 2 inflation target based on the fact that we are seeing this inflationary pressures coming from technology advances as well carol that is correct technology advances and energy is shifting the cost of energy is going down rapidly we are not going to see 150 a barrel oil as much as the saudis want to that there are other forces starting to discipline the economy its not going to happen in two months but over a few years look at the uptick in electric vehicles and how much that saves consumers people are putting solar in your home they can cut energy bills radically and the government pumped a lot of money into making these things happen give it a little more time and we will see these natural forces containing costs large sectors of ongoing costs which will allow the consumer and the market to keep going without a major recession of course they can crash the market if they raise interest rates they will crash the market and