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you have no intention of firing Jerome Powell because here a economic advisor Larry Kudlow a few days ago said that you and people in the White House were studying this idea of possibly before his term ends. Do you have any plans on doing that?

No. None whatsoever. Uh never did. The press runs away with things. No. I have no intention of firing him. Uh I would like to see him uh be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates. This is a perfect time to lower interest rates. Uh if he doesn't, is it the end? No. It's not, but it would be good timing. It would be it would it should could have taken place earlier, but no, I have no intention to fire him.

Breaking news now, President Donald Trump now says he has no intention of firing Fed chair Jerome Powell. Of course, this going contrary to what Trump has said in recent days that he would consider removing the Fed chair if he did not lower rates quickly enough to suit President Trump. But he said today, he never had any intention of firing him. He says he wants him to be early, not late, but that it's not the end of the world if he doesn't cut rates. I'm here with Jay Woods and Josh Shafer um to talk a little bit more about this as we await the earnings call from uh Tesla. And, you know, we immediately saw a reaction in the futures and individual stocks here.

It's crazy. Tariffs on, tariffs off, Powell in, Powell out, Powell back in again. I mean, Monday's whole big sell off was for two reasons. And the biggest of those reasons was, you know, one, nothing happened over the weekend as far as tariff deals go. But two, Jerome Powell, uh you know, does he have the ability to be let go? And what kind of impact will this have on the market? So to get this breaking news, uh I would suspect this is going to continue the rally that we saw today. Uh and uh yeah, just uh crazy. I mean, he he never intended to fire him. I don't know what those, you know, Truth Social posts were all about then. Uh he he was just angry, I guess.

He put the truth in Truth Social?

Uh he was venting. He was venting.

I mean, it certainly seemed like there was some insinuation, right? But I guess you can maybe parse through the words that he didn't specifically say that he was definitely planning to do it or going to do it. But I think we're seeing a clear market bias here on what exactly the market was rooting for, right? I'm taking a look at the YFi interactive right now. I'm just looking at our 11 sectors in the S&P 500. The tech sector is up almost 1.3% after hours. Now, of course, tech leading as we've seen very frequently on these bounces, right? And then you take a look on an individual stock basis. I mean, Tesla is now up 4%. Tesla had not been moving prior to this even despite its earnings release. Looking across the other Meg 7 large cap tech, Nvidia is up 3% after hours. So perhaps just a little bit more of a risk on side of relief in markets after hours as investors digest this.

I mean, Jay, is there a sense at all of fool me once, you know, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me that like is there an argument to be made especially if you're a longer-term investor to just sitting back? And I mean because because there is this sort of contradictory headlines day by day, if not hour by hour.

This is great for the trading community. The volatility is something uh we haven't seen in quite some time. The 1% moves intraday. Uh but as far as these headlines go, yeah. I mean, someone watching this at home has just got to be like, are you kidding me? Where to now? So you don't know what is to believe. What I want to know is who got in Trump's ear and said, hey, listen, do you see what the market did? Do you see that this could cause more problems? I know he did speak to some ex-Fed uh you know, representatives. And the feedback from what reports were that, yeah, you may want to step back. He's got a year to go. People forget this was a Trump, you know, appointee. Powell has been kind of late. We've argued this. We can argue it. Uh when it came to raising rates, uh to lowering rates. I think he was a month off. And now it's going to be interesting. He still has a few more days he can talk. Then we get the quiet period, and then we have the Fed meeting with the decision on the seventh. Um you know, inflationary data has been okay. If they wanted to lower rates without the Trump noise, he could make the argument that, all right, things are progressing. Things have stabilized. Yes, inflation's still sticky, and we have that tariff uncertainty, which he's alluded to again and again. But if you look at data point one at a time like he says he does, okay, maybe he could cut a quarter point.

Can he do that now though, Jay? Like, I feel like we've we've without us mocking him. We've gotten too far down this road, right? And he doesn't want to look influenced by what the president's saying, right? And then you're starting to just give that up even if it's to your point, of course. Right? You look at a lot of those inflation metrics. They've looked better over the last couple months. But I just feel like from a pure stance of I'm not being influenced by what the administration is saying. I I don't think you can cut rates. You probably can't even send out someone to the journal, to Mr. Tim Rose, and be like, yeah, you know, the data is okay. Maybe we can cut. But no, it's your point. It would be it would look the optics on it would look horrible if he was to say, okay, yeah, the data, let's not focus about the tariff uncertainty. We'll deal with it when it comes. Uh no, he he can't walk this back now. So I think they're locked into a pause. And uh then we'll watch the language after that meeting because we'll see if there are tariff decisions between now and that meeting. Then it's a whole new ball game. So it's interesting to watch.