John

Hello and welcome to the Portfolio Intelligence podcast. I'm your host, John Bryson, head of investment consulting and education savings at Manulife John Hancock Investments. Today is October 20th, 2025, and I've invited back Matt Miskin and Emily Roland, our Co-Chief Investment Strategists here at Manulife John Hancock Investments, to talk about what's happening in economies and markets around the world. Matt, Emily, welcome.

Emily

Hey John.

Matt

Thanks for having us.

John

You got it. Hey, Emily, I'm going to jump right in with you. I want to talk about the economy. How are the numbers coming in so far?

Emily

Yeah. So you know that Facebook relationship status button that says it's complicated? That's basically the way that we're thinking about the economic data right now. It's really all over the place. You just look back to recent data last week, the NFIB small business survey showed a deterioration in sentiment on that front. But then you look at some of the manufacturing data closely. One that we watch is the Empire Manufacturing Index, which beat, but then its brother, the Philly Manufacturing Index, fell. We look at things like the Fed Beige Book that showed mixed messages across consumers and businesses. So we're seeing really some chop.

It's really difficult to get a read right now given the government shutdown and the lack of economic data that we're getting.

We've been using some more timely or kind of alternative sources of labor market data. And that's obviously really important to us in order to gauge the health of the economy today. So things like Indeed and a piece of data from LinkUp. And those are both showing that job openings are decelerating. So when you put it all together, we are seeing some weakness in the macro picture—not certainly falling off a cliff, but continuing to see a slow deceleration right now in the U.S. economy, it's happening globally as well. Probably, you know—or not probably, but we are holding up the best in the United States on a relative basis. Things like the German ZEW Sentiment Index, industrial production in Europe, all falling. But it certainly hasn't been reflected in the markets, and I know that's something that we'll get to here as we move through the podcast.

John

Yeah, thanks Emily. Hey, Matt, Emily has her economic Facebook status as complicated. I don't think you're a big Facebook person, but maybe on LinkedIn, how would you have the earnings situation so far?

Matt

Well, earnings, you'd be the most popular person on LinkedIn right now. It is…earnings are just coming in awesome. So the estimates at the beginning of the quarter are about 7%. We're coming in more like 9% to 10%, 85% beat rate. And financials just came in last week with a string of beats and they came in with earnings growth of about 20% reported thus far. So it is, you know, stocks follow profits in our view. I know there's an old saying that it's the economy, stupid. I grew up in the 90s. That was something that really I heard a lot of. And now it's the earnings. We inserted a much nicer word here at the Matt Miskin household.

But it's about earnings and even though stocks are heavily, you know, richly valued, we're not looking for much more multiple expansion. The dividend yield is low, earnings growth is the driver of returns and we're seeing unlocking of stocks—actually that were having great earnings, that performance wasn't even that great this year. A lot of times it's been the stocks that haven't had good earnings this year that have done better, but there's been a bit more of a shift to recognizing these good companies that are growing earnings and that's where we're seeing the best opportunities today.

John

All right, that's great. We've been talking about can earnings keep up with the multiple, and so far that's been the case.

Hey, I want to dig in a little bit deeper, Matt, specifically around the bank sector. Bank earnings have been strong like we've seen across a lot of the parts of the market, but there's been some volatility in the sector. Help us understand what's happening there.

Matt

Yeah, so last week in some of the reporting earnings, there was a bank that did have a loan that, you know, basically they weren't paying…they weren’t able to get the money back. And that bad loan write-off did send through a bit of volatility across the market. Otherwise, on the whole, we're seeing nearly 20% earnings growth in mid to small-cap banks, and banks in general are seeing great earnings growth. So it was, you know, one of these things where overall the businesses are good, the wealth management side’s good, investment banking is getting better, the yield curve is steepening year over year, but the knock is, well, there are companies or consumers that are, you know, weakening under the hood in terms of loans, and they had to kind of put across some, you know, basically write-offs or charges to represent that.

Overall, though, we're not seeing a liquidity event in markets. We keep looking at high-yield spreads. So if banks are having issues with loans, you look to the biggest lower-quality loan market to see: is there a liquidity issue there? High-yield spreads, which is in essence the measurement of a jump on yield relative to Treasury bond yield to say, 'OK, how much am I getting compensated for that lower credit quality I'm getting access to?'—that spread is still like 2.8%, 280 basis points. That's near off the lowest in history. I mean, the lowest ever is like 2.3% in 2007.

So still showing a lot of liquidity on the front of the high-yield space—and then the Fed is likely to cut rates. What we saw last week too, the two-year yield dipped beneath support. So 3.5% was support. The two-year yield is starting to sniff out that the Fed would likely intervene, coverage through what they had to do if they needed to support the bank system. Banks have already rallied coming into this week off of some of the weakness last week. We're keeping an eye on it, but in general, we're seeing ample liquidity in the high-yield market and a Fed that could very well step in if they needed to.

John

Thanks, Matt. Emily, I want to dig into a little bit more. We hear comments about there might be cockroaches in the hotel, and if you see one, you see many. How has the broader bond market reacted to this situation and credit? And when you go back to your comments about economic, you know, inconsistency, if you will, how does that impact things? And where do you think the Fed goes from here?

Emily

Yeah, John. So, you know, the most important thing we're watching to see if there's something more sinister going on here. Are high-yield bond spreads, Matt mentioned that, you know, sitting well below 3%. That is the credit market telling you that everything is fine for now and that this does appear to be more of an idiosyncratic situation.

You know, we look at the yield curve as well, and what we're seeing right now is that the 10-year Treasury yield is at a really important level, just hovering right around 4%, having broken below 4%, chopping around here. The two-year Treasury yield has broken below 3.5%. And we're talking about '90s references—there was another one, like, remember, 'talk to the hand.' So if you think about, you know, if you want to know what Fed policy is going to be from here, talk to the two-year Treasury yield. And right now, it's telling you that the Fed may need to cut a bit more than markets had anticipated prior to some of these developments taking place.

You know, of course, there’s other factors that are impacting the yield on bonds—certainly some of the slower economic growth data, some concerns around geopolitical risk—but we're seeing some pretty significant moves there. And in fact, we think that's right. We think that the Fed may be underestimating a couple of things. One is the softness in the labor market. Again, it's tough to get a read on this right now because we're not getting things like the non-farm payrolls report, but some of that more timely data that we're watching is indicating that cracks are widening. And, you know, if you do look at the non-farm payroll data that we have gotten, there was a negative print over the course of the summer—that rarely happens outside of recessions.

And then we think that inflation is going to be slowing a lot more than some of the official data suggest as well. So we look really closely at the services component of inflation—shelter or housing represents 35% of that. And if you look at, again, the real-time measures of housing, we've actually seen five months in a row of home prices nationally falling. That's per the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index. We're seeing supply coming online—it's up about 17% year over year, albeit off of low levels, but supply is picking up at the same time that demand is slowing. Unaffordability is still a major issue, even with rates coming down a bit. We're seeing folks that are concerned about their jobs, fewer job openings—that's resulting in a bit of a lack of confidence on the demand side as well.

So, big changes on the inflation front as it relates to housing that are not being picked up by the BLS, just kind of given the way that they conduct their surveys on shelter. So I think that's something that's important that's leading us to expect the Fed to cut a bit more. Right now, the bond market's pricing in two cuts for this year, a total of three for next year—that's up from two. We think it may be, you know, something like four or five cuts into 2026.

John

Okay, all right, really helpful. I feel like you and Matt want me to have a 70s throwback podcast at some point in the future. So keep dropping them. I love it.

All right, hey, Matt, I want to broaden the conversation. You and Emily are out talking with advisors and other investors all the time. What other topics are coming up in the conversations that you're having?

Matt

Just really, the move, you know, the last six months has been one of the tremendous bull market rallies in history, frankly. And you know, is it sustainable? And just also, I mean, there are markets all over the world that are going up parabolically right now. And I think it's rightfully difficult as an asset allocator to look at equities and, you know, just think of it as, hey, you know, I mean, we're just continuing to add to this allocation when valuations are much richer. The earnings growth is good, and you know, that's what we're focused on. But this rally is something usually you only see out of a recession—only we didn’t have a recession. And so, you know, it’s like, how do I keep allocating capital for appreciation for my clients, but doing so in a thoughtful way?

And we’ve talked about alternatives like infrastructure-related equities, multi-alternative strategies. We’ve also talked about using mid-caps to diversify your equity allocation because U.S. large-cap is really concentrated in 10 stocks right now—the most concentrated in history. And so we’re trying to diversify away from that AI exposure that’s now so dominant in global equities using mid-cap, mid-cap value. And you know, on the international side, it’s hard, I think, also after such a massive run, but we are seeing more of a growth tilt kick into gear for us because the earnings growth in Asia is really starting to do better than Europe.

And then on the bond side, you’re still sitting here saying, look, you can allocate and get nice income for your clients where you can liability match, meaning you can use this income as spending for the clients for years to come, and let’s take advantage of that while we have it. Because the other thing that investors are grappling with is, if Emily is right and our view is right, that the short end of the curve, the Fed funds rate, goes down, money market and cash interest is going to be cut down significantly, and it’s going to make it harder to meet those distributions that you had the years before. So we’re trying to manage that. But really, it’s being risk-conscious in a world where it is so risk-on and such a momentum freight train—how do we thoughtfully allocate capital today?

John

Okay, I like that. Risk aware and a risk-on environment. Hey Emily, any final thoughts that you'd want to share with the audience before we go?

Emily

Yeah, I think just building on what Matt said, you know, you wake up every morning and there's just this technical, momentum-driven, unprofitable companies, meme stocks, crypto. You know, it's just like it's unstoppable. And for us, it's really about drafting.

You know, it's always a risk when I try a sports analogy, this one's around race cars and you know, you think about kind of not being that lead car, but being right behind. Meaning, you know, we're fully invested, we're just not chasing risk here. We're looking for higher quality stocks. We don't want to, you know, sort of risk a crash or an accident by loading up on too much beta here. You know, you look across markets, not only in the United States, but also there's Europe. There's areas within Europe that are up 30% on no earnings growth. So we just want to be careful there. We're owning high-quality companies in the United States. We're looking at not overpaying for earnings growth. We want to own companies with good return on equity, great balance sheets, lots of cash. It's sectors like tech and com services, sprinkled in with a little industrials and utilities that are all seeing positive earnings trends and higher quality balance sheets in companies as a whole. So drafting instead of trying to pull away, I think, from the rest of the crowd is the way we'd be thinking about portfolio positioning.

John

Excellent stuff as always from both you, Matt and Emily. My only complaint is you missed an awesome Days of Thunder reference.

Emily

I know Matt would have gotten that.

John

I would have gotten it. It would have been awesome. It would have been awesome. But you know what? Maybe we save that for next time. Hey folks…

Matt

Sounds good.

John

Yep. If you want to hear more, as always, please subscribe to Portfolio Intelligence on iTunes or our website or wherever you find your favorite podcast. And also check out our website for viewpoints on investing, great business-building ideas, and much, much more. As always, thanks for listening.

John

This podcast is being brought to you by John Hancock Investment Management Distributors, LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speaker, are subject to change as market and other conditions warrant, and do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation regarding any specific product or security. There's no guarantee that any investment strategy discussed will be successful or achieve any particular level of results. Any economic or market performance information is historical and is not indicative of future results, and no forecasts are guaranteed. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal.

Beta measures the sensitivity of the Fund to its benchmark. The beta of the market as represented by the benchmark is 1. A fund with a beta of 1.1 is expected to have 10% more volatility than the market.

Justin

Hello, and welcome to Portfolio Intelligence podcast. You might be wondering who's behind the mic since it's not your usual host. I'm Justin Clarke, senior vice president, director of sales execution, and I've taken over the mic for a very special reason. We've hit 100 episodes.

Joining me is John Bryson, head of investment consulting at Manulife John Hancock Investments, and he's the familiar voice you've come to know and love as your podcast host. Today, we're flipping the script. Instead of John asking the questions, he's in the hot seat. We're pulling back the curtain to hear from the person who's been guiding us through market insights, investment strategies, and more for nearly 100 episodes. John, thanks for being here and congratulations on this milestone.

John

Hey, thanks, Justin. I'm really excited and kind of nervous. This is a different seat for me, but I'm really happy to be here.

Justin

Yeah. Now, now you know how everybody else feels, right?

John

Yeah, exactly.

Justin

So, let's start with the origin of the story. What inspired you to start this podcast? And what was your vision and goal when you recorded the very first one back in 2020?

John

Yeah. So, you may remember back in 2020, there was a lot going on. We were a lot of volatility in the markets right before or the beginning of COVID is when we actually started this. Markets were all over the place. I think in general, what we're always trying to do, and you know this, at Manulife John Hancock Investments, is to help advisors—help them build better outcomes for their client portfolios and their business.

And when we're sitting around the home office, we're talking to investment professionals, we're talking to managers, and we're getting these great insights. And we're like, hey, how do we get this out more effectively? We do a ton of stuff—webinars, viewpoints, all that stuff. But, you know, could we do something that's timely, kind of more hard-hitting, and get this information out, whether it be around asset allocation, portfolio construction, what's going on in the markets, and how advisors can take advantage of that? You know, can we do that? And we said, yeah let's give a podcast a try.

You know, so we wanted it to be lively. We wanted it to be free flowing. We didn't want a lot of jargon. You know, we wanted to get to the insights really quick but make it usable for the end users and actionable. And that's what we went after. And honestly, I think we achieved it. We probably had some misses along the way, but overall, I'm really proud of how far we've come.

I'm hearing from many people that it's a go-to resource to get market insights. You know, a ton of advisors love it. Feel it's part brain fuel, part inspiration, but it's always kind of focused on what they need the most. So, we're really proud of it.

Justin

Totally agree with you. It's been amazing to see how the podcast has grown into something that, as you mentioned, advisors generally rely on.

Speaking on that, let's dig a little bit deeper into the setup a bit for the listeners who are new here. What kind of guests and topics do we usually bring to the show?

John

Yeah, like I said, we wanted to help advisors build better outcomes for their clients and their business. We looked around at a lot of the different podcasts that were out there from asset managers, and naturally, they were investment related. You know, what's going on in the markets, what's going on in the economy, what type of investment ideas and themes are happening that advisors can take advantage of. And we have tons of that, you know, we definitely wanted to bring that to the marketplace.

We saw some were kind of complicated and didn't get to the point. So, we wanted to get quicker to the point and really make it impactful. But we also saw there was a gap. You know, it's more to running a financial advisor's business than just getting the investments right. It's: how do you grow your business? How do you help your clients achieve certain goals? They're getting asked a ton of different questions. Can we help them with that? And we said, yeah, we definitely can. We've got great practice management expertise here. How do we bring that to the forefront and kind of give people a teaser so they can know what's important and where they can get more?

So, we've brought folks from the college planning space. We've brought industry experts around Medicare and Social Security and the CARES Act when it launched. We've talked behavioral finance, we've talked women, wealth, and wisdom, and how to work with those types of clients. So, you name it.

And then we obviously brought a lot of internal experts from Manulife John Hancock, and other thought leaders from the asset managers we partner with to bring a bunch of different ideas. So, it's really broad in scope, but we try to make it impactful and quick. The podcasts usually don't go longer than 15 minutes because we know people don't have a lot of time nowadays. So that's where we try to focus—make it really powerful and impactful.

Justin

They finish their cup of coffee in the time it's finished, so I love that. That's great.

You've had some incredible guests and covered a ton of ground. I'm curious, how has hosting the podcast changed the way that you think about the advisor-client relationship or even the investment profession as a whole?

John

Yeah, it is fascinating as I talk to more and more people about what advisors are interested in, and currently, it is so broad. It is so broad, and beyond just the investment part of it, they have so many challenges. And it makes me think not only about what I am worried about outside of the working day, but also about what I need to think about in the future. So, one of the ones that I talk about a lot—and I'll probably dig into more—is the college planning part, right? Advisors are helping individuals with real-world needs, whether it's related specifically to their investment goals, or tangents, or even further afar from that. So, they have to know so many things. I appreciate the advisor's role so much more than I did when I was just worrying about the alpha and the beta of a portfolio. So, that's probably what I've learned.

And I've also learned it's about trust and confidence. You know, we can't all figure out everything. You need a trusted resource that you can rely on. I find that I get that from the different asset managers I talk to. And I think that's so important in the advisor role with their clients—to have trust, to have confidence—because these are important decisions you want to get right. You do need patience in this job. There's a lot of distractions, but if you're confident in your decisions for the long term, things work out.

Justin

This next question you can file under kind of 'who's your best child' or 'who's your favorite child?' So, we know you're on the hot seat though, so we expect you to answer it.

You've had some pretty insightful guests on this show, and I know you've heard a ton of great ideas. So, I've got to ask, has there been a piece of advice or a moment that really stuck out with you personally?

John

Well, I'll give you the kind of moments that stuck out, and I'll give you a couple of life lessons along the way.

I had no idea how many people were really interested in elections. Meaning we can read the newspapers, but people have specific questions and are looking for help and guidance on how to build their portfolio for elections and where we're going. So that was Part 1.

Part 2: I had no idea how interested people were in college savings and admissions for college. We've had admission coaches on a number of times, and we get great traction with those. I learned a ton because what I went through to get into college versus what my kids have gone through is completely different. I got a sneak peek by working in this role and talking to the college counselor. So that was personally fantastic.

The last one is you really realize, when you're talking to these investment professionals, how many rocks they flip over to get an additional piece of information that you're not going to get out of the research you can do through reading newspapers, following your favorite podcast—unless it's this one—or doing research online. The investment professionals spend their day in and day out flipping over more rocks to get more and more insights as to what's happening.

A couple of insights: talking to David Cohen at Boston Partners—his background was as an energy analyst—and when we were going into COVID, I remember him talking about how cheap oil was and how big the opportunity was and how people were actually renting storage spaces and buying barrels of oil because it was such an opportunity. That just blew me away—not that he was doing that, but his market insights around what was going on in that space were so incredible. And he was saying there's a big opportunity for us in energy, and they took advantage of it. That was incredible.

Michael Scanlon was talking about the diabetes and weight loss drugs well in advance of them hitting the marketplace. So that was like, 'I don't know what this is. Tell me more,' type of conversation. So, a ton of that I've learned along the way.

The bigger picture one is probably—you need patience. You know, we always want to get the answers right away. Sometimes you have to wait, so that was really critical…in investing, you need to be patient because sometimes it takes longer to play out than you want it to. So maybe I'll just stop there, Jason, Justin, because I have a ton of different learnings I got along the way.

Justin

Very insightful, and I think some more might be popping out in this next question. Looking back over the last 100 episodes, which guest or topic do you feel had the biggest impact on how advisors support their clients?

John

Without a doubt, Emily Roland and Matt Miskin. So, Emily Roland and Matt Miskin have created the Market Intelligence piece. It's a quarterly piece that they update advisors with what's going on in the markets. We have them on almost every month, and every single time they're a huge hit. They've given great advice. They've given timely topics, context, how you address this in a portfolio, but they've also been very good about—focus on the long term, you know, balance risks and returns in a portfolio because that's what's important over the long term, and be patient. So, without a doubt, they have had the biggest impact on the advisors and listeners to the podcast.

Justin

Dynamic duo. I love it, Matt and Emily.

As you look forward, as you look ahead for the next 100 episodes, what topics, trends, or goals are you most excited to explore?

John

Yeah, great question. You know, looking ahead, I'm really excited to dig into some of the bigger industry trends that are shaping where we're heading. So, for example, AI and portfolio management, we're excited to have an idea on that one to bring it to the marketplace. We continue to educate our audiences on alternatives and the impact that they can have on portfolios. So, we're going to do more of that.

And I'm interested in kind of keeping an eye on how advisors' practices are evolving. You know, we do know that technology will have an impact on advisors' practices. We want to stay in front of that and help them take the best technology out there and implement it to make their practices more efficient. And we're always kind of keeping an eye out across our network for new ideas and fresh voices, whether it be from ManulifeJohn Hancock, or all the other different asset managers we partner with. So, we're super excited for the ideas that we get to learn from them.

Justin

Well, it sounds like there's no shortage of ideas. I can't wait to see where you take it, John, over the next 100 episodes. Folks, if you want to learn more, as always, please subscribe to the Portfolio Intelligence podcast. You can find it on Apple Podcasts or on our website. You can also find viewpoints, all things investing, great business-building ideas, and much, much more. Everyone, thank you for listening, and we hope you enjoyed the show.

John

This podcast is being brought to you by John Hancock Investment Management Distributors, LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speaker, are subject to change as market and other conditions warrant, and do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation regarding any specific product or security. There is no guarantee that any investment strategy discussed will be successful or achieve any particular level of results. Any economic or market performance information is historical and is not indicative of future results and no forecasts are guaranteed. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal.