Halftime Huddle — Moneyball is on Fire in 2025, but What’s Next?

We’ve officially reached the halfway point of 2025 — and so far, most of my predictions have been hitting the mark dead-on…

So in today’s (brief) weekly update, I’m going to share a little bit of my patriotic excitement about the best holiday of the year, and we’ll reflect on where we’re headed in the critical second half of the year ahead.

Let’s roll the videotape:

Video transcript:

Welcome to Moneyball Economics. I’m Andrew Zatlin, and we are here at halftime.

That’s right, the first half of the year is up. Second half of the year has begun, so let’s check in on where we’ve been and where we’re going.

However, before we do that, let me wish the United States of America a happy birthday. July 4th is almost here, and you know what? I am super patriotic. I come from a family of immigrants, as do most of us.

I’m third generation, and this has truly been a land of opportunity, and more than that, I’m very proud to be an American because quite frankly, the rest of the world would be a much more miserable place without America in it. It would be a lot poorer, a lot more hungry, a lot more unhealthy, and generally speaking, just a lot less happy without the United States contributing to its welfare, we’ve been carrying the ball.

Speaking of halftime, we’ve been carrying the ball on behalf of the rest of the world, and we will continue to do that. We have made the world a better place and I hope we continue to do that. Having said that, as you know, my son is at West Point as of this weekend. So in a gesture of solidarity, I did let him shave me … give me a buzz cut, and I’m going to keep this buzz cut while he goes through basic training over the next, I think six, eight weeks.

Whether you’re in the service, maybe you used to be in the service, maybe you have friends and family in the service, whatever the case, I want to say thank you. Your contributions to a strong America is a contribution to a strong and improving and ever moving forward world. So thank you very much. And speaking of all this patriotism that I feel, I know that this is unusual.

We’ve been nothing but self-flagellating for a couple of decades. Maybe it started with Obama, I don’t remember, but we have been beating ourselves up for being American somehow, and I suspect a lot of it was picked up on distorted and amplified by our adversaries such as Iran, China, and Russia via the internet creating divisiveness in this country. The message that I hope you hear from me, and hopefully you share it with everyone else, is I am proud to be American.

This is not a “my team, right or wrong” thing. We’ve made mistakes, but every country has. In the meantime, we have moved forward and we’ve helped the rest of the world move forward. No more self-flagellation, only patriotism. Trump, whether he is reflecting this trend or maybe he’s driving us to face it, this is his world and it has been for some time.

I pointed this out last year, late in the year, that when Trump comes to town, we could expect volatility.

So let’s check in on this year. That volatility that I predicted, man, has it been volatile, and I suggested that you, for example, do straddles. In fact, back in March and April when the market was collapsing, I was sitting there banging the drum saying, you should be buying this dip. And in fact, since the bottom in April, the market has surged 24%.

So hopefully you’ve been hearing that. I’ve made some wrong calls along the way, of course, but overall, I do believe that we’re going to go beyond the current 6% returns for the year and hit the 15% that I put out there at the beginning of the year.

I think we still have room to go, and there are a couple reasons. Number one, we’re going to get a rate cut. We’re going to get maybe two rate cuts. That’s just going to turbocharge things. That’s going to make the bond market surge, and it’s going to make a lot of companies feel a lot better about investing. Meanwhile, we also have this big, beautiful bill.

There’s nothing like a tax bill with all the goodies in it to help corporate America start investing again, and people perhaps, we are talking about a lot of giveaways, a lot of subsidies that are going to be on the table.

And let’s face it, a lot of the times, even though the payoff isn’t until April of next year, when you file and get your refunds or whatever you’re going to get, a lot of it comes with a deadline. You had to have taken action by December 31st. So we’ve got less than six months, not a lot of time to take a lot of action. I think we’re going to see a lot of spending from the consumer side and from corporate America.

Having said that, look around the world, in addition to the growth that I think the US is going to get some of the nitrous coming into the tank…

I think the rest of the world’s also going to start buying more American. In particular, I looked to the Middle East as a major purchaser of American products and service. Why?

Well, if you recall last year, I said, Hey man, Israel’s going to bomb Iran. I thought it was going to be in January. I was off by a few months, but Israel’s going to bomb Iran. And what that does is that clears the table. It gets rid of a lot of the stuff that’s been withholding or holding back the Middle East.

Now we’re going to see a lot of spending in the Middle East, and I think it comes with a fry stack. I think everything that’s going on in the Middle East with Saudi Arabia getting ready to cut checks, is going to benefit American companies because our number one salesperson is Donald Trump.

Similarly, I think China’s going to step in line. Europe’s going to step in line. Everybody’s going to be lining up to buy American, and that’s going to drive jobs. It’s going to drive earnings.

The economy itself right now is starting to slow, but things should pick up. Of course, along the way, there are going to be problems.

I see the job market actually being very weak, even though the job was the payrolls came out and they looked strong at the headline number. You peel back that onion. This was a terrible testimony to a horrible job market. The only thing that went up was education jobs in the public sector because of timing. Quite frankly, they didn’t have their school vacation, summer break in time for the latest survey to capture some of these teachers off work, some of the groundskeepers and so on.

So what am I saying?

In general, ignore today’s number. Next month, it’s going to be equally horrible. If this month was good, next week is going to be equally bad.

Bottom line, the economy is slowing. Slowing economies don’t generate a lot of earnings growth. Slowing economies don’t lead to a lot of stock market growth. 15%, where are you? Well, again, that’s today. Going forward, I think, like I said, there are going to be some good export opportunities domestically, lower interest rate, tax manipulation, all these things will boost American companies, will boost our economy going into the second half, 15%.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s going to be 20%. In any case, just as I’m excited to be an American, I think the stock market’s going to be equally excited as well.

We are in it to win it, and we are winning it.

Zatlin out.