What’s Driving U.S. Growth in 2026

Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley.

Mike Wilson: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s CIO and Chief U.S.  Equity Strategist. Today on the podcast, why the Fed may hold the key for both near term and medium-term stock market performance.

It's Monday, November 24th at 1pm in New York.

So, let’s get after it.

At the end of September, we discussed the building tension between the Fed and markets in terms of both the Fed funds rate and liquidity, suggesting this had the potential to lead to a correction in the short-term. This scenario is playing out with high momentum and low-quality stocks responding more to tightening liquidity back in September, while the high-quality S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 responded more to the incremental hawkishness on rate cuts relayed at the October 29th Fed meeting.

While downside for the S&P 500 has been limited to just 5 percent, the damage under the surface has been more significant with two-thirds of the largest 1000 stocks seeing more than a 10 percent drawdown and one quarter down more than 20 percent. Similarly, Bitcoin is down close to 30 percent and topped even earlier than high momentum stocks. Gold also felt the impact of tighter liquidity earlier than the S&P 500, as one would expect.

We’re staying vigilant around this dynamic related to monetary policy and can't rule out more index-level downside in the short-term, especially if breadth remains weak. Having said that, we think the weakness under the hood is a sign that we're closer to the end of this correction than the beginning for the weaker areas of the market. Historically, the generals tend to fall the most at the end of corrections. As I said on this podcast back in September, we would view this type of correction and reset on expectations as an opportunity to double down on our rolling recovery thesis which remains out of consensus.

From our perspective, private labor data are showing signs of weakness that suggest the Fed should be cutting rates more aggressively. This is very much in line with my core view that the rate of change through in the labor data occurred back in April with the lows in the equity market. The official government labor data that the Fed is waiting for is lagging and will simply confirm what we, and the markets, already know. With the official October jobs data cancelled due to the shutdown and the November series not available until December 16th, the equity market may continue to wrestle with the Fed dragging its feet and delaying rate cuts.

The good news is that we expect a meaningful decline in the Treasury’s General Account in the coming weeks as the government re-opens. This should help to provide a much-needed boost to liquidity at the same time the Fed ends quantitative tightening. The question is whether these changes will be enough to improve liquidity conditions in a durable way. In my view, the clearest indication will be if we see relief in areas of the equity market and asset classes most sensitive to these dynamics over the next two weeks.  That means low quality profitless growth stocks in the equity world should rally the most.

Bottom line, I remain convinced in our bullish 12-month outlook for the S&P 500 and stocks more broadly. Initial feedback from investors to our recently published 2026 outlook indicates that several of our core views for 2026 remain out of consensus. More specifically, our early cycle narrative versus consensus thinking that we’re late cycle; 17 percent earnings growth versus consensus at 14 percent. And finally, our upgrades of small/mid cap stocks and consumer discretionary goods to overweight. Use near term weakness related to a Fed that is moving too slow for the markets’ liking to reposition portfolio to sectors and stocks that have lagged behind for most of the past several years – but will benefit the most from the more aggressive Fed action we expect to come.

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Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley.

Today, a look at a very different type of challenge for credit markets.

It's Friday, November 21st at 6pm in Singapore.

It has now been well over 15 years since the Global Financial Crisis shook the credit markets to its very core. It's hard to state just how extreme that period was. How many usual relationships and valuation approaches broke. It saw the worst credit losses in 80 years; I think, and hope, that this record will hold for the next 80.

This shock, however, did have a silver lining for the credit market. After a crisis that was driven by bank balance sheets being too large and complex, they shrank and simplified. After companies saw capital markets suddenly shut, they increased their cash levels and often managed themselves more conservatively.

The housing market long, the engine of debt growth in the U.S. saw much tighter lending standards and less overall borrowing. And so, all these trends had a common theme. Less bond supply. The credit market has seen numerous bouts of volatility in the years since. But these have generally been driven by concerns around the macro economy, like the eurozone crisis or COVID. Or they've been driven by companies’ specific issues such as weakness around the oil sector in the mid 2010s or the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023. The idea that there would be too much borrowing for the level of demand and that this causes market weakness, well, it just hasn't been an issue.

Until – that is – now.

As we've discussed on this program, there is an enormous increase underway in the amount of capital expenditure by technology companies as they look to build out the infrastructure that supports their cloud and AI ambitions. Morgan Stanley Equity Research estimates that the largest spenders will commit about $470 billion of spending this year and [$]620 billion of spending next year. That's over $1 trillion of spending in just a two-year period. And it's still growing. We see a lot of momentum behind this spending, as the companies doing it have both enormous financial resources and see it as central to their future ambitions.

But all this spending, however, will need to come from somewhere. These are often very profitable companies and so we think about half will be funded from their cash flows. The other half, well, debt markets will play a big role, especially as these companies are often highly rated and so have significant capacity to borrow more. And over the last few weeks, those spigots have now turned on. Several large technology hyperscalers have been borrowing tens of billions at a clip, and they've been doing this in short succession.

There is some good news here. This new borrowing has been coming at a discount, with the issuers willing to pay investors a bit more than their existing debt to take it on. Demand in turn has been very high for this debt. And in most cases, this borrowing is still well below anything that could feasibly trigger rating agency action.

But it is raising a very different type of issue after a long period where, generally speaking, investors have rarely worried about excessive supply – these are very large deals coming at very large discounts, and they are moving the market. If a AA rated company is in the market willing to pay the same as a current single A, well, that existing single A credit just simply looks less attractive.

As far as problems go, we think this is a generally less scary one for the market to face but is a new challenge – something we haven't encountered for some time. And based on the aforementioned spending plans, it may be with us for some time to come.

Thank you as always, for your time. If you find Thoughts on the Market useful, let us know by leaving a review wherever you listen, and also tell a friend or colleague about us today.