Northwestern Mutual's Schutte: Markets won't be 'straight up and to the right'

Brent Schutte, chief investment officer at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co., says that "Asset classes don't die, they just go to sleep for awhile," and they wake up when there are changes to the macroeconomic backdrop. He says that domestic strategies about trade, tariffs and global defense represent that background change, which is why he's recommending diversification, and considering commodities, international stocks and more. Schutte says he's expecting rate cuts late in the year and thinks the economy can avoid recession, but not a slowdown.  David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs, finishes the firm's three-week look at troubling dividend trends, this week focusing on "dividend traps," companies where the current price is so high that a big decline would mean that the dividend isn't worth sticking around for. Previously, New Constructs featured "fake dividend stocks" and "false dividend stocks" in The Danger Zone. Plus economist Brian Lewandowski of the University of Colorado Boulder looks at the June 2025 Outlook Survey from the National Association for Business Economics, out today, which showed that economists expect sluggish economic growth and persistent, higher inflation into 2026; on average,  the economists felt those conditions were not likely to create a recession.