Many investors are trying to figure out what impact the presidential election will have on stocks. Looking back at prior elections provides helpful context.

Let’s start with George W. Bush’s victory in 2000. The S&P 500 fell 13% in 2001 and 23% in 2002. But it’s hard to blame that on Bush.

Stocks already were sliding in 2000 as the dot.com bubble began to burst. Bill Clinton caught the right end of the economic cycle in 1993-2000, and Bush caught the wrong end.

But then Bush benefited from the inevitable economic rebound. His tax cuts helped drive it, though they also widened the budget deficit. The S&P 500 soared 26% in 2003 and kept on climbing until 2008.

Then came the financial crisis, which drove the index down 38% that year. Barack Obama was elected in November 2008, and initially, his election meant little, as the S&P 500 kept sinking until March.

But most experts agree that Obama and the Federal Reserve did an excellent job of bringing the economy and financial system back from the brink.

The S&P 500 jumped 23% in 2009 and ascended further in five of Obama’s seven remaining years.

The Trump and Biden impact on stock market returns

The stock market’s reaction to Donald Trump’s 2016 election win was quite interesting. Many experts thought he and his mumble-jumble approach to economic policy would hurt the market.

Stocks did dive the night of Trump’s election, but they quickly rebounded, jumping 19% in 2017 and continuing that trend for two of the next three years. Trump’s tax reduction and deregulatory policy helped boost the economy, though government debt exploded.

When Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Trump and some other conservatives predicted the stock market would dive. It didn’t. Fiscal stimulus from Biden and monetary stimulus from the Fed helped drive the economy to steady growth.

The stock market has registered more than 20% returns in three of Biden’s four years of office.

Presidents’ policies do impact stocks, but there are plenty of other factors at work. Many experts argue that the market is now overvalued.

Stock valuations and history send signals

As of Oct. 18, the S&P 500 traded at 21.9 times analysts’ earnings estimates for the next 12 months, according to FactSet. That’s well above the five-year average of 19.5 and the 10-year average of 18.1.

If stock prices fall as investors seek to push the ratio closer to historical norms, it may not matter who’s in the Oval Office.

So, what are we to make of the Trump-Kamala Harris matchup? Given how close the contest appears to be based on Presidential polls, it may take days to determine the winner. Stocks could seriously slump if that’s the case.

Political instability may be the biggest danger investors ever face, especially when there’s a threat of civil unrest. If you’re a long-term investor, that actually could create buying opportunities for you.

BlackRock’s take on election and markets

The conventional wisdom is that Trump will be good for stocks, but Harris won’t. But take that with a large grain of salt. It could be that Trump would spark social instability or that Harris would be good for business.

Jean Boivin, managing director of BlackRock Investment Institute, says financial markets aren’t taking the threat of a disputed election seriously enough. (the Institute is money-management titan BlackRock’s research arm.)

There could be “weeks of very disrupting legal battles” that will upset markets, he told Bloomberg.

“I don’t think that’s in the price. And if you want to prepare for some scenario where you need to react, I think that’s one of those scenarios that could be bad for markets.” But he recommends against short-term trading around the election, calling it “a fool’s errand.”

Buckle up, investors. The week ahead may offer a bumpy ride.

The week has more than enough of everything: a Federal Reserve meeting, the June jobs report and more than 1,000 earnings reports from companies giant, huge, big and small.

The schedule comes after a volatile week:

• The S&P 500 fell 0.8%. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.1%, with the Nasdaq-100 index down 2.6%. Yet, the Dow had a small gain, and the small-cap Russell jumped 3.5% as investors pushed money to non-tech investments.
• The major averages are no longer overbought but, rather, oversold. A key indicator — MACD — suggested the trend for now is lower.
• Kamala Harris has emerged as the Democratic front runner after Joe Biden withdrew his presidential reelection bid.
• Nvidia has fallen nearly 20% from its 52-week high of  $140.76 on June 20 and it’s unnerving, given the market’s big rally from lows in October.

There’s the potential for more volatility Friday when the Labor Department issues its jobs report for June.

But markets aren’t panicking. It may be more investors who can take profits are doing so — and reinvesting elsewhere. As money manager Jon Markman wrote on Friday, “Success is not supposed to be easy.”

A flood of earnings are ahead

This is the biggest week of earnings for the second quarter. Nasdaq estimates nearly 1,095 companies will report results. The lineup includes some of the very largest companies, including:

Microsoft, due after Tuesday’s close. Microsoft  (MSFT)  shares fell 2.7% this past week as investors started selling pricey techs stocks. Microsoft is down 4.9% in July but up 13.1% for 2024. Fiscal fourth-quarter earnings are estimated at $2.90 a share, up from $2.69 a year ago.

Apple, due after Thursday’s close. Apple  (AAPL)  shares fell 2.8% on the week but are up 3.5% on the month and 13.2% year-to-date. The estimate for fiscal third-quarter earnings is $1.34 a share, up from $1.26 a year ago.

Amazon.com, due after Thursday’s close. The online retail colossus  (AMZN)  fell just 0.3% on the week. The shares are down 5.6% for the month but up 20.1% in 2024. The earnings estimate is $1.03 a share, up from 63 cents a year ago.

Meta Platforms, due after Wednesday’s close. Facebook parent Meta  (META)  fell 2.3% on the week and shares are off 7.6% in July. Year-to-date gain: 31.6%. The analyst estimate is $4.69 a share, up from 3.23 a share a week ago.

Normally, you get into this time of May and the big crush of earnings reports eases off, giving investors a breather in time for the Memorial Day Holiday.

Not this year. This week brings a number of market-moving earnings reports that bulls hope will fuel a continuation of last week’s big rally.

In addition, two big housing reports will show whether the residential real estate market is showing signs of life.

Last week saw the major indexes hit new highs, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s dramatic last-second push Friday to close above 40,000 for the first time.

The index finished up 134 points, or 0.3%, to 40,003.59.  The Dow had crossed 40,000 briefly on Wednesday but fell back. It moved lower on Thursday, and only a feverish rally in the waning moments of Friday’s trading pushed the average to its new closing high.

There’s an irony in the Dow’s big close. The index counts just 30 stocks. Nvidia undefined isn’t a member, though Apple  (AAPL) , Amazon.com  (AMZN) , Microsoft  (MSFT)  and Salesforce  (CRM)  are.

And its year-to-date gain is 6.1%, compared with just under 11.2% for both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite.

But right now, the Dow’s levels are little frothy. The Dow’s relative strength index finished the week at 70.4. The index measures how fast the price of something is moving.

A reading above 70 suggests a stock is overbought and, at the least, might be a warning that continued gains might be harder to obtain.

Nvidia takes center stage — again

Since the beginning of 2024 — and 2023, for that matter — Nvidia has been the market’s star. Interest in its March technology conference was intense. Co-Founder Jensen Huang was treated to a profile on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program a few weeks later.

This week, Nvidia will command total investor attention again.

That’s partly because its market capitalization is the third largest among U.S. companies, trailing only Microsoft and Apple.

But most important Nvidia reports fiscal-first-quarter earnings after Wednesday’s close. Analysts are estimating $5.57 a share in earnings, up 468% from 98 cents a share in the year-ago quarter.

The revenue estimate is $24.6 billion, up 277% from $6.52 billion a year ago.

The company is the most powerful player in chips developed to handle the demands of artificial intelligence applications.

The stock jumped 239% last year and, in March it hit a 52-week high of $974. Right now, at $924.79, the stock is up 86.7% this year.

Beating the earnings estimates by a lot is critical. Nvidia’s per-share earnings have beaten Wall Street estimates each of the past four quarters by an average 19.5%.

Just meeting estimates would disappoint investors. An actual earnings miss would be a totally unexpected shock, and the news surely will hit the stock hard — and probably the entire stock market.

There’s an additional matter.

A substantial beat would increase the drumbeat for the company to split the stock, as Walmart did earlier this year.

Nvidia, in fact, has split its stock five times since 2000, the last a 4-for-1 split in July 2021.

If you’d bought 100 shares in June 2000 and held on through all the splits, you would have 4,800 shares. That stake would be valued about $4.4 million.

So, yes, attention to Nvidia will be paid Wednesday afternoon.

Target, Lowe’s, Palo Alto Networks, Workday also on tap

Along with Nvidia, investors will also study results from Target  (TGT) , home-improvement retailer Lowe’s Cos.  (LOW) , Palo Alto Networks  (PANW) , Workday  (WDAY)  and others.

Target reports Wednesday, a day after Lowe’s. Both companies will offer a lot of insight into the current health of the  consumer right now.

The core market for both companies is middle-class consumers. Both have commented that those customers have been decidedly cautious this year.

Target shares are up 12.4% this year, despite its worries. One reason is that Wall Street is applauding its restructuring moves over the past two years.

The average estimate for Target is $2.05 a share, flat with a year earlier. The revenue estimate is $24.5 billion, down slightly from a year ago.

Lowe’s shares are up 3.9%, for the year, but the shares fell heavily in April. The cause: fears that the home-improvement market might be stalling out because mortgage rates are holding back home sales. (Shares of rival Home Depot  (HD)  also fell in April.)

Analysts don’t disagree on either company’s cautious outlook. The quarterly estimate for Lowe’s is $2.94, down from $3.67 a year ago. Revenue of $21.1 billion would be off 2% from a year ago.

Palo Alto Networks’ primary customers are more than 70,000 organizations in more than 150 countries trying to defend their networks against computer thieves, aka hackers.

The core product is a platform that includes advanced firewalls and cloud-based offerings that extend those firewalls to cover other aspects of security.

The stock is up 7.8% this year. The estimate for third-quarter earnings is $1.25, up from $1.10 a year ago. The revenue estimate is $1.97 billion, up 14%.

The policy-making Federal Open Market Committee held its key rate at between 5.25% and 5.5%, the highest in 22 years, a unanimous move that Wall Street widely expected following the central bank’s two-day policy meeting in Washington. The Fed’s last rate move, a quarter-point increase, came in July 2023.

The newly released Summary of Economic Projections, known informally as the ‘dot plots, indicates around 0.75 percentage point of rate reductions this year, interpreted as three quarter-point rate cuts. That level matches the Fed’s last SEP release in December.

Still, the Fed noted that inflation risks remain “elevated” while the job market has remained “strong,” suggesting it may not decide to begin lowering borrowing costs until later in the spring.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, however, told reporters in Washington the the central bank wasn’t swayed by the faster-than-expected inflation readings over the first two months of the year, and said that price pressures will return to the Fed’s 2% target along what he called a ‘bumpy’ path.

“The Committee does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%,” the Fed said in its official statement.

“In addition, the Committee will continue reducing its holdings of Treasury securities and agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities, as described in its previously announced plans.”

“The Committee is strongly committed to returning inflation to its 2% objective,” the statement added.

U.S. stocks extended gains immediately following the Fed decision and ahead of Chairman Jerome Powell’s question-and-answer session with the media. The S&P 500 was marked 33 points higher, or 0.64%, on the session

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was marked 273 points higher while the Nasdaq gained 147 points, or 0.91%.

“The immediate market reaction is the relief we were expecting. Investors were worrying the Fed was going to pull back from rate cuts this year, so keeping three rate cuts on the table naturally pushes stocks higher and bonds yields lower,” said Bryce Doty, senior portfolio manager at Sit Investment Associates.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury-note yields slipped 1 basis points to 4.287% following the interest rate decision and during Powell’s press conference, while 2-year notes fell 5 basis points to 4.631%.

The U.S. dollar index, meanwhile, was last marked 0.25% lower on the session at 103.571 against a basket of six global currency peers.

CME Group’s FedWatch now puts the odds of a May rate cut at just 11.6% but has bumped up the chances of a June reduction to around 65.4%.

The most optimistic reading for 2024 rate cuts puts the year-end federal funds rate at between 4.5% and 4.75%, effectively reflecting three quarter-point reductions from the Fed’s forecasts.

The major averages all fell in the first week of January, with big technology stocks absorbing some of the biggest declines after investors were cheered by a huge nine-week rally and hoped for continued gains ahead.

The declines began to emerge on Dec. 29, after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index  (^IN)  came close to — but failed — to set a new all-time high. At the time, most of the major averages had been signalling the market was overbought.

Maybe the gains will start up again. One mediocre week does not make a year bad. The real hand-wringing will come if the market hasn’t rebounded by the end of the month.

That’s because January’s performance is often a signal of how the markets will perform. It’s been accurate 70% of the time since 1929. So, a good January may mean a good year for stocks.

January 2023 saw the S&P 500 rise 4.5%. The index ended the year up 22.4%. For the record, the S&P 500 fell 1.5% on the week. The Dow Jones industrials  (^DJI)  slipped 0.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index  (^COMPX)  dropped 3.3%.

Which brings us to two stocks to watch this week: Apple  (AAPL)  and Boeing  (BA) .

Apple jumped 48% in 2023. The tech giant is still the most valuable company in the world. This week, thanks to two downgrades on worries about whether revenue growth in its first fiscal quarter and beyond will be modest at best, the shares fell 5.9%.

Boeing, up 36.8% in 2023 thanks to a resumption of travel and new orders, fell 4.5% this past week.

And we don’t know what will happen to Boeing shares in the week ahead after a fuselage blowout on a Boeing 737 9 Max after a takeoff from Portland, Ore.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered 171 737 Max planes operating in the United States grounded pending safety inspections. These take four to eight hours to complete, the FAA said Saturday (Jan. 6).

Other sources of unease

Interest rates rose a bit last week. The 10-year Treasury yield finished Friday at 4.046% on Jan 5, the first close above 4% since Dec. 13. It is still off from the intraday of 5.022% on Oct. 23.

Crude oil rose 3% to $73.81 barrel. Luckily, however, the national average price of gasoline, however, fell slightly to $3.079 a gallon by Sunday, the American Automobile Association reported. The price is down 20.7% since Sept 18 and has fallen on 117 of the last 122 days.

Continuing reports of corporate stress. Xerox Holdings  (XRX)  is planning to cut its global workforce by 15%. Struggling drug store giant Walgreen Boots Alliance (WBA)  cut its dividend by 28%. Tesla  (TSLA)  fell 4.4% on the week to $247.49 in part because of news it is no longer the best-selling electric vehicle maker. It now appears China’s BYD is tops. And food processing giant ConAgra Brands  (CAG)  said 2024 sales were likely to fall 1%-to-2%. It had been projecting a 1% gain.  The shares, little changed on the week at $28.21 on Friday, fell 27% in 2023. Radio company Audacy  (AUD)  filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, citing an uncertain economy and falling ad revenue.

A decent jobs report

Friday’s jobs report did offer some good news. The first estimate suggested payrolls expanded by about 216,000 in December, more than November’s 173,000 and better than expected.

The unemployment rate held at 3.7%.

The numbers are probably not that robust but will still be good in the next two revisions.

Will the SEC approve a crypto ETF?

The big event this week will probably come Jan. 10, when the Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to decide whether to approve the idea of exchange-traded funds that invest in cryptocurrencies.

A dozen or more asset managers want approval, including BlackRock  (BLK)  and Fidelity Investments, to market ETFs.

The first crypto ETF is likely to be based on bitcoin  (~BTCUSD) , the most widely held cryptocurrency. Bitcoin rose 3.5% this week to $44,000. It closed at $45,055 on Jan. 2, the first close above $45,000 since April 5, 2022.

But any investor in a crypto ETF must remember: It’s a volatile group. Bitcoin was up 156.8% in 2023 after falling nearly 75% in 2022.

Also ahead this week:

Economic reports. The big reports are the Consumer Price Index report and the weekly Jobless Claims report, both due on Thursday.

Jan. 12 has the Producer Price Index Report.

The price indexes may help the Federal Reserve decide when to start cutting interest rates. Futures trading suggests traders see six rate cuts this year, starting with a cut in March from the current 5.25% to 5.5%. Many Fed watchers are skeptical. Other interest rates have been falling since October.

Fourth earnings season shifts into high gear. Conagra and others have already reported and others have warned about weak results. After three relatively quiet days, the reporting starts to get fast and furious with Taiwan Semiconductor  (TSM) , Infosys  (INFY)  and regional bank company WaFd  (WAFD) .

The financial giants come in. Friday, Jan 12 is their day to shine. They include health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group , JPMorgan Chase  (JPM) , BlackRock, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Bank of New York Mellon.

Delta Air Lines  (DAL) , the second-largest U.S.-based airline, also reports on Friday.

While the Federal Reserve’s “higher-for-longer” narrative is depressing prices, the precious metal has remained surprisingly resilient as governments around the world continue to accumulate it amid growing economic and political risks.

“Most assets are impacted by the Fed and its path in terms of whether it is looking to hike or aggressively hike in the foreseeable future and gold is no exception,” said Stefans, responding to a question from Jin Hennig, CME Group Global Head of Metals, about how U.S. monetary policy will impact bullion.

His remarks came as part of an OpenMarkets Exchange of Ideas panel. The interview took place following CME Group’s annual precious metals dinner in New York in September.

Despite the growing specter of higher benchmark rates and a strong U.S. economy, gold prices (hovering above $1,800 an ounce in early October) haven’t fallen as far as some might have expected, and could be buoyed by nations’ desires to hoard it based on their economic situation. It may be benefiting from concerns around lingering recessionary and geopolitical risks such as the Russia-Ukraine war and fragile U.S.-China relations.

“Gold is a global investment asset. There are very different economic scenarios across countries around the world,” said Stefans. “So while it makes sense to cut allocations in the U.S. and North America, the opposite is true in a lot of other countries where it makes sense to add gold to portfolios.”

Asked what a U.S. soft landing or recession will mean for gold, Stefans stressed strong demand could continue to lift prices.

“Six months ago, we were in a very dark period in terms of where we thought the U.S. and other countries were heading. Now we are predicting a much softer landing which takes away some of gold’s safe haven status,” Stefans remarked.

“But gold has become much more than a safe haven. People are buying it for other reasons, such as to diversify away from local currencies or offset economic uncertainties in their countries or regions. So while a soft landing scenario is not necessarily a bullish catalyst for gold, I don’t think it’s as bearish as most of the market would lead you to believe.”

U.S. Strength

Hennig highlighted the United States’ stronger-than-expected economic performance and how that has boosted the dollar while treasury yields remain high – a heady cocktail that could affect gold and other precious metal prices in the long term.

While agreeing the dollar should remain high amid that backdrop, Stefans noted that Washington’s rising financing costs threaten to undermine its debt profile and that’s prompting some governments to accumulate gold in lieu of treasuries.

“Some countries who are traditional buyers of U.S. debt are now diversifying into other things like gold,” Stefans noted, adding that this trend could provide a long-term headwind against the greenback and support gold. “When I look at the next three, to five to seven and 10 years, this is something that could play out in gold’s favor.”

Biggest Risk for Gold?

With an eye to 2024, Hennig asked about the biggest risks for precious metals investors to watch.

Stefans answered the near-term outlook remains “tough, not only for gold but commodities in general as they are zero-yielding assets” viewed against high treasury yields, so they should be focusing on long-term opportunities.

“It’s a very difficult scenario for general commodities and especially gold. But I think this is a short-term phenomenon,” noted the trader, who spent 13 years in leadership positions at HSBC’s precious metals desk before joining MKS PAMP in 2019.

“We are seeing that with the two and 10-year yield inversion, which is starting to flatten out but remains inverted. This shows investors are still concerned about what the future will look like, not only for the U.S. but also on a macro global level, and that uncertainty continues to bring people into gold.”

Risk Management “Extremely Important”

Amid such challenges, Stefans said proper risk management has become pivotal at MKS PAMP.

“It’s extremely important… We are in a binary space, especially if you are talking about short-term risk management. Any headline can drive markets 1% to 4% higher or lower on a given day and that makes it very, very tricky to be in our seats and for others within our industry to manage the market.”

Heightened volatility has fueled record demand for CME Group’s Short-Dated Gold options contracts, including those covering Monday, Wednesday and Friday expiries, according to Hennig. Interest in Micro Gold contracts has also grown “tremendously” in the past five years, she added.

The bulk of this growth has come from retail investors looking at safe havens such as gold to diversify their holdings amid looming risks. When asked how this has impacted the overall market, Stefans noted the phenomenon has been widely felt, sending premiums for small gold bars and coins into record territory.

“Investors continue to want their money allocated in a safe type of haven such as gold because of future uncertainty and/or currency volatility, not only with the dollar but also with the Turkish lira or Chinese renminbi,” Stefans said. “Across the world, the uncertainty of what is happening, including in their own countries, is driving retail investors into precious metals products.”

Many economists began forecasting recession last year, but a downturn obviously hasn’t happened yet, with the economy expanding an annualized 2.4% in the second quarter.

And now the experts are starting to change their tune. That includes Bank of America economist Michael Gapen.

“Recent incoming data has made us reassess our prior view that a mild recession in 2024 is the most likely outcome,” he wrote in a commentary.

“Growth over the past three quarters has averaged 2.3%, the unemployment rate has remained near all-time lows, and wage and price pressures are gradually moving in the right direction.

Cyclically sensitive sectors have shown signs of stabilization.”

Unemployment totaled 3.6% in June. And consumer prices rose 3% in the 12 months through June, slowing from a 4% increase in May.

Soft Landing Ahead

So, “we revise our outlook in favor of a soft landing, where growth falls below trend in 2024, but remains positive throughout our forecast horizon,” Gapen said.

“We forecast GDP growth of 2.0% this year, 0.7% in 2024, and 1.8% in 2025.” The previous prediction was for 1.5% for 2023 and zero growth for 2024.

“We still expect inflation to decelerate and remain on a path to 2.0%,” Gapen said. “But with a stronger forecast for activity and labor markets, inflation falls more gradually. We look for the unemployment rate to rise to a peak of 4.3% in the first quarter of 2025.”

So what does this mean for Federal Reserve policy? “We still expect one additional 25-basis point hike in September for a terminal target range of 5.50-5.75%,” Gapen said. “We now expect the first rate cut in June 2024.”

BofA anticipates a total of 75 basis points of rate cuts in 2024 and 100 basis points of reductions in 2025. Interest-rate futures contracts have recently implied 120 to 160 basis points of rate cuts in 2024.

Goldman Sachs Sees no Recession Either

Goldman Sachs also has adjusted its economic outlook.

“We are cutting our probability that a U.S. recession will start in the next 12 months further from 25% to 20%,” the bank’s chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote in a report last month. Goldman pegged the possibility at 35% in March.

“This remains slightly above the unconditional post-war average probability of 15% — a recession has occurred approximately every seven years — but far below the 54% median among forecasters in the latest Wall Street Journal survey.”

So what caused Goldman’s increased enthusiasm for the economy?

“The main reason is that the recent data have reinforced our confidence that bringing inflation down to an acceptable level will not require a recession,” Hatzius said.

U.S. economic activity is buoyant, consumer sentiment is rebounding sharply, and unemployment remains low, he noted.

“The easing in financial conditions, the rebound in the housing market, and the ongoing boom in factory building all suggest that the economy will continue to grow, albeit at a below-trend pace.”

Artificial intelligence is that one big story right now. It’s cropping up in tons of headlines, and it always seems to be associated with a risk of now or future job loss as the new technology — launched so effectively with OpenAI’s ChatGPT — continues to prove and upgrade its ability to research, write and bring a lot of potential efficiency to the workplace.

IBM’s CEO said Monday that the company will pause hiring for jobs that could be accomplished by AI, and suggested that nearly 8,000 jobs could be affected. A March report by Goldman Sachs said that, if AI delivers on its promises, 300 million jobs in the U.S. and Europe could eventually be subjected to some automation.

And businesses across the country are ramping up their efforts to hire workers who can speak the ChatGPT language.

The reality, though, might not be quite as bad as it seems.

One senior employment analyst, speaking with Yahoo Finance Friday morning, thinks that AI will do more to replace tasks than jobs.

“What I’m hoping is — and I have to be lucky on this — is that it’s mostly replacing tasks. I’m actually going to be more productive in the future,” Matt Darling, an employment policy fellow at the Niskanen Center said. “I don’t think the situation that people are really worried about, where we’re going to see permanently high unemployment rates because of AI, I don’t think that’s particularly likely. I think there’s going to be a lot more complementing human abilities and human ingenuity than we are going to be substituting it for.”

That doesn’t mean that AI won’t have an impact on jobs. Darling, mentioning the field of translation, which could soon be replaced by AI, stressed that, as society begins to adjust to AI, the focus has to be on retraining the people whose jobs change due to the technology.

To Darling, a strong labor market comes down to smart fiscal policies and monetary support.

The important thing, he said, is that “we don’t use AI as an excuse to do bad macroeconomic policy.”

As many experts continue to predict an upcoming recession, much of the focus has been on layoffs in the technology sector.

Another industry is also is feeling squeezed in terms of the ability to pay all of its employees.

Coupa CFO Tony Tiscornia said education industry CFOs cited workforce reductions as an expected action in the next six to 12 months to drive growth in the event of a recession, according to Fox Business.

E-learning company Udemy announced on Feb. 14 that it would be cutting jobs.

“In order to position ourselves for long-term sustainable growth, we have made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce our global workforce by 10%,” wrote Udemy CEO Gregg Coccari in a letter to employees.

Seattle Public Schools, facing a $131 million budget deficit, has notified some employees that their jobs may be cut.

“We’re in a difficult stage right now,” Superintendent Brent Jones said on Feb. 28. “It’s moving from theory to actual action being taken. This is actually impacting employees.”

A Coupa survey of 600 chief financial officers (CFOs) found that they are experiencing economic uncertainty, supply chain disruption and pressure to remain profitable as costs rise.

Gasoline prices remain stable and have risen only slightly as demand returns.

The national average is $3.26 per gallon, which is down $0.05 from a week ago, but rose by $0.05 from a month ago, said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, the Boston provider of retail fuel pricing information.

The price of diesel is selling for $4.62 a gallon on average, which is a decline of $0.07 a gallon during the pat week.

Demand for gasoline has risen steadily since people have resumed their daily driving habits.

“The holidays will be behind us in next week’s data, and as of right now we’re on track for another rise in demand this week, up 5.8% from Sun-Tue thus far,” he tweeted.

Depending on the amount of gasoline used by consumers, the price of gasoline could remain under $4 a gallon, De Haan said.

“If Americans were to restrain their consumption of gasoline this summer to current levels, we wouldn’t even get to $4 per gallon for a national average,” he wrote.