Tesla Bull Ross Gerber Calls On Fed To Stop Raising Rates Ahead Of October Inflation Data

Ross Gerber, the co-founder of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, came out all guns blazing against the monetary policy stance of the Federal Reserve under its Chair Jerome Powell.

What Happened: The U.S. economy is clearly failing, Gerber said. Substantiating his claim, he noted that unemployment is rising and credit is severely constrained.

The Tesla Inc. TSLA bull warned of a looming recession.

“WTF is wrong with you Powell. It’s time to stop raising rate,” Gerber added.

See Also: Thursday's CPI Inflation Reading Is Critical: Here's What Investors Need To Know

His outburst comes ahead of the release of the October consumer price inflation data, which is due on Thursday at 8:30 a.m. EST. Economists, on average, expect the annual headline consumer price inflation to have cooled off slightly from 8.2% in September to 8% in October. Month-over-month, the consumer price index is expected to have increased by 0.5%, slower than the 0.6% rate in the previous month.

The core year-over-year inflation may have slowed a tad to 6.5%.

The data assumes importance because the Fed has been fixated on fighting inflation and bringing it under its 2% target.

Why It’s Important? The Fed has been very aggressive in the current rate-tightening cycle, having increased it by a 75-basis-point increment in each of the past four meetings. The fed funds target rate is currently at 3.75%-4.25%.

Although the October monetary policy statement gave some reason to cheer by suggesting the central bank will look into the cumulative impact of its monetary policy actions, Powell almost ruled out either a pause or a pivot at the press conference that followed.

Fund managers, including Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood, and academicians have criticized the Fed for acting on lagging indicators and putting the economy in the throes of a recession.

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