The Federal Reserve's messaging around initiating interest rate cuts has become the will they, won't they gossip for markets in 2024, with many experts and even Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester affirming March may be too soon to deploy rates.

Horizon Investments Head of Portfolio Strategy Zachary Hill sits down with Yahoo Finance Live to talk about interpreting recent economic data prints, including jobless claims and consumer sentiment, and their reflective influence on markets.

"As we sit here today in the economy in 2024, it is very hard to have a proper recession unless you see material job losses, and so that's something that we're looking at quite a lot... and so far everything looks good. But, we're updating those as we get weekly numbers from the jobless claims and continuing claims numbers," Hill states.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

JARED BLIKRE: Well, let's think about some other headwinds potentially for the markets. Everybody is looking at interest rates and the Fed, but what are some of the things that might be keeping you up at night that might not necessarily be-- necessarily be on every investor's radar?

ZACHARY HILL: Yeah, this is a great question and it's one that we think about a lot in terms of, kind of you know scenario planning for what do we really-- what are we really worried about and what are we not worried about. And I'd say the biggest thing that we're focused on from an overall macro economy and market perspective is the job market in the US, you know. I think put simply, as we sit here today in the economy in 2024, it is very hard to have a proper recession unless you see material job losses and. So that's something that we're looking at quite a lot, you know. And so far, everything looks good, but we're updating those as we weekly numbers from the jobless claims and continuing claims numbers.

Some of the other things that we're thinking about, I mean, definitely noticed that consumer sentiment is really down in the dumps. There's not a lot of good reasons for that if you look objectively, but it is what it is. That's how people are answering their surveys and that's the way that they feel. And there's a potential situation where people-- the way people feel about the economy can kind of feed into their actual consumption actions. That hasn't happened at this point, but that's something that we're certainly paying attention to.

And I'd say the last thing kind of on our radar is just looking beyond the US for different growth engines. I mean, we haven't had a very strong recovery in Europe. The recovery in China, if you can even call it that, has been extraordinarily disappointing. There are a lot of deep problems there.

And so as we think about what's going to drive global growth in 2024, we think it's mostly focused in the US. And so that makes the US labor market all the more important. But it also raises the risk if something kind of goes wrong, there aren't as many other horses to pick up the slack, so to speak. And so those are the things that we're thinking about right now, obviously exogenous events notwithstanding.