jonathan: joining me around the table is noelle coram, ira jersey, and tony rodriguez. let's begin with you. year end forecasts are typically pretty useless for many people. [laughter] jonathan: this time around, i cannot think of a year with there is so much uncertainty going at the 2019. noelle: right. that is the certainty, the amount of uncertainty. we are thinking about it in three main macro buckets. each bucket has -- they work together and drive asset prices. growth which we see as moderating but still solid, inflation which is going to be noisy as tariffs are noisy, and financial conditions are policy which in q4 of 2018 was the primary driver of markets. that's why you saw some of that underperformance in credit. looking forward, we do expect that to continue and we expect the fed to be battling between a solid growth picture and tightening financial conditions, so we do expect to see some tightening into q1 and q2 of next year and that is why we stayed defensive. ira: the uncertainty next year is going to come around the fed mostly. regardless of what happens

jonathan: joining me around the table is noelle coram, portfolio manager at invesco fixed income, alongside ira jersey, chief u.s. interest rate strategist at bloomberg intelligence, plus coming to us from minneapolis is tony rodriguez, chief taxable fixed income strategist at nuveen asset management. noelle, let's begin with you. year end forecasts are typically pretty useless for many people. [laughter] jonathan: this time around, i cannot think of a year, for a long, long time, where there is so much uncertainty going into 2019. noelle: right. that is the certainty, the amount of uncertainty. we are thinking about it in three main macro buckets. each of those macro buckets has -- they work together and drive asset prices. so growth, which we see as moderating but still solid, inflation, which is going to be noisy as tariffs are noisy, and then financial conditions or policy, which in q4 of 2018 was the primary driver of markets. and that's why you saw some of that underperformance in credit. but looking forward, we do expect that to continue and we expect the fed to be battling between a