Hello, and welcome to our Market Alert video for today, June 28 2024, the day after the Presidential Debate, and I’m going to get into that and the aftermath of that and our view of where that takes us. But before I do that, I want to say hi to everybody in SCWPerS Nation, I hope you’re out there SCWPering your little tails off. And as you guys know, slippers is the acronym for second childhood without parental supervision, we want you to go play and have fun and enjoy. And don’t worry about all this boring financial stuff, let us do it for you. And all you clients who are not SCWPerS yet, thank you for watching, also, and our goal is to get you there, we want you to enjoy that second childhood as soon as we possibly can get you there. So, you know, as we as I was watching the debate last night, as I’m sure most of you did, the moment there where President Biden, you know, could not finish his thought he lost track of what he was talking about, and seemed confused. You know, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican as a human being your heart had to go out to him. You know, as I was watching that, it was just heartbreaking. It was awful. I don’t want to get political. So I’m not going to dive into what the aftermath of this is. The elections are coming here, they’re right around the corner. How do we think the elections are going to affect our investments? And how are our investments doing now that the first half of the year is over? Well, the first part of it is that the stock market is neither Democrat nor Republican. Okay, let’s get that straight. The stock market cares about profits, in our view. So the candidate that represents the best possibilities for profits is the one that the stock market is going to like, and the candidate who is bad for profit, the stock market’s not going to like, it’s not Republican or Democrat, it’s all about profits, in our view. So let’s go back to when Donald Trump was elected, what happened there was that he represented significant reduction in taxes, he represented significant reductions in regulations, and therefore significant increases in profits. So what happened after he was elected, the stock market went way up a significant rally. Now we’ll go back to when John Kerry and George Bush were running for president. In that year, what happened was around August, the stock market was way, way down. In fact, it was this close to our sell strategy, we almost sold that year, because it came that close to it. Why? Well, because John Kerry represented a significant increase in regulations and increases in taxes. And so the market did not like that. Now, when Bush was elected, what happened was the stock market rallied into the end of the year, by a lot. Why? Because thank goodness, regulations, and taxes are not going to eat into profits. So again, the stock market is not Republican, it’s not Democrat. It’s all about what profits, how profits are going to be affected. So you know, between now and election time is boy I think every single day something historic is going to happen this year. It’s unbelievable. But having said that, we don’t think that assuming for a moment, that jar, the Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the nominees, that either one of those being elected, are going to have a significant impact on the stock market and in our investments. Why? Because the regulations and the taxes that are in place right now will be in place until the second half of next year. And the stock market is notoriously short sighted, they can’t see beyond six months. So the elections are going to be way before that. And therefore the impact of those things is later stock market won’t feel it. So there probably would be a reaction regardless of who gets elected. But in short, but it won’t be it’ll be short lived in our view, and should be a relative non event when it comes to the stock market. So what could be the cause of a recession and a stock market crash, of course, is always the Fed. Okay, they they’ve done it before. In fact, many historians credit them with the Great Depression. So they’re very capable of creating really bad economic times for us. And we’ve watched them more than we’re going to watch the elections because as I said, we think the elections are not going to be the issue. So what’s the Fed doing? We think they’re going to be late to the party. They we think they’ll lower interest rates later than they should. And if that’s the case, it could cause some bad issues to happen. And that’s why we’re so glad we have our investment protect strategy to protect us against if they mess it up and cause a big bad bear market. And there’s precedent for that. Back in the 80s. Paul Volcker waited too long to lower interest rates, and there was a bad recession and there was a bear market to go with it. So it could happen again. And this Fed has proven to us that they’ve been behind the curve pretty much from the very beginning. So our Invest and Protect Strategy is there for a reason. And I hope it gives you the peace of mind that it does us. The other part that I want to talk with you about is that our bond portfolio, which we bought back in December of last year, is finally starting to turn. In the last two months, it’s gone up significantly on the prospect that the Fed will be lowering interest rates, which is what we thought is going to happen towards the latter part of this year. And so we’re getting paid pretty good dividend in our view while we’re waiting. And the price of the bonds have gone up quite a bit here in the last two months. And we think that trend will continue as long as the narrative is that the Fed is going to lower interest rates. So and we think that will continue. So overall, we’ve had a very good first half of the year. We’re hopeful about the second half. And we think that it’s going to be good, unless the Fed messes it up. But we have a strategy to address that if they do. So I hope you have peace of mind. Thank you for watching this video. We are so appreciative. I cannot tell you from the bottom of my heart, how thankful we all are that you’ve chosen us to be your retirement planners. Every day that we wake up, we do our level best to serve you to protect you to do everything we can to make sure that you do enjoy that second childhood. That’s our that’s our goal. We want you to have peace of mind, and we want your money to last as long as you do. And we’re going to do everything we can to make that happen. So share this video with your friends, your family. We want to help as many other people as possible, and we’ll talk soon.
Please note: transcript has been modified after the time of recording.
Economic indicators and stock market performance cannot be predicted. Opinions expressed regarding the economy and the stock market belong solely to Ken Moraif on behalf of Retirement Planners of America and may not accurately portray actual future performance of the economy or stock market outcomes. Opinions expressed in this video is intended to be for informational purposes only and is not intended to be used as investment advice for individuals who are not clients of Retirement Planners of America. All content provided is the opinion of Ken Moraif, CEO and Founder of RPOA Advisors, Inc. (d/b/a Retirement Planners of America ) (“Retirement Planners of America”, “RPOA”). ©Copyright 2023