Hello, and welcome to our Market Alert Video for today, which is September 1, 2023. I hope you are doing fantastically well. And for those of you who are SCWPerS, I hope you are in fact enjoying your second childhood without parental supervision. So this is, you know, I want to my grandson just had his, today actually is his second birthday, but we were visiting with my daughter and my grandson and my son in law to celebrate his birthday last weekend. And he taught me something that I’m going to start implementing, about you know how to use power, effectively. So he’s combined two things. Okay, one is this, okay? Just pointing your finger. That’s the first step. And then now that he can talk a little bit, use the word no. So you combine them, here’s what you do, you point. And the moment you point, every single adult in the room is like, what, what do you want? Do you want juice? Do you want? Do you want a banana? Do you want some apple? What do you want? And you just sit there in your throne? And after you pointed and all the adults are doing that you say no, no, no, no. And they’ll just keep going. And it’s it’s, I can just see him. He’s having so much fun. So I’ve decided I’m going to try this with my wife, I’m going to point and then when she does that, I’m gonna say no, no, no, I’ll keep you posted on how that goes for me.
Anyway, let’s get back to what’s important, right, which is the market and what’s going on where we think we’re gonna go? Well, as we have been telling you in these videos, and in other communications, we think that the Federal Reserve is not going to lower interest rates later on this year. And actually, it’s interesting to see the dynamic because the market went from or investors went from, okay, they’re gonna be lowering interest rates in the second half of this year to Oh, no, now they’re gonna raise them. And now they’re saying, well, because of the jobs numbers that we got this morning, maybe they’ll just leave interest rates where they are? Well, we’ve been saying they’re not going to lower them, and that people were being overly optimistic for several months now. And sure enough, that’s exactly what’s been happening. So the jobs numbers did come out. And they did give us some data as to where we are in terms of fighting inflation and the Fed. And the numbers do appear to, to show that the Fed is starting to bring down the big drivers of inflation, which is a good thing. However, we still continue to believe that their job is not done. We said that inflation would bottom in June. And it did, we said that inflation will trend back up towards 4%, that it started to in in July. And we think that here in the next few days, we’re going to get the inflation numbers for August. And we think we’ll see that inflation is going to go back up some more, which means that the Fed will not be lowering interest rates this year. But we also agree that probably they won’t raise them either in September, because it looks like things are starting to go their way. And it’s kind of one of those things where you know, bad news is good news, you know, of course, starting to see more unemployment. Oh, that’s good. Inflation is coming down. We like that. Bad news being good news.
So we continue to believe that into next year, inflation will start to come down. And of course, investors invest six months in advance, the market tends to do that. And so therefore, we think that even though inflation will continue to rise into the rest of this year, the stock market, our stock portfolio will probably rise along with it into the end of this year, and be higher than where it is today. So from that side, we think the correction that we told you what happened did and now we think that the rest is now going to be the rise into the end of the year.
So what about our bond portfolio? Well, on our bond side, because of what we just said the Fed probably is not going to be lowering interest rates anytime soon. And as you know, when interest rates are high or rise, bond bonds tend to not do well. And in fact, bonds have lost money this year, and certainly they lost money last year. So we’ve been out of them since April of last year. And so far, that’s been a very good decision. So we don’t think we’ll be buying back into our bond portfolio until April of next year, the second quarter, when the Fed we think will finally start talking about lowering interest rates.
Now, in the meantime, the portion of our money that would have been in bonds is actually in our money market fund and currently that’s earning over 5% So we’re being paid to wait which is good. So and have relatively very little risk. So overall, our strategy and everything that we’ve been doing has been working according to plan and we anticipate that it will continue to do so. For the rest of this year.
Now, having said that, you know, one of the things that has happened is that the Fed has raised interest rates more rapidly and as a larger percentage than they ever have in history, this is historic, what the Fed is doing. And interest rate when they raise interest rates, it takes about a year to filter through the economy, and for us to see the full effect of that. And so therefore, most of the rate hikes that they’ve made are not a year old yet. So we haven’t seen the full effect of all that they’ve done. It is possible that they’ve created more damage than we’ve been we’re seeing right now. And it starts to snowball. And we have a bad recession and a big bad bear market. And some of the major banks are actually calling for that. We don’t see it. But we sure are glad we have our Invest and Protect Strategy available to us, just in case. And we get out, protect ourselves to the extent that we can.
So I hope that that gives you peace of mind. As you know, our goal is for your money to last as long as you do, and for you to have financial peace of mind. And so I hope you have both of those. And for those of you who are retired, I’m glad, I hope you are a SCWPer that you are enjoying that second childhood without parental supervision. So once again, thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts we are we are so honored we are we are so thankful that you’ve chosen us to help you and to guide you and to manage your money for you. And so that you can think and enjoy other things. And let us worry about it so that you don’t have to, so we’re eternally grateful for that. Recommend us to your friends recommend us to your business associates. So many of you have done that we are very thankful for that. If you have do it again. And if you haven’t, please do you know as I always say business is good, but we’re always looking and so thank you for watching this video and I wish you all well and we will 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 MMWKM Advisors LLC (d/b/a Retirement Planners of America). ©Copyright 2023