Hello and welcome to our Market Alert video for today, which is September 27, 2024 and I have so much to get into with you, but I’m we’re going to go. We had some very important information regarding the state of the economy, we got some great data points to talk about. And of course, the market moved very nicely this week, so we’ll talk about that as well. But I also want to share with you my commute to where I am now, which is in Florida. And I came over yesterday, and boy, howdy, that was an adventure to get here. And so I want to go over that with you as well. So let me, let me show you this picture. So if you, if you look at this picture, where you can see the blue dot is where I was. I actually took this picture while I was sitting in the airplane in Dallas, getting ready to fly to Orlando. And so you can see that dark green with the orange there, that is not a good thing to fly through. Okay, that’s bad stuff. And so when we were on the airplane, the captain came on and he said, All right, here’s what’s going to happen the first hour. It’s a two hour flight, so the first hour of the flight is going to be smooth sailing, but the second hour is going to be very rocky. And so therefore I’m going to have the seatbelt sign on for the entire second hour, and so you’re not going to be able to get up and go to the bathroom. So if you need to go to the bathroom, go now. So all of a sudden it was this whole line of people lined up to go to the bathroom. I’ve never seen like 15 people in line to go to the bathroom on an airplane before. But anyway, so, and we did fly through that. And sure enough, the pilot was not kidding. It was very rocky. In fact, I’ve been on six flag rides that were not as Rocky as that, and I don’t do well in in turbulence on an airplane. I don’t, I don’t like that. It’s, it’s for me, that’s just not the thing. Anyway. So we land in in Orlando, and the resort that we’re going to is north of Orlando, so we’re picked up by a courtesy van. And here’s a video of what the drive was like through the tsunami. And then, as we were in the middle of this rainstorm, all of a sudden, my phone goes off, and I look at it, and there’s a tornado warning, and I’m thinking, I did not know that hurricanes and tornadoes could happen at the same time, you know? I thought those guys were mutually exclusive. So all of a sudden we’re in a tornado zone, and they’re like, seek shelter because it’s life threatening. Yeah, that’s exactly what I want to see when I’m in my car, you know. So we’re looking out, you know. Do you see any funnel clouds? Do you see any tornadoes coming? You know? Should we be under a an overpass, you know, hiding from all of this or not? So it was like, anyway, we finally get to the resort, I get i, you know, have dinner. And that’s when the storm actually hit, around 10 o’clock at night or so. And so I want to show you a video of that part of it, because I went outside to video this. So now you may be wondering, why on earth would I come all the way here, knowing all of that right? What kind of a who thinks, who, who goes through a hurry, flies through a hurricane to go. Well, this is a business conference that I think is very important, and so I wanted to make it, and it’s kind of a business pleasure thing. And today it looks like it’s going to be beautiful and blue skies, and no no hurricane anymore, thank goodness. So let’s go over what happened in this last week. We got four important data point, three important data points that seem to really please the market. The first one, well four actually, it was a GDP. So this is the gross domestic product. And essentially, that’s the gross income of the United States. It’s the income we get from all sources, services and products and manufacture all of that. And so that is slowing, but it’s still good. So that was a very positive sign, and was taken well, the other thing we got was unemployment claims, and they came in less than expected. So of course, unemployment claims means the number of people that got fired, essentially. And so we, the Federal Reserve and observers, watch that number because we want to see if people are losing their jobs and if the unemployment rates are going to start going up. And that seemed to hold. So that was really well taken. Consumer confidence came in, and the consumer, despite all the inflation and despite all the stuff that’s going on, seems to be holding on to their confidence, and of course, they represent 70% of our economy. And so yeah, we want them to have confidence, because they’ll spend money, and if they do, then the economy continues on. So that’s an important number, and it came in nicely. And then finally, the PCE deflator. Love that one. That’s the the inflation gage that the Federal Reserve likes to look at to see how things are going in their battle with inflation. And that showed that inflation is cooling a little bit. And so therefore that was all taken very positively. Market was very happy, and we saw a nice rise in the market last week or this week. So what do we take from all of that? Where do we go with that. Well, so far, our Fearless Forecast is coming to fruition, pretty much as we said that it would at the beginning of this year. What we said was that we thought that in the second half of the year, the Federal Reserve was going to lower interest rates. And sure enough, that’s when it happened. Many top economists and many of the biggest banks in the country were all saying, you know, by March, we’re going to have seven rate cuts. Well, they didn’t happen. So we saw it happening the second half of this year, and we just got the rate cut that you know about. And so that bodes very well for our bond portfolio. We said that in the second half of this year, bonds would perform very, very well, and in fact, they have been doing splendidly now. We also said that unless we see employment numbers really start to come down rapidly, that the stock market would also do very well in an environment where the Fed is lowering interest rates, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing. The unemployment numbers came in nicely. Now next week we’re going to get the employment numbers, so that’s going to be an interesting one also. But so far, it seems that the employment number is not dropping off a cliff, therefore no recession in sight. Lowered interest rates. Stock market loves that. Should do well into the last half of this year, the last few months of this year. So overall, it looks like our Fearless Forecast is coming true, and things look good. And right now, as I said, there’s blue skies out there. We think that maybe blue skies are coming for the market as well as we go into the last three months. Now, having said all of that, we anticipate that inflation is going to tick back up again here in the next two three months. And so when that happens, we anticipate the market might not like that, obviously, and we could get the correction that we’ve been saying. And hopefully you watch our video with Jordan Roach, our Investment Oversight Director that I asked to join us about three or four weeks ago. If you haven’t go back and watch it, we talked about the last 10 election cycles and what the market did during those periods. It’s very interesting, and so that’s why we’re anticipating that we’re going to get a correction. And certainly, if inflation is going back up, that could happen, and that would be a drop of 10% or more in the stock market. So it’s no fun. It’s attention getting but we think that that probably will be a buying opportunity, not a panic, and get out of the market opportunity. So everything’s fine. Everything’s going the way we thought, if it wasn’t for the elections. But of course, we have the elections, and so that’s going to be a lot of turbulence that’s going to come. I’ll be your pilot now you where you’re going to have to wear your seat belt for the last hour of this flight until you know the elections are over with. And so we’ll, we’ll be minding the store for you. We want you to go out there and SCWper. Be a SCWPer. Enjoy. Have fun. Don’t worry about it. Let us get the gray hair for you. Okay, that’s our job. Your job is to go out and play. Have fun. Enjoy and and don’t worry about all this stuff. So we have our Invest and Protect Strategy ready to go. We will sell if we need to, to protect your money, to protect your retirement, but we don’t anticipate we’re going to need to do that. So again, thank you for watching this video. Share it with your friends, and if you do have any friends or associates that you want to refer to us, please do, we want to help as many people as we possibly can to achieve SCWPerness! Okay, so that’s what we’re all about. So thanks for watching, and we’ll talk soon. Bye.

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