Hello, and welcome to our Market Alert video for today, which is February 16, 2024. And Happy Valentine’s Day, belatedly to all of you lovebirds out there. Going to dive into what happened this week, we got some important data with regard to inflation, and retail sales. So very important stuff to talk about. But before we go a step further, I want to share with you I’ll call it good news, even though it’s prefaced by bad news. As you guys may know, we have a dog. Her name is Noodle. And she’s a poodle schnauzer mix. So she’s a Schnoodle. So we called her Noodle, the Schnoodle. And she’s six years old. She’s 75 pounds. She’s a big girl. And she’s just energetic. She’s a giant puppy, and she’s loving, and she’s affectionate and gentle with little dogs and all that. Well, on Super Bowl Sunday night, at three o’clock in the for that whole day. She was behaving listlessly. She seemed to be not herself. She didn’t eat, she wasn’t drinking. And so at about three o’clock in the morning, my wife wakes me up. And she goes, I’m taking Noodle to the emergency room. And I’m like, what? You’re taking her to the emergency room? And she goes, Yeah, I just don’t think there’s something wrong with her, we need to address it. Well, thank goodness she did, because she took Noodle to the emergency room. And her Noodle’s, heart stopped, they actually had to resuscitate her. So I guess you could say that for a moment, she was dead. And so had Fay not taken her to the emergency room as she did, Noodle probably would have died that night. And so it’s amazing. You know, thank goodness, she had that intuition. It also tells us that tomorrow is promised to no one, is it? It’s shocking that things change so fast and who it would have been a tragedy, as it is. She has Addison’s disease, which is a hormone deficiency. And so we’re going to have to give her a shot every four weeks of hormones, and she’s a big girl, and she’s stronger than me. So I don’t know how we’re gonna wrestle her down and give her shots every four weeks. But that’s going to be our job for the rest of her life is to make sure her hormones are properly balanced. And if that’s the case, then what they tell us is she’ll live a normal and healthy life, and all will be well. So it was very close. Anyway, let’s talk about what happened this week, we got the data from the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, inflation, and the number came in hot, or at least hotter than people expected. We, in fact, even hotter than we thought we thought it’d be under 3%, finally, but no, it came in at 3.1%. And this was a shock to the system, because everybody else was expecting inflation to come down under the 3% mark, and it didn’t. So the initial reaction on the day of the news was a big sell off. Now the indexes were down tremendously. Well, that dissipated, because on the next day, when the dust settled, and people kind of examined what happened, the reality is that inflation did come down, it came down from 3.4 to 3.1, which is still a good trajectory, it’s where you want inflation to keep going down towards that 2% the Fed is after. And so because of that, people started buying on the backs of the people that sold the day of and so it continues to feed the narrative that we believe, which is that we are going to see the Fed lower interest rates around July of this year, because inflation will be going in the way that they want. And that’s good news for both our stock portfolios. Why? Because if inflation is coming down, and interest rates are coming down, then the consumer has more purchasing power, they buy more stuff, more profits, and stock prices tend to go up after that. So on that side, good news. The other side of it is the bond portfolio. And as you may have noticed, we bought back in in December, and we still anticipate that bonds are going to have a very good year, but it hasn’t been the best so far. But that’s only because inflation has not come down as fast as many people thought it would. We still think that as the Fed lowers in the second half of this year, our bond portfolio should do very well. Overall though, we’re off to a very good start January was a good month and so far February is as well. So all is well. We hope that you have peace of mind all of you out there in SCWPer Nation. I hope you are SCWPering your little tails off and you know it’s really it’s a fun thing we’re having so much fun with it. Make sure you tell your Retirement Planner what year if you are a member of SCWPer nation, meaning that you have retired and you are enjoying your second childhood without parental supervision, SCWPer is the acronym for for that and make sure you tell your Retirement Planner the year in which you retired. So for example, if you retired in 2022 Then you would be a SCWPer ’22 and we’re having fun with it and we’re going to see this this beautiful shirt here. We’re going to have some swag for you guys with some whoops I’m on the wrong side here SCWPer ’22 If you’re retired into it we’re gonna have some stuff for your coffee mugs hats, but we can’t give it to you unless you tell us what year you retired and so we need to know what SCWPer year you are for those of you who are not SCWPerS SCWPerS, it is our job to get you there and we will we’re going to get you to be a SCWPer enjoying your second childhood we want you to go play and have fun and enjoy. Let us worry about all that let us get the gray hairs for you so that you don’t have to. So thanks for watching this video and share it with your friends. Family we want to help as many many people to become SCWPerS and go out there and SCWPer their little tails off that’s what we want. So thank you for watching this video 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