Hello, and welcome to our Market Alert video for today, which is March 8, 2024. And I’m coming to you from snowy Colorado. Over the last week, they had 24 inches of snow and are expecting another 12 in the following week. So I’m here to do some skiing with my grandson and my family so, and it’s going to be his first time ever on skis. He’s almost three years old now. So it’s gonna be interesting to see how he, how he adapts to the snowy conditions. But be that as it may, more importantly, let’s talk about what happened this week, our weekly market recap, we had some two of the most important people in the world when it comes to finances spoke this week. One was Jerome Powell, our Federal Reserve Chairman. And the other one was Christine Lagarde, who is the equivalent for the European Central Bank, both of them, it was kind of interesting to watch them and listen to what they had to say. They both used to use the word confidence. They both said they needed to have more confidence before they start lowering interest rates, but that their confidence is increasing. And they were well what’s gonna, what’s it gonna take for you to have confidence, one reporter asked? Well, we don’t know. But we’ll tell you what we have it. So that doesn’t help anybody. But that’s that’s the way that they’re telling it right now, they want to have more confidence than they have now. But their confidence is increasing. So generally, we would take that to mean that our Fearless Forecast that by July or July or later, rather that they will be lowering interest rates looks like it’s still on its way to happening. The other thing, big important number that we got today, in fact, Friday morning was the jobs numbers and they came in very strong. The expectation was 200,000 jobs created but 270,000 were created, so is significantly more. And that also feeds into the narrative of the Fed waiting a little longer before they start lowering interest rates. So why do we care about all this? Why do we watch the Fed so carefully? And why is it so important? Well, the reason why is because if they lower interest rates, bonds should do very well. And that’s what we think will happen. As the Fed starts lowering interest rates, we think our bond portfolio will do very, very well. In addition, if inflation is coming down, and the Federal Reserve is lowering interest rates, the consumer has more purchasing power, they buy more stuff that leads to profits. And as you guys know, we think that the one thing that drives the stock market is profits. So if profits are going up, stock prices should go up too. And therefore, we think this is going to be an unusual year, as we’ve said before, where both stocks and bonds should go up in tandem. And normally they don’t do that. So should be in a good way, this should be a good year. So overall, we still think things are looking good. However, one thing that is a little worrying is that we have had one of the biggest run ups in the stock market in 50 years, over the last six months. And one of the things that Warren Buffett is famous for saying is when everybody’s brave, I’m a coward. And when everybody’s a coward, I’m brave. And right now with the market setting new highs seemingly every other day, confidence is very high in the investment world. And when everybody’s brave, and they’re all buying that sometimes is is a bad thing. The other thing also is that it’s driven for the most part by these large technology companies. And that may look familiar to some of you who have been around long enough to remember Y2K, when this new thing this internet thing was going to be like change everything. Well, it did. We have the internet and it did change everything. But in the process. We also had a terrible bear market during Y2K, because of the over exuberant, irrational exuberance as Alan Greenspan called it of investors, we may be seeing some irrational exuberance now. It’s not the internet, it’s artificial intelligence. It’s AI and AI is going to change everything. It’s going to make everything more efficient and faster and cheaper and better. And so therefore, everybody’s investing in anything that has to do with AI. Well, that could lead to irrational exuberance, and we could have another Y2K. We don’t think yet. We’re not there at that point yet. But certainly, this looks eerily familiar. So that’s why we have our sell strategy. That’s why we have our Invest and Protect Strategy, so that you don’t have to worry about it. You could just sleep at night, go out and be a SCWPer. Enjoy your second childhood without parental supervision. And let us do the worrying for you. And with our sales strategy we’re there to protect we’re we’re not worried that if this is another bubble that indeed we should be protected. So thank you for watching this video share it with as many of your friends and family and anybody that you want. We want to help as many people become SCWPerS as well as we possibly can back we’d like the whole country to have 1000s of SCWPerS everywhere SCWPering their tails off. And as I said last week, so we’re gonna go around go and look there’s another SCWPer tail. Wait, there’s another one. They’re everywhere these SCWPer tails. So anyway, thanks for watching this video. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate and value you. Without you we are nowhere and we know that so thanks for watching, and thanks for being a client and for those of you who are SCWPer thanks for being a SCWPer. 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