Hello and welcome to our Market Alert video for today, which is Friday the 13th. Ah, 2024 I hope you are receiving this video healthy, wealthy and wise. And for all of you out there in SCWPerS Nation, I hope you are SCWPering your little tails off, and that all is coming up roses for you. So let’s dive well, actually, I want to dive in, but I got to tell you a quick story, because we had an unfortunate event happen the other day. Yes, so we were having a dinner party, and we were had steaks for about 16 people, and they were on the counter. We’d salted them. We put spices in them. They were sitting there waiting to be to be roasted on the on the barbecue, and Noodle. So Noodle is a 75 pound schnoodle. She’s a poodle and a Schnauzer blend. So she’s called a Schnoodle. And so she’s Noodle the Schnoodle, and she’s a big dog, and her neck is like right where the counter is. So I was looking away for a second, and all of a sudden I heard all this mastication. I heard I heard all this stuff going on. I look over and Noodle had eaten three of the steaks before I could even react. So somebody had to go without steak. And since I was the host, that was me. Oh no, I didn’t eat three steaks, but you know what I mean. So anyway, let’s talk about what happened last week. We’ve got some good data on the inflation front. It looks like inflation is slowing down again. That ties right into our forecast that the Federal Reserve is going to lower interest rates in the second half of this year. And sure enough, that looks like what’s going to happen. Next week on the 18th, they’ll be announcing what they’re going to do. We anticipate a quarter of a percent cut, meaning 25 basis points. So that’s what the in the business, they call that 25 basis points, that’s a quarter of a cut. Now the talk is they might go 50, but we don’t think they’ll do that, because if they go 50, then they’re they’re kind of going to scare everybody, because why are they going so big? Maybe they know something we don’t know. Maybe we should panic. Maybe we should sell so they don’t want to upset the apple card and get everybody excited. So the likelihood is it’ll be 25 basis points. Now, again, we forecasted this, unlike, you know, many of the big banks and others that were saying that in March of this year, six months ago, they were going to be lowering rates six seven times. Well, we said no second half of the year. The other thing that we said is that we also believe that the stock market was going to underperform the bond market. Why? Because, as the economy slows down and as people get worried about profits, the stock market gets very bumpy, but the one certainty it appears that we have is that the Federal Reserve is going to lower interest rates. That’s good for bonds. So we believe that bonds are going to do very well into the end of this year. And so far, they have outperformed stocks, just as we said that they would. Now there’s an old expression that says, if you don’t toot your own horn, ain’t nobody gonna do it for you. So you guys may recall we said to sell our bonds. We sold our bonds actually in April of 2022 and this was just before the worst part of the worst bond bear market in history, according to Bloomberg. So we avoided massive amount of drop, the biggest drop in history, in bonds. We bought back in in December of last year of ’23 a little early if I if, if I had a crystal ball, I would have liked to have waited a little longer, but we can’t time things perfectly. But so far, it looks like it’s working out very where, uh, very well for us, and we’re very happy with the outcome. So overall, things are going exactly as we thought they would going as planned, and it’s good now we always have our sell strategy ready to be enacted, because even though, you know, we think something that’s not necessarily what the market thinks, and it may do something different. So that’s why you have our strategy. I hope it gives you the peace of mind it gives me to know that if we need to, we will get out and protect ourselves from from major losses, as much as we can. So for those of you in SCWPerS Nation, I hope you are out there SCWPering your little tails off or clean up crews or going everywhere they’re finding SCWPerS tails everywhere. It’s awesome. We love that. So SCWPer those tails off. And for those of you who are not SCWPerS yet, we’re gonna work to get you there. And for those of you who don’t know what a SCWPer is, well, SCWPerS is the acronym for second childhood without parental supervision. We want you to go play, have fun, enjoy. That’s what it’s all about, and we hope to get you there as soon as possible, if you’re not SCWPerS yet. So thanks for watching this video, 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 RPOA Advisors, Inc. (d/b/a Retirement Planners of America ) (“Retirement Planners of America”, “RPOA”). ©Copyright 2023