Hello and welcome to our Market Alert video for today, which is August 9, 2024 and the week is finally over after a lot of tumult. Love that word tumult, and so want to kind of put it all in perspective for you, but before I do that, I hope all of you SCWPerS are all are out there, SCWPering your tails off. Just celebrated a new SCWPer just last week. So that’s wonderful. Love that when that happens, and for those of you who aren’t SCWPerS yet, that’s our goal is to get you to your second childhood without parental supervision so you can go play, have fun, enjoy and let us do the worrying for you. So I hope you all are healthy, wealthy and wise. So, you know, one of the things that I’ve talked about is that, you know, in 2007 we had significant moves up and down. And also in Y2K just before what the stock market crash of Y2K and 2008 we had significant up and down moves in the market before it finally collapsed. And so, you know, I equate it to the movie Titanic, which you may recall. The Titanic hit the the iceberg, and it created a shutter. It shook the whole ship and people, it woke them up, and they went outside and they looked around, but because the hole that the iceberg made was below water level, they didn’t see it. So they looked around. Everything’s fine. Okay, go back to bed. Nothing to worry about. Well, as you know, what was happening was that hole was filling the billows with water, and eventually the Titanic sank. And the important lesson there is that you don’t ignore the shutters. And the second thing is make sure that you have a lifeboat to protect you to get into should the ship sink, and so we don’t think that the shutters that we’re feeling right now are a precursor for a big, bad bear market. At this point, we’re still a good distance from our sell signal, so we’re not particularly concerned or near getting out at this point. Just to let you know that, however, it is possible that these shutters that we’re feeling right now, these big moves, and they’ve been big, 2% up 2% down here over the last couple of weeks, if you have those kinds of activity. It could very well be the market sensing, you know, Something’s just not right here. There’s something wrong here, and it could be a precursor. Again, we don’t think so, but we’re glad we have our Invest and Protect Strategy to implement should it turn out to be as in 2008 when those those big moves, or up and down and up and down, but then one of them actually triggered us out, and that’s when we told our clients to get out and stay out for year and a half, almost. So a long time. Anyhow, the thing that’s kind of disconcerting, I’ll say, with regard to what’s going on now, is that the two worst bear markets that we’ve ever had in our country was the Great Depression, and then 2008 and historians look back at that and point the finger, many of them do, I do, certainly to the Fed, because the Federal Reserve back in the Great Depression, what they did was they actually raised interest rates, because during the whole when It was a recession, it turned into a depression. They raised interest rates because they thought that if there were higher interest rates, people would have more money from their investments, higher interest rates, and they’d spend more, and that would help the economy. Well, we know now that that’s a terrible idea. So now the opposite is what they do, right? In a recession, you lower interest rates. Well, that was 2008 Well, guess what happened there? The Fed lowered interest rates so much that they were practically zero. And what did people do with that? They borrowed tons of money at very, very low interest rates and bought all those subprime mortgages. And next thing you know, we had another crash. So both of those, you could say, were induced by a Federal Reserve mistake. So here we are today. What’s going on? Well, the Fed raised interest rates the fastest it’s ever done. This is a just a breathtaking increase as a percentage, but from practically zero to over 5% unbelievable. And so the economy has been slowing down, as we’ve been chronicling for you, but and the momentum of that slowdown has been increasing, so that’s worrisome, but the one thing that people pointed to Don’t worry, because people have jobs. The jobs numbers were holding. But what happened is here, over the last two months, the jobs numbers have repeatedly been worse and worse. So it looks like the jobs numbers, were starting to increase their momentum as well, and that’s why you’re getting all this angst in the markets. So fundamentally, though, we’re still at very low unemployment rates. So it’s we’re not overly worried about it, but we are watching it for you. But if it does continue to accelerate, this momentum of the economy slowing down and jobs slowing down, we could very well have a really bad recession. And I hope that the fact that we have our invest and protect strategy ready to be enacted gives you the peace of mind, knowing that we will make we will get out if we need to, just as we did in March of 2020 when the pandemic, literally, the day before the pandemic was announced, we said, let’s get out. And then in April of 2022 same, let’s get out before the inflation, the bear market that came after that because of inflation, we want to protect you, right? Invest. Growth is important, but protection of principle is even more important. That’s why you’re here. And I hope you are not worried. Let us do the worrying. A client told me, Ken, you got more gray hair than you did a year ago. Yes, I do. You’re right, but that’s okay. That’s my job. I get the gray hair. You go out and do your SCWPering. So thank you for watching this video. Oh, I want to talk a little bit before I go with regard to bonds. So the bond market continues to be a bright spot here the last couple months. And again, we predicted that. We said that if the Fed is going to lower interest rates, then our bond portfolio should do quite well. And it has been. There’s if you look back at history, the bond the bond aggregate index, which is where most of our bond portfolio is invested in it has done if the Fed drops interest rates by 1% historically, the bond aggregate index has gone up by 10% so it has a one to 10 leverage, if you will. And so we believe the Fed will be lowering interest rates by 1% over the next six months, and that being the case, there’s still some upside, a lot of upside, in fact, for, we think, for our bond portfolio. So we have a strategy to address the stock market if it goes south, and we have a strategy our bonds, we think will do well whether that happens or it doesn’t, because it’s based on what the Fed does, and we think they will lower interest rates. So we think we’re well positioned. I hope that gives you peace of mind. I hope this video gives you peace of mind. Share it with your friends. Share it with your family. We want to create as many SCWPerS as we possibly can. So again, thanks, 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