Hello, and welcome to our special Market Alert video for today, which is August 5, 2024. And we thought that we’d get this video out to you today given what the chaos has been going on in the market, and to hopefully give you some peace of mind with regard to what’s going on. So thanks for watching. There are several items at play right now, some of which we’ve already been talking about with you over the last few weeks. And that is that the economy is slowing down, there’s no question and the momentum of that slowdown has been accelerating over the last several weeks, 2-3-4 weeks. But what has been holding everything up despite that was the jobs numbers where the jobs numbers seem to be holding and coming in better than expected. And so that was kind of a little bit of a of a backstop, if you will to a full fledged sell off. On Friday, we got the jobs numbers, which were not very good at all. And so the concern now becomes, you know, did the Federal Reserve wait too long to lower interest rates? Is the economy’s momentum now accelerating in a bad way? Do we have consumers who depend on their jobs for their consumption? Are we seeing the jobs numbers and the consumption numbers starting to accelerate in the wrong direction. And then, as we’ve spoken about before, is that our economy is a giant like a giant oil tanker, you can’t turn it on a dime. So if you wait too long to start trying to turn it, it’s gonna be very difficult. So. And the precedent for this is back in the early 80s, when Paul Volcker was the Federal Reserve Chairman, and he raised interest rates very, very high, so as to combat inflation. And then he waited too long to lower interest rates. And because of that, there was a very bad recession. And the stock market had a pretty bad down period also had a crash by those days’ standards. And so the concern is did the Fed way too long this time, like Paul Volcker did? Is the economy slowing down? And so all of that is going into the emotions of the day, there’s an additional item that is also in play, and that is what’s called the carry trade. And so the carry trade is where investors can borrow in one country at a lower interest rate, and then go and lend that same money in another country at a higher interest rate. So basically, what they do is they borrow the money, they carry it over to a different place, and then they lend it over there. Well, that works great. And it’s almost a lock on how much money you can make. But it only works until it doesn’t. And now what’s happening is is that the Bank of Japan is raising interest rates, and we’re potentially going to be lowering interest rates. So this carry trade doesn’t work anymore. If you’re gonna pay a higher interest rate on what you’re borrowing, and you’re getting less from the people you’re lending to. This is not a good business decision anymore. And so this carry trade with the Japanese is unwinding and people panic always, it seems like, and so that has caused a lot of selling on a global scale. So those are the dynamics of what’s going on right now. And therefore. So what do we do about it? Well, there is a little bit of good news that came out this morning. And that was that the manufacturing numbers this morning came out and were not terrible. They were okay. So maybe things are not as bad as maybe investors in the market are thinking. The important thing for us to do is not to panic, we’ve got two things going for us. One is we have our Invest and Protect Strategy. If this is going to turn into a big bad recession with a terrible bear market, like what happened in the early 80s. Our strategy, if you go back to that time, and you look at what it did, it would have served us well back then. We anticipate it’ll serve us well in this environment also. So from the standpoint of the stock market side, if if things really deteriorate and go south, I hope you have some peace of mind knowing we do have a strategy to address that. Now, unfortunately, just like in October of 23, when the market had bottomed, right, it went down from July to October, it went down a lot. It went down almost 12%. Right now the market is down about 8-9%. So that was worse than now. But we stayed firm. We didn’t panic, and it turned around and went up significantly after that. So we don’t want to panic. We want our strategy which we’ve thought through we planned ahead. We’ve tested it, we want our strategy to be our guide. The other side of the equation is our bond portfolio. And as you guys know, we bought back into our bond portfolio in December of last year, the latter part of December. And the reason why we did was because we anticipated that the economy would slow, we anticipated that the Federal Reserve would have to start lowering interest rates. And we think they will, here probably soon, September is their next meeting. And probably now it looks like they might actually lower interest rates more than once. In that environment, our bond portfolio should do very, very well, it’s already doing well in anticipation of that, and we anticipate that that doing well will accelerate. So that will be a counter to what the stock market is doing. So our diversification with our bonds, and our investment, protect strategy, both are there to help to mitigate against that downside. So let us do the worrying about this so that you don’t have to, that’s our job. I know it’s difficult when you see the headlines, and everybody’s telling you the world’s falling, the sky is falling. But let us do that worrying for you, we will address it, we will take care of it. You know our goal is to make sure that your money lasts as long as you do and we have not lost sight of that goal. We are firmly watching the store for you. Okay, so not fun times, but comes with the territory. And again, if it turns into something really bad, our strategy will get us out and our bonds will do very well if it turns into something like what happened in 19 in the early 1980s. So thanks for watching this video. Please share it with your friends if they’re worried or scared. Hopefully, this will give them some perspective. So again, thanks for watching, 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