• We did not reach our sell signal today.
• We continue to be on high alert should we reach it.
• If we do reach our signal, we will sell.
• We will tell you when we’re going to sell, and we will tell you how much and what we sold after the trade is completed.
• The reason we do that is because we don’t want others front running our trades, so we don’t get optimum pricing on our trades.
• This morning, the Michigan survey of consumer sentiment came out, and it was the biggest drop in consumer confidence in quite a while.
• It went from 64.7 to 57.9, which is a significant drop, and attention getting, but 57.9 is still positive.
• It still means the majority of people feel confident, but a drop in that level of confidence.
• Consumer confidence matters because it can indicate whether consumers spend or not.
• If consumers are not feeling confident, then they don’t spend.
• Consumers represent 70% of our economy, so that the fact that it dropped is not a good thing.
• But 57.9 is still a good score.
• We also want to discuss the importance of diversification.
• The S&P 500 Index is down 4% this year, not from the peak, but from January 1.
• However, international stocks are up 8% and the bond aggregate, which is the majority of our bond portfolio, is up 1.5%.
• Diversification has mitigated the downside for us, reduced it by more than half if you’re in a 60 stock, 40 bond portfolio.
• So even though the market has come way down, it has not hurt us as badly because of diversification.
• It’s like we are wearing a belt and suspenders.
• The suspenders are our diversification, but the belt is our Invest and Protect Strategy.
• Our strategy is designed for protection.
• Our strategy is designed to protect you from big, bad losses that could debilitate or devastate your ability to stay retired or to retire when you want to.
• In the past, when we’ve sold, two things can happen.
• One is we sell, the market goes way, way, way down after that, and then we buy far lower than where we sold.
• That’s a great outcome, but it is not what the strategy is designed to do.
• It is also possible that we have a mild bear market or a short lived bear market, and if we do, it’s likely that we will buy back higher than where we sold.
• That is not a bad outcome either.
• What’s really important is what happens after we buy.
• If it goes up after we bought, that’s the measure of what we should be looking at to see how well our strategy works.
• Our #1 Investment Principle is that we are committed to having your money last as long as you do.
• Therefore, we’re going to be conservative, and we’re going to have a strategy that we want to use so as to protect against major losses that could cause your money to not last as long as you do.
• That’s why we have our strategy.
• Investment Principle #2 is that growth is important, but protection of principal is more important.
• The strategy is designed to protect your principal.
• Think of it as insurance. Insurance is not designed to make you money; it’s designed to protect you from losing money.
• Investment Principle #5 is that the Invest and Protect Strategy comes with opportunity cost in certain market conditions.
• Opportunity cost means that the market went up while we were waiting for our buy signal.
• We have to decide what game we’re playing.
• Are we playing the game of making the most money possible, or are we playing the game of having your money last as long as you do?
• If the game is making the most money possible, then let’s go super aggressive, buy bitcoin, or gamble.
• The problem with that is it’ll be a violation of growth is important, but protection of principle is more important, and it’ll be a violation of we’re committed to your money lasting as long as you do.
• So it is possible that we buy back higher than where we sold.
• But that’s okay, because what we’re doing is we’re protecting against what we don’t know.
• When our strategy says to sell, we don’t know in advance whether it’s a big, bad bear or whether it’s going to be a short lived or a shallow bear market.
• The strategy is designed to do to protect against downside, because that’s how you live to fight another day.
• If you don’t make as much as you could have, or you don’t buy back lower than where you sold, that’s okay.
• If you sold, you protected, you still have the money you sold, you didn’t lose what happened after that, when it went down.
• For us, the primary thing is we want your money to last as long as you do, so that you can remain SCWPerS, so you can stay retired and enjoy your second childhood without parental supervision.

Hello and welcome to our Market Alert video for today, which is Friday the 14th of March, 2025 and I want to start this video off by saying we did not reach our sell signal today, and so we continue to be on high alert should we reach it. And also want to tell you that if we do decide to, if we do reach our signal, rather, we will sell. And we will tell you we’re going to sell, what we won’t be able to tell you is how much we’re going to sell, or what we sold. And again, the reason why we do that is because if others know what we’re doing, they can front run our trades, and if they do that, then we won’t get optimum pricing on our trades, and we want to get optimum pricing on our trades, so that’s why you’ll find out after the fact. Okay, so be patient with us, please. I’m very proud today. Look at that. I’m wearing my proud to be a RPOA SCWPer. And if you don’t know what SCWPerS stands for, it’s a second childhood without parental supervision. And so once you retire, we want you to go play and have fun and enjoy and don’t worry about all this boring financial stuff. Let us do it for you. So to SCWPerS Nation. Hi. I hope you’re out there SCWPering your little tails off. And for those of you who are still not SCWPerS, clients, we love you, we adore you, we cherish you, we are grateful. And our goal is to get you to be a SCWPer as well. So let’s talk about what came out this week, or actually this morning, consumer confidence. The Michigan survey of consumer sentiment came out, and basically it’s the biggest drop in consumer sentiment consumer confidence in quite a while, it went from 64.7 to 57.9 which is a significant drop, and one that you know is kind of attention getting, and it’s still positive. 57.9 still means the majority of people still feel confident, but the drop in that level of confidence. Now here’s the interesting thing. They looked at, who are the people that are confident and the people that are not confident? And guess what? There is literally nothing anymore that happens that is not political. It’s crazy to me. So guess what? The drop in consumer confidence was with Democrats and independents, but not with Republicans. So the Republicans are feeling confident about the future, and the Democrats and the independents are not feeling it so much. So it’s it’s crazy. The thing is, though, it doesn’t matter what the politics are, because what it does matter is whether consumers spend or not. And so if consumers are not feeling confident, then they don’t spend. And that is 70% of our economy, and that’s not a good thing. So that the fact that it dropped is not a good thing, but the fact that it’s still basically 58 is still a good score. It’s just not as good as it was. It was very high before, right after the elections. So again, we didn’t reach our sell signal. Two things I want to go over with you. One is that the value of diversification the stock market, as I record this is the S&P500 index is down 4% this year, not from the peak, but from just from January 1. However, international stocks are up 8% and the bond aggregate, which is the majority of our bond portfolio, is up 1.5% again, as I record this, and it’s the BNY Mellon ETFs. And so diversification works, it has mitigated the downside for us, reduced it by more than half if you’re in a 60 stock, 40 bond portfolio. So even though the market has come way down, it has not hurt us as badly, again, because of diversification. So I like to say that we’re wearing a belt and suspenders. Okay, so I’ll say the the suspenders are our diversification, but the belt is our Invest and Protect Strategy. So we got that on tightly, and that way our pants won’t fall down. So I want to talk about our Invest and Protect Strategy with you for for just a moment. Because, you know, I think it’s important that we all have the same expectations of what our strategy is designed to do. Okay? So our strategy is not designed to buy to sell high and then buy low. Okay? It’s not designed for that. It’s designed for protection. It’s called Invest and Protect. So our strategy is designed to protect you from big, bad losses that could debilitate or devastate your ability to stay retired or to retire when you want to. That’s its job. It’s not designed so you know, in the past, when we’ve sold, two things can happen if we sell, right? One is we sell, the market goes way, way, way down after that, and then we buy far lower than where we sold. That’s a great outcome, but it is not what the strategy is designed to do. Okay? Because it is also possible that we have a mild bear market or a short lived bear market, and if we do, it’s likely that we will buy back higher than where we sold. Is that a bad outcome? No, because that’s not what the strategy is designed to do. If you’re fixating on where we sold versus where we bought. You know, fixate on it when we buy way lower. Big, bad bear. Okay, but what’s really important is what happens after we sell. I’m sorry after we buy, right? Because if it goes up, I’m recording at home. So if it goes up after we bought, that’s what the measure of what we should be looking at, and the fact that we bought higher than where we sold should not be the measure of how well our strategy works. So I want to share with you something here. So give me a moment for it to load up, and I want to share with you our investment principles. Okay? So what you can see here is, I want to start with investment principle number one. We are committed to having your money last as long as you do. Okay, so our investment philosophy is, we want your money to last as long as you do. What that means therefore, is we’re going to be conservative, and we’re going to have a strategy that we want to use so as to protect against major losses that could cause your money to not last as long as you do. So that’s why we have our strategy. The next one I want to talk about is number two, growth is important, but protection of principal is more important. Okay, so, yes, it’s possible and likely that we will go we’ll go down before we sell. So we lost money when that happened. We may, and I’ll get to the the next one in a minute. We may not get in as fast as we would like. If we had a perfect strategy, we’d buy back in at the very bottom. But growth is important, but protection of principal is more important. The strategy is designed to protect your principal. Okay, think of it as insurance, okay. Insurance is not designed to make you money. It’s designed to protect you from losing money, if that makes sense. Okay, now I want to go to number four, okay, or rather, I’m sorry, number five, okay, so I’m down over here, the Invest and Protect Strategy comes with opportunity cost in certain market conditions. Okay? So opportunity cost means that the market went up while we were waiting for our buy signal and we missed out. That comes with the territory. We have to decide what game we’re playing. Are we playing the game of making the most money possible, or are we playing the game of having your money last as long as you do? Because they’re not the same. If the game is making the most money possible, then let’s buy bitcoin. Let’s Let’s gamble. Let’s go super aggressive. Let’s be let’s do those things, and we could make the most money possible. The problem with that is it’ll be a violation of growth is important, but protection of principle is more important, and it’ll be a violation of we’re committed to your money lasting as long as you do. So it is possible, and if it’s not a big, bad bear, not always, but likely is we will buy back higher than where we sold. But that’s okay, because what we’re doing is we’re protecting against what we don’t know. Okay, because when our strategy says to sell, we don’t know in advance. I wish we could. We don’t. Whether it’s a big, bad bear or whether it’s going to be a short lived or a shallow bear market. We don’t know that in advance. So therefore we have to act every single time, and that’s why we will so I’m just prepping you so we have alignment of expectations. Look at what the strategy is designed to do to protect against downside, because that’s how you live to fight another day. If you don’t make as much as you could have, or you don’t buy back lower than where you sold, that’s okay. Okay. It’s not bad, because remember, if you sold, you protected, you still have the money you sold, you didn’t lose what happened after that, when it went down, right? And so if it comes all the way back, and you buy back slightly higher than where you bought, or at the same place or lower, to us, we love it if it happens, but it’s not the primary thing, the primary thing is we want your money to last as long as you do, so that you can remain a SCWPer, so you can stay retired and enjoy your second childhood without parental supervision. So just as a recap, we did get consumer confidence, not a good number. We also did not reach our sell signal, and so we’re in good shape for now, and we’ll see what happens next week. So have a great weekend, everybody. Thanks for watching, and please like and subscribe to this video and share it with your friends. If you know anybody that is retiring or retiring soon or is retired, send them this video. Have them watch it. Maybe they’ll they’ll talk with us. We’re always open for business, so 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