You ghost. You know that's a nice song, Zach. Good morning, folks. I'm Stephen Bouchet. I'm sitting here live with you, and I thank you for taking time out of your day to tune in. You know, don't feel blue. Fifty two days till spring, folks, we are we are really getting there now. For those that love the snow and ski and snowmobile and all of those fun things to do, well, you may want spring to be pushed back a little bit more because you really haven't had
as much snow as you would like. So whatever, whatever your feelings are, let's, you know, let's just keep eyes focused on the prize. The prize right now is record highs on the S and P five hundred index. We're almost there with NASDAK whatever you think. The stock market is pretty resilient. The stock market likes what's going on. We set Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday record highs. You know, yesterday we gave just a smidgeon back, but record highs. You know, I promise you. I
give you two promises. One, you'll lose money if you're invested, and I don't care if you're invested in stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities. You'll lose money for a day, a week, a month, you'll lose money. Sometimes for a year, like in twenty twenty two, you'll lose money. It comes with the territory of investing. But when you do lose money, remember the stock market always comes back to make new all time
highs. And that's just what happened. It's nice to see, especially for those investors that weren't scared out of the market, or maybe had an advisor they were working with that just may have been as scared as the investor, and that happens. I gave you a story not too long ago about the gentleman I met had a party. He's a friend, he's not a client.
Unfortunately for him, he's not a client, and his advisor let him make some crazy moves and that pushed off as retirement and he had to work a whole lot longer than he expected to, all because of silly, silly mistakes. So this was a nice week in the stock market, and I'd love to talk with you any questions that you may have. The phone lines are open one eight hundred talk w g Y one eight hundred eighty two, five five, nine, four nine. Any questions whatsoever, Give me a
call. Let's get you pointed in the right direction. Talk about your financial situation. If you're not sure about an investment you may own, or if you're being sold an annuity and you're not sure it's right for you, whatever it might be, folks, give me a call. One eight hundred eighty two five five to nine four nine. So I went to our website to see if our we we every year do a State of the Economy. When I tell you we try to take care of our clients as best we can.
We try to take care of our clients as best we can. Every year we do a state of the Economy dinner presentation where we invite clients, and this year we had over three hundred clients Tuesday and Wednesday night. It was a beautiful, beautiful gather for many reasons, but we had over three hundred clients and my team did a presentation that was just second to none,
and they put together information data. People that left that presentation Tuesday and Wednesday night were just amazed at how, you know, how we try to make it simple for them to understand what's going on. That's why we call it our State of the economy presentation and we'll share it with you. It'll be on our website. I thought it might be up by now. We had a professional it firm back in my high school days. We call them the av guys, and that's what I referred to them as, because you know,
these guys do amazing things behind the scenes. So they are editing it right now and we'll have it up. You'll be able to see the presentation. The presenters I had Marty John Ryan my leadership team, and Nicole Goebel who's one of our senior advisors. Nicole's a CPA and certified Divorce Financial Analysts. And Paulo La Pietra, another senior advisor who's a CFP and portfolio strategist.
He works closely with Ryan on our investments. So between the five of them and myself, we really had a solid State of the Economy presentation. So thank you for those that came, and by next week we should have it. So stay tuned next Saturday and Sunday. We'll let you know when it's up on the website for you to be able to go and view it
yourself. It's really well worth your time. Probably one of the highlights of our years doing our State of the Economy presentation one eight hundred eight two, five, five nine nine, one eight eighty two, five fifty nine forty nine. If you have any questions, give me a call. Let's talk about anything you want to talk about. I would love to talk with you. So this week, what happened China? You know, their CSI three
thousand index hit its lowest level in five years. If you're invested in China, you're not You're not whistling Dixie like if you were invested in this great country of ours. The S and P five hundred index is really the benchmark you should be comparing your your your information to your portfolio too. And we don't own any international investments. We haven't owned any international investments in quite some time. And I don't care to. I don't care really to get back
into them. I don't need to. I can get all the exposure I want with our foreign counterparts out there through the mega caps and the big you know, basically top dogs, the big megacap companies in this country. They do business overseas, they sell their goods and services, So we get exposure to the international artment international investment investment markets indirectly, boy, I got tongue tied there, indirectly. So you know, if you own China, your
sucking win Bitcoin. You know, we had a good run. Bitcoin went all the way up to forty five thousand, came back down. Bitcoin's the only action you can get on the weekends, folks. I mean, if you want to bet on investments, bitcoin is it. So as we sit here, it's down about one hundred and eighty. This morning, bitcoins trading at almost forty two thousand. It was forty five thousand, so it came off about, you know, fifteen percent, and that's okay. There's a
lot of people that feel bitcoin really is here to stay. I have some of it in my sandbox account, and you know my sandbox account. It's just like we have clients that have sandbox accounts. One of my clients actually coined it and i've or basically shared with me. That's what he calls his play account. And I coined it, and I stole the idea and I use it a lot. We have clients that like to play in the sand. Remember when you were a kid playing in the sand or going to the
beach and playing in the sand. Well, that's what my sandbox account is. It's just a little account that I play and I have a little bitcoin in there. And soon I'm going to have an artificial intelligence ETF. I got Ed Wilhelm, one of our portfolio committee members, and our trader doing some research because, as Ryan pointed out in the presentations this week, there's actually some artificial intelligence ETFs that never even held Microsoft the number one company in
the world. It actually topped Apple and then you know, now it's still a close second. But Microsoft is a player in the AI world, a huge player, and I can't imagine having an ETF focused on artificial intelligence not having Microsoft one eight two, five, five, nine, four nine. Let's go to the phone lines and kick things off with Dom and late them. Hello, Dom, Hi, how are you. I'm doing great. I had a question. I had a question about the Silicon Dolly Bank.
You know what the current uh uh? Do you know what the current value is of that bank? I think zero. You know, I haven't even thought about it since last March when they went belly up. But let me see if I can pull it up for you. You know now it's valued at thirty four point two billion as of the end of December, and then we know what happened last the end of December in twenty twenty two, we know what happened last year. And you know, I'm ashamed to say I
have no idea what it's doing right now, but I'll try to. I'll try to find it for you. You know, the way I see it, I believe the share price is seven cents a share, and that's unfortunately a long way from where it once was. But I don't think you know, listen, this is a bank that got caught up, and it's not
like they did anything wrong. What they did was they had too many long term bonds on their balance sheet and when they needed to liquid date bonds were down big time last year and they got caught up in it, along with a few other banks. But you know, SVB Financial Group is I think, just really holding on by by a thread. But I don't know what the value is and I can't find it too quickly. Dom. I'm sorry. It's not often I get stumped, but you stumped me. I think
I don't know how to consolidate or filed. Is it possible to file bankruptcy? Well, I you know that question. I've got to take this. Yeah, but you owners got to take this no. Yeah, good good,
It's good that you didn't own it. No. I mean there's been so much money in there that, uh, you know, we never hear a year two three years later about how it's doing and what happened to what the other Republic the other banks in New York City that joined, And there was a period there following that where people were calling banks constantly, is my
money safe? As my money safe? People were scared all over. I've even called myself, and people were scared that, you know, they were taking money out of their bank and putting in other banks just to be because they were worried about the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars FDIC. Yeah,
well people should be scared. I mean, this is a bank that got themselves in trouble and they've lost, you know, ninety nine point nine to nine percent of their value, and I think they're there could put but I don't have I can't, you know, unfortunately, I could care less about it. So I haven't followed it quite some time, and I should because
Ryan actually talked about it in our presentations this week. So if he's listening, text me Ryan but I don't know any I don't know anything about I'll try to get some information, tune in through the whole show, and if I get some more information on SVB Financial Group, I'll let you know. Dom. Hey, Dom, stay well, be healthy. He stumped me.
You know, it's a I've lost track of it, you know, with all the emotions and the volatility last spring around the bank and bank failures, and you know, as I said, it's not like somebody was embezzling money. Basically, what happened here it was a stupid idiotic move by the powers to be in this bank that basically in a nut show. What they did was they they never filled their chief risk officer position, and that position is to do and keep them from having happened what happened. So it was
an idiotic, stupid move. And you know, believe me, it's it happened. It's behind me. Well, I got stumped. One eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine. One eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine. If you have any other questions with anything other than Silicon Valley Bank, I'd love to talk to you. One eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine. So I started to kind of recap the week. China's index it's lowest level in five years, bitcoined down fifteen percent,
Tech stocks, you know, God, the Magnificent six. I know you're probably wondering, why isn't it the Magnificent seven because Tesla is sucking win? You know, Tesla is is is down twenty six percent year to date. Listen, I don't know what happened to Tesla. We're gonna talk about it. I got some information prepared to talk about Tesla today and tomorrow. But Tesla is I'm not so sure it's considered one of the magnific and seven.
You had fourth quarter growth, you know, above above expectations three point three percent. December inflation was moderate at point two percent. A couple of different reports on the GDP and PCeU that we'll talk about. So for the week, the Dow was up point sixty five percent, a new high, SMP of one point zero six percent, four new high closes. As I said, Friday gave just a smidgeon back. So we can't sit here and say we're at a record high. NANSNAK up point nine four almost one percent,
for the week. So we had a nice, you know, a nice week in the stock market, folks, you knows. As so Marty, Marty had a slide about all the talking heads, all of the supposedly some of the smartest, brilliant people in the investment world that were basically, you know, pounding their fists last year saying we were going into a recession and
a bad one. And you know, thank god Marty gave me credit because I set the tone, and I set the tone in our firm for sure, and I said, we're not going into a recession, and if we do it, it'll be short lived, very shallow. In hindsight, we did not go into a recession. We did not run for the hills.
There was no reason for it. I said that just because history shows that the economists feel that we needed a hard landing and high unemployment to get inflation down to a number that the FED had in their mind as their target. I said, we did not need all of that to happen. The economy was resilient. Why did we need to have millions of workers that finally are
working and being paid a decent wage lose their jobs. Why did we need for the economy to suffer with a hard recession if if we can come in for a soft landing, And that was a big part of our presentation. And we did come in for a very soft landing. I mean it was like the airline pilot, you know, was was was floating on air as he came into the runway. It was as soft of a landing as we could have. We did not go into a recession. We did not have
any hard times. And I'm very optimistic on the stock market. So it's you know, you can't listen to listen the people in the know are only in the know in their own minds. You got to put a lot of information together, folks, and make an educated decision and informative decision. Don't just you know, don't just listen to every talking had one eight eighty two, five, five nine four. Or when we go back to the home lines, we have another Dom. Hello, Dom, that'll be Dom number
two. I know what I was trying to get to you earlier before him, Oh man, oh man. You know, listen, today's a big Dom. Today's a big day. And horse racing. We got the Pegasus down at golf Stream or you know, a lot of the A lot of the great horses are going to be racing. I mean, you almost made it to the finish line. Dom knows you out. Listen, this is gonna be a beautiful thing when that happens. Listen. The horses are gorgeous. You know, we're just so underrated them. Anyway, Steve, I
got a question for you and proud to twenty twenty. I purchased incrementally some some gold eagles from the from different you know places around the Capitol District area and you know, reputable places. So I made sure that I tested with my Sigma analytics. But I got a question for you. I want to be able to I want to. I'm glad I did what I did, but I'm not trying to. I wasn't trying to use it for any purposes other than the whole wealth. Understand. Whenever wanted to use it as an
investment. It's not an investment. It's like silver, it's like gold and platinum and so on. All I wanted to do was put a certain amount of money income way in something like that. Now, all I want to do now is I want to split that in half what I could and I can get a decent premium at the same time as the I did the spot price of it. But the question is is what do I do with it? Once I do that? You know, I hear you all the time. I'm listening to you and I and I enjoy your enjoy your shows.
You've got a great shown, You've got a great show. You're you're really one point. So what do I do with this? Now? Do I do? I split this in half too, as I do that to put that in convert the different places, and do it incrementally? Do that? Also? What do I do? Because the way I did my goal is one test quote arounds this halfs and and and one ounce, you know,
in that way. So you know, I just want to know what's what's my you know, because I want I did that with sober too, and a little bit of platinum, not too much in platinum, but more good. Platinum is so low right now, but that's actually where you want to buy it at. So I should have wanted the opposite way. But let me ask you a question, what would I do with that? Now? It comes to about probably I can get right now if I don't have probably
about fifty grand. So what do I do so I have paid taxing many, go ahead. Yeah, So how much does it represent of your total investment portfolio? Well, it's not an investment for folio, it's a well holding. No, no, no, no, what I mean yeah, what I mean is like, do you have one hundred thousand dollars in this represents fifty percent of all your investments or a million dollars? I did it
by by the gold silver ratio. Yeah, no, I'm sorry, Dom, Like you must have other investments, correct, CDs or none of that, just a bank account and that's what I got. Oh, so this is all you have. So I'm gonna yeah, I'm gonna give you my my, my uneducated view on gold. And I say that piece. We talked about it in our presentation this week. You know, as we sit here, gold go golds two thousand and seventeen dollars an ounce. You know the gold gold really had a good run over the last few years. You
did well with it. But there's no intrinsic value with gold. Yeah yeah, there's no. Yeah, there's no intrinsic value with with gold. So what you have to be careful with them is, you know, Wendy is selled because gold really there's there's two pieces of the puzzle, and there's only two that make up the value of gold. There's a buyer and there's a seller. What is this buyer willing to pay for the gold? I don't care what form you have, and whether it be gold bars, gold shavings,
gold ETFs. You know, for the for the most part, that's how gold is. You know, there's there's no intrinsic value, there's no dividends paid. It's not like it's you know, there's earnings and pe ratios. Gold is a commodity that two people come together and one's selling, one's buying, and that's really how you get to the price of gold. So you know, we're over two thousand dollars an ounce, and gold really, you know, hasn't gone that much higher. It's it's it's been in the
two thousand ranges is the high water mark. You go back. You know, god gold was thirty five dollars an ounce for thirty five years, and you know the early eighties that it kind of rosed about eight hundred dollars an ounce, and you know, we've we've seen it. Back in two thousand and eleven, gold was almost two thousand dollars an ounce, and then it went down to eleven hundred dollars an ounce, and here we are crept back up to two thousand dollars an ounce. And you know, there's a lot
of reasons why gold should do well. Right. People buy gold for you know, out of fear. They as you said, And it's a nice way of putting it. Don you bought it as wealth, It's part of your wealth. It's like only in your mind, I'm guessing home or something hard of value. One, be careful with it. If you're storing it, make sure it's stored safely somewhere. But I'm just not a gold bug.
I'm just not into buying gold. And you know, maybe behoove you to sell it and get into something a little bit more, let's say diversified. Hey, we're coming up to the end of the first half of the show. Thank you for tuning in. You're you know, listening to Let's Talk Money, brought to you by Bouchet Group, where we focus on your health. You know, we want you to be healthy and we'll manage your wealth. Eighty two five five nine four nine or the phone lines are open.
I'll see you on the other side of the news. Oh god, just that's away. Just that's me with lot of TrEPS wear us have with you. I can't let you walk away, folks. I'm here for you. I'm Stephen Bouchet, and I am live helping any anybody that I can help with their financial future, give them my thoughts and outlook and advice. I've been helping clients for thirty six years, in business thirty four and a
fiduciary for now over thirty one years. And I'm proud, proud, proud of the team that I've surrounded myself by, and I'm more happy to do the show every week to help you get pointed in the right direction, because you get one opportunity to retire and you can't. You can't go back and make up for decades of working and maybe you know, trying to find a way of putting money away in order to retire. You have to do that unless you know, unless you can live on twenty thousand dollars a year that's
the average Social Security wage. And if you can live on that, then then you don't need to save money. But if you need more than twenty thousand dollars a year, you need to save some money. So if you have any questions pertaining to your financial future one eight hundred talk WGY one eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine. So you know, the first Tom had the question on SVB Financial Group and during the newsbreak, I, you know, I just dug deeper, as I said, I should have
known you know this, and I kind of sensed it. But I'm not one who likes to just you know, talk to talk and not not have accurate information. And you know, as as I thought, Silicon Valley Bank, believe it or not, it was the sixteenth largest bank and it failed. It went out of business. The assets were basically bought by First Citizens Bank, and you know last March and the share prices for the most parts defunk. Sometimes you know, these these entities come back and revive themselves,
but not for not for Silicon Valley Banks. So Dom, if you're still listening there you have it. It's it's it's it's it's gone. Say goodbye. Se Leve Riva de VICI nice knowing. Yeah, eight two five five nine four nine. If you have any questions, give me a call. I'd love to talk to you. You know, the markets God, we
record highs in the SMP. As I said on the first half of the show, the S and P was up just over one percent for the week, Nasdaq was up just about one percent, and the Russell two thousand was up one point seventy five percent. That's important because that means that it's not just a Magnificent seven or Magnificent six, depending on how you want to look at those companies. People are kind of writing Tesla off. They don't feel
Tesla is one of the Magnificent sevens anymore. But you're to date, the SMP is up two and a half percent, NASDAK is up three percent. QQQ is up three and a half percent. Not a bad not a bad way. Twenty seven days into the new year twenty twenty four, and we're up to and a half three percent, depending on which index you want to look at. Russell two thousand is down two and a half percent year to date, so Russell two thousand has some ground to make up, which was
nice to see. The Russell two thousand and a half a good week, and we all miss for clients. When you look at the top holdings, the Magnificent seven accounts for just about twenty five percent of the S and P five hundred index. So think about that five hundred companies, and you got seven companies that account for a quarter of the assets. The top ten holdings I think is about a third. So there's there's other companies out there other
than those magnificent seven. And you know the magnificent seven we know them is Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and the Tesla. These these were the companies that were just on a tear last year and you did well. You know, the SMP was up twenty six percent last year. Nasdaq was up fifty five percent last year, and mostly because of these magnificent seven. The stellar performance of these seven companies, and most of them are
are tech stocks, that's what drove the market. So what what happens if if some of these companies don't have as good of a year and when the economy really breaks out, folks, these other companies are going to do well.
So when you when you have the Microsoft and Apples of the world representing such such a huge part of the S and P five hundred, you know, I mean, when you put it in perspective, Microsoft and Apple or like seven percent, you got Alphabet, If you look at both class shares just about four percent, just over four percent, NA Video almost four percent, Amazon three and a half percent, Meta which is Facebook, just over two percent, Tesla one point two percent. So we got we got the
top ten holdings and the round it out. You got Birdshire, Hathaway, broad Com in there that that that rounds out the top ten holdings. You know, they represent thirty two percent of the of the S and P. So you know, these companies when they do well, it's going to really you're going to do well with these things. But the equal weight, the equal weight where you basically have you know, all five hundred companies are equally
weighted and they own point two percent. So Apple and Microsoft instead of it being eight percent each of the equal weight index, it's point two each respectively. And that means that all those other companies are playing a big part. So the market cap weighted SMP, you know, right now it looks like almost half of the NASDAC believe it or not, and that's more than twice
of where it was ten years ago. And when you look at you know, as I said, the top ten holdings account for thirty two percent of the sm P. That's up from twenty five percent just over a year ago. So because these companies did so well, it took them from being you know, the top ten, from being twenty five percent of the SSP all the way up to a third of the SMP. So you know, the SMP right now is trading at just under twenty times forward earnings. The equal
weight index sixteen. So last year, as I said, the SMP was up twenty six percent, the equal weight if you look at the Investo SMP equal weight up almost fourteen percent. And over time, though, believe it or not, over time and if you have time and your patient, the equal weight index had almost twelve percent return over the last twelve I'm sorry, over the last twenty years you're in year out almost almost eleven point five to be exact, and the SMP market cap weighted index was ten point three.
So it might be a good time if you want some diversification in your portfolio, if you want to get away from those top seven or top ten companies in the S and P and the Magnificent seven although they're being called the Magnificent six because Tesla is doing so bad, it might be the time for you to look at equal weight indexes, and there's a lot of them out there, and basically what you're doing is you're getting more broad representation of the market
because that's what we want. That's why I talk about the Russell two thousand, the Russell two thousand. If you look at the top three thousand companies, you have, you know, your big boys, that's the Russell one thousand, and then you have the next two thousand companies that's considered the Russell two thousand. So you have a lot of mid cap and the higher end
of the small cap index. And we want, we want these stocks, these companies to do well because that means that the whole market is doing well, not just a handful of companies. So own owning an equal weight index, we we we own it for our clients and we're happy to own it. And we may be adding more in that area, kind of diversifying a little bit away from those top ten Bahamas companies, and it makes sense. One eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine one eight hundred eighty two
five fifty nine forty nine. Any questions, give me a call, you know, I'd love to talk to you, love to talk to you about anything that that you'd like to talk about. So I said in the beg getting in the show, I talk a little bit about Tesla, and you know, Tesla Man Tesla. I don't think there's a company that that has gotten as much publicity over the years as Tesla, and Tesla is one of
the Magnificent Seven. Not to beat a dead horse, but you know, it's it's it's it's legging, you know, Tesla, the electric vehicle maker. It's it's really it's a lagger. Now you got Microsoft Meta in the video, you know, climbing to new highs. Apples down a little bit yere to day, but I'm not giving up on Apple. Some people are.
We have a debate in the office that should we should we lower the Apple exposure because when you look at our portfolios on behalf of our clients, you know, we you know, ed in my office gives me a rundown. Apple, you know right now, Apple is represents about five percent of
our stockholdings, the same with Microsoft. So our clients, you know, because we don't buy individual stocks, they don't think they own all these stocks, and we remind them you absolutely, do you know your top ten holdings, our top ten holdings for our clients is Apple, Microsoft, Broadcom, Amazon Na Video, Pepsi, Meta, Amjin, Costco, Eli, Lily.
So the way Ryan has the portfolios diversified, we're not just you know, those technology companies aren't making up the entire top ten holdings like so many other ETFs and mutual funds. Ryan has the portfolios diversified such that we have pretty good representation in there. You know. Sure it's nice to have Apple and Microsoft, two of the biggest companies in the world. Is our number one, number two, But it's also nice to have Pepsi, am Jen,
Costco, Eli, Lilly. There's nothing wrong having those in the portfolios either. And it's it's it's why our returns have been as good as they bent one eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine one eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine. I'm gonna take a quick fifteen second break. Don't go anywhere. Thank you folks for letting me wet my whistle. I was getting a little dry there, so I appreciate you let me letting
me take that quick break. One eight eighty two five five nine for nine. Give me a call if you have any any questions. So Tesla's down twenty six percent, and you know this year twenty twenty four, it's lowest level since last May. And on Wednesday the shares were were dealt some bad news. Basically reported earnings came out, Earnings and revenue missed badly. The stock was down more than twelve percent on Thursday. It's worse one day,
dropping more than a year. And it was up just a smidgeon on on Friday. But basically, Tesla's executives warned on the earnings call that growth is likely to slow in twenty twenty four. There's a lot of competition for EV listen EV vehicles. It's like artificial intelligence. EV vehicles are here to stay, and more companies are getting into them. They're committed to them. So Tesla isn't the only player. So what do you do with Tessa? Well, for those of you that have held it and wrote it down, I
don't know. Maybe keep it. For those of you that always wanted to get in, I can't tell you if today is a good day to get in, or or or tomorrow or the next day. But it's it's off pretty pretty good from where it was, and it's a much better entry point now than not one eight eighty two, five, five, nine, four nine. Let's go back to the phone lines. We have jo Nice Greenbush. Hello, Joe, Hi, Steve, who are you. I'm doing great? Yeah? Good, I really, I really, I really enjoyed
the show. I took a quick question for you. I'm not not sure how how familiar you are with the Federal Employee TSP, which is kind of their four oh one analog. I guess, but we have right now, I'm about anywhere from eight to ten years out from retirement. My wife and I. I'm right now in a life cycle fund through the TSP through the federal government, which is kind of just kind of mirrors when you're allocates based
upon what you expected retirement's going to be. So right now I have it being a little bit more aggressive than where I think I'm going to be. I'm more probably likely around twenty and thirty eight, but I'm in the two thousand and forty life cycle fund. And you kind of answer the question a
little bit during that last segment. But the allocations, it's a mixed allocation, and I've been always for the last few years, I've been kind of thinking about switching that over to more a little bit more heavier in the S and P to kind of mirror their results. This life cycle fund, than I am right now, is weighted throughout several different funds, but only thirty
seven percent of it mirror is the S and and. Yeah, at this point in life, I know it's this is a very kind of broad question without really looking into the funds that are represented in this life cycle I know it's kind of hard to answer. But if it's a general kind of rule is I know, you were just speaking about having a kind of a mixed, mixed portfolio, and I think this life Tega fund kind of does that.
But I'm a little bit hesitant that I'm not getting the full benefits over these next eight years by having just thirty seven percent in the SMP and every year and every quarter, you know, as I get closer to that retirement, that's probably going to decrease even further and to eventually where it's just kind of all cash. Yeah, I just one of what your thought might be on that. Yeah, So I'll give you my thought. I'm not a big fan of the of the life cycle funds better known as target date funds.
You know, you were up over the last year about you know, sixteen percent. The S and P was up twenty six percent. How old are you, Joe, I just turned fifty fifty, So man, you got time. And if you're able to retire, I think I heard you say you and your wife may be retiring in the next ten years. God
bless you. Good for you, But you're young. If you were our client, we'd be, you know, looking at you hanging out with us for the next thirty five forty years at the least, and the chances of one, if not both of you hanging out living that longer are pretty good.
So the target day funds basically what happens is, you know, if you choose the twenty thirty fund, what that means is your target data is twenty thirty, and as you get closer, the investment firms kind of had the funds be more conservative so that when you retire in twenty thirty then you're almost in a cash position or very conservative position. But you can retire even
if you do this for the next ten years. When you retire ten years from now, you don't plan on dying, You're going to have another twenty five thirty years that you'll be living through retirement. So that's why I'm not a fan of the target date funds. I'd rather have investors put together their own mix of investments to represent a blend. Now, listen, I'm in my sixties and I'm one hundred percent investing in the stock market. I don't
expect anybody to follow my lead. I'm very comfortable with risk. When the market goes down, I could care less. I'm very disciplined. I don't panic. I know the market will come back. So a year like twenty twenty two, I just don't look at my investments. I really, I could care less what the value is because it's only on paper. They come back. Now, I don't expect, as they said, although we do have a whole bunch of our clients do what I do, so they are
in our all equity strategy. And I'm still working, so I don't need, you know, income from bond like investments. So I let my money grow, and it grows very nicely. If you look over the last fifteen years, I'd love to get this numbers out. The S and P has grown right now about fifteen percent year in year out, bonds two point five
percent, So the stock market's nothing to be afraid of. So being fifty, you know, most of our clients in your age group would probably be in a growth strategy, which is about eighty percent stocks twenty percent bonds. And as I look at your choices, and we're very familiar with the TSP funds, you know you got to common you know, basically the the SMP look alike. That's the C fund. You also have the S fund,
which is the small cap. I would probably have because we in my sandbox account, I just added more small cap to my mix of investments because I'm betting that the market will will broaden. I would probably have maybe seventy five percent in the C fund, twenty five percent in the S fund. I would not invest in the I fund, which is the international I'm just not
a big fan of international. And then you know, as far as the rest of your choices, you got a choice of the G fund, which is the government securities fund, or the F fund, which is the fixed income fund. So if you want to be eighty twenty, maybe do ten in the G, ten in the F you know, fifty sixty in the C fund, and you know the rest in the S fund. That would be an nice mix. I think you'll find that the returns over time will
be better. But and I'm you know, listen, we have we we manage a lot of fun K plans, and we have a lot of these target date funds because it's easy for investors that may not want to do the homework. But that's that's what I would do. Joe, great question, Stay well and good luck. I hope you get to retire in the next ten years. Let's go back to the phone lines. We have Jack on hold. Hello, Jack, Hey, how you doing. I'm doing great? How about you? I'm doing fantastic so far. Thank you. So,
I say, have some questions. I work for a company that's about to close its stores here and I have a four along k with them, and I guess, never being in a situation such as this, I guess, you know, what are my options? I understand I can roll this into the next employment, but you know, is it worth taking this and giving us to someone to manage and starting maybe a ross in the next job or starting Yeah. So, a lot of a lot of great questions.
First and foremost, let me ask the answer the easy question, the low hanging prove absolutely you want to take that money, put it into your own I RA where the world is an oyster. You you got everything and anything available to you from an investment standpoint, And if you're working with an advisor, you listen to the show every week. We can help you, and that's the way to go. You never want to leave money behind in the
old employee. You know, wherever you work, you never want to leave that money behind, And you don't want to roll it into your new job either, because there's fees in there. You're actually paying for the caw of the retirement program. So why you know, why be subsidizing it when you can have it in your own IRA plan without having those administration fees. So
that's first and foremost. You definitely want to do that. And as far as with your new company, should you be if your income is low, Jack, I like the Wrath portion of the Foreman K. You don't get any tax break for the money going in, but the money grows tax deferred and it's tax free when you get it out. But you kind of got away whether or not you want a tax break now or you want a bigger tax break when you retire. Jack, we're coming up to the end of
the show, So thank you hit the road, Jack. I had to say that, Jack, but thank you for calling. Hopefully, hopefully I help you. If not, come back tomorrow morning eight o'clock, I'll help you more. Folks, you're listening to Let's Talk Money, brought to you by Bouchet Financier Group, where we, you know, help our clients prioritize their health while we manage their wealth for life. I thank you for tuning in. Go to our website Bouchet dot com, beaz In boy O U
C H e y dot com to get more information. I'll be back on with you tomorrow morning at eight. In the meantime, stay warm, enjoy this Saturday, and stay healthy.