Let's Talk Money

the right direction. The phone lines are one eight hundred talk WGY one eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine one eight hundred eight two five fifty nine forty nine. Any questions whatsoever, folks, give me a call. So, Zach, I know you were worried yesterday about the weather because you had your daughter's birthday party. But boy, it turned out to be a beautiful afternoon.

and we don't mind talking about fees. I know a lot of people when they're selling investments don't really like to talk about fees beause once they start talking about fees and maybe their clients realize that they're paying a whole lot of money in fees. Listen, folks, if the SMP over time is up ten percent and over the

last ninety years, it's been just about ten percent. Over the last fifteen years, as they shared yesterday, the average return year in, year out spend fourteen percent fourteen percent. So whether you own the SMP over the last fifteen years getting fourteen percent year in, year out with a passive investment, if you're buying a mutual fund, or if you're buying especially a variable annoity where the fees are much higher, and mutual funds wrapped with an annuity wrapper

around it. That means that those investments have to outperform the S and P by whatever those fees were. So yesterday was really enlightening. Some good, good callers with good questions, and hopefully it helped the listening audience understand a little bit more about why they should ask a whole lot of questions when they're sitting down with their advisor, or if they're interviewing a new advisor, they should really, you know,

have that advisor disclose everything. There's one reason why I'm very proud that percent my money is invested like my clients is because very few people can say that I wanted to have my money managed in a different way other than the same way as my clients had their money managed. I truly believe in our portfolios. So when you're interviewing an advisor, look them in the eye here or sheet and make sure that you're getting the right answer, make sure they're being honest with you, make sure they

disclose all the fees. So good show yesterday, really good show. It was good to be on. Got some nice text messages, getting some nice text messages this morning, some people that are on the road that listened every week, So I truly appreciate you tuning in. My colleagues did a superb job. Why I had a little sabbatical, so I wasn't wasn't with you for three or four months. But but my colleagues did a great job.

two percent. NASDAK was down about three point three five percent. QQQ was down about three point zero six percent. The big loser for the week was small caps, and I say that because we worry about small caps. We need small caps to really take part in the rally. So it's not just a magnificent seven. Those those mostly technology stocks, so small caps. If you look at the SMP small caps six hundred and decks down about five point five percent.

Russell two thousand was down almost seven percent, folks. So if you were in those small caps, we gave some back this week and hopefully we gain gain't it back, no pun intended, But to date, the S and P is up about twelve percent, Nan Snack up about twelve percent, QQQ is up almost ten percent. Russell two thousand is

up almost four percent, just over four percent. So those small mid caps are lagging were you know, for this market to go places, we need that part of the market segment to be really part of the of the rally. But they're so sensitive to the economy that when when we get bad news on the economy, you're going to see small and mid caps not do so well.

Amazon had a bad, bad, bad week. Amazon projected weaker than expected revenue growth, said it would continue to ratchet up spending to meet anticipate the demand for AI artificial intelligence services. It seems like everything is going the AI route. The total sales was up about ten percent from a year earlier one hundred and forty eight billion dollars billion with a B, so that's a lot of that's that's

a nice jump in sales. But the you know, revenue from the cloud computing unit grew by about nineteen percent, higher than expected, which was good news. Shares of Amazon, up more than twenty percent so far this year, fell about seven percent after market trading on Thursday and Friday, down about eight percent for the week, it was down about eight percent. You know, basically, what what got to Amazon was they're projecting that things aren't going to be

is good to them over the next quarter. And if so, the bar has been you know set, it's a low bar, and that means that if Amazon comes in and absolutely actually has a better than expected quarter, you'll see you'll see Amazon do well. So maybe this is a low point for Amazon that gave back a lot. It was, you know, trading pretty high and now it's it's down pretty good. And then you had Apple. Apple's earnings lifted

the stock. And you know, Apple still worried about sales in China, what will happen with the iPhone sixteen when it comes out once again, uncertainty around artificial intelligence features and timing. I mean, there's just so much that these technology companies are up against. And for the week, you know, if you look at these Magnificent seven stocks for the week, you had the number one performer was Meta, which is Facebook,

up almost five percent. You had Apple up just shy at one percent, but everybody else was down negative territory now the S and P was down just over two percent. So you had you know, Tesla down about ten to eleven percent. You had Amazon down about eight point four percent. You know, Microsoft, Google, and the Video they were all down. So it wasn't a good week for the Magnificent seven. And that plays into Nasdaq being down because they make

up such a big part of Nasdaq. When you buy Nasdaq, you really, I tell you what you're buying mostly is this Magnificent seven. You know the makeup of Nasdaq. When you look at just how much of NASDAC is made up of these top holdings you got in NASDAC along, Apple makes up almost nine percent, Microsoft just over eight and a half percent, in the video just about seven and a quarter percent, Amazon five percent, Meta just about five percent, Tesla just Shive three percent, and about six

percent for Google. So when you look at all those magnificent seven companies, you know, as you can see, the big part of it, the top ten of NANSDAC is fifty percent. Just ten of the one hundred holdings represents fifty percent of NASDAC, and the Magnificent seven is seven of those top ten holdings. So there you have it, folks, you know, earnings weight on the market. And then you know, the big news on the market was Friday's jobs report

less than expected. We had about one hundred and fourteen thousand jobs added last month according to the Labor Department, missing expectations. Expectations was going to be about one hundred and eighty five thousand jobs. You had unemployment go from four point one percent to four point three percent, and that's its highest level in almost three years. But a lot of a lot of that is because more people were out there looking for work, what we call the

labor participation rate. So you had more people out there looking for work, which means that the unemployment rate gets kind of skewed and it really doesn't show a true picture. And that's one reason why the unemployment rate bumped up to four point three percent. Yet average hourly earnings came down a little bit from last month, which isn't good news. We like it when workers are making more money. One eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. One

eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine. If you have any questions, folks, give me a call. I would love love to talk to you, get your pointed in the right direction. Any questions pertaining to your financial future. Phone mines are open. One eight hundighty two five fifty nine forty nine. So, as I said, the stock market yesterday, you know, stocks fell sharply. Intel had just a you know, the worst day in fifty years. You had to go back to nineteen seventy four for Intel to have as

bad as a day as it had yesterday. Intel was down about twenty six percent just on Friday alone night yesterday, yesterday, the markets were closed stock knocked off more than thirty billion dollars of market value. That's a lot of money that Intel lost, and one day Intel's just can't keep up.

Once again, with the artificial intelligence arena, you know, if you're not in that marketplace, folks AI is here to stay, and if you haven't played around with it or used it, you really should dabble in it because it's it's not going anywhere. It's like AOL was back in the nineties. I think that's when AOL was discovered. You know, people you know, just didn't know what to think of it. In AOL consumed our lives and now you know, you never hear about AOL. I'm not so sure that's going

to be the case with artificial intelligence. I think artificial intelligence is here to stay.

But artificial intelligence, as I said, I play around with it, and it's really interesting. You get some good information. You got to be careful obviously garbage and garbage. I don't make sure that the information, you don't make sure that you you verify it. But for the most part, I've been pretty impressed with artificial intelligence. And this is what you know, companies like Intel, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, you know, it's all all artificial intelligence. And obviously the video is

the King, the King of the Mountain. The video is number one in the artificial intelligence arena. If you were lucky not to own the video early on, you made some good money, some really good money. I'm not so sure the video won't continue to do well. Some people feel that when a share price gets so high that it can't go any higher, and I said, well, that's really crazy, because if it's a good company, good business, good management, the share price can continue to go higher.

So if you own a company like Navidia, and someday you may see you know, maybe just maybe you'll see Intel come out of the Dow. Maybe Navidia will go into the Dow now that they had their stocks split and the share price isn't so expensive. A lot of companies don't make it to the Dow unless their share price is affordable because it's a price weighted index, whereas the S and P five hundred index is a market cap weighted index. So the price share price means a

lot for stocks to be included in the Dow. One eighty two, five five nine, four nine, any questions, give me a call. Treasure yields down to about three point eight percent, well below you know that that that those those days of five percent five point one, five point two for the ten year treasury, and I talked a

lot about it back then. I said load up on them because I felt that they were good yields, And in hindsight, I'm not sure we're going to see five percent, not any time too soon anyway, especially if the Fed starts cutting rates. So you have US ten year treasury yields down to three point eight percent. The volatility index closed at its highest level of the year, all because of this Job's report and the uncertainty on the economy and investors taking some chips out of riskier assets putting

them in more risk free assets like government bonds. Or gold or utilities was out of the eleven sectors that make up the S and P five hundred indecks, utilities was one of the only ones that was in the green, utilities and telecommunications. All remaining nine sectors were in the red. They were down for the week, so utilities did well. Utilities pay a good dividend. A lot of investors go there as a safe haven when they're kind of fearful of the market. But you know, listen, stocks go up,

stocks go down. I said it yesterday, I'll say it again today. If you go back and look at the statistics, the average swing in the stock market year in year out is about fourteen percent high to low, peak to trough fourteen percent. That's the average year in year out. So for the stock market to have swings, don't get nervous over it. It comes with the territory of investing. It's actually it's normal for the stock market to do that. The stock market can't just go straight to the moon.

You know, that was a Jackie Gleeson segment. You'd have to watch the reruns of Jackie Gleeson if you want to go straight to the moon. But the stock market just isn't going to go straight up. It's going to have some good days and you're going to give some back on other days. You never know what day, what week, what month is going to be a bad time for the stock market. But over time, stocks is an asset

class has been your best performing asset class. And I try to teach investors that when there's volatility, do not do not you know, have a knee jerk reaction, do not panic. It comes with the territory of investing. And if you have a well thought oh portfolio, then let that volatility ride itself out.

And this is why the people that make the most money when investing are those that are willing to take risk, especially those that are willing to kind of close their eyes during the bad days, weeks, months, or sometimes you get a bad year, and they don't they don't get bothered by it. They just kind of make believe they don't own stocks. That's the best thing you can do

with regards to the stock market. Right now as we sit here, out of the three major indexes the dial, the SMP in NANSDAC NANZDAC right now is in a ten percent correction territory. It's down ten percent from the high just a couple months ago. So NAZDAK is formally in a correction. When you're down ten percent, If it's down twenty percent, it's what we referred to as a bear market. But we're down ten percent from its high. You have, the SMP is down just under six percent

from its high. The Dow is down just under four percent from its high. So nas that is really we considered our aggressive pass up holding. We own a lot of NANSDAC. We own as much Nansdac in the portfolios as we do the broad stock market index. We like NANSDAC, We like the companies in there, and Nanzdac today is different than NANZDAC at the turn of the century. A lot of those companies at the turn of the century are nowhere to be found. Well, the companies that make

up NANSDAC I just went over. You know, seven of the top ten. You know, these companies aren't going anywhere. They're good, strong businesses, and especially a company like the Video that's leading the charge in the artificial intelligence area, all these other companies are looking to catch up. They need to get into that game because it is the future and you're going to see a lot of money invested. Artificial intelligence is here to stay. Don't don't run away

from it. It's it's here to stay. So you're going to have some volatility. But over time, stocks is an asset class. You know, if you look you know, the last as I said, fifteen years, SMP is up fourteen percent year in year out. If you look at NASDAC up eighteen almost nineteen percent year in year out, So you're taking on more risk. When you have a bad year, it's going to be worse than the SMP. The broad stock market indecks.

to take on risk. And when you get a week like this week or a day like Friday, what you can't do is panic. You can't sell out. You can't think the world is coming to the end. The world is not coming to an end. The world is going to be here for quite some time, I'm pretty sure. And during that time the stock market will recover from all corrections and bear markets. The US economy comes out

of every recession that we've been in. So when you see bad news on the horizon, what you can't do is just throw the towel in and say I can't on stocks, they're too risky, because over time, stocks is really where you want to be. Folks, you're listening to Let's Talk Money, brought to you by Bouchet and Andrew, where we help our clients prioritize their health while we manage their wealth for life. The phone lines are open one eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine.

We're gonna take a quick break for the news. Call in, Zach will put you up one eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine. See in a couple of quick minutes. I found a lot for me.

up enough money to be able to retire. You work hard for decades, decades and decades and decades, and if you're not prepared to retire unless you feel you can live on Social Security And the average social Security check is about fifteen thousand dollars a year. So if that's enough for you, then you're doing just fine. You don't need to save money through the years, and it's hard to save money, especially with the price of gas, food

utilities being so high. We're paying more for stuff now than ever before, and that's taking a lot of money out of one's paycheck. So it's really hard to save money. But somehow, some way, hopefully you find a way. I always like to, you know, the tongue in cheeks say, make believe tomorrow you go in to work and you get a pink slip and you're all done with your job.

You're going to be devastated, devastated, and then you get a phone call later on in the day and they say, hey, we can hire you back, but only ninety percent of what we were paying you. More than likely you're going to take that job. And it's just a quirky way

of getting you to realize. The only difference is if that were the scenario and you would take that job back at ninety percent of the paycheck that you were getting, then tomorrow go into your business office and say, hey, I want to put ten percent into my four to oh one K plan or four H three B or whatever pension plan you have at work. That's really what

you have to do. Force yourself I promise you you will be swearing at me, cursing, You will be saying, I don't know what I'm talking about for the next few pages. Piece, you're going to have less money coming out. But that ten percent that you put away, it's not really ten percent.

free money. So ten percent, if you're not putting more than likely, if you're not putting ten to fifteen percent away into your pension plan, you won't have the quality of retirement that you dreamt about that you always want it. That's how expensive it is to retire.

forth to supplement the difference of what you need. So if you're not putting ten to fifteen percent away, you're not putting enough. And that's real important for you to kind of just think about. If I can get you to think about anything today, it's put some money into your pension plan. Make sure you're at least taking advantage of whatever the company matches. Usually it's up to six percent or something where the company will match you a

certain percentage. Each company is different, but absolutely take advantage of that free money and then have that money invested appropriately. If you're younger, you know you want to be more growth oriented, you want it more invested in stocks than bonds or any other type. Acid class stocks is okay over time. As I said before the news break, there's nothing wrong with owning stocks. Even even with days like Friday where the stock market gets just claberate. It's okay

to own stocks long term. One eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine one eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine. If you have any questions, give me a call. So this past week was an interesting week. You know, the Federal Reserve held great steady, and I'll talk about that in a few minutes. They they they signaled a possible cut in September. You had

technology companies that just got you know, clobberd. The sell off in technology companies in the video, Intel, Amazon, you know, just you know, taking it pretty bad. This past week, take anology was not the place to be. But I still am a big believer. It's our number one sector in our portfolios. We own more technology than we own anything. And a good way of owning technology is to buy the Nanstac one hundred composite. QQQ is the symbol. You

had US unemployment rose to four point three percent. The number of jobs were lower than expected, one hundred and fourteen thousand compared to one hundred and eighty five thousand expected. You had Japan that raised rates. So for the week, the Dow fell about two point one percent, SMP two point oh six percent, Nanstac three point four percent. Now in a correction territory. That's how the week went. The

other thing that happened this week. Obviously, you had just Delta alone canceled five thousand flights because of the software update from crowd site Strip. That really really created havoc throughout all of our lives somehow, Someway, I think everybody got affected by that, and it was just a software update. It wasn't anything that was out of the ordinary other than a software update that just did not go well. I'm pretty sure whoever was in charge of that may

not be working at crowd and Strike anymore. Delta feels it lost about five hundred million dollars in lost business. Obviously, if you were a Delta customer flying Delta, and I like Delta. Delta is a good airline, I fly it often. But if you were flying Delta last week, more than likely you you had delays or canceled flights, and that's

a little upsetting. The other thing that happened this week you had the US Treasury basically our debt in this country is now thirty five trillion dollars thirty five trillion with a T. That's a lot of money, folks. It's as much money as we've ever been in debt. Ever, it's a record debt for us, and I'm hoping that someday, somehow, some way, people in Washington, at some point will wrap their arms around the financial stability of our country.

the streets. I somehow, some way, you're spending more than you're making. And that doesn't last long. You're really going to have some pretty pretty tough times or go bankrupt or something. It's just not going to work out. Unfortunately, in this great bunch of hours, we can print money. So as we go further in debt, we just continue to print money, which creates, you know, inflation and affects the value of the dollar and everything else. So thirty

five trillion dollars is an eye opening number. One eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine one eight hundred eighty two, five fifty nine forty nine. So the jobs report that was the big news on Friday, and basically now listen, the FED just met on Wednesday. Jerome Powell, the Fed Reserve Chair, and the Federal Open Market Committee came out and said that they are leaving interest rates alone, maybe in September. More than likely in September, there'll be

a cut. It'll only be a point twenty five percent cut. They don't have any any any anticipation of a point five h half a percent rate cut. Well, that was on Wednesday. I can almost guarantee you that their minds said. If they had that jobs report before they met on Wednesday, it would have been a different message coming out from the Fed. I am sure of it. That message would

have been so much different. Now, more than likely, we are absolutely going to get a rate cut in September, and a lot of people feel that maybe a half a percent along with another half a percent in November. Right now. You know, the Fed did this to us a couple of years ago, and I hate to beat up on them. I beat upon them enough, but they admitted to their faults. They're only human, right, But they're being paid to, you know, really be ahead of the game.

And a couple of years ago, when they said inflation was transitory, that it wasn't real, well, listn't, folks. They were living in la la land. Because you and I were paying more at the gas pump, we were paying more in the supermarket, we were paying more for our heating bills. We knew that inflation was real. They felt that it was just temporary. The White House felt the same way, and they were late to the game. They

did not start raising interest rates soon enough. Now, when they did start raising they were aggressive and they brought inflation from nine point one percent down to the three percent neighborhood range. Their target is two percent. But now it looks as though they may have waited too long to cut rates. There are some that feel that the Fed should have been cutting already. You need to be ahead of the game. You need to you know, what did Wayne Gretzky say, go where the puck is gone?

You know, you got to kind of anticipate where the economy is headed. And right now there's a lot of people that are fearful that maybe just maybe, I hate to use the R word, just maybe we're.

The number of jobs over the last few months is blatant. The revised jobs forecast for the previous two months was a net loss of another twenty nine thousand jobs. So you have not as many people going to work now. With that being said in defense of the jobs report, and not that we want to rush time by us, but August jobs report will be a better indicator because we had Mother Nature. Remember the hurricane in Texas and how many people were without electricity, how many people couldn't

go to work, especially in the hospitality industry. They were out, they were filing for unemployment. Well that's built into this job's report on Friday that week number. So you have, you know, not as many people getting jobs. You had a lot of people that were out of work because of mother nature. And that's why you have to, you know, be patient and see what August brings us. But I still think we're in for a cut in September. Whether it's a point twenty five or a point five zero

percent cut, we're in for a cut in December. And that cut is is going to be crucial to make sure that we don't go into a recession. We don't have a hard land and we keep it as a soft landing Zach, let me take a quick fifteen second break, folks, don't go anywhere. One eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine. Give us a call. Any questions that you have. Hello, folks, thanks for letting me take that quick break. The phone lines are open. Give me a call so I don't have to take a break. To

what the whistle is? They say, one eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine, Any questions whatsoever? One eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine.

cut means that interest rates go down. A cup means that mortgage rates come down. A cup means that people that are saving money and savings accounting bonds, they're not going to get as much interest. As I said in the first half of the show, the ten year treasure, you know, three point eight percent, and not too long ago it was five percent and more so, if you were lucky enough to buy one of those US ten

year treasury notes. While back getting five percent, you're guaranteed five percent for the next ten years, and that bond is worth a lot of money to you right now. Not only are you getting five percent, but if you were to sell that bond, you'd be paid a premium for it, because right now, if you buy a new ten year bond, you're getting three point eight percent. Nowhere near is profitable is the five percent that you could have bought. And that's why you can't mess around when

it comes to your savings. That's why I always say, ladder a bond portfolio or a CD portfolio, don't try to guess. I said often on the show for the past several months. Actually I haven't been on for three or four months, so the months before that, I was teaching investors to ladder a portfolio. Don't get sucked in with short term interest rates being higher than long term interest rates. You know, people would always say, well, why, you know, why should I buy a tenure bond when

I can make more money buying a six month bond. Well, the reason is because when that's six months or moe year bond comes due, where will interest rates be and right now. If you you know, if you buy a six month bond today, you're going to get about four point eight percent. If you buy a ten year bond, you're going to get three point eight percent. The problem is when that six month bonb comes due, where will

interest rates be? If interest rates are still in the three percent range, well, you're going to be renewing at a lower rate. So you want a ladder a portfolio. A one year or a two year, a five year, or a seven year or ten year, and when each one of those come due, you just buy a new bond. Take the thinking out of the equation that I can assure you. For those that buy individual bonds or CDs, that is the best way to ladder a portfolio. Fixed

income portfolio the best way to ladder of portfolio. Now, some people buy stocks with divinants, and dividends are a beautiful thing. If you look over the last ninety years, the average return in the stock market was ten percent, and I think three percent of that was made up because of dividends. Dividends is a beautiful thing. Right now, the smp I think is yielding just under two percent dividend yield. So even when you buy the S and

P five hundred index. You're getting some dividends. There's nothing wrong with dividends. It's a beautiful thing. They get paid dividends. Now, some people buy stocks based just on the dividends. And at the beginning of the year, if you looked at Walgreens, you were getting at the beginning of the year, you were getting a seven point three.

to look at the total return. Will that investment make money or lose money? So, if you bought Walgreens at the beginning of the year for that seven percent dividend, today it's down fifty five percent. The SMP's up twelve percent year today Walgreens is down fifty five percent. If you bought a company like Cisco a percent dividend yield at the beginning of the year, today it's down six percent.

If you bought McDonald's for a two point twenty five percent dividend yield, sounds good, but the total return year to date is.

the safest paper in the world. So if that is yielding three point eight percent, let's just round it off to four percent. If that's yielding four percent and you're getting paid more than four percent, that means you're taking on some risk. Now it's up to you to decide where is that risk coming from?

Total return is what you're being paid in dividend or interest and whether or not that holding is going to make money or lose money. That's what total return is about. So you got to be real careful when structuring a portfolio and putting a portfolio together. I love dividends, but we would not recommend that you go out and buy the highest yielding dibdend that you can not, as as confirmed by the price of Walmart being down fifty five percent even today, you know wal or not Walmart Walgreens,

although Walmart's down as well. Walmart is down fifty five percent as well. The dividend isn't as high, but Walgreens, you know today the dividend yield is almost nine percent.

you're really pretty fortunate. And if financially you can make it happen, then folks, don't take it, don't mess around, because that means that you're in a good place. If you have your health, you have your loved one, and financially you can you can retire and do things that you want to do. Don't mess around, take advantage of that and make the best of it. I truly appreciate you tuning in this weekend. It was good to be back with you. Come back next Saturday at ten, Sunday

at eight. Have a great day, folks,