Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd. Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner practitioner and senior vice president and financial advisor at Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered investment advisors. We call it Something More because we'd like to talk not only about those important dollar and cents issues, but also the quality of life issues that make the money matters matter.
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and across the country. Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd. Welcome, this is Something More with Chris Boyd. I'm here with team members, Jeff Perry and Russ Ball. We are all of the AMR team at Wealth Enhancement and glad to have you with us. Today, we're talking about the wall of worry.
The market climbs a wall of worry is an ism that we hear about often and the market seems to be doing just that. So we thought we'd talk a little bit about some of the reasons and some of the issues and just give some thoughts around what's going on in the investment world around us. We got tariffs. We've got Middle East conflicts. We've got all these. Is Iran considered the Middle East, by the way? Yes. Okay, all of these kinds of issues.
We can maybe go through some of why don't we start with that a little bit about what are some of the worries that people are facing? I feel like our clientele come in routinely and mention various concerns and are looking for reassurances along the way and thinking how are we handling these and how are we positioning for them? Well, I think you're right, Chris. The breadth of clients, we meet with clients practically every day, practically all day in some cases, some days, right?
Right, it feels like it. And we meet with clients who are young, just starting out. We meet with clients who are in their accumulation years and we meet with clients who are retired. So we really get a, not purposely, but we really get a snapshot of what people are concerned about and worried about and there are very consistent patterns. And they tend to run with the news cycle, right? So a few weeks ago, a month ago, whatever it was, I lose track, it was the tariffs.
What will be the impact on the economy and the market on the tariffs? Early April, right? What was the name? Liberation Day. Liberation Day, that's right. They coined the phrase. So, and then I was just going to run through them if you want. Yeah, go for it, run through them. We'll come back and talk about them all. Yep. Well, we can even go back before that.
After President Trump took office, he was attempting to implement many of his campaign promises, etc. And so, depending on where you are politically or where you are in your employment, in some cases, you might have been worried about effects to the employment market. Immigration certainly was another, is and was another big one. And then we ran into the tariff wall, so to speak.
And then we got this crisis in the Middle East where, as we well know, Israel made a preemptive strike because of the intelligence related to Iran having a nuclear weapon. Yeah, I mean, you could categorize it more broadly with wars because before that, we were dealing with still, you know, Israel dealing with Palestine's sort of Hamas, right? Yeah, and all of Iran's proxies. Yeah, yeah. So, broadly defined as Middle East. Yeah, I think that's accurate.
And Russia, Ukraine continues to, you know, be an ongoing source of instability, let's say. That's right. Plenty of things to worry about there. And both of those wars, crises, whatever, conflicts have to do not just with security and potential terrorism, but have to do with the energy markets. And certainly that impacts the global economy. And in the middle of all this, we have a big, beautiful bill trying to work its way through Congress.
And, you know, all the pros and cons of that, you know, the tax relief, the giveaways, I'll call them too many giveaways, the impacts to the national debt and deficit. And also in that big, beautiful bill deals with, temporarily, but deals with the debt ceiling, which is a common thing that the markets get in and nod in about. And then Moody's downgrades the national debt. That's a good point. So, I'm sure I'm not getting them all. And there might be more, yeah.
All right, so there's all these variables that are of concern. Do you want to weigh in on this before I chime in? Things that you're hearing about? Well, I mean, I know recently, like just prior to the Iran conflict that's going on, the protests in California were a big topic in people's minds and immigration and all that. Civil unrest, right? Sent over to California. So, it seems like there's an endless stream of headlines that are making waves and making people worried, I would say.
Good points, yeah. So, let's kind of pick at some of these things and dig into them a little. And then let's come back to some of the context of all this. Because again, a lot of this, what's relevant is how it fits into an individual's financial plan. But we still spend a lot of time thinking about these issues. And as advisors, we spend a lot of time thinking about how it should impact one's portfolio or not.
So, you know, you talked about the immigration maybe as the starting point or earliest in the sequence of events. There definitely has been some adjustment of the positioning as it relates to the deportation of certain types of workers that might be here illegally. Seems like there's been some rhetoric around maybe not as much focus on farm workers or people who are workers. But right now, there hasn't been much discernment between people here illegally in one form or another.
It seems like there's been an effort to just get anyone out who's not here illegally. I think that's accurate. And if we haven't made this realization yet, I think we really need to. And maybe the market has. Maybe the market has before we have. And that is a policy statement or a position of the Trump administration when announced is probably going to change. Right.
So, you know, all whether it's the immigration thing or whether it's the big, beautiful bill or whatever these policies are, they do tend to change. They're not as they're not as grand at the end of the story. Right. So traditionally, you would expect what the president says to be intended to be taken at its face value. Literally. President would say what he means and that that would be policy. Or at least efforts to continue to get to that policy.
Yeah. Whereas with the Trump administration, the notion of deal making and the art of the deal or whatever the book was that maybe that's not always the case. Is that where you're going with that? Exactly. Exactly on that. Well, the initial stance we were on immigration, but we can make the same tariff comment to terrorists. Right. You know, this is what it's going to be. This is it. This is it.
And then change it and sometimes seemingly change it for no purpose that we know about anyway, but just a different adjustment in the strategy. And initially, we had a lot of market turmoil based upon some of these statements. Well, for a week, they were like, there's not going to be any postponement of this. This is it. We're going to need deals right away. And then bond market reacted. And, well, we're going to push this off 90 days.
Right. So maybe that I know maybe a month later, we're going to push this off for 90 days. So maybe the market has figured this out because it does not appear to be responding as it normally would or previously would based upon any given crisis. I would put it a different way.
You can't believe what's being told, you know, I mean, that's part of the frustration of this is that, you know, on the one hand, you take at face value what's being said and then it turns out, no, that's not really what's being what's intended. And you discern what's really meant and what's not really meant. That's that's it's such a frustrating way to deal with things.
And, you know, this notion that in foreign affairs that, well, people, you know, keeps people on their toes, but also means people don't know what to expect. So sometimes they're going to do there's a there's a danger that you're going to have misfire of what one person's thinking and versus what one person is saying and what it's what's going to actually be the case, you know, how it's going to play out. I think it's scary. But personally, I think it's a bad, bad way to do business.
But and as as a leader of of a nation, I hope that that can change. But I don't think it is. I agree. I think you're right that that's the that's that's the modus operandi of this administration, that it's a little bit of keep you guessing, keep you on your toes and trying to navigate with like, oh, we'll put something really outlandish on and see how much we can get. And then we'll get something and we'll feel good about that.
And then it's better than where we started kind of mindset when it comes to tariffs. That was kind of the essence of what you were saying to me yesterday about some of this. Yep. Generally. And whether or not you are a supporter of the president or not a supporter, you know, even if you believe this is the art of the deal and you like what he's doing, you still should have the position where you can't rely on it. Right.
Or if you're a critic of the president and you don't like what he's doing, you would have the same position. And so under the theme of climbing the wall of worry, as the market has been, you know, down from that correction or whatever, however we want to characterize it, whatever that reaction to the tariffs, you know, Both in anticipation and then at the announcement, the market was starting to decline, but then it declined more precipitously, close to 20%, not quite from its peak.
So you wonder like, if the president, Right back to where we were, right? Right. Or in some cases higher. Maybe higher. Yeah. So you wonder what the market, would have the market responded basically the same way in April if the president said, we're going to have a 30% tariff across the board unless we make another deal. Yeah. Would, would the market be saying, Oh, that's great. Look at, look at where we are today. You know that. Okay. You know, we're at, at highs or near highs.
We're recording on June 26th. Happy anniversary, Kristen. Happy anniversary. So, so we're, we're, we're, things can change. So, but, but as far as this tariff element is concerned, I think you make a good point. If you just came out and said 30 % across the board, there's a 30 plus 10, maybe or whatever it is, you know, that it might have been received in a different way. Where it'd be, you know, where, as opposed to, Oh, we're not going to have 145 % tariff on China. Well, maybe that's good.
We don't know that that's the case though. That's the thing that I keep coming back to. We are assuming that the, there will be deals. I mean, it seems like we're moving in that direction. But right now it's just been, we've delayed, we've postponed. Now, what happens in July? I think it's the 9th when the 30, the 90 days expires from the time that this delay was postponed to some time. Well, the date doesn't even mean anything.
I mean, if you, if you announce this to the TikTok, will it be, will it be extended again? Or, or will it be more rattling the cage? Oh, we're going to be, you know, sticking it to everyone who doesn't meet, you know, get an agreement or right away or something, you know, again, is it really what's going to happen? Or is it just sort of intended to move people to some kind of intended objective you were going to say about TikTok? Well, TikTok is an analogy because we had a date.
This is the third extension to the TikTok deal. And so that just gets pushed down the road. And I'm not trying to be critical of President Trump. I think he's had some good successes. But he does do this in many times. When, when he gave Iran up to two weeks to respond, the news media correctly pointed out that he says two weeks a lot. Yeah, you know, he puts it out there two weeks over and over again. So you can't rely on not just the policy, but you can't rely on the date either.
So let's talk about the Iran action, the decision to drop bunker busters and so forth on the Iranian nuclear sites. On the plus side, you know, hopefully this has material consequence to limit Iran's ability to actually create a nuclear weapon, which I think everybody is concerned would not be a good thing for the world order, whether it's because of escalation of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, or because of the concerns of what would, you know, what would be the consequences of that.
Iran actually do, whether through proxies or, or whatever, right? Israel security, all that. My issue with the whole process was procedural in a sense. You know, I do think that's essentially an act of war. Whether it's been declared as a war or not, that's essentially an act of war. I think, I don't recall, I'm sure there are instances, but I don't recall instances where we did something similar, where we had this kind of action without congressional consent, or what's the right term?
Not consent, giving the four leaders of Congress a heads up on this kind of thing. And whether or not, you know, you can point to some instances where we've struck back at people who, when there's been some kind of a retaliatory strike. I think, you know, that's not uncommon, I think, but this was, I would argue it's preemptive.
I think you and I were kind of, would be willing to argue that point a little bit, but because of all the proxy activities and so forth that Iran uses, but I don't know, this just seemed pretty substantial to me as a military action. You know, at this point, it's a celebrated military action and, you know, no critique of the military and the way things were exercised or anything like that.
I just look at it as thinking from a governance point of view, is this really the way we want to potentially engage in a war without some congressional engagement, you know, that kind of thing? You and I do disagree on this and, you know, we could, I could point to many examples and many presidents, including Thomas Jefferson, who had a military action against the Barbary pirates without congressional action all the way through Syria and Libya and et cetera.
And I think this is a real issue that Congress needs to deal with. And I don't mean because of the actions of President Trump, I mean, because of the actions of numerous presidents. Well, that may be the right answer. It may not be specific to President Trump, but just that notion of where do you draw that line as to what is permissible within presidential power as an office without the consent of Congress, who actually is empowered to declare war.
Right. And Article Two, where the president has the authority to defend the country and be the commander in chief. And it's tough to reconcile those two if you have a, just for sake of discussion, without talking specifically about this case, but if you have a credible threat to the United States that is imminent, that intelligence shows is imminent, and we have threats to our country, our bases, our allies.
Should the president be able to act without telling members of Congress who may or may not, you know, keep it to themselves, so to speak? Yeah. Would you consider this one of those occasions? I do, because I have to, because I don't have any other evidence, although, you know, we can be skeptics and say, you know, question the intelligence. But I am told through our government that they had credible evidence that Iran was on the edge or about to have nuclear weapon capability.
And in fact, they went over at the Pentagon briefing this morning. It was very enlightening. If people haven't seen it, I would encourage you to look at it. They talk about that this, this particular process of this particular site, the monitoring of it, and the strategy in the government started 15 years ago when they saw what was being built, and they actually built these bunker bombs for this site.
So if I believe my government, which I tend to do, but open minded, and it's a credible threat, I want my president to have the ability to eliminate a threat. To our bases, our military service members overseas, and our allies, without having to go to Congress to tell them, you know, what the plan is, basically. And I guess the notion of imminent is maybe probably relevant in that. Well, let's say it's not imminent. Let's say it's within the next month.
I still struggle with telling members of Congress what we're asking permission to do this and giving our enemies time to listen to the public debate in Congress about that. The War Powers Act doesn't require it. It requires notification within 48 hours of Congress and a limit of 60 days to hostilities. So is that the right balance? I don't know.
But if this is an issue that Congress is worried about, I mean, one thing that you and I agree on is Congress has delegated, is negligent, whatever it is, on all these things that they end up complaining about afterwards. Congress has the power to change the War Powers Act if they choose to, and I doubt they will. I doubt they'll complain. And if it was a Democratic president doing it, as it has been in the past, the Republicans complain about it.
And then the Republicans get in power, and they don't do anything about it, and vice versa. I don't want the limitation on there. Yeah, I gotcha. But, well, in any case, I think this is a really interesting discussion. I'm kind of into it. But I want to bring it back to what we were originally talking about was the idea of the wall of worry and markets' reaction to it. And I think there are other things besides this. Now, this seems to be presently in a ceasefire.
I think there's a question, like, will it last? What is the end of it? Yeah, right. Is that the end of hostilities? Or will there be more of a retaliatory response? You know, there was a modest retaliatory response on one of our bases. Was it Qatar? Qatar, how do you say that properly? Telegraphed and planned. Yeah, it's pretty widely known. So, in any case, it seems surprising to me that that would be the extent of the retaliation. But fingers crossed that it is, right? Absolutely.
But, you know, at the same time, my worry would be like, oh, what if there's some kind of cyber attack? Or, you know, that kind of thing. Terrorist attack, sure. Yeah, terrorist attacks. What kind of response might there be in a way that's less militarily defendable? You know what I mean? But maybe more disruptive to our economy, I guess. But you wanted to comment? Yeah, I think another one of my concerns with this specifically is, I was reading it.
It sounds like we didn't do that much damage to the nuclear capabilities. I was reading something that said we set them back maybe a few months by hitting some of the tunnels. And if that is the case, then if we didn't really obliterate the nuclear facilities that are in Iran, then we just drop bombs on some that might have nuclear capabilities in the next several months. So, yeah, I feel like, you know, you're never going to know for sure if you're going to do the damage that you expected.
But it is just a looming thought. Yeah, and that whole issue seems to be one that's in flux, you know, because they're still getting the data on how much damage really was done. And that was some of the conversation this morning. It was, and I agree with the general. It was, you know, it was disappointing. In the Secretary of Defense, I think it's disappointing that that story was released.
It was based upon just the initial internal data that someone leaked and it had a low confidence, etc. No one's going to know until somebody's actually there. Yeah, because it's all underground. I, based upon the presentation made this morning, I have greater confidence that it was destroyed. And they didn't say that. I just, on the presentation that they made about the weapons and about the plan and about the execution of it.
It seems, it seems like it would have to be, but we'll have to, we'll have to wait. Some positive things that came out of the conflict, though, is that North Korea, China, Russia, the axis of evil, however you want to describe it. Yeah, what we used to, yeah. Right. None of them, none of their, Iran's allies did anything to support them. Yeah. In fact, they did the opposite, at least with their public statements. And they didn't seem to even rattle their swords, so to speak.
Well, and Russia seemed to say, we'll, we'll, we'll help Iran get nuclear capabilities, didn't they? I, if they did, I didn't, I didn't see that, but they, no one did anything meaningful. Which I think is a positive for the region itself. And so at the end of the day, if the ability of Iran and their proxies to be disruptive in the Middle East or have a nuclear program, whether it, whether it's set by six months, six years or forever, I think is a positive thing.
And then at the same time, the NATO conference was going on and it seemed like, based upon the news reports, that it was a very productive NATO conference with President Trump reassuring NATO that we are a part of NATO and we would defend any NATO country. And all but one, I believe, of the NATO countries agreeing to that 5% of GDP, their GDP spending. And that's, you know, by itself, if we didn't have all this other stuff in the news, I think that would be.
The headline news about NATO getting along so well and making these commitments to being a strong and vibrant partnership. So at the end of the day, if this holds and I, I share your potential concerns, Chris, but if this holds as it is today, it's, it's the world is a better place because the United States acted to take a, to deter a threat or eliminate a threat or however we want to characterize it.
Yeah. So, um, the, I think we'll know more within a short time, you know, a couple of weeks, we'll probably have a better sense of what's the real damage that was done, whether or not there'll be more retaliatory response. So I think this is one of those, um, let's give it a little time and see where we're at. Similarly with the tariffs, uh, we've got, uh, June 9th looming about a month after that is the, um, China.
I think we'll get a sense of, uh, you know, from the extension that was originally done in April for most countries, uh, where we stand with, will the, uh, administration kind of kick the can another 90 days or something like that, um, to bide time for finalizing some of these negotiations that may be in place. Um, and then that might give us an indication of, oh, well, that's probably what would happen with China as well. Right.
So presumably, um, it was, we'll have maybe within a few weeks, have a sense of what's coming there. Additionally, this tax bill is in the thick of it, perhaps even by the time our episode airs, there could be movement on this. We don't know whether it's going to succeed or fail. Uh, essentially the, uh, the house passed a version of the bill, the one big, beautiful bill. We talked about that in a prior episode.
Some of the, uh, features of that, uh, that the Senate is in the throes of its negotiations as it relates to this. Um, there are discrepancies of, uh, how these will be dealt with. Um, and that's the nature of how the process works. Uh, the Senate will have to pass its version of the bill that will bring it back to the house to, uh, vote, I guess, on. Reconciling. Reconciling whether they, you know, can live with something that comes out of that.
Uh, it's a tenuous process and, um, it, it, it's on unknown. And I gather there's features in the bill that go far beyond just a tax bill, a budget deal. Um, but essentially, uh, it seems that, uh, as if they can keep the Republican, um, numbers in line. I mean, I think we've got, was it one Senator who clearly indicated he's not going to vote for this? That leaves them maybe two that, uh, and then you've got the vice president as a tie, you know, if there's a tie, but is that what it is?
There's like 52, maybe then that would be in favor, uh, if they can keep it together. I think the bill passes the Senate. And as you've said before, um, the house vote when it went to the Senate passed by one vote, uh, one, one vote. I think, I think that the Senators are working this weekend. I think they're going to get it out past, uh, whether or not J.D. Vance has to be the tying vote. I don't know.
I think probably not, but I think the real challenge to the bill is when it comes back into the house. There's a lot of, um, renegade Republicans and maybe that's not a derogatory term for some people. It's a good thing. Um, there's been, and there's like been more attention to some of the details in the meantime, right? That could cause some people to say, I don't really like this or that. Uh, you got that group who are focused on the salt, uh, tax component of it. That's not coming back.
It seems the way they want. Right. Um, there's all different elements that, you know, you can say, I don't want this. Not only that, right. Not enough spending cuts to money, spending cuts, uh, Medicaid or Medicare rather. Uh, you know, you've got these different schools of thought. So, uh, I think it's going to be challenging to see how that gets resolved, but there's a lot of political pressure. Sure. Within, you know, a party to, to move things.
So, uh, but again, we should probably have a better sense of this uncertainty within a week or two as to, you know, whether this is likely to pass or not. Um, and that's even an unofficial date. I mean, it's a date, it's a date set, but this is the bill. This is the bill for October. Yeah. It's a good point. Uh, that being said, there's a debt ceiling date. I want to say August. I mean, we're in the, we're already past the, uh, point at which they're doing the emergency measures and all that.
But we've got a, you know, a drop dead date, so to speak of somewhere in August that, uh, if this didn't get passed, well, now we've got a whole new debt ceiling, uh, challenge to deal with and strong views about whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, which is essentially, uh, the willingness to pay the debts we owe because our interest costs keep pushing the debt higher, uh, in addition to, even if we keep everything else the same, you know, essentially. Right.
So, um, we've got a challenge that, uh, either the debt ceiling needs to be increased or we might have defaults, um, in some form or fashion. And as the treasury secretaries in the past have said, uh, they don't have the authority to, uh, prioritize some of these, uh, obligations that may exist. So you'd have some real issues of who gets paid. I don't think the market could climb that wall if that actually happened. That would be, I think that's a good point.
Yeah. That would be, uh, devastating to our, uh, credibility as a nation, our credit as a nation and the market itself. Add to that right now, valuations, uh, I, I would look, I point to PEs. I know Brian's not a big fan of, uh, PE, uh, ratios. When we talked to Brian Regan, our, our, uh, teams, um, senior portfolio manager. Um, but it's a commonly utilized, uh, reference point for talking about, you know, whether the market is, uh, value how it's valued.
And, uh, in relative terms at, uh, 21, almost 22 times forward earnings. Um, uh, the market arguably is a little bit expensive. Um, you could, um, make a case for interest rates and, you know, all these variables that could justify some of that. Um, uh, growing, uh, you know, artificial intelligence and all the rest of there's things to look to and say, oh, isn't this, you know, positive. But there are, uh, you know, a lot of uncertainties.
It's kind of a, it's, it's priced for perfection, I guess you might say. And I think that's a good way to say it. We have a lot of these variables that are in the mix that may, um, go the way we expect or the way the market likes is, uh, we had a conversation internally. We're talking with Brian about this and we'll talk about some of this with him next week as well. For those who would be interested in listening, we'll be talking about some market related topics with Brian Regan next week.
The trend for the, as you were talking about with tariffs is favorable. There's a lot of these things you look at the way they seem to be shaping up is encouraging. Uh, but, uh, I think there's still some will earnings increase to the point to cause the PE to come down. Um, well, you know, tariffs could be a factor in that and so forth. You know what I mean? There's some variables that we don't know the answers to yet.
In any market, the market can be irrationally exuberant is a quote from Alan Greenspan or it can be too pessimistic. So, and I think in this case, it's, you know, it's exuberant whether it's irrational or not. Well, we'll reserve judgment. Time will tell, but it is a bit precarious. I think at times, um, when the market gets ahead of itself and, you know, we assume that it's always going to be that way. So let's turn our attention to, you know, the, as we wrap up.
I mean, I know we're going a little long. We'll try to wrap this up quickly. You know, so what's an investor to do? How do I plan for this? How do I think about it? Um, you know, big picture, control the controllables. What are the controllables? Well, one of those is your asset allocation. Uh, if you're concerned about volatility, um, you know, if you're not a longterm investor in one sense, you know, that, that is different from someone who's a longterm investor.
If, uh, I'm Russ here, uh, yeah, I got a long time to invest, right? Uh, if I'm, uh, someone in my eighties, I might be more concerned about how long it takes for markets to recover. Um, we had markets decline, uh, by 20 % almost earlier this year. And we're already talking about their back to highs. Things can happen quickly, but they don't always happen quickly. And sometimes it takes years for markets to recover, if you will. So we get more concerned about that as we age naturally.
So one of the things we might want to think about is one, do we have our liquidity, uh, sufficient reserves, um, in place too? So we like to think in terms of buckets, we've talked about this a lot, but you know, graduated levels of risk. And for the portion of our portfolio, that's longer term in nature. That's where we want more risk, depending on your particular temperament for how much you can tolerate. But this is a good time to reassess what's my tolerance for volatility.
And if I say I can, I can tolerate a bear market, that's a 20% decline. Turn it from a percentage number to a dollar number. Oh, if my mark, if my account went down by X dollars, 20%, but do the math, how do I feel about that? Can I tolerate, can I stomach that? If the answer is no, and, and just because we say a bear market is 20%, doesn't mean it can't go down 30% or whatever. Right. So, you know, be, be doing a little bit of the forethought of how much can I really stomach?
And if that answer to that is that really makes me uncomfortable, maybe you want to address your allocation a little bit. Yeah, yeah. There can be tax events and all of that, and that's true, but better to capture something and have a gain and a tax event than to have it go down if you can't stomach it going down. Right. So now's when markets are at or near highs, now's a great time to be revisiting what's my allocation comfort zone. And so control the controllables. We can't control everything.
We can't control what's going to happen with tax bill. We can't control what's going to happen with tariffs and war in the Middle East. All of these are things that are a little bit outside our control. What we can control is how much risk are we comfortable with? Do we have the cash flows we need? Do we have liquidity to meet our needs for the next couple of years? If we're retired, maybe six months.
If we're not retired, you know, do we have things in place to give us the willingness and ability to stay the course on our intended objective? Put it all into a financial plan to help you navigate this. You need help with a financial plan. That's where we come in. What did you guys want to say? Because I tried to throw a lot in there quickly. Well, this is a financial planning topic. I feel like I've talked about this before, the stress testing of the financial plan.
So a lot of people are worried about the market right now. So we're talking about what if the market went down 20% rather than looking at it on an account to account basis. You can take it all into one picture in your financial plan. See what would happen if the market went down 20% tomorrow. Is your plan compromised or does it still work? Right. And big picture, yes, there's a lot of uncertainty in the near term. Big picture over your lifetime.
How does this shape out even if the market does drop 20, 30% in the next few days? And we can model that out and see what that would look like. Yeah, good point. So financial plan stress test can really make a difference in your sense of peace, peace of mind as you're dealing with your plan. Because in most cases, a lot of cases anyway, when we work with our clientele, we do this stress test.
And we see, yes, it has an effect, but not so great that it should be so concerning, you know, or if it is, well, that's educational. That's informative. Maybe we should make some accommodation to plan for that. Jeff, speaking about the uncontrollables, I think that's what drives our emotion sometimes, especially in these times of high stakes and high interest news items. People tend to get more focused in on the news and sit there and watch it and worry about it.
And, you know, one of the best things about having a financial advisor and you talk about the Vanguard studying a lot, Chris, is that a financial advisor can assist you when you're having those urges that you feel you need to do something. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. As you said correctly, sometimes the best thing to do is something. But it can help you to do anything. It's a great point.
Sometimes your best bet is just stay the course, you know, because you have a plan that works. But left to our own devices. Sometimes if you're not working in the field, then you don't understand the, you know, the history of it all. And your own financial plan that's created by your trusted financial advisor. Sometimes your behavior is driven by these emotions and you make decisions that are wholesale decisions. I have to get out of this. Yeah, we can overreact, right?
We can overreact, which has devastating impacts to your plan long term in many cases. So, you know, that behavioral stuff that maybe you didn't walk into your financial advisor when you met with them and hired them and been working with them. Maybe that wasn't top of mind. Like, oh, I need this because I could have some worries that would be irrational at some point. But having that check and that person to sit down as Russ indicated and go over your plan and review it and say, does this matter?
That's where the super amount of value comes in from having a fiduciary that you're working with. Yeah, well, and when it comes to some of these things, when it comes to the worries of the moment, you know, that can be part of the value where your financial advisor, your portfolio manager. When the way they navigate that looking for opportunities can benefit you or risks, but they can be positioning the portfolio.
Maybe that's where you say, I control the things I can control, but I'm having professional management to help me navigate some of these other things to identify when there's risks or opportunities that they can position things so that we benefit from those possibilities.
Yeah, some tactical things that there are different times that Brian has been very successful at seeing these opportunities and not making wholesale changes to the base case, but to take advantage of some opportunities that may be short-lived or long-term. Yeah, particularly when there is disruption in the market, that's when it's least likely that we're going to want to, but there could be some significant opportunities to take advantage of. Absolutely.
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