• Today we will cover reflections on the jobs numbers, all of the most relevant aspects related to the expansion and adoption of AI tools, and how the market could respond to those variables.
• So, we’re always evaluating. It’s becoming clear that several jobs will be taken over by AI. It’s just an unfortunate reality for job seekers or those that are in particular industries that AI is currently threatening.
• Jordan Roach, our Chief Investment Officer, and I had a bit of a disagreement about whether the AI take over is good for our investments.
• With AI, you’re stuck with having to evaluate if unemployment going up is too much of a bad thing for portfolios or if the positive impact to profitability offsets the negatives related to high unemployment numbers enough for AI to be a net positive.
• If new efficiencies are created, new jobs will be created as well. It’s a one to one relationship.
• The question is whether this trend is going to hit particular sectors harder than others, or is it going to cascade into all areas of employment? If you look at the US economy historically, there’s a level where the US economy can soak up unemployment and it’s not going to cause concerns across the broader consumer.
• AI is accelerating at an incredible rate, much faster than anyone would have predicted. And that’s going to be the challenge. If nobody has a job because machines are doing everything, who’s going to have the money to support the economy?
• There’s a case for optimism in the short and long terms. Short term, the profits will be so good that portfolios will be healthy. Profits drive stock prices. It’s just that simple.
• However, Salesforce just announced 70,000 layoffs. Unfortunately, the stock market doesn’t care about people.
• We’re seeing AI hit the biggest areas of the economy first. And that could be troubling overall. It’s a wait and see. It’s profitability versus consumer. What timeframe do these things reconcile versus not?
• Let’s bring it back to our neck of the woods. Job numbers are important because the Fed responds to job numbers. So we’re watching the Fed watch the job numbers and anticipating a dip in interest rates from the Fed because job numbers and the economy influence the decision.
• If rates fall in a meaningful way, the real estate market, which is 20% of our economy, could rebound due to an increase in refinancing and building homes.
• The uptick in jobs that AI cannot do could soak up the loss of jobs created by layoffs due to AI.
• So, paying attention to the trades can be a good thing to do. The arrival of more trade jobs is a signal that the economy is stabilizing and balancing. And that stabilization can be achieved through adjusting interest rates.
• Overall the outlook is pretty good. The second half of the year appears to have a lot of potential, especially if the Fed starts lowering interest rates and we don’t see the tariffs really pick up in terms of inflation and unemployment.
• We’re optimistic on both the stock and the bond side. We’ve seen so many highs in the market this year, 15 to be exact, so it would be very rare to experience a downturn or a new low after so many highs.
• Overall, we’re in good shape.
• Thanks again for watching this week’s Market Alert video. Make sure you like and subscribe and share it with your friends and family.
• We hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy, and wise, and we’ll talk again soon.

Trancript:

Ken Moraif
Hello everyone, and welcome to our market alert video for today, which is August eight, 2025 and not a lot of economic data to hang our hat on this week. And so therefore, we’re going to have reflections on the jobs numbers. And it was prompted for me by a conversation that I had with the son of a client, that a client brought his son in and as a prospective new client, and he was discussing how AI is impacting his job and the jobs that the company that he works for, and it occurred to me that in today’s world, I don’t know that we’re talking that much about the impact of AI on jobs, because as we view it, in the future, there are a lot of jobs that are going to be taken over by AI, and so we want to talk about that. And but before we do, I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy and wise. I hope all you people out there in squibber nation are squimpering Your little tails off, and I hope you are enjoying your second childhood without parental supervision. I hope all is well for you. You’re enjoying your summer. You’re letting us worry about all this boring financial stuff for you, and for those of you who are not skippers yet, our job is to help you to retire when you want to and enjoy the life the second childhood that you want to as well. So I’m glad you’re watching. Thank you. Let me bring Jordan Roach, our Chief Investment Officer, into the conversation. And you know, Jordan, we were having a little bit of a disagreement about whether AI taking over all the jobs is a good thing for our investments or a bad thing. So, so let me, let me, first of all, before we do that. And I know this is supposed to be financial and all that, but I just want to share a tip with everybody. And this tip is on if you, if you’re really instead of ozempic, and you know, all this stuff that helps you to lose weight, what you need to do is have a colonoscopy. Let me tell you, I lost six pounds in two days. Great equalizer. That’s pretty good. Oh my gosh. It’s like, you step on the scale and like, wow, I lost six pounds. That’s incredible. Now the job is, like, not to eat anymore, so I keep Sure, right? So So that’s my tip for you, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to lose weight. So anyway, let me, let me give you a story. Okay, well, first of all, let me say why. This is prompted so the son of a client who came in and he’s interested in becoming a client, 50 years old, he said that he ran the tech division of a larger, a very large company that I won’t name, and he had 70 people reporting to him. He and all 70 of them are have been laid off because AI can do their job, programming, coding, you know, all that stuff. AI can do that at a fraction of the cost. Can do it very fast. It’s replaced 70 people this company and him, so suddenly he’s like out of a job. And he said he’s looking for a job. He says it’s like impossible, because everybody is using AI now. So he’s looking for jobs, and they’re hard to find because you can’t, you can’t replace that. So is that a bad thing? You know, is unemployment caused by AI, a bad thing, right? So, let me, let me tell you the story. All right, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna do a little imagination here. So we’re on an island in the Pacific, okay? And this island has people on it, and the way that they survive is that, you know, the the husbands go out and they go fishing, and they get the fish and they feed their families. I know that was pretty sexist, but be that as it may. It’s sexist island. So the guys go out and they fish, and one day, one of the guys says, You know what? I’m sick and tired of going out and fishing every single day. It’s like such hard work. You know what I’m going to do, I’m going to invent the net. And so he invents the net, and next thing you know, this guy, in one hour, gets enough fish to feed the entire island. So let’s look at what happened to this island. All of a sudden, we’ve got 90% unemployment. He’s the only guy that has a job, because he can supply the fish for the entire island, right? So we have 90% unemployment. It’s terrible, right? Everybody’s out of a job. If we look at the island, and we say that the value of that island is fish, how much fish it has, the value of that island is skyrocketed. This island is incredibly more valuable than it was before. And so when you look at companies like the one I just described, when they let go 70 people, you know, they just cut, I don’t even know how many hundreds of 1000s of dollars in cost that is, they become more profitable. So unemployment has gone up, but profitability has gone up at the same time, therefore stock prices go up, yeah.

Jordan Roach
So you’re good at this. You like putting things. To stories, right? Broad concepts to make stories. So I would say, Okay, on that island, you’re right, the value of that island temporarily is worth more. But they have a problem, because all the fish that they’re going to pull out of the sea now, no one has the dollars to buy them to be able to eat. So at some point there’s a reckoning there. There’s an imbalance.

Ken Moraif
Well, what this guy’s gonna do is he’s gonna say, you know, I got all this fish, and these people don’t want my fish, and so I need people to clean the fish, and then I need chefs to, like, mix, you know, fish scampi and, and, you know, fish with whatever. So he’s gonna start employing people eventually, wouldn’t he? I mean, that might be the other way around it. I

Jordan Roach
think eventually. I think you’re right, is things, new jobs will be created from the efficiencies driven through this old school job. I mean, we’ve had this even the US economy. I mean, we go from it, from an economy that was manufacturing based, most, the vast majority of employment, I think, or at least a large share, was via manufacturing. And today, a lot of those manufacturing jobs are done by machines, technology. It’s more efficient now, if you look at the share of manufacturing GDP 70 years ago, over today, it’s actually the same. So we’re producing the same amount of output from manufacturing. This requires a lot less headcount, and those jobs shift, right? And the economy is okay, but I do think that takes time. So I think the, I think where you and I probably agree and may disagree is the time frame, which is okay, and I think maybe short term, maybe the profitability is pretty good. Yes, companies,

Ken Moraif
right? I mean, let’s look at a different scenario. Okay, let’s say Walmart tomorrow figures out how to use AI and they don’t need any employees anymore, right? Those stores become fully automated. There’s not a single person working there anymore, and they lay off however many hundreds of 1000s of people work for Walmart. So we’ve got this massive unemployment that just happened, right? But what’s going to happen to the profits of Walmart? It’s going to skyrocket. Their stock price will shoot through the roof.

Jordan Roach
It will temporarily that individual. So the question is, is this going to be, you know, being done at singular sectors and industries and companies, or is this a cascading of it that hits the broader economy? Because at some point, I mean, I think the US, you know, the US economy, if you look at historically, what unemployment rates the economy can sustain while still moving forward, that four to 6% maybe six and a half percent range is pretty healthy. So there’s a level where the US economy can soak up some unemployment, and it’s not going to cause concerns across the broader consumer

Ken Moraif
The problem, though, is that this AI thing is really fast it moves. I mean, it was faster than I think, then jobs are being created. Yes, it’s accelerating at an incredible pace. Yes, and that’s going to be the challenge. I think I do too, you know, and I don’t disagree with you, you know, if nobody has a job because machines are doing everything, then who’s going to have the money to buy what these machines are producing? That’s going to be, that’s the question that I don’t reconcile in my brain, right? I guess what I can say is, you know, when they invented the dishwasher and the washing machine, you know, people are freed up from doing that, and they found other things to do. And so, I guess my optimist says that we will find other things. You know, we’re creative beings, and we’ll find other ways to make money and to grow and do other things, but it won’t be that, yes, won’t be what machines are doing.

Jordan Roach
I think I’m optimistic in the long term and maybe even in the very short term, but there’s some gaps in there to where I don’t know at the speed at which new jobs are created and that AIs are placing things short term. I do think, you know, short term. I think short term profits win with the market.

Ken Moraif
Profits win. And as we’ve always said, you know, profits drive stock prices. So I guess the theme here is that, yes, we’re going to start seeing headlines. And I’m surprised we haven’t seen them already. Given what this, this young man told me that, you know, AI is going to very quickly start. I mean, what? Facebook or no Salesforce. So just said that they’re laying off like 70,000 people.

Jordan Roach
Microsoft said several batches of layoffs. Yeah, doing the same thing,

Ken Moraif
because they don’t need all these people, right? Machines are going to do everything for them. Yep, tick up and their stock thing goes with and their stock goes up. So I guess the moral of this story, what, I guess, what I’m trying to get across here is that, yes, I think we’re going to start seeing unemployment numbers that are going to be more and more affected by artificial intelligence. But unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you want to look at it, the stock market doesn’t care about people. It cares about profits. And if companies make more profits, the stock prices should go up. Yes, and in that environment, even though the headlines are probably gonna be ugly with regard to, you know, oh no, we got 300,000 jobs, you know, lost in the economy, probably profits will rise in that in that environment, if it’s aI driven, yeah, I

Jordan Roach
think it’s, I mean, I think it’s really interesting, because I do think, largely speaking, our economy is service driven. You. Right, technology driven. So the good part of that, you know, the bad part of this, AI thing is, we’re actually seeing AI hit the part of the economy that’s the biggest first. And so what point do you get a balance where it’s extending to other industries, where we’re seeing layoffs across other sectors, and those sectors are not growing as fast, swallow up the unemployment that’s taking up across the technology space. If you have that get swallowed up, I think everything keeps marching forward. So I think it’s gonna be interesting. It’s profitability versus consumer. What timeframe do those things reconcile versus not? So

Ken Moraif
let’s narrow the universe. Let’s bring it to our neck of the woods. Last week, when we had our mark alert video. We said that the big drop due to the jobs numbers revisions was temporary, and it looks like we’ve recovered all of those losses. So once again, ladies and gentlemen, you need to watch or listen to nothing else. You get it all here, and if you don’t, you do it at your own peril. If you don’t. But where do we go from here? It looks like the Fed is most likely going to lower interest rates. Now, given those jobs numbers,

Jordan Roach
I think that’s the big thing. It’s everything’s everybody’s watching. It’s watching the Fed watching inflation numbers. Could that change their mind? Watching jobs numbers? Gotta change your mind. But I think there’s more and more evidence stating that the Fed is going to pull start pulling rates down in September. And then the question from there is, how many more times, right?

Ken Moraif
And if they do in a meaningful way, the real estate market, which is 20% of our economy, has been frozen. In fact, we were just talking with Jeremy, our producer, about interest rates. You want to refinance your mortgage, right, Jeremy, or is it? Oh, okay, so everybody out there, everybody, there’s a lot of people out there there is thinking, you know, man, I’d like to get a new mortgage, maybe move or change or build a house, or whatever it is, and they’re not doing it because interest rates are too high, and that could unleash a lot of economic activity that AI, for the time being, cannot do. That’s right, that’s right. So that could create a bunch of jobs to soak although I don’t know that a coding person who does technology can be good at building a house. I guess it’s kind of the weird. It may be in reverse, right? It used to be like, if you didn’t know how to do technology because you were a, you know, a carpenter, like you’re going to lose your job. Maybe it’s the other way around. Now, all the technology guys are gonna lose their jobs, and the carpenters are the ones. I think that’s

Jordan Roach
right, from initial ports. I’ve seen, like the jobs that could come back in are all these trade jobs that AI cannot do,

Ken Moraif
it, that AI can’t do until the robots. Yeah, that’s for another conversation. Yeah. So overall, the outlook is pretty good. I think so. And again, ladies and gentlemen, you know, we we’re very optimistic. We think the second half of this year has a lot of potential, especially if the Fed starts lowering interest rates, and we don’t see, you know, the tariffs really pick up in terms of inflation and unemployment because of that. So it’s we’re setting up for a pretty good brew of positivity in the market. And so because of that, we’re optimistic, both on the stock and the bond side, right? Because if interest rates go down, our bonds should go up as well.

Jordan Roach
Yes, I think short term, we’re feeling pretty optimistic, yeah, through the end of the year. I mean, again, we’ve also had, you know, 15, you know, highs in the market this year. It’s very, it’s, it’d be very rare for the market to march to a new low after hitting so many highs in the year. That’s, again, that’s very bullish short term for us. Yeah.

Ken Moraif
So overall, we’re in good shape. But as always, we have our invest and protect strategy in place, because what knocks the market down and causes the bear market is always what nobody saw coming. It’s the it’s the it’s the unforeseen shock to the system that suddenly it’s like, oh my gosh, look at that. And that’s why we have our invest and protect strategy always ready to enact and to put into place. So I hope that gives you peace of mind. I want to thank you guys. You know, it’s unbelievable to me. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve crossed over a million views on our podcasts and our mark alert videos. And that’s thanks to you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much. Here’s another statistic. This blew me away. In the last 30 days, we’ve had 1,000% increase in subscribers. Wow. Thank you. That is fantastic. So you guys are awesome. We appreciate you, and hopefully it means that these Mark alert videos and our podcasts are beneficial. So I thank you once again. I hope this video found you healthy, wealthy and wise, and we’ll talk soon, retirement planners of America, rpoa.com, you.

Please note: transcript has been modified after the time of recording. 

Economic indicators and stock market performance cannot be predicted. Opinions expressed regarding the economy and the stock market belong solely to Ken Moraif on behalf of Retirement Planners of America and may not accurately portray actual future performance of the economy or stock market outcomes. Opinions expressed in this video is intended to be for informational purposes only and is not intended to be used as investment advice for individuals who are not clients of Retirement Planners of America. All content provided is the opinion of Ken Moraif, CEO and Founder of RPOA Advisors, Inc. (d/b/a Retirement Planners of America ) (“Retirement Planners of America”, “RPOA”). ©Copyright 2023