• Ken and Jordan checked in from Alaska, reminding us that even when traveling, our team is monitoring markets and keeping your retirement plan front and center.
• They began with a reflection on the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, underscoring the importance of civil discourse and stability in our democracy. While somber, it’s a reminder that we plan for uncertainty in all aspects of life.
• On the financial front, inflation numbers were encouraging this week:
o The Producer Price Index (PPI) came in well under estimates.
o The Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in largely in line with expectations.
o Both results support the case for interest rate cuts.
• The market now views a Fed rate cut next week as almost certain. Whether the cut is 0.25% or 0.50%, investors are expecting action.
• This optimism helped drive the Dow, S&P 500, and NASDAQ to new all-time highs a bullish sign historically.
• While some fear “all-time highs” mean it’s time to sell, history shows that when multiple indices hit highs together, it’s often a positive confirmation of strength, not a warning signal.
• The jobs market remains strong, with unemployment still in the low 4% range. There are small signs of cooling, but nothing alarming at this stage.
• That said, we remain mindful of risks:
o If companies facing tariff pressures can no longer absorb costs, they may raise prices or cut jobs.
o If AI-related investments slow down, valuations in tech could come under pressure similar to past bubbles.
o The bond market is signaling caution with long-term yields drifting lower.
• Our base case remains positive for the rest of the year, but as always, we plan for the worst and hope for the best.
• Our Invest and Protect Strategy is designed to act if risks materialize. Just as it protected clients in 2008, it remains our safety net today so you can focus on enjoying retirement while we monitor the details.
• Most importantly: know that we are on top of the markets every day, even in the rain in Alaska, working to give you confidence, peace of mind, and the freedom to enjoy your second childhood without parental supervision.

Transcript:
Ken Moraif
Hello everyone, and welcome to our market alert video for today, September 12, 2025 and we are here in beautiful Alaska on a business conference. I’ve got my chief investment officer with me here Jordan roach. And, you know, kind of a somber day today, because we’re contemplating, you know, the Charlie Kirk assassination and how, you know, the founding fathers gave us the freedoms that we, I hope, don’t take for granted. They’re so important, freedom of speech being one of the most important, and to me, if you disagree with somebody, it’s okay, you know, to disagree verbally, but I think that if it resorts to the point of violence or killing somebody, that is a traitorous Act, in My opinion, that is not patriotic. You’re not standing up for something and doing the right thing by doing that, you’re actually a traitor to the founding fathers, to our Constitution, and you are actually a threat to our democracy. So I hope that this person is caught and lawfully convicted, and that the country does not devolve into something worse, because we don’t need that discourse. Political discourse, is something that we should have. It’s healthy, and it keeps the country vibrant. And I hope that we don’t finger point that we all agree that we need to agree to disagree sometimes, but it is not patriotic. It is traitorous to kill somebody that you disagree with. So I wanted to start with that kind of a somber thing. We thought that, you know, we’d have some good news for you. The PPI number came in, CPI number came in, you know, stuff that normally we would talk about that is actually not bad news. So let’s do that, since that’s what this is about. Sure. So, Jordan, you served. How do you feel about about this?

Jordan Roach
Shocking, I was actually getting off the plane when found out right coming up here, and it rattled me quite a bit for all the reasons you said. So I hope the nation will learn for this, can find a way to heal from this, but it’s one of the worst times, least in my adult career.

Ken Moraif
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, this kind of behavior is a threat to our democracy. We can’t in any way condone it in any way, no matter what you believe. Think that it’s okay, no, it’s shocking. So Alright, so let’s talk about all the other stuff. Yeah, the stuff that seems so unimportant when something like this happens. So we got two inflation numbers, we got the PPI, and it’s dripping on us, right

Jordan Roach
on us. We’re not getting sunny Alaska.

Ken Moraif
That’s right, but that’s okay. It’s actually quite pleasant. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, there’s a pond right behind us, and yesterday, there were two moose that were feeding in there. And I think Paul, you can insert the video maybe somewhere in this mark alert video to show everybody these moose. It’s unbelievable. But there were two things, right? There was a ppi, which is the Producer Price Index, and then there was a CPI Consumer Price Index, and both of them bode well for the conversation that the Fed is going to be lowering interest rates.

Jordan Roach
No, that’s right. I mean ppi, which,

Ken Moraif
let’s move over here and right over here. I think we’re underneath, but PPI

Jordan Roach
that gave us a little scare, maybe a pause in August where that all of a sudden spiked, and everyone got, oh, here it comes. That settled way back down and came way under estimates. So that’s good news. And then just a typical CPI came in, largely in line with estimates. And again, it’s not what the Fed wants. 2% annualized. It’s higher than that, but it’s well within, again, expectations,

Ken Moraif
yes, and it’s also in line with where kind of their target is right. So maybe it’s time now to focus on the jobs market more so than inflation, and therefore, maybe it’s time to lower interest rates. And the market is very happy right now, given that,

Jordan Roach
I think the market right now is getting excited, it’s bracing to almost guaranteeing the Fed’s going to cut, if you can say that, right? I mean, right now it would be such a shock to the market. The Fed, they didn’t have a big sell off. So I think for early next week is when is the Fed meets? I think it’s probably a done deal that the Fed cuts. The markets ready now, whether it’s point 5% or point two 5% don’t know, but the market’s ready. The market’s getting excited, because what we saw this week is we saw a Dow, S and P and NASDAQ all hit all

Ken Moraif
time highs. Okay, so let’s talk about that. All time highs everywhere you look. Isn’t it time to sell? Shouldn’t we just get out and we’ll take our chips off the table?

Jordan Roach
We even get. That question more and more, like Ken, there’s no way this can keep going right, right? And it’s, it’s hard to judge that. But what I would say is, broadly, when you have three major indices confirming all time highs, that is bullish, not bearish,

Ken Moraif
okay, right? Yeah. And most, if you look at most times when we are in a bull market, we hit multiple all time highs. It’s like the market’s ready. Yeah, right. So now, so let’s talk about the jobs market. How’s that the jobs market seems to be holding up also, right?

Jordan Roach
Holding up. Now there’s, you know, some people fear that the Fed could be late to the party here, that there is some underlying weakness to the jobs data. You know, you saw new claims, jobless claims for unemployment insurance tick up a little bit. But again, I don’t know if the market is that concerned, given the fact that we have broad unemployment in the low force, so some expectation that it’s going to come up. So I do think that the fear would be the Fed is late, and this jobs data where companies, you know, a few years ago were firing people in advance of what could have been that never was. Maybe you can start seeing that again, but it looks now that the Fed is certainly going to shift their attention to making sure that jobs market, that growth component, stays strong.

Ken Moraif
Okay, so new all time highs continue. Looks like the rest of this year should be good. Yep, some more. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we do. This is the sacrifice that we make, even in the rain. We’re doing it in beautiful Alaska. We will make this video. So let’s talk about what could go wrong, right? Because sometimes the old expression is, if things are rolling along too well, make sure you’re not rolling downhill. That’s right. So what could go wrong? I mean, it sounds like jobs are good. Inflation is under control. Nothing seems to be worrying anybody at this point.

Jordan Roach
Yeah, I think there are several things that could go wrong. You know, one’s interesting to look at right now is kind of saying who’s right, stock market or bond market. And the reason I say this stock market’s converting highs, right? So it’s certainly bullish. The bond market, you’re getting yields back down to where they haven’t been since before Liberation Day, and sometimes when yields are coming down on the long end of the curve, meaning 1020, 30 year yields, not short term yields. That’s a sign the bond market might be pricing in some level of weakness. So which is, right? So if that, if that weakness does actually manifest itself, well, what we could see is companies and again, that have been just kind of on a hiring freeze, not laying off. Start to lay off, they start layoff. Yeah, right. If, if cost of credit didn’t come down to a reasonable level, maybe expenditures on AI development stops that hiring freeze goes from a freeze to a layoff that could happen. The other thing is, again, and we’ve talked about this multiple times, we’re probably not done seeing the effect of

Ken Moraif
tariffs. Tariffs, yeah, and there’s lots of CEOs that are saying, you know, they’re not passing it on the cost. They’re swallowing it for so long. But they’re saying there’s a point where we can’t keep doing that. And if they decide we’re not going to keep doing that, and they start selectively increasing prices on things, then that could be inflationary again, and that could cause unemployment, and we could see, you know, the dooms, the Doom Sayers about tariffs turn out to be right. That’s not our base case, but that’s certainly a possibility. That’s right. They could actually start having to pass it

Jordan Roach
on finally, because they want to retain the profitability, or if they want to retain it and they don’t want to pass it on because they’re worried about consumers slipping, what do they do? They cut costs elsewhere. How do they do that? That is where the layoff starts.

Ken Moraif
Yeah. So. And then you also have, you know, the people that are comparing the AI to y 2k and the dot coms, and how, you know, we had this huge technology run up, and now we’re doing it again, right? And we’re doing to repeat that. We’re not, you know, we should look at that, right? So, how? Again, not our base case, but it’s certainly possible that these companies are ridiculously priced, right? And if they fell, they’d take the whole market with

Jordan Roach
them. There are some parallels to that time where, you know, everybody right now is willing to pay in the market very high prices for this growth that could be and if that growth does not manifest into actual earnings.

Ken Moraif
Yeah, look at Oracle, 40% in one day, 40% in a day, in a day. And that’s not a small company either.

Jordan Roach
No, that’s a mega cap name that’s coming in. So again, you have maybe some of those things underneath the surface where people are saying this is starting to feel a little bit too much. Yeah, the market needs to settle. So we’ll

Ken Moraif
see. And you know, the dot coms, even though they did collapse, they still left behind the internet, so it was still a good thing. People were right to invest in this, right? But they got a little crazy investing in anything. Yes, and maybe that’s what we’re doing here. We’re building an AI bubble. The important thing to remember, ladies and gentlemen, is that if we are, if the tariffs kick in, if all these things we’re talking about turn out to be the bad things, which is not what we think will happen, but it could. We always plan for the worst and hope for the best. We don’t plan for the best and hope the worst doesn’t happen, and that’s why we have our invest and protect strategy that is designed to get us out, to protect us. And you know, 2008 seems like an eternity ago, but it wasn’t. Right? And in November of 2007 our strategy said to get out and sell. And the clients who followed our advice were out of the stock market for almost a year and a half, and when the market went down 57% from peak to trough, they participated in almost none of that. So it’s very important to always be ready for the bad things that could come, and then, if they don’t, well, guess what? We’ll enjoy the ride. So thank you for bearing with us. Well, we’ve been dripped on and rained on here in Alaska, but you know, if you look at this, it is absolutely beautiful, and we certainly appreciate you guys. Without you, we would be nowhere. So I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy and wise, and we’ll talk soon.

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

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