• We began this week’s market update with a comprehensive look at the key forces shaping your financial future, including the Federal Reserve, inflation, global conflict, and energy markets  

• As always, our goal is to bring clarity and perspective so you can focus on what matters most, living your second childhood without parental supervision  

• The Federal Reserve made the decision to hold interest rates steady, which we view as a prudent and disciplined approach given the current level of economic and geopolitical uncertainty  

• With conflicting signals around inflation, tariffs, and global tensions, patience from policymakers is both appropriate and necessary  

• Encouragingly, jobless claims remain at their lowest levels since 1969, reinforcing the strength and resilience of the labor market  

• Despite ongoing concerns about artificial intelligence and job displacement, employers are continuing to retain their workforce, which supports overall economic stability  

• A strong employment environment leads to confident consumers, and consumer spending continues to be the primary driver of economic growth  

• We are closely monitoring developments at the Federal Reserve, including the ongoing investigation involving Chairman Jerome Powell and the broader leadership dynamics  

• While the situation introduces an element of political uncertainty, we remain focused on how these developments may impact interest rate policy moving forward  

• Looking ahead, we believe there is a strong likelihood that interest rates could decline in the second half of the year, particularly under potential new leadership  

• Lower interest rates would provide meaningful support to the housing sector, which remains the primary area of economic softness  

• If housing activity accelerates, it could serve as a catalyst for broader economic expansion in the months ahead  

• On the global stage, shifting energy dynamics are positioning the United States as a leading supplier of oil and gas, creating a significant economic tailwind  

• Increased global demand for U.S. energy exports has the potential to further strengthen domestic growth and reinforce our economic leadership  

• While we remain optimistic about the outlook, we also recognize that market downturns often emerge unexpectedly, even during periods of strength  

• That is why our disciplined Invest and Protect strategy remains central to everything we do, helping ensure you can make your money last as long as you do  

• Our commitment is to provide you with confidence and peace of mind, knowing that your financial future is being actively managed and protected 
• As always, we will continue to monitor these developments closely so you can enjoy your second childhood without parental supervision.  

Transcript:

Hello everyone, and welcome to our weekly market alert video for today, which is 5/1/26, May 1. Wow. The year is almost half over. I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy, and wise. We have so much to talk about today with the Federal Reserve, with their interest rates, job claims, the high drama at the Federal Reserve with the criminal investigation, oh my gosh. Inflation, tariffs, oil prices, war, wow. We got so much to talk about, and I’ve entitled this one, USA, USA, USA. And I’ll explain why when we get into it. So, we have a ton to talk about. First of all, I want to say hi to all of you clients and all of you skippers out there in Squipper Nation. And as you guys know, if you are retired, you are a scwper. Squipper is the acronym for second childhood without parental supervision. We want you to go play and have fun and enjoy. You earned it. You worked for it. Let us get the gray hair for you, worry about it so that you don’t have to. So that’s what we’re all about. So, I want to dive into all this stuff, but I want to share with you something. My wife and I just celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary, and I want to tell you a quick story that I think is funny, you probably won’t, but you know what? It’s my show. So, I wanted to have like a trigger mechanism to remind me of when our wedding anniversary was. And so, I decided that, you know, and it was April 15, so Tax Day, that’s pretty easy, right? So, every year on Tax Day, I knew that that was our wedding anniversary, and so we celebrated our wedding anniversary for, I don’t know, 15 to 20 years at the time, and we had our wedding actually recorded on Betamax. Now, for those of you, are you old enough, Alex, to remember Betamax? 

 
I was not around, you don’t even, I’ve heard of it. 

 
You’ve heard of it. Okay, well, Betamax was before VHS, you know, the little cassette things. Anyway, okay, so Betamax went out. It was gone. But that’s what we recorded our wedding on, you know, with a Betamax camera. So, I was talking to a client who was a videographer, and I was telling him, you know, I’ve got my wedding videos, but I can’t watch them because, you know, they’re on Betamax. And he said, well, let me ask you something. He goes, do you have a player? He said, do you have the cassette? And I said, yes, I do. He says, you know, I think I have the player in my attic. I think I have an old Betamax player. And I’m like, no way. He goes, yeah, I’m going to go home. And when I get home, I’m going to go look for it. If I find it, then I can burn it all onto CDs for you, and we can solve this problem. And I was like, wow, that would be cool. So, he goes home, calls me, he’s all excited. I do. I have a working Betamax player. It’s 10 years old, but I’ve got it. And so, if you can get me the cassette, then what I can do is I can burn it onto a CD for you, and you’ll have a digital version of your wedding, or your wedding itself. So, I gave him that, and he worked on it, and about a week later, he comes back and he gives me these CDs, DVDs, and it says, Ken and Fay’s wedding, April 28. And I said, Dave, our wedding anniversary is April 15, not the 28th. And he goes, Ken, I didn’t make it up. The video itself says it’s April 28. So, I’m like, holy cow, we’ve been celebrating our wedding anniversary on the wrong day for 15 years because I registered in my head that the way to remember my wedding anniversary was on Tax Day. The good news is that my wife fell for it too, so she thought it was on the 15th as well, so I didn’t get in trouble for it. But yeah, for like 20 years, we celebrated our wedding anniversary on the wrong day, and it took that video to find the right day. So, like I said, I thought that was funny. You probably didn’t think it was. So, let’s talk about the Fed. So, the Fed decided to leave interest rates alone and do nothing, which is probably what, you know, I would have done if I was them. I mean, how do you know what to do? We’ve got a war going on. We’ve got the potential for more tariffs. We don’t know whether inflation is up or down. We don’t know what’s going on. I mean, there is too much uncertainty. So, if I’m the Fed, I do exactly that. The economy seems to be okay. Let’s not change anything at this time. Let’s just let the dust settle and figure out later what we’re going to do. So basically, that’s what happened. And you know, to add validity to the notion that the economy is doing all right, this is a statistic that just blew my mind. Job claims, which means people applying for, you know, that have lost their jobs, that are looking for a new job, are the lowest since 1969. And you know, everybody’s talking about how AI is going to destroy all these jobs and put everybody out of work and all this stuff. It probably will happen, but it does not seem to be happening right now. Employers are holding on to their employees. They are not laying anybody off. So, the job claims are the lowest since 1969, so that bodes well. If people are secure in their jobs, they spend, and consumers drive 70% of our economy. So that is all good stuff. The high drama that is going on right now at the Federal Reserve is interesting to watch. So, you may not be aware of this, but President Trump, in my opinion, wanted to put pressure on Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chairman, to lower interest rates or to quit. I think more likely to quit, so he started a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chairman, over the construction of the new Federal Reserve building, where, apparently, they spent like a billion or two billion dollars, and so he said that they overspent, and this must be criminal. So, there is a Department of Justice criminal investigation going on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and so that, I think, was Trump’s way of saying, you know, leave, get out of here. And, you know, the pressure. Jerome Powell, on the other hand, said, well, as long as that criminal investigation is going on, I’m not leaving. So, it is kind of backfired on Trump from that standpoint, if that is what he was intending, because Powell is saying, you know, I’m not leaving, because when I am a private citizen under criminal investigation, I could go to jail for that. I am relatively immunized if I am still the Federal Reserve Chairman. So, you mix that in where now there is a new chairman that is probably going to be in here. As I record this, he was not, but most likely he will be. So, if he gets in as a new Fed chairman and Jerome Powell stays as a governor, what is the politic of that? Does the drama intensify? I mean, this is a soap opera to end all soap operas. The way we see it is that the Fed, probably in the second half of this year, under the new leadership, will likely lower interest rates, which is what President Trump wants. And the last remaining part of our economy that is lagging right now is construction of new homes. That is the one part of the economy that is not doing as well as everything else. If that picks up because interest rates go down, the economy could boom, and that is why we think the second half of this year could be very, very strong. So overall, that is all great. So why did I name this, this video, USA, USA, USA? Well, the reason is because, you know, the war in Iran. What is going on over there is that they have essentially, with the embargo, shut off the supply of oil to the world going through the Strait of Hormuz. And Iran is also doing the same thing. So, the combination is the world has to buy their oil from, guess who, from us, and from Venezuela. And so, guess what? All these tankers are coming over. The Secretary of the Treasury was out saying that, you know, the world is coming to us to buy oil and gas, and we have the ability, like nobody else in the world, to ramp it all up so quickly and get it out the door and satisfy the demand. So, it is really incredible what is going on in terms of our own domestic oil and gas industry and how it is picking up. So, who knows, by the time this war is over, maybe we will not even care about the Strait of Hormuz, because everybody will be buying their oil from us, and we will be the new supplier in the supply chain, and all of that will go away. So, if that is the case, another reason why our economy could boom. And again, USA, USA, USA, right? So right now, it all looks well, and we are very positive, very optimistic about the rest of this year. But again, the one thing that always has happened when we had a big, bad bear market is that it came out of the blue. Nobody saw it coming. In most cases, it was when it was the best of times, and then all of a sudden, wham, this thing comes in out of nowhere. So, we cannot get complacent. We have to always have our invest and protect process in there to protect your retirement from catastrophic losses, because we want you to enjoy your second childhood. We want you to go play and have fun and not worry about it, and so that is why we have it. I hope it gives you peace of mind. It does me to know that we have it. And I guess that is all I have got for you this week. So, I hope this video found you healthy, wealthy, and wise. I hope all you scwpers out there are scwpping your tails off. Go. Have fun. Summer is coming. Just enjoy. Do whatever you think you can afford to do, and we will take care of business. We will watch the store for you. All right, so thanks for watching, and we will talk soon 

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

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