In this week’s market update, Ken takes a look at the latest economic developments, including strong business growth and low unemployment, and explains how those trends could affect inflation and interest rates.

He also discusses what rising rates may mean for bonds and the stock market, including the potential risks facing highly valued technology stocks. Finally, Ken previews the upcoming October 15 Investment Oversight Committee webinar, where he and Chief Investment Officer Jordan Roach will discuss updates to the bond and stock portfolios and improvements to the Invest and Protect strategy. 

If you’re within five years of retirement or in the first five years of retirement, a major loss could change your life. Watch the video to learn why we believe you should invest, yes, but you should protect as well. 

• ADV explanation 

• Economic growth and new business formation 

• Low unemployment and job market strength 

• Inflation and the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate outlook 

• Rising mortgage rates and housing affordability 

• Potential impact of higher interest rates on bonds 

• Potential impact of higher interest rates on the stock market 

• Risks surrounding highly valued technology stocks 

• Possibility of increased market volatility and a bear market 

• Adjustments to the bond portfolio 

• Updates and improvements to the Invest and Protect strategy 

• Upcoming October 15 Investment Oversight Committee webinar 

Transcript:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our weekly market alert video for today, which is September 25, 2026. As usual, I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy, and wise, and all you squippers out there, I hope you are enjoying your second childhood without parental supervision. That’s our goal, and we hope you are enjoying yourselves and all is well.

We have a lot to talk about in this weekly market alert video. Uh, one thing I wanna go over with you is the ADV email that you guys got, and, uh, there was some language in there, some stuff in there that was written by our compliance department in legalese, and many of you said, uh, you know, “We’d like to know what all that means.

Can you tell us in English what that means?” And so I wanna translate that for you. It’s all good news, but I do wanna translate it for you. Also, I wanna talk with you about, uh, our, uh, webinar that we have coming up on October 15th. It is our, uh, quarterly Investment Oversight Committee webinar. And as you know, we have a webinar for you every third Thursday of the month, so October 15th will be the third Thursday of October.

Uh, in it, we are gonna be talking about, uh, several things. One is we are going to be changing our bond portfolio, and the reason why is because interest rates are going up, and we need to adapt to that. Secondly, we’re gonna be changing our equity, our stock portfolio, because of some of the things that our research has shown us, so I wanna share a little bit of that with you.

And then finally, we also wanna talk with you about changes that we have made, uh, and are going to make to our actual invest and protect, uh, strategy so that, uh, we can improve the results we get from that even more than we already have. So all of that on the October 15th Investment Oversight Committee webinar.

Please, please, please, we think it’s very important that you attend it. Every one of you should. Uh, we’re gonna go over the past, the future, and the present with you, and, uh, Jordan Roach, our Chief Investment Officer, will be joining me for that. Uh, so along with that, we’re also… So there, I got that out of the way.

I wanna talk with you also about, um, what we’re gonna talk about on this, our, our, our weekly mar- market alert, right? Uh, first I wanna talk about how the economy gave us great news. The economy is doing very, very well. But why is that bad news? Well, we’re gonna talk about what interest rates are, are doing and what our, uh, what it looks like they’re going to do in the future.

I’m gonna talk about how that’s gonna affect our bond portfolio, which I’ve just mentioned we’re gonna do, but also how it, it, it could eventually affect our stock portfolio. Are we in a bu- a, a bubble? Is there a big, bad bear coming? So we’ll talk about all of that. So we have that to talk about, so we have the time to go through with you, so I’m excited.

Uh, before we jump in, I just wanna t- give you some, uh, some good news on my part, uh, and that is that my youngest daughter, uh, got married on, uh, last Saturday And, uh, it was up in the mountains, and it was outdoors. So for those of you who know about mountain weather, you know that the weather can change very, very quickly.

And in fact, it rained all week, and it rained cats and dogs right up to an hour before the wedding started. So we were sweating it. We were thinking we’re gonna have to go indoors, but as it turned out, the skies cleared, all the clouds went away, the sun came out, and the wedding went on outside, and it was a beautiful thing.

So I’m very fortunat- uh, fortunate now. I have three wonderful, um, son-in-laws. We, we love all three of them. They are great. Our daughters did a good job choosing. And, uh, we’re fortunate to have, uh, a, a new family starting here, and that’s just great. So let me go over first with you the, uh, the ADV, which you got an email about.

Um, and it created… Because it’s w- written in legalese, it created some, uh… How do I put it kindly? Some, “Can you translate it into English for me, please?” So I guess that’s my job here, so I’m gonna do it. The first thing that it says is that we have consolidated our fee, uh, into one, and not only that, but your fee is going to go down, okay?

So, uh, the way we had it before was that we had the advisory fee and the platform fee separate, and it- that also created some confusion, so, uh, but they are all, all a fee that you pay. So what we’re doing is we’re combining them into one fee. So on your October statement, you’re just gonna see one fee, and it’s gonna be lower as a percentage.

The percentage fee that you’re paying will go down. So that is good news. We’re lowering your fees, and, uh, any opportunity that we can find to do that, we want to. So that’s great news for you. The other thing also, in the ADV, there was a typo that said that we pay 1% to Fidelity. Uh, that is, was supposed to say 0.01%, or a 10th of 1%, is what we pay Fidelity.

We currently have two custodians. Fidelity is one, and, uh, Pershing is the other, and we pay the custodians for their services. And so that 10th of a percent is something that we pay. Some of you read that as, “What? I’m paying 1% to Fidelity? What’s this? I don’t wanna do that.” You’re not, okay? Your fees, whether you are on the Fidelity platform or you are on Pershing, are exactly the same.

It means there’s no difference to you. The fee that you’re seeing there that was disclosed is what we are paying Fidelity, okay? It comes out of our money, which, I guess indirectly comes from yours, but be that as it may, it’s our expense. Changes your fee? No way. Uh, so that’s basically what it said in English.

Fees going down, consolidated, 1% is not 1%, it’s a 10th of a percent. It’s paid to Pershing. It does- it, it doesn’t affect your fee. Your fee is the same, either platform, okay? So that’s all good news. All right, so let’s talk about, uh, the great news that came for the economy. Oh my gosh, business development, business- small business growth, the highest in five years.

That’s great, right? We are an entrepreneurial economy. We encourage new businesses to develop and build and bring us new products and services, hire more people. And guess what? The highest in five years. Great news. The other thing is that, uh, we found out that the unemployment claims, people filing for unemployment, the lowest, are you ready?

In 57 years. Oh, that is fantastic news. So with all that good news, why is the market down, and what’s the problem here? Well, the problem is that according to the Federal Reserve, they think that all this good news is inflationary. They think it’s gonna cause inflation to go up even further, and that’s why they raised interest rates last week, as we told you they would.

But now the bet- the betting markets are saying that there’s a 66% chance that they could raise interest rates two more times this year. Now, the crazy thing is, at the beginning of this year, the, the, the consensus was three reductions in interest rates this year, and now it looks like it’s gonna be three raises.

So the world is turned upside down. So that’s a big deal. Mortgage rates are at s- uh, 7% now, which is the highest in a, a very long time. Uh, the 10-year treasury is now over 5%, and what we’ve told you is that when it gets over 5%, that’s contractionary for the, uh, for the economy. So th- th- those things then bleed into our investments.

So let’s talk about that next. So as you guys know- As you’ve followed us over the years, that bonds tend to have an inverse relationship to interest rates. So as interest rates go up, bond prices tend to go down. So what does that mean? Well, it means that we need to adapt to that, and we’ll be telling you more about how we’re gonna change our bond portfolio to adapt to the fact that interest rates are now gonna be going up, it appears.

Okay? So that’s the first thing on the bond side. On the stock side, what could go wrong there? Well, the, the stock market is near all-time highs, but it’s massively cons- concentrated in just seven companies. They’re 30 to 40% of the entire value of the stock market. They are borrowing money. These are the AI companies.

They are borrowing billions and billions and billions of dollars to fund all these data centers and everything else. Well, guess what? If you borrow money and interest rates go up, the cost of your borrowing went up. If the cost of your money and your borrowing went up, your profits went down. And so the stock market then recalibrates.

It says, “Okay, you were making a lot of money. We priced you at this, but now you’re making less money, so we’re gonna price you at that.” And that recalibration is what we’ve been seeing, what we said would happen, and that is that the stock market, over the last two or three weeks, has generally been going downward.

Now, will this lead to a big, bad bear market? Are we in an AI bubble? Will it burst and we’ll have another, like what happened in the year 2000 with the, uh, the technology stocks back then? Well, I was asked that actually last night at a cocktail party and I said, “We’ll see.” You know what I mean? I don’t know.

What I do know is we need to plan for it because there’s a better than zero chance that it could happen. And if there’s a threat like that that could come after you, we wanna be sure that we are ready for it, that we’ve planned for it, that we are, that we have the, the mechanisms in place to do the best we can to protect you from that should it happen, and that’s our Invest and Protect.

And I hope that it gives you peace of mind knowing that if it does burst, if the, the market recalibrates all of that and the companies that represent almost 40% of the stock market go way down, which is what happened back in Y2K and the market went down 49% as a whole, well, if that happens again, we believe that our Invest and Protect should protect us from any major losses and any catastrophic losses that could derail our retirement.

So I hope it gives you the peace of mind knowing that we have that and it g- because it does me you know? My job is to have you, your money last as long as you do, and we believe that without having that it would be a very difficult assignment, you know, to, to weather big bad bear markets and still not have your money run out.

We think that would be very, very difficult. And with it, we think that we can do it. So that’s why it gives me peace of mind. So I hope this video found you healthy, wealthy, and wise. And remember, sign up for the October 15th Third Thursday webinar. Uh, it’s gonna be our investment oversight committee quarterly update.

We’re gonna go over what happened since the last time we visited with you, what we think is going on now, and then most importantly, the changes we’re making to address the future, and I think you’ll like all of it. You’ll be very pleased with the work that we have done, okay? So make sure you sign up for that and, uh, we’ll talk soon.

Economic indicators and stock market performance cannot be predicted. Opinions expressed regarding the economy and the stock market belong solely to employees of RPOA 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 employees of RPOA Advisors, Inc. (d/b/a Retirement Planners of America ) (“Retirement Planners of America”, “RPOA”). ©Copyright 2026