In this Weekly Market Alert, the team discusses the latest interest-rate outlook and what recent jobs data could mean for the Federal Reserve’s next move. Jordan Roach explains the recent changes to the bond portfolio, including shifting toward shorter-term Treasuries, increasing highly rated corporate bonds, and expanding cash and money-market exposure. The video also previews the October 15 Investment Committee quarterly webinar, which will cover additional bond and stock portfolio changes and updates to the Invest & Protect strategy.
- Federal Reserve interest-rate outlook and the upcoming October meeting
- Recent jobs numbers and their potential impact on interest-rate expectations
- The relationship between interest rates and bond prices
- Why the bond portfolio was shifted toward shorter-term Treasuries
- Reducing duration and managing interest-rate sensitivity
- How shorter-term bonds can benefit from a rising-rate environment
- Increasing exposure to highly rated, investment-grade corporate bonds
- Differences between Treasury bonds and corporate bonds
- Using corporate bonds to diversify fixed-income risk and potentially increase yield
- Increased exposure to short-term money markets and repurchase agreements
- The overall strategy behind shortening the bond portfolio’s duration
- Review of the bond trades made earlier in the week
- Upcoming October 15 Investment Committee quarterly report
- Potential changes to the stock portfolio
- Updates to the Invest & Protect strategy and getting back into the market
- Inflation, economic conditions, and potential market risks
- Discussion of concerns surrounding an AI-stock bubble
- The importance of maintaining a long-term perspective amid changing market conditions
Transcript:
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our weekly market alert video for today,
which is Friday, October 2nd, 2026. And I hope this video finds you healthy,
wealthy, and wise. And all you squippers out there, I hope you are out there
squippering your tails off, enjoying your second childhood without parental
supervision.
That’s your job. Our job is to get the gray hair, and I gotta tell you, I’m looking
at that, I think we’re doing a good job of that. Anyhow, um, I hope you are
having a great, uh, day, and, uh, we’ll have a great weekend. We have a ton to
talk about with you on this, our weekly excursion into the land of, uh,
retirement planning.
So first of all, uh, as you guys know, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates
last meeting, and now all eyes are looking towards the October meeting.
October 16th, I believe, is when it is. And, uh, at that time, they’re gonna tell us
if they’re gonna raise interest rates again. The jobs numbers this morning came
in, and they were not good relatively to what the market was expecting.
So now the odds have fallen away. They were 66% they were gonna raise
interest rates again, and now it’s dropped off to less than 50%. Oh, my gosh, are
we gonna raise? We’re g- not gonna raise? The, the point, though, is that we are
in a- A cycle now where the Fed’s, uh, bent, shall I say, the momentum, is
towards raising interest rates.
And when you have a raising interest rate environment, what that brings with it
is bond prices tend to fall. As we’ve talked on multiple occasions on these
Weekly Market Alerts, bonds and, uh, interest rates tend to have an inverse
relationship. So as one rises, the other one falls, and vice versa. And so if the
Fed’s gonna be raising interest rates, then it’s incumbent upon us to adapt to that,
to change accordingly, and to, uh, change our bond portfolio so as to take
advantage of the fact that interest rates, uh, are in an upwardly trended
environment right now.
So what I’m gonna do is, uh, bring on our fearless Chief Investment Officer, uh,
Jordan Roach. Jordan, welcome to, uh, the, uh, Weekly Market Alert. It’s good
to see you. Good morning. Good morning. I hope, uh, I hope all is well with
you. Uh, I had, I had an incident this morning that I’m not very happy about,
before we get going.
It w- you know, I think people know at this point that I’ve caved. I’m now a cat
lover. I can’t believe I would say that at this stage in my life. Uh, and we have a
cat. His name is Ziggy, and Ziggy is appropriately named. Hmm. The guy is a
freaking idiot. He’s, he zigs and zags. He’s got so much energy. He’s flying all
over the place.
He has decided that toilet rolls are his favorite toy now. Oh, that’s a fun trick.
So, he- That’s a fun trick … so I go in the bathroom, and he’s there doing this.
He’s fanning it, and there’s this big giant pile of toilet paper. And I’m like, “Oh
my gosh. Are you kidding me?” So now we gotta put the toilet paper away
because of Ziggy.
I’m telling you people- Mm-hmm … I may go back. I think I’m gonna go back-
Yeah … to dogs. Dogs don’t- And he knows what he’s doing. Ziggy knows what
he’s doing. Oh, he’s- There’s- … having a great time. Then he dives into the pile
of, of, uh, of, uh- … toilet paper, rolls around in it, and he gets all- Yep … caught
up, and he’s chewing it, and then he starts coughing it out.
The guy is a complete mess. I don’t know what to do with him. Well, yeah,
maybe, maybe dogs. Maybe dogs are the thing. So, uh, Jordan, tell us or tell, uh,
our, uh, our audience, uh, you know, what is it that we are doing? We’ve… What
we’ve done, right? And so we’ve- Yeah … already changed the bond portfolio.
Uh, we couldn’t tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in advance because that’s w- it,
it would result in this thing called front running, which is illegal, and insider
information, and all those good things.
So we don’t want any of that. So we have to trade for you first, and then after
the fact, we can tell you what we did. So that’s what we’re doing now. So what
did we do, Jordan? Inform us. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a fairly major shift for our,
let’s call it our bond offering, our bond solution. And it, it’s something that, you
know, Canada Investment Committee, you know, we’ve been talking about a
lot, a lot, even absent of this environment of what do we want our fixed income,
our bonds to do for us.
And then you overlay, like you talked about, kind of the, the cycle that we’re in
with inflationary fears, what the Fed’s doing, and it just seemed like now is the
time to pull the trigger. And so we did a, we did a couple things here. You
know, if, if you looked at our bond portfolio before, it was comprised largely of
5 to 10-year Treasuries, and we had some corporate stuff and some cash in
there.
That was our biggest exposure, and that’s the part of the market that’s been
under some stress for the last 12 months, and likely will continue. All right? So
what we did is we effectively removed that part of our portfolio. Still, but we
still wanna own Treasuries, okay? And so we just are owning Treasuries that
are, um, let’s call it a little more shortly dated, meaning instead of owning five
to 10-year Treasuries, let’s own one to three-year.
Okay, so we did that. We brought in- So- Yeah … why, why is that a, a good
move to make? Why would you want to, uh, uh, as they call it, shorten the
duration of our, uh, Treasury portfolio? Why would you wanna go on the, on
the shorter end… Short-term interest rates right now is what the Fed mostly
controls. So why would you wanna be on that side of, of the, of the yield curve
versus the longer end?
I mean, two reasons. One is there’s less s- sensitivity for those types of bonds to
move inversely if yields come up. So if rates come up, the effect it will have on
those prices of those bonds is far less than what we had. So that’s good. So it
tightens up our risk a little bit. And the other thing is, if rates do continue to
come up on the short side of things, right, so three month, one year, two year,
three year bonds come up, those bonds also benefit from the increase in yield
far faster than longer duration.
So it’s, kind of, both sides of that, that we could, you know, help s- um, again,
potentially boost some yield if things come up and also, more importantly,
reduce our risk. Yeah. I, I’m picturing a fulcrum. You know, it’s like- Mm-
hmm … it, it’s sitting on a fulcrum, and as long-term rates, you know, s- uh, are
going up, then what happens is, uh, I’m sorry, as long-term…
As short-term rates are going up, long-term rates, uh, the, the bond market tends
to go down. And if you can make interest here without the risk of that, right,
you’re reducing your risk, but you’re riding the interest rate curve with the Fed.
As they’re raising it- Yes … you’re riding it. Short-term bonds mature faster, so
if they keep raising rates, the bonds mature, and now you go back and buy back
with higher interest rated bonds.
Exactly. So all of those dynamics play into why going on the shorter end of the
yield curve, as they call it, the, the, the, the spectrum of interest rates, uh, makes
sense in this, in this environment. That’s right. And so that was one m- main
thing we did. The other thing we did is we are, kind of, diversifying t- more
into, let’s call it, investment grade, very highly rated triple A corporate credit.
Um, and so we have that as well. And because right now, look, there, there are,
let’s say, pressures or fears around the economy, but the economy broadly is
doing well. And corporate credit does not price in or respond to the same types
of risks that, like, treasury yields do. All that inflationary fears and geopolitical
fears.
And so we also increased that. Again, highly, highly rated companies. We put a
little bit more dollars out to that allocation as well. Yeah. And, and, uh,
corporate bonds are different than, uh, treasuries. Treasuries are basically…
And, and by the way, the word bond is just a nice word for we’re borrowing
money.
Okay? Yeah. So when somebody issues a bond, uh, that’s just a nice way of
saying, “We need to borrow money.” And nobody, you know, that’s usually not
a good thing when you have to borrow money. Mm-hmm. So when the
government issues treasuries, they issue treasury bonds, basically they’re
borrowing, right? So the federal, the federal government is borrowing money.
Corporate bonds are the same thing. So corporations are borrowing money also.
And the treasuries are priced based on how risky is the US government.
Corporate bonds are based on how risky are corporations. So corporate bonds
tend to behave a lot like stocks, right? I mean, they, they, they, they don’t move
quite as much, you know, in magnitude.
But they tend to move in the direction like stocks do, because it’s based on the
underlying health of the companies that are, that are issuing those bonds. That’s
exactly right. And, and then right now, um, and we think even you go back
historically, um, you know, right now there are companies out there whose
healthy balance sheets that are fairly safely rated.
And so we can diversify there a little bit, still pick up a little bit of yield. And
again, ultimately for us to spread out the risk. ‘Cause there is a lot of pressure
right now on deficits and inflation and all these things. So again, we’re just
gonna have a, a two-prong approach here. Okay. What else have we been, uh,
doing?
What, what else did we do i- in the, on the bond side? On the bond side, so…
And then one thing we did is, and then the, the, we did have two other
exposures in our bond portfolio. You know, we had kind of short-term money
markets and repurchase agreements. Right? Think cash. We had that in there.
And then we had kind of cash, like, again, investment grade that we already
had.
And so what we did is just increased also those exposures. So effectively, we,
we removed one exposure, we added a completely two new exposures, um, and
then just increased two existing. So all of this is to shorten the duration of the
portfolio, right? Basically- That’s right … that’s the, the, the techy or the- Uh-
huh
insider way of saying it. That’s right. We don’t want long-term, longer term
bonds because those are the ones that go down the most when interest rates go
up. That’s right. Uh, and we wanna be on the shorter end of the curve, because if
we do that, then as interest rates rise, we- that’s where we sit in the, in the, uh,
higher interest rate environment.
And so that’s the reasoning behind what we did. And all of those trades took
place over this last few days, right? That’s right. Earlier in the week, we made
those shifts. So all that has happened, dust has settled, everybody sees that right
now. Um, and that’s the posture we feel pretty healthy, you know, to maintain,
you know, over the coming 12 months and hopefully even longer, quite frankly.
Okay. All right. So Jordan, thank you. It’s good to see you. Yeah. Uh, have a
great weekend and we’ll, we’ll probably talk again, uh, on Monday for sure.
Great. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Jordan. So ladies and gentlemen, uh,
that’s our report and I wanna make sure that you, uh, sign up for the October
15th, uh, third Thursday webinar.
All right? These are the webinars that we do every third Thursday, and this third
Thursday, October 15th, is going to be our investment, uh, committee’s
quarterly report. We’ve got a lot to tell you about. You cannot miss it. It’s so
important. We’re gonna talk about the bonds that we just did and go into some
detail on that, but we’re also gonna talk about some changes that we’re
contemplating making to our stock portfolio.
We’re gonna talk about the changes that we have made to our invest and protect
strategy on the buy side. As you guys know, we’ve made some significant
changes that were very positive for us, uh, on the get out of the market side, but
now we’ve focused our attention on the get back into the market side, and I
think you’ll be very happy with the changes that we’ve made there.
Uh, so we’ve got a lot to report to you on our October 15th, so if you haven’t
signed up, do, and, uh, you can do it, uh, there should be a link attached to this
video. Uh, if there isn’t, then, uh, make sure that you talk with your retirement
planner and, uh, we’ll get you signed up. Uh, again, it’s October 15th, 6:00
Central Time.
So, um, right now the economy looks great, but inflation’s too high. The Federal
Reserve is, uh, probably not gonna raise interest rates, uh, here in the next, uh,
two or three weeks, uh, given the jobs numbers that they got, and then we look
into the latter part of the year to see what they’re gonna do when we get the
inflation numbers.
So never a boring moment, but for you, hopefully all of this is boring.
Hopefully you don’t want to even know about this. You want us to know about
it so that you don’t have to, and, uh, hopefully it gives you peace of mind to
know that we are on it for you. And if this does turn… you know, there’s a lot of
talk that we might be in a big, bad bubble with the AI stocks and all of that.
Could it burst? And if that happens, of course, we have our invest and protect,
that we will engage and enact to protect you from catastrophic losses. So with
all of that going on, if I were you, what I would do is I’d go play golf. I’d go kiss
your grandchild. I’d go on a vacation. I would do something other than worry
about your finances.
Let us do it for you so that you don’t have to. So thank you for watching, and
we’ll talk soon. Retirement Planners of America, rpoa.com
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