• The jobs report came in exactly as predicted by analysts, which gave investors confidence and caused the market to rally.
• When the market gets what it expects, especially with jobs numbers, it tends to respond positively and that’s what happened today.
• Inflation is still holding at about 3%, and the economy is not showing signs of recession.
• Tariffs are a hot topic, but so far they have not driven up inflation, hurt jobs, or triggered a recession.
• The government is actually generating significant revenue from the tariffs, without the doom-and-gloom outcomes some predicted.
• Whether tariffs are inflationary depends on what gets tariffed and how consumers and companies respond so far, the reaction has been positive.
• We encourage you to watch our recent podcast on tariffs it breaks all of this down in detail.
• The Fed is likely to hold interest rates steady for now. With inflation stable and the economy doing “okay,” there’s no rush to cut.
• That means bond prices should stay relatively stable, and we’re still earning attractive yields on our bond holdings.
• We think the stock market is on track to hit new all-time highs in the second half of the year.
• One wildcard is the so-called “big, beautiful bill” if it doesn’t pass and corporate taxes go up significantly, profits could drop and take the market down with them.
• The Trump-Musk drama could complicate getting that bill passed, but we think cooler heads will prevail and it will go through.
• The Republicans have a lot to lose by letting it fail, so we believe they’ll get it done in the end.
• If that happens, we expect the market to respond positively and hit those new highs.
• Looking back at our response to the recent market drop we got out early, avoided most of the decline, and got back in effectively.
• Our strategy worked well, and the added “sanity check” we implemented helped us avoid overreacting by not going 100% out.
• Going forward, our Invest and Protect strategy along with those sanity checks will help us navigate both deep and shallow market pullbacks.

• For all our SCWPerS, enjoy your retirement. We’ll keep watching the markets so you don’t have to.
• And for those still working, we’re here to help you reach your retirement goals and join the SCWPer club.

Transcript
Hello and welcome to our Market Alert video for today, which is June 6, 2025 I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy and wise. We have so much to talk about, but really the only thing I want to talk about is that whole thing between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, oh my gosh. What drama, but, and we are going to talk about it, but in the context of, how is that going to affect our investments? And you know, how is it going to affect how the stock market and the bond market reacts, as opposed to trying to predict what’s going to happen between those two, which is impossible. So I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy and wise. We have the jobs numbers to talk about. We have a ton of stuff, so let’s dive right in. So first of all, I want to talk about tariffs with you, because we’ve gotten a lot of data so far that helps us to get some clarity, not complete clarity, but some clarity as to how tariffs are going to affect us. And we got the jobs numbers this morning, and the jobs numbers came in exactly as the analysts and economists all predicted. And because of that, that gives people confidence. Hey, I got this, I predicted exactly what would happen. I’m a I’m going to invest, because I’m smart, and so the market almost always goes way up when everybody predicts something and it does happen. And so that’s the case. As I record this, the markets up quite a bit. So that that was good, the jobs numbers came in benign, nothing really exciting. Still showing good signs of holding. So that’s good. So let’s talk about tariffs for a moment. And by the way, if you haven’t watched our Tariff podcast, I strongly encourage you to do so, because I have to say, I think it is, it’s good So, but it talks about, are terrorists inflationary? Do they cause recessions? It talks about, how do companies and consumers respond to tariffs, and what kind of tariffs, and all that so. But I think it’s actually quite good. I watched it three times because, you know, it’s kind of like watching game films. You kind of see what your mannerisms are and all that. But I encourage you to watch it. So tariffs. So far, inflation has not gone up. In fact, it’s gone down. Jobs numbers have held. The economy is not showing any signs of going into recession, and the tariffs are generating some significant dollars for our government. So so far, all the doom and gloomers who are talking about, you know that we would see unemployment and inflation and all that. So far, none of that has happened. And if you I’ll give you kind of the general idea of our podcast. But in general, we believe that that tariffs are not necessarily inflationary. It depends on what you’re tariffing, and it depends on how businesses and people react to it, and so far that has, it has not impacted negatively on jobs or inflation, recessionary fears or the stock market. So so far so good. Now time will tell, of course, and that’s why we have our strategy in case. You know, things do turn badly and we do need to react to it, which we will if that were to happen. So overall, right now, the picture is pretty good. Jobs hold, people spend. Economy continues. That seems to be the case. So let’s look at the other side of the coin, because a good percentage of our money is in bonds, and so bonds are affected by what the Fed does if they raise interest rates, bond prices tend to go down. If they lower interest rates, bond prices tend to go up. And so that’s what we’re looking at. And right now, with the jobs numbers we got this morning, what it tells us is, is that the economy is kind of doing all right. It’s not hot, it’s not cold. Inflation is at about 3% so the Fed has no reason at this point to lower interest rates, particularly when they don’t know, you know what the outcome of the tariff negotiations are going to be, the big, beautiful bill. All of that don’t know the answer to that. So therefore, why act prematurely when things are okay? So in our view, the Fed probably will not lower interest rates until the latter part of this year. So what does that mean for our bond portfolio? Well, it means that the price of our bonds should stay relatively stable. It’ll go up and down, but should stay relatively stable over time. But interest rates are high, and if they are high, then guess what? It means the dividend we’re getting should be relatively high as well, and that’s a good thing. So overall, we think we’re going to see new all time highs in the stock market, and we’re also going to see the bond market just pay us a nice dividend while we’re waiting to see what the Fed going to do. So let’s talk about what could cause things to derail. What could cause that, of course, is the big, beautiful bill does not get passed if taxes go up by 68%. Now you guys know we always talk about how profits drive stock prices, right? So if a company has great profits, its stock price will rise, and if it has terrible profits, its stock price will go down. And so there’s a direct relationship between those two. Now if taxes go up significantly, then that means that companies cash and their profitability will be affected badly by that. And if that happens, their stock prices will be affected accordingly, and we could see a big drop in the market. So will this thing going on between Trump and Musk cause the big, beautiful bill not to get passed. And if that’s the case, then do we have to worry about that? It’s a possibility. Now we do think that it will pass. The Republicans have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not passing it, and therefore, you know, they’ll it’ll go back and forth. It’s the old sausage making thing. But in the end, it is in their best political interest to pass it, and so therefore we think they will. And on that news, we think the market will see new all time highs. So we think the stock market is going to do well for us through the second half of this year and into the second half and then the second half of the year. So overall, we’re looking pretty good now as we look back at what we did with the you know, after liberation day, pardon me, we saw the market go way down. We got out. There’s a huge drop after we got out, it came back. We got back in. Overall, as we’ve done a post mortem on that, we felt that we did well by you. You know, we think that if we had to do it again, we would do it exactly as we did. Our sanity checks helped us to not sell 100% and that was a good thing to do because, you know, it was short lived, even though it did go down about 19% and so US selling only half instead of 100% was a good move on our part. So the addition of that overlay, if you will, that sanity check on our strategy was very positive, and I’m very happy with how that went. So in the future, when Big Bad Bears come, our strategy should be there to help us, and in shallower ones, hopefully our sanity checks will also be there to help us to not overdo our enthusiasm. So I hope all of this gives you peace of mind for all of you who are SCWPerS who are enjoying your second childhood without parental supervision. You’re out there. I hope that you are SCWPering Your little tails off. I hope that there are SCWPer tails everywhere. Our cleanup crews need to be overwhelmed cleaning up all the SCWPer tails. Okay, so enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. Let us worry about this stuff for you so you don’t have to. And for those of you who aren’t retired yet, it is our singular goal to get you to retirement when you want to, and to enjoy the retirement that you want, and for you to also become a SCWPer. So thank you for watching this video. Please like and subscribe. It really helps us out a lot. Share with your friends and your family. We want to help them too, if we can. All right, so thanks for watching, 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