• The “Big Beautiful Bill” looks likely to pass, which could help reduce market uncertainty going forward.
• Jobs numbers came in stronger than expected, a sign that the economy remains resilient.
• Despite strong jobs data, the Fed may keep rates steady for longer to avoid fueling inflation—just as we predicted in last week’s video.
• Stocks cheered the jobs report, while bonds responded cautiously as sustained growth could mean interest rates stay higher for longer.
• Markets are showing confidence, pushing toward all-time highs—momentum that often leads to more highs, not immediate downturns.
• Peak uncertainty may be behind us: wars are easing, tariffs haven’t triggered expected inflation or job losses, and trade deals (including with China and Vietnam) are progressing.
• There’s still a mountain of cash sitting in money markets; if that reenters the market, it could push stocks even higher.
• July has historically been a strong month for the markets, and we remain optimistic about the second half of the year.
• Still, we’re watching key risks:
o Upcoming corporate earnings season
o Middle East tensions
o The impact of tariffs over the coming months
o A looming $9 trillion in U.S. debt that needs to be refinanced
• If foreign investors lose confidence in U.S. debt, it could impact the dollar and stock market—but for now, demand for Treasuries remains solid.
• Our Invest and Protect Strategy is designed to mitigate risk in uncertain times. We invest alongside you, and we’re just as motivated to protect your retirement.
• With less uncertainty in the air and a sound strategy in place, we hope you feel more confident and independent this Fourth of July.

Transcript:
Ken Moraif
Hello everyone, and welcome to our Market Alert video for July 4, 2025 and we have a Market Alert video that is going to be chock full of fantastic information. And I know you’re going to love it. And so let me kind of go over with you quickly what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to talk about as we record this, we’re recording this actually on July 3rd, to be honest with you, and the Big Beautiful Bill has not passed yet, but it looks like it’s going to. So we’re going to talk under the assumption that it has passed, and if it didn’t, then you know why. We’re going to talk about uncertainty going away, the Federal Reserve, we’re going to talk about jobs and how they came in better. What does that mean to our portfolios? What does that mean to our retirement plan? Whew. Man such a lot to talk about. But before we go a step further, I’m going to bring into the conversation my Chief Investment Officer, Jordan Roach. Jordan. Happy Fourth of July.

Jordan Roach
Thank you. Always a great day every year

Ken Moraif
Yeah, especially for you, right? Because you’re, you’re a Veteran.

Jordan Roach
I’m a veteran indeed.

Ken Moraif
And okay, so you’re and actually, you know, I want to just say that Fourth of July for me, I’ve never been in the military, but I think I understand how important you know the military is to our ability to even celebrate a July 4,

Jordan Roach
That’s right.

Ken Moraif
You know, the freedoms that we enjoy do not come free, right? There’s a lot of, you know, that the military and all the people in our Armed Forces have done. So thank you for everything that you’ve done.

Jordan Roach
Of Course.

Ken Moraif
So what is an infantry officer? You were an infantry officer in the army.

Jordan Roach
That’s right, infantry officer. So went to West Point, then you get to choose a branch. So an infantry, and I always describe that as, that’s the boots on the ground, the trigger pullers. Those are the people in Iraq, Afghanistan, clearing houses.

Ken Moraif
Oh my!

Jordan Roach
Engaging, the fights. That’s it. The infantry

Ken Moraif
The ground, the ground troops.

Jordan Roach
That’s it. That’s all I wanted to do. That’s the only place I applied for school,

Ken Moraif
Really?

Jordan Roach
At West Point, that’s it.

Ken Moraif
That’s that’s about as in harm’s way as you can get.

Jordan Roach
Yeah, that’s what we wanted to do. So thankfully we’re still here.

Ken Moraif
Thank you, thankfully you are here and you’re doing this. I’m glad you are so thank you for that. So yeah, you know I want to, ladies and gentlemen, I want to play something for you that every time I listen to it once a year now, but whenever I do it brings tears to my eyes,

Jordan Roach
Ok

Ken Moraif
And so I’m gonna play it for everybody. And this is actually my 31 year old daughter when she was seven years old. Okay, so I’m gonna play it now.

Child’s Voice
I Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated. * child giggles*

Ken Moraif
Whew. That’s, that’s a lot. Yeah, you may be seated. The reason she said that is because she came home from school and the teacher always led them in the in the Pledge of Allegiance. And then the teacher always said “You may be seated.” So she thought that you may be seated was actually part of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Jordan Roach
Oh man!

Ken Moraif
And when she came home and told us, you know, she said, Mommy, Daddy, I want to do the pledge. And she did that, I was like, okay, stop right there. And I went and got my little microphone with a little boombox recorder, and I said, I have got to record this for posterity. And that was, gosh, 24 years ago,

Jordan Roach
A lifetime ago?

Ken Moraif
My goodness. Anyway,

Jordan Roach
Same daughter who just had baby.

Ken Moraif
Same daughter who just had a baby. That’s right.

Jordan Roach
Wow…wow

Ken Moraif
Did that bring tears to your eyes?

Jordan Roach
That’s pretty incredible, yeah.

Ken Moraif
So Happy Fourth of July, everybody. And you know, I hope that we all do not take for granted the freedoms we have. And celebrating this weekend, I think is wonderful, and we should be very proud to be Americans. So let’s talk about the stuff this is supposed to be about. Okay, so the jobs numbers came in this morning better than expected. Stock market said, yay. Bond Market said uggghhh,

Jordan Roach
That’s right.

Ken Moraif
So tell us. Why did the bond market say uggghhh?

Jordan Roach
Well, I think it’s convergence of things. I mean, I think the bond market now is the price in, you know, if we have sustained growth, maybe rates do have to hold for longer, because that can be inflationary.

Ken Moraif
Yes.

Jordan Roach
There is growth which can be inflationary. And I think on top of that, which I know we’ll talk about, is the Big Beautiful Bill on there, lingering and so that can have some, you know, upward pricing effects on yields, and so I think that’s where we are right now, where we have stocks and bonds kind of doing slightly different things.

Ken Moraif
Yeah. So I mean, the jobs numbers came in actually, better than expected, so the economy seems to be in good shape.

Jordan Roach
Yep.

Ken Moraif
So why would the Fed lower interest rates when they’re concerned about inflation? Maybe they just sit on their hands some more. Which, where did we hear that? Oh, it was last week’s Market Alert video where we said that would happen. So, ladies and gentlemen, as I always say, you miss these videos at your own peril. This is the only place you need to come to get everything you need to know. In fact, at times I wonder if maybe we should be helping the Federal Reserve out, you know, because they seem to be a little misguided.

Jordan Roach
Would love to be in those meetings.

Ken Moraif
Wouldn’t that be awesome? So let’s talk about the stock market. So stock market is yay, right? Jobs came in higher than expected, and that’s a yay for the stock market, presumably, because if people aren’t getting laid off, and jobs are plentiful and they’re get people are getting jobs, businesses are optimistic, profits should come with it. Stock markets should be happy.

Jordan Roach
Stock market’s still happy. Stock market getting to all time highs, looking forward, all this soft data that is still looking kind of better than expected, all these things that were going to happen, again. He says, week after week after week, all the bad is not happening yet.

Ken Moraif
It’s true. It’s true. And then, you know, one of the things that the markets, investors, don’t like, is uncertainty, right? And we talked, you know, in previous Market Alert videos about how, you know, we reached maybe peak uncertainty. There’s more it is more uncertainty we’ve ever had. It’s at the peak, but now it seems to be alleviating, right? The wars in Middle East seem to be on the way out. Tariffs, apparently, are not causing the inflation that people feared. They’re not causing the unemployment that people feared. The trade deals are starting to happen. Looks like we’re doing one with China, the Big Beautiful Bill. I mean, uncertainty is just lifting off of everything.

Jordan Roach
There’s a lot of uncertainty, at least peak uncertainty that was causing a lot of fear, that has actually caused a lot of money, cash, to be put on the sidelines. What we’re hopeful, maybe, is, and we’re at almost historic levels money markets, you know, dollars on the sidelines. Some of these things, money starts coming back in, right? We have an overwhelming amount, hopefully, of demand buyers that come in. You got more buyers than sellers. Markets lift. And so maybe we’re getting to that season. Historically. July for us too, is a very good month.

Ken Moraif
So how do you respond to clients or others who might say the markets hitting new all time highs? Shouldn’t we sell? Should we just get out? I mean, this is maybe the top right. This is it?

Jordan Roach
Yeah, I would say historically, it feels that way. It always feels like, if you’re at the top of a skyscraper, the only way to go, is to go down, right? But typically what happens is, we keep stacking floors, right?

Ken Moraif
I like that.

Jordan Roach
That’s what happens. People want to build more and so typically all time highs, beget more all time highs. Actually the bigger fear that I would have, looking underneath kind of the market is, if it’s very difficult, we only hit one high in a year, new high, market then is actually probably about to brace for a sell off. So I’d rather see new highs being made. That typically is a good thing.

Ken Moraif
So that implies momentum. It implies confidence.

Jordan Roach
That’s right.

Ken Moraif
More and more people are investing on the backs of the others, and

Jordan Roach
It’s exactly right. That momentum effect in there, that’s exactly right.

Ken Moraif
Okay, so, and then, you know, as we talked about the inflation and the jobs, the trade deals, the, you know, the tariffs are apparently not causing all the things that people were so concerned about is, should we relax about that? Is it time to say, you know, tariffs are not going to cause inflation, not going to cause job losses, or is there still more to come? That we need to watch out for.

Jordan Roach
I don’t think we could say, you know, definitely not going to cause any of those things. You know, I am interested to see, like, what, how much time has to go by for the Fed to say, Okay, it’s not going to have that effect. It seems like they just keep pushing that down the road. But I think it’s probably reasonable to where we probably need to be six months down the timeline from when, really, tariffs were enacted back in April, to say, Okay, this really looks to be subdued, moderated, nothing different than what the market expected, most likely.

Ken Moraif
Yeah, a lot of you know, I kind of like to listen to the chatter from all the talking heads, because it kind of, the general noise that it creates, kind of gives me a feel for the sentiment of, you know, the markets. So I’m not particularly listening to every word they’re saying. I’m just kind of getting the energy of it. And what seems to be is that, you know, we apparently, were going to sign, or have signed, a deal with Vietnam, and they’re saying, you know, that looks like that may be the template for the deals we’re going to do with other countries. And if that’s the case, it looks like, you know, as much as President Trump is kind of a power negotiator, it looks like it’s not a hugely terrible deal that he’s forced upon Vietnam. And therefore maybe it’s not going to be, you know, as one sided and terrible for all these other economies. And therefore maybe it’s not going to be all as bad as we might think on the global economy.

Jordan Roach
And that could be a reason the markets are continuing to push forward International and developed is, you know, we had a base case for what we thought tariffs, how bad they could be, how steep they could be. And yes, tariffs still at 20% is more than maybe what they were, but if it’s better than what the market really was pricing in 1, 2, 3, months ago. So it can lift, because about relative bad, not just absolute. It’s about how bad is it relative to where I thought we’d be at this time?

Ken Moraif
Yeah, that’s really true. It’s always the relativity, right? We could have a terrible number, but it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. And the market goes up.

Jordan Roach
Absolutely right.

Ken Moraif
You always wonder, how does that even happen if that’s the reason. So before we get too optimistic, and you know, we’re very bullish for the second half of this year, and you know, our view still is that the Fed might lower interest rates, but probably towards the back end of the year, and maybe only one time this year, that’s kind of been our position all along. So right now, it looks pretty rosy. What should we be concerned about, I guess, or, you know, what should we be looking at so that we don’t get overconfident?

Jordan Roach
Well, several things. I mean, we’re going to always get into earning season. We, you know, we’ve and that’s always gonna be interesting, because that’s where you get what is actually happening to companies. Because, again, you said this for years and years, years, it’s about the profitability of companies.

Ken Moraif
Yeah.

Jordan Roach
So we got to continue to watch earning season. We still have to continue to watch what’s going on the Middle East. Is that going to going to grow in something else. If it’s going to be new escalations, new infighting, you know, somebody will get pulled into a conflict that they weren’t in before. That’s always going to be big. And then again, I think it’s going to be just watching what tariffs are doing and watching what the Fed is doing.

Ken Moraif
Yeah, we have, we have a huge amount of money coming due towards the end of this year. $9 trillion of our debt is coming due, and it’s gonna, you know, if I were to look at what could cause, you know, the stock market and you know, everything to this go nuts in a bad way, it would be if this $9 trillion that we have coming up of our debt that’s getting refinanced, in essence, and nobody is on the other side, or fewer people are on the other side of that, because they don’t have confidence that the US can pay back its debt. If that were to happen, the dollar would probably crash, the stock market would probably crash. So we don’t think that’s a high probability of that. But that’s certainly something to keep our eye on.

Jordan Roach
That’s a very good point. So, you know, historically with my career, we have not focused that much on, like, what is the auction looking like? With different treasuries, but I think that is something the market’s looking for, right?

Ken Moraif
We saw that a couple months ago.

Jordan Roach
Saw that with the weird auction of 20 years, right? It was a strange auction which you don’t usually rely on, but I think that is something that’s interesting, because right now, I mean, President Trump said this, even the treasury secretary said this. They’re focusing on the 10 year they’re trying to figure out, can they get that average 10 year yield to come down a little bit? Fortunately, in the last few auctions, the demand from, you know, current domestic players and, most importantly, foreign players, has been better than nothing, what the market thought. So as long as you know, we have these European, Japanese, even Chinese, buyers that are still willing to pick up our debt, we can probably continue to, I guess, push this down the road.

Ken Moraif
So please, all you foreign investors,

Jordan Roach
It’s a weird thing.

Ken Moraif
Please buy our bonds. We have to pay for our deficits. We have to pay for all of our spending and all the stuff that we’re doing. We have to pay for it, and we need you to refinance our debt, or we’re gonna be in trouble. So ladies and gentlemen, you know, one of the things that gives me great peace of mind is, of course, that we have a strategy to address something like that, and it’s, you know, the chances of that are more than zero, I would say, but not likely. You know, we still are the strongest economy in the world. We still are the reserve currency of the world, which means we’re the world’s bank account. And you know, they want to put their money in a safe place, their safe money. We’re still the only game in town. So the likelihood that this $9 trillion that’s coming due will not get refinanced is small, but it gives me peace of mind, knowing that if it does turn out that people are not as anxious to finance our debt by buying our bonds, that we have a strategy to address that, to protect us on the downside. To a great degree, it gives me a great deal of peace of mind, and from two standpoint. One is that, you know, we invest right along with you. We eat our own cooking. And so therefore, you know, if your investments go down, ours are going to go down with you. So we have a vested interest in protecting you, because we’re protecting ourselves in the process. And so you know, I hope that gives you the peace of mind of knowing that we do have a strategy to protect against that, so that if you want to retire, you still can when you want to, and that if you are retired, that you don’t take a massive hit, and suddenly the lifestyle that you wanted is no longer available to you. So I hope that that leaves you of uncertainty. And since the title of this was, are we now independent from uncertainty? A lot of the uncertainty seems to be going away, and hopefully having our strategy gives you that independent feeling, and I’m going to wish all of you a very Happy Fourth of July to you and your families. I hope you enjoy this weekend and celebrate the freedoms that we have. So thanks for watching. I hope this found 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