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. 

• 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 we have a ton to talk about with you today, and I’m very excited to get into it. Um, I wanna talk with you today about– We’ve got three things that we’re gonna talk about.

One is the great news on the economy. The economy is doing great, and we’re gonna talk about that. And, and that then translates into inflation, which is bad, which means higher interest rates, which is bad. And therefore, we’re gonna have potentially the stock market affected by those interest rates and potentially badly as well.

So what do we do about that? The other thing I wanna talk with you about this week is I wanna encourage you, if you haven’t signed up already, for our third Thursday of the month, our third Thursday webinar, and the next one’s gonna be on October 15. Make sure you attend that one. If you attend no other, attend that one because it’s gonna be on our Investment Oversight Committee report to you, our quarterly report.

We’re gonna have Jordan Roach, our chief investment officer, with me. We’re gonna talk about where we’ve been, you know, what, what’s happened, uh, since the last time we spoke with you about it. But more importantly, we’re gonna talk about three things. One is, given higher interest rates, we are gonna be changing our bond portfolio.

So you’re gonna wanna know about what that means. We also have made what we think– or are going to be making, should I say, some s– uh, what we believe to be significant improvements on our stock portfolio to take advantage of how our invest and protect works. And I won’t get into any more detail. I’ll, I’ll tease you on that one.

But we believe we have an advantage because we know how our strategy works, and therefore, maybe we can use that to, uh, magnify our returns or improve our returns, should I say. Now, of course, no guarantees, but that’s the goal, and I wanna share that with you. And then also- We’ve made, we believe, to be some important improvements to the strategy itself, the invest and protect strategy.

So we wanna talk with you about some of the things that we have done, that we’re, have done there that we think will, uh, help us when we hit our signals to go into protect mode or to go into invest mode, and how we think those things could be made better. And so it’s a lot w- that we’re gonna talk about on our, uh, third Thursday of the month webinar.

That’s on October 15. Make sure you attend. It’s super important that you know what’s going on and what we’re doing for you, okay? So let’s dive in. Oh, before we dive in, I gotta give you some good news. Uh, my youngest daughter, my third daughter, got married last Saturday, and so that, the wedding was great.

It was in the mountains, and so we were very, very worried. For those of you who are familiar with the mountains, the weather changes, like, in the blink of an eye, and it’d been raining all week and we were very worried, ’cause it’s this outdoor wedding, that it was gonna be raining, uh, during the wedding.

And sure enough, the day of the wedding, it rained, and then it stopped, and then it rained, and then it stopped, and r- an hour before the wedding it was pouring cats and dogs, and we were like, “Oh, no.” But then it cleared up in time for the wedding. The skies cleared. Not there were, like, three clouds in the sky.

The sun was shining, and it turned out to be a beautiful wedding and all went very well. So that’s all good news. Uh, and, uh, w- we’re proud to have a new son-in-law, and, uh, we love our other son-in-laws as well, so we’re very fortunate to have three really, really great son-in-laws. So, um, that’s the good news on our front.

Pardon me. So let’s talk about… Let’s start with the great news on the economy. So first of all, new business development growth fastest in five years. New businesses are gr- uh, are b- developing at the fastest rate in five years. That’s really good news. New business, hiring, jobs, new products and services.

It’s what our economy is built for. Our entrepreneur- uh, entrepreneurial, uh, economy is, is built to produce these new jobs and create all these things and these new businesses. So that’s all great news. The unemployment claims came in at the lowest in 57 years. People have jobs. They’re not filing for unemployment.

I mean, the economy is doing very, very well, probably better than any economy in the world right now. So that’s all great news, right? Wrong-o, moose lips because all this growth creates inflation, and inflation is already higher than where the Federal Reserve wants it to be. So if interest rates, i- if, uh, inflation’s heating up, what does the Fed do?

They raise interest rates, and that’s what they did already. But now the question is, are they gonna do it again? And because of the numbers I just gave you, the odds now, according to the oddsmakers, is 66% that they’re gonna raise interest rates at least one more time this year, if not two And remember, at the beginning of this year, we were talking about three rate cuts.

So this is a completely different regime now. The world has turned upside down. Mortgage rates 7.1%. This is the highest in a long, long time, making it difficult for people to buy houses. So all of that then is bad news, right? So what about the stock market and our investments? Well, the two components of our investments, number one is bonds, and if interest rates go up, bonds tend to go down.

That’s why we’re, we’re reconfiguring our bond portfolio as we speak. And, uh, we’ll tell you what we did next week, but we’ll go into more detail on the aforementioned IOC meeting on October 15th. So again, make sure you attend. So on a bond side, we’re gonna make some significant changes to adjust for the fact that interest rates are now going up and not down.

The other thing we’re gonna do, uh, is look at the, uh, the, the stock side of the equation. So if interest rates are going up, the cost of money just went up, and if the cost of money went up, the, the, the, the, the, the technology stocks that are driving the stock market up so much and, and are so highly richly char- uh, uh, uh, priced are based on cheap money because they’re borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to do this.

And so now what’s gonna happen is their cost of money goes up. If their cost of money goes up, their profits go down, and maybe what happens now is that the market recalibrates the value of these companies. And you know what we said is that could make the market go down, which it has, but the pro- the possibility is also that it creates a big, bad bear market.

If there’s a sell-off in those stocks, there’s… The, the market is so heavily weighted in them that we could see, you know, a big, bad bear come from that, like what happened with the technology stocks, stocks in, in 2000 where they were richly priced, and then they fell off a cliff. Now, we’re not calling for that right now, but the important thing is- There’s a more than zero chance that this could happen.

You know, I was at a cocktail party last night and they were asking me, “Ken, do you think this is a bubble? Do you think this, uh, whole thing is a big house of cards that’s gonna collapse?” And I said, “We’ll see.” I don’t know. But it could, right? So we don’t try to predict the future. We don’t try to say, you know, we got a crystal ball and we know.

We don’t know. What we do know is you have to plan for the worst and hope for the best, not hope the best happens and don’t plan for the worst. We don’t think that’s a wise thing. That’s why we have our Invest and Protect to address if this is in fact a big, bad bear coming, if this is a bubble and the whole thing pops.

We have, uh, some mechanism in place to ideally protect you from that, like what happened in 2008 where we did protect our clients from major losses during that time. So, um, and by the way, we have, uh, made some additional changes. I’ll plug the October 15th webinar. Make sure you attend it, ’cause we’re gonna be talking about the improvements that we’ve made, at least that we believe we’ve made, uh, with regard to our Invest and Protect.

I think you’ll like the, the thought process behind what we’ve done. So, um, great news on the economy, terrible news on inflation, higher interest rates. Could that cause the bond market to go down? Most likely. Could it cause the stock market to crash? Maybe. But it could, and therefore, we want to plan for that.

So as usual, I hope this video found you healthy, wealthy, and wise. I hope everything for you is coming up roses, you’re enjoying your second childhood without parental supervision. If that’s the case, then we’ve done our job. And, uh, make sure you share this video with as many of your friends and family and business associates, just everybody.

Share it with as many people as you can. We wanna help as many people as we can to achieve their retirement goals in their second childhood. So again, thanks 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