• For the first time in nearly 30 years, Ken took a well-deserved vacation. Our Chief Investment Officer, Jordan Roach, led this week’s update!
• Markets ended the week slightly down, but major indices (Dow, S&P 500, NASDAQ) remain near all-time highs.
• Month-end trading, combined with the long holiday weekend, often brings short-term pullbacks as institutions reposition this is a normal seasonal pattern.
• Historically, August and September are weaker months for the market, so short-term volatility at this time of year is not unusual.
• So far in 2025, international stocks are leading U.S. markets, though U.S. large caps remain strong. Encouragingly, mid and small caps are starting to join the rally healthy signs for a more resilient bull market.
• Technology and cyclical sectors (financials, industrials, materials) continue to lead, which is the type of leadership we want to see in a growing economy.
• Bonds have quietly had one of their best years since 2019–2020, showing strength despite concerns about tariffs, trade deficits, and inflation.
• Inflation, measured by the Fed’s preferred gauge (PCE), came in at 2.9% above the 2% target, but in line with expectations. This allows the Fed to begin shifting focus toward growth and employment.
• Fed officials are signaling that rate cuts in September remain on the table, though probabilities have eased from over 90% to the mid-70% range. Sustaining growth and jobs is becoming a bigger priority.
• Nvidia’s earnings beat expectations, reinforcing the importance of AI, but questions around tariffs and future investment spending could shape how the broader market views tech leadership going forward.
• Whether markets climb higher or face bumps ahead, our focus remains the same: helping you retire with confidence and, once there, stay retired.
• We want you to enjoy your second childhood without parental supervision, let us worry about this financial stuff and getting the grey hairs for you

Transcript:

Jordan Roach
Hello everybody. This is our Weekly Market Alert. Today is Friday, August 29 2025 and what you’ll notice very quickly is, I’m not Ken Moraif. I’m Jordan Roach. I’m the Chief Investment Officer of RPOA retirement planners of America. And for the first time, largely, I think in 30 years, Ken is not the one himself doing this call, leading the call and being a part of it. After after much deliberation, going back and forth, we’ve actually convinced him to take some much needed vacation, so much needed R and R, to enjoy his second childhood without parental supervision, as he says, and let us man the helm for him. Now, he’s not retiring, right? He will probably work till he’s 100 Lord willing, that’d be great. But he is off, and he’s got confidence in us to continue keep things moving forward. And what I told him is, let us worry about all this boring financial stuff for you. Take the week off, and he’s taking us up on it. Surprisingly.

Ken Moraif
Hello everyone, and welcome to our market alert video for today, which is August 29 2025 I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy and wise. I’m on vacation. I’m actually in Spain. As I record this. You know, when one of our clients retires, we call them a SCWPer, and that’s the acronym for second childhood without parental supervision. And so I’m not retired, but I am enjoying the SCWPer lifestyle.

Jordan Roach
So I’m happy to be here, happy to be back. I enjoyed last week I was in California. We have three offices there, talking about 100 of our clients, about the market this year, what to expect changes we’ve made, what to expect going forward, all sorts of good things. And I was even fortunate enough to meet a prospective client in the the John Wayne Airport outside of Irvine. So I hope you’re listening today. I hope we do see you come aboard at some point in the future. Now, today is Friday, the day before holiday weekend. I know my kids this morning get an extra pep in their step knowing we’re leading to the long weekend here. So we’ll see if the markets have the same thing as of right now they don’t, but yeah, long weekend. You know, for my kids, we’ve only been in school for about three weeks. We live in North Texas, prosper Texas, and they have not just a three day weekend this week, it’s four days. So we’re already getting softer already. They’ve been in school for three weeks already. Get a four day break. Pretty unbelievable. I wish I got that deal, but we don’t have that. But the kids are off. It’s good. And we’ll talk about a bunch of things this this week, including, we’ll give a recap of the market, right? What’s working, what’s not working? What are we seeing today, this week, this year? Are those themes going to continue? We’ll talk a lot about the Fed. Are they shifting in their narrative of what they’re seeing, what they’re focusing on? What does that mean for future rate cuts? We’ll talk a little bit about Nvidia, right? A dominant player in the market. Over the last five years, they had some important earnings. This week, we’ll talk about some economic indicators, and then, of course, like always, what could go wrong. So thanks for being with us, and let’s jump into it. So as of right now, again, it’s a Friday. Markets are closing up here soon, and it’s a down day for the market. It’s a down day. A lot of people would attribute that to to some inflation readings this morning. It’s very fun to just kind of point to when the market’s going up or down. A singular data point is the reason that’s very unlikely to actually happen. One thing, if you look at it right now again, we’re we’re close to all time highs. We look whether the Dow, the NASDAQ, the s and p5 100 all are pretty close to all time highs, and all are pretty much down today. Now, there’s important things to know about today. One, it’s a month in data point, right? A lot of things happen at the month end, and that we get institutional flows in and out, buying and selling, that happens at month end every time quarter in the same way. So a lot of money movement happens in the month we’re going into a long weekend, alright? So a lot of times what will happen is institutions will profit take or pull positions off the board, moving into a long weekend, just so they can sleep at night, have peace of mind, get ready with their work plan, going into what could be an eventful September. And the other thing is, you know, seasonally, August and September are not healthy months for the market, right? And that’s despite whoever’s in President, the economic cycle, the Fed cycle, just it’s not a healthy time in the market, generally speaking. So the fact that we’re having a down day right now, even, you know, even if there’s some negative or not, we’ll talk about economic data, that doesn’t really concern me. Again. It’s month end. It’s seasonally weak. These things happen. It’s not a big deal. Now, if you go in the last week, markets are largely flat, again, flirting kind of with those all time highs, and absent a really surprising new catalyst, whether that’s earnings data or fed speak or, you know, all the things that can happen. You know. So it’s probably going to take a little bit more for the market just to march through all time highs and keep that path. So we’re largely flat now, if we look longer period for the year, what’s working, what’s not working well, for the first time in a long time, international markets are leading US markets, right? And that probably does have a lot to do with trade deficits, a lot to do with tariffs, but we’re seeing international market. Stock markets lead us markets. We are seeing the continuation of inside the US market. We’re seeing dominant us large cap stocks relative to mid cap or small caps. And that is going to be because largely the risks that are at play when the market is perceiving uncertainty and risks and tightening monetary supply, typically large cap companies that have more ability to weather storms and get access to capital, they typically lead small caps. So we’ve seen that this year. Now the good news, what I would say is, though large caps have dominated small caps this year, over the last month and even in the last week, but more so the last month, we’re starting to see mid and small size companies join the party a little bit. And that’s a good undercurrent inside the market. If we want to have kind of a greater legs to this bull market and see this extend over the next few years, what we want to see for a more resilient market. We want to see, yes, large cap stocks, s, p5, 100 Dow NASDAQ, we want to see that doing well, but we want to see mid caps and small caps join that rally. That would suggest the market is is starting to look past uncertainty and thinking that a broader economic growth cycle will continue, and we’re starting to see that. So that is a good thing. Now, if we’re looking at Sectors this year we’re seeing the right sectors lead, meaning, if the market’s going up, there’s certain types of stocks that should be leading others. Okay, if we see the opposite of that, that could mean there’s weakness underneath the surface. So what we have seen is technology stocks continuing to lead again, despite April being a very difficult period for them, technology stocks, growth stocks are leading the charge. That’s good thing. Cyclical stocks, think about financials. Think about materials, industrials. Those are also outperforming relative to kind of consumer staples, some other areas. So that’s good so for this year again, we’re seeing international beat us, but us still doing okay. We’re seeing big stocks lead small. We’re seeing the right kinds of stocks leading other stocks. So largely been good. It’s actually shaping up so far to look not wildly dissimilar to what we saw in 2019 during that tariff regime cutting cycle. There’s some there’s some things that are mirroring that paralleling that time. And then a kind of a sneaky segment of the market this year is bonds right, despite the worries over trade deficits and tariffs and inflation and the US dollar, the broader bond market, it’s having its best year since kind of 2020 and 2019 when the Fed was cutting. Okay, so that’s a good thing. We’ve had a sneaky resiliency to the US bond market. Now that could change, but as of right now, bonds are actually doing pretty well this year, so that’s that’s a good thing, okay, so all in all, pretty good so far this year, this week, despite today being a down day, across across the board, really. Now, if we’re looking at data points this year or this week, we’ve had the Fed say a lot, right? So the Fed chair, Powell, is looking to start shifting from, you know, the focus and the fears on inflation, and now start talking about the growth side of the equation, the unemployment side of the equation. Now again, the Fed is has two mandates, that is price stability, which basically means keep inflation under control, and then full time employment, right? And that looks by, they look at GDP figures, they look at, you know, jobless claims and some other factors to decide, you know, do people have access to jobs, staying at the jobs, gainfully employed. And then we have both sides of that mechanism, hopefully intact. Now, the reason the Fed really has not pulled down rates as much as many would like to see, including our president, probably is they’ve been so focused on inflation ramping back up again, right? So if we look at it right now, inflation, and we had it, we had an important reading this morning from PCE, which is the personal consumption expenditures reading, and that’s a preferred way the Fed looks at inflation. We see that come in at about 2.9% which is in line with market expectations. So that’s good. When things come in line with the market that is not necessarily okay. I don’t know if say it’s good, but certainly not bad. Okay, so that’s a good thing. Now, 2.9% is higher than what the Fed has put out there. That 2% would be their preferred inflationary Gage. That’s the number they want to see it at, but 2.9% of what we’re seeing at, which means that, yes, there is some inflation out there in the system, higher than what the Fed would see. But maybe it’s not as bad as they feared. Maybe they you know, tariffs are not going to be this, this negative event that are called prices to go through the roof again, and now they. Shift away from that worry to the growth side, employment side of the equation. And if we look at that, we’ve had a few readings this week. We’ve had GDP gross domestic product, right? That’s that is basically the value of what we produce and consume. We’ve had gross domestic income come out this week, and we’ve had on the other side of things, we’ve had jobless claims, and GDP was revised up to a positive number. Right? 3% an economy of our size, our maturation, that’s a pretty healthy number. So we’re seeing GDP numbers revised positively. The economy is moving up, and the Fed certainly wants that to sustain itself. It wants it to see that continue. If you look on the job side of the equation, right? New jobless claims are actually lower than estimates. Okay, despite we had an uptick on a revision, you know, last month, and again, that’s good. So that we’re starting to see the narrative switch from the Fed being so worried about inflation, maybe that’s going to be moderated. And what they want to do is make sure that growth side, that job side, sustains itself. And if that’s the case, that’s a big switch in narratives. We had another fed Governor even this week. Basically say inflation is fine. We need a 25 basis point cut, meaning point two 5% and maybe we should do it one or two more times after that. Right now, again, there’s a there’s some split thinking at the Fed, but the fact that they’re starting to move outside of the inflation narrative, of always wanting more and more and more, to feel like that’s under control. That could mean that fed cuts for September are back on the board. You know, there was as high as 90% maybe even higher. Now it’s looking in the mid 70s. The chances the Fed does cut rates there, and despite inflation again being higher than their target. It might be good enough where they say, You know what, let’s make sure we maximize employment. We continue the credit supply to move through the system, the monetary supply, let’s pull rates down. Let’s make access to capital cheaper. That could continue help this bull market to continue. So that will be very interesting to see what they do in September, and if they stay with that side. But it’s broadly good. Now, if we look at the next thing that was very interesting this week could be we had earnings for Nvidia, right? So Nvidia is a huge player, right in in the in the growth and just overall psyche of the market. A lot of people look at Nvidia as the proxy for this theme of AI capital expenditures and growth and so as many goes, maybe in some respects, so do so goes the market. And this week, it was interesting to look at their earnings so broadly, their revenues and sales were above targets, in line with expectations. It was pretty good. You had some parts of their of their segments of their business, had bigger beats versus some of the other areas that the market thought they were going to do really well, and that were actually down, but broadly, it was pretty good across the board. Now, the thing though, the market’s going to is wrestling with, I believe, we believe, is that NVIDIA basically said, you know, looking at forward guidance, they’re not sure how much money they’re going to continue to plow in to development of chips that are going to be tied to foreign purchases, specifically China, right? It’s looking at tariffs and what it’s going to mean for their chip exports, and they’re saying, Yeah, I don’t know if that part of our business has been growing and huge, if we’re going to be able to put so much money into that going forward because of the effects on tariffs. Now that’s interesting, because largely what we’ve seen in the last few years, the market is very bullish. When all of these big tech companies say, I’m going to plow investments, our own capital into the development of more AI capabilities, so it’s looking more at investment versus the return on those investments. Well, if Nvidia then says, I might slow down our investment now the market’s going to shift and maybe say, what if these other firms do as well? So now we’re not investing as much in AI, and we’re going to shift to now within what are earnings doing? Right? Because we have very lofty expectations on earnings, and the market hasn’t taken any of these companies to task on that because they’ve been so focused on the growth, the capital deployment. So that’ll be interesting to see. If we’re starting to shift, if other companies follow suit with Nvidia, if they’re just as concerned about their exports due to tariffs. So see that looks like, and then broadly again, what does this mean for fed cuts? I mean, that’s the catalyst thing the market is looking for. Historically, the market does pretty well when the Fed is pulling rates down, as long as they’re not doing that, because growth is already negative, right? That’s that’s not a good reason to cut. So I think the market is braced for that so broadly we’re optimistic on what could happen going through the year. I would not be surprised over the next, you know, month or two, if we kind of ping pong around between, you know, one or two or 3% higher than our all time highs, and some somewhere lower. Again, I think the market’s going to need a catalyst to really spur it for sustained growth higher, and I don’t know if we’re going to have that or not in the next month, so I wouldn’t be surprised again if we have this kind of consolidation like we’ve seen largely in the last month, if that continues to the time now. So what are the worries out there? Right? What are the things that could cause the market to have to discount, sell down, because we got some new things to work through? Well, one thing we’ve seen this week is right? Is the President calling effectively for the resignation or even firing of a Fed governor, and so that could call into question the independence between the Fed and the executive branch and the market probably would not say that’s a good thing, right? We want some level of independence there, despite if people think there actually is or not. You know that that is the market does think there’s some some separation there, so that could cause some reverberations right through. I think the other thing is, what is the Fed actually going to do? How many rate cuts are going to be on the board. Are they going to issue some forward guidance that spooks the market? That could do something is the AI dominance, the AI theme that’s largely pulled us up over the last few years. Is that sharp starting show cracks? Right? Is Nvidia the first of May that says, I don’t know how much we can deploy. We shift to looking at earnings. Are earnings not in line with expectations? And again, everything’s just too overvalued, that could be something and then, of course, you know, again, is inflation truly tamed? You know, it looks to be moderated. It’s higher what the Fed wants it to, but it’s not ramping up, I think, to the degree that the market was worried about, or the Fed’s worried about, but if that happens, certainly that could cause the market to sell off. So good news is, again, we have a strategy in place to deal with those should it happen, we are broadly optimistic through the end of the year, and think that we should be maybe we’ll probably have some bumps in the road, but broadly, you know, the growth we’ve seen from the lows in April should continue. So everybody, thank you so much for watching. You know, one thing I would say is please subscribe to our podcast. We’ve done some good ones about estate planning, about distribution strategies and taxes, Social Security, about tariffs, about the strength of dollar. So please continue to watch those. We put out content that certainly helps us and make sure that you’re seeing what we’re thinking broadly range of topics. So that’s it for Friday. I appreciate you all for hanging there with us. I wish you a very happy, very safe Labor Day weekend, and I certainly look forward to talking to you again soon. Thanks everybody. Have a great weekend.

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