The stock market is at all-time highs. Interest rates are near two-decade highs. And war is driving oil prices over $100. 

These are all coexisting in the same place. Something’s got to give here. 

In this week’s Market Alert, we explain why next week’s Fed meeting could be so important, why the tech and AI stocks carrying the market are especially vulnerable to higher interest rates, and why a 10% to 20% correction may be a very real possibility. 

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. 

• • The Fed meets next week, and for the first time in a long time, they’re talking about potentially raising interest rates. For two solid years, everybody assumed rates were going down. Now, the next move is probably going to be up, and that is a significant change. 
  • The war in Iran is escalating, pushing oil prices over $100. Higher oil prices mean higher inflation, which pushes the Fed further toward raising interest rates. 
  • We’re already seeing the impact. Mortgage rates hit a 14-month high, and higher rates mean higher costs for mortgages, car loans and everything else. That’s a bad thing for the consumer and the economy. 
  • But here’s the really big one when it comes to the stock market: more than 40% of the S&P 500 is concentrated in the tech and AI companies that have driven the market to all-time highs. 
  • Those companies are borrowing enormous amounts of money to build data centers and drive their growth. If the cost of money goes up, that could squeeze their profits and potentially lead to a 10% to 20% market correction. 
  • Am I calling for a big, bad bear market like 2008 or Y2K? At this point, no. The economy seems to be good and jobs are strong. But we need to fasten our seatbelts and be ready for a correction. 
  • Think about where we are: the stock market is at all-time highs, interest rates are near two-decade highs, and a war is driving oil over $100. These are all coexisting in the same place. Something’s got to give here. 
  • Paul Tudor Jones famously believes that your job as an investor is not to make the most money. Your job is to lose the least. If you lose the least, you win. 
  • We believe the same thing. You should invest, yes, but you should also have a strategy to protect your retirement. 
  • We saw what happened in Y2K. The internet really was the future, but many of those stocks still collapsed, and the overall market fell about 50%. It took roughly five and a half years just to get back to even. 
  • If you’re about to retire or already retired, five years is a long time to wait. If your retirement is 25 good years and five years of that is gone, you just lost 20% of your entire retirement life. 
  • So we want to protect your retirement from catastrophic losses if we can. We believe you should Invest and Protect. 

   

Transcript:

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our weekly market alert video for today, which is September 11, 2026, and yes, it is the 25th anniversary of one of the most horrible days in the history of the United States, and that is the World Trade Center attacks that happened in New York City, just an awful, awful day, and one that I think we should always remember. And you know, with 25 years, we have almost a generation and a half that is not familiar with what happened on that day, and maybe doesn’t even appreciate the the you know the dangers that we face as a country. You know that our enemies can do some bad things. So for all the people that passed in that terrible event and the heroes that responded to it, you know our our prayers, our hearts, and our thanks go out to all of them. It was unbelievable what happened, and nobody that was there that was that was alive. I think, on that day, we’ll forget where they were in that moment. I certainly know where I was when it happened. So somber note. So let’s let’s dive into the weekly market alert. What we have on tap for you this time. So again, three stories. The Fed is going to be meeting next week, and this is the first time in a long time that the Fed is going to be talking about potentially raising interest rates, and so because of that, this is a particularly important meeting. And so we’re going to talk about the repercussions of that and what we should look ahead to how that would affect us. The other thing is, you know, the war in Iran is escalating right now? You know, as I speak, we had I guess the U.S. Navy sunk five Iranian tankers, sunk them. They’re sending missiles towards our aircraft carriers, and of course the Houthis are now attacking Saudi Arabia. So this thing doesn’t show any signs of abating at this point, and that has pushed oil prices up. So what does that mean to us and to our more importantly to our consumers? That represents 70% of our economy, and then of course the if interest rates go up, who is mostly affected by it? Well, it’s the companies that are holding the stock market up right now-it’s all those tech companies. They are very, very sensitive to what interest rates do, and they’re carrying the market. They have driven it to these all-time highs, and if they tank, then they could bring it to some pretty low lows as well. So a lot of stuff going on. So let’s dive in. So first of all, we have, as I said, we have the Fed is going to meet next week, and for two solid years, people have been saying interest rates are going to go down. That’s been the mantra. Everybody has been assuming that interest rates were going to fall. It was going to cause profits to rise. The stock market was happy. All of that. Now, for the first time, the next move is probably going to be up, and that is a significant change. And it’s going to-they’re going to decide. They’re going to meet Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, and they’re going to be deciding. You know what they’re going to do with interest rates. It is such an important thing that even President Trump has come out and said that he thinks interest rates should be at a half a percent. He wants a major stimulus, and so you know there’s a lot of pressure on the Fed from the president to lower interest rates, not raise them at this point. The other thing is the war in Iran. So what has happened? Well, you know we talked about this last week. We’ve talked about it for several weeks now, and that is that as the oil prices rise, that is going to push up interest rates. Why? Because everything that we buy costs more when oil prices go up, right? And if oil prices go up and we have higher inflation, the Fed then is going to raise interest rates to combat that.

So these higher oil prices are causing, you know, mortgage rates, for example, to hit a 14-month high, and you know the Fed’s dilemma is an oil shock stokes inflation, which pushes the Fed to further towards rate increases, and then that causes the consumer to have higher costs of mortgages and car loans and everything else that goes on, and that’s a bad thing for the economy. So that’s the second story. Then is these higher oil prices driving interest rates? The Fed basically being, you know, having to do something about it. We’ll see. But here’s the really big one when it comes to the stock market. We’ve we’ve talked about this in previous marketer videos that we have an extremely concentrated market right now, the market is basically 40 plus percent of the entire S&P 500 is in those tech companies, those AI stocks, and they are borrowing money to drive the data centers and all the growth that they need. They’re borrowing money, and if the cost of money goes up for them, then that causes them potentially to. Have a profit squeeze. If they have a profit squeeze, then this market, which is at all-time highs, could experience a correction, which means it could go down anywhere from 10 to 20% And I think that’s a very, very likely possibility. So we need to fasten our seatbelts and be ready for that. Okay. Now, will we go into a big bad bear market like 2008 or Y2K or something like that. At this point, no. The economy seems to be good. Jobs are strong. So no, that’s not what I’m calling for. But I do think that we may be presented with these stocks being hit badly here if the Fed decides to raise interest rates next week. So what we had and and you know so what we have here then is a situation that think about it. So we have the market is at all time highs. Interest rates have hit two decade high. Right, we talked about this last week. If interest rates get over 5% on the 10 year, and right now they’re sitting at about 4.9, that starts to squeeze the economy. So we have interest rates at a very high level. We have a stock market that’s at a very high level, and we have a war that’s driving oil prices over $100. And these are all coexisting in the same place. Something’s got to give here, you know. I mean, it doesn’t make sense that the stock market is at an all-time high when we have the consumer about to be hit by higher interest rates and inflation, and these companies that are holding up the whole stock market getting hit by high interest rates, and their borrowing costs and their ability to make a profit being impaired, so we’ll see if all of how long all of this can last. But you know, Richard Nixon, I think, is famous for saying something that won’t last Forever won’t okay. So so and you know the lesson that we’ve talked about on these weekly market alerts comes from Paul Tudor Jones. And for those of you who don’t know who that is, he’s a trader, not a tradeor, but a trader. Right, he trades on the stock market, and he made a fortune in one of the biggest down days in the history of the stock market back in 1987. So he’s a legendary investor, and his theory is that you don’t, as an investor, your job is not to make the most money. Your job is to lose the least. He believes that if you lose the least, you win. So another way of saying it, in fact, Warren Buffett said it is the way you win is by not losing. Okay, kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? And so that’s what we believe as well. You know, we believe that you should invest, yes, but also you should have a strategy to protect your retirement. Who knows? You know, if if these tech stocks stumble and we see a big bad drop. We saw it in Y2K, right? Everybody was high on the internet. Everybody thought that was the future, and it was. The internet is was the future. It’s ubiquitous today. So, but there was a gap between the build out of the infrastructure and the implementation of that infrastructure.

That gap was a period where companies were losing money and they had no profits to show for it, and because of that, their stocks went down almost 50 percent or 90 percent in many cases. Took the whole stock market down by 50 percent. So in those kinds of scenarios, yes, it will rebound, but you know it took what five and a half years almost to get back to even. So if you want to wait that long to see what you have today, again, you know I admire your your intestinal fortitude. I don’t want to do that. And if you’re about to retire within the next five years, or you’re in the first five years of your retirement, experiencing a half, you know, losing half your money, that could change your life. You know, that’s a long time, five years. If you think about it, your retirement is what 25 good years, and if five years of that is gone, you just lost 20% of your entire retirement life, and that could happen in the blink of an eye. So we believe that you should invest. Yet yes, and you should protect as well. And as you guys know, you know with my radio show back in 2007, I told everybody on the radio show that you need to get out of the market now. This was in November of 2007. We said get out, go into cash, sell all your stocks, and sure enough, 2008 came later, and the market went down 57 percent from peak to trough. So those of the people who followed our direction on that didn’t lose all that right, and so we want to protect your retirement from from catastrophic losses if we can. Now I can only do that if you’re a client of ours. So what I would encourage you to do is to go to our website. It’s rpoa.com, and when you’re there, click on Meet with an Advisor. And if you do, we’ll schedule a time to visit with you. We’ll build your plan for you, soup to nuts. Social Security, rolling over your 401ks, required minimum distributions, income tax planning, insurance planning, and most importantly, how to protect your portfolio from catastrophic losses. We’ll build all of that for you, no charge or obligation. And if you like what you see, great. And if not, that’s fine too. Part friends, so if you want to know where you should go to avail yourself of this wonderful opportunity, Alex, can you play a jingle

for them?

That’s right, rpoa.com. So if you go there, and we have lots of content for you, enjoy binge. You’ll you’ll benefit from it. I’m very sure. So once again, thank you for watching. I hope this video found you healthy, wealthy, and wise, and we’ll talk soon.

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