In this Weekly Market Alert, the team discusses the latest interest-rate outlook and what recent jobs data could mean for the Federal Reserve’s next move. Jordan Roach explains the recent changes to the bond portfolio, including shifting toward shorter-term Treasuries, increasing highly rated corporate bonds, and expanding cash and money-market exposure. The video also previews the October 15 Investment Committee quarterly webinar, which will cover additional bond and stock portfolio changes and updates to the Invest & Protect strategy. 

• Our now world-famous chocolate chunk cookies are waiting for you at the office! We love seeing you in person, so come visit us. 

• We have a very confusing paradox going on. The economy is slowing down, and normally the Fed lowers interest rates, but no, they’re raising them! 

• In fact, rates are at a 24-year high. What on earth is going on, and what should we do about it, more importantly? 

• The 10-year Treasury yield is at 5.36%, and as we’ve said, if it gets above 5%, it starts to slow the economy down. 

• Basically, the Fed has decided the economy is less important than inflation. They’re saying, “We understand the economy’s slowing down. We don’t care.” 

• Number one, inflation hasn’t left, and the Fed still hasn’t accomplished its goal of getting it down to 2%. 

• Number two, the government is borrowing enormous sums of money. Our national debt is over $40 trillion now. Oh, my gosh! 

• But here’s the problem our government has: they now have competition from these big AI companies borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to build data centers. 

• So investors are saying, “Should I lend money to the government, or should I lend money to Microsoft or Nvidia?” 

• And when you have competition for money, what happens to the cost of that money? It goes up, and the cost of money is interest rates. 

• The people getting hurt aren’t the data center companies. It’s the consumer who’s getting caught in the crosshairs of this interest rate fight. 

• Mortgage rates are high, credit card rates are high, car loans are high. It’s stymying the ordinary consumer, and it’s not fair. 

• So what have we done about it? We’ve reduced the duration of our bond portfolio, and we’ll explain those changes at our October 15 webinar. 

• You have to make it, okay? We consider it mandatory for clients, and we only do these investment updates once every three months. 

• The Fed’s meeting minutes confirmed they’re more worried about inflation than the economy, even though the economy is slowing down. 

• Right now, the consensus is that the Fed will hold rates steady on October 27, but betting markets are saying there’s about a 78% chance they’ll raise rates in December. 

• So why does this matter to you? Bonds are kind of like a teeter-totter: as interest rates go up, bond values fall, and as rates go down, bond values rise. 

• The longer the term of the bond, the farther out you are on that teeter-totter and the bigger the swing. 

• That’s why we’ve moved our bond portfolio into shorter-term bonds, closer to the fulcrum, where interest rate changes have a much smaller effect. 

• And at the same time, those shorter-term bonds are paying higher interest rates. So it’s a double benefit. 

• Now, what does all of this do to the stock market? Investors are asking, “Should I invest in stocks, or should I invest in bonds where I can get higher interest rates with less risk?” 

• As the return on quote-unquote “safe money” goes up, the extra return investors expect from stocks becomes less attractive, and therefore stock values could go down. 

• And here’s the risk: those big technology companies represent about 40% of the entire stock market. If those guys get hit, it could be Katie bar the door! 

• Remember Y2K? Technology stocks represented only 26% of the market, and when they went down, they took the whole stock market down 49%. 

• Right now, we’re at almost double that concentration in these big technology companies. 

• So does that mean we’re going to have a big, bad bear market? My answer is, “Time will tell.” 

• But I do know this: I want to plan for it, and that’s why we have our Invest and Protect strategy ready to be employed. 

• If the market decides it’s going to tank big time, we can’t stop it and we can’t predict it, but we can plan for it. 

• Our view is you plan for the worst and hope for the best, not the other way around. The other way around, we believe, is not very smart. 

• So where are we? We’ve shortened the duration of our bond portfolio to get higher interest rates without as much risk. 

• We’re also looking at making changes to our stock portfolio and our Invest and Protect strategy that I think you’ll like for the better. 

• All of this is an ad for our October 15 webinar at 6:00 p.m. Central Time, where we’ll go into detail about these changes and answer your questions. 

• Overall, we don’t think a big, bad bear is coming, but it could. Certainly, the odds of it are increasing. 

• And if so, I hope you have the peace of mind of knowing that we have our Invest and Protect strategy there to address that to the best we can. 

Transcript:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our weekly market alert video for today,
which is October 9, 2026. And we have a very confusing paradox going on, and
we’re gonna discuss it. The economy is slowing down, and normally what the
Fed does is they lower interest rates when the economy is slowing down.

But no, they’re raising interest rates.
In fact, rates are at a 24-year high. What on earth is going on, and what should
we do about it, more importantly? So we’re gonna dive into all of that on this,
our weekly market alert video. Um, but, you know, I have, uh, something with
me I wanna just share with you. Let me move this out of the way. So, so these
right here are our now world famous, uh, chocolate chunk cookies, and as you
guys know, we don’t make them out of chocolate chip.

We make them out of chocolate chunks. Chips are made with wax. They’re
formed. It’s par- it’s paraffin. You don’t wanna eat paraffin. That’s disgusting.
It’s gross. You want real chocolate that melts in your mouth, that gets all over
you. Let me show you exactly what I’m talking about. See, this is right out of the oven.

Oh, oh, my gosh. This, I mean, that is just… Why am I- My mother taught me
never talk with your mouth full. Why am I talking about cookies? Because you
guys are, are relying on Zoom too much. We’re having, you know, clients are
like, “We wanna meet with you on Zoom.” We don’t want to meet with you on
Zoom. We’ll do it, we’re happy to, but if you come in, we’ll have chocolate
chunk cookies waiting for you, baked fresh. Mm, mm, mm. And, uh, we always like to see you in person if… That’s our preference. So that’s just my way of encouraging people, Alex, to come in- Yeah … and visit with us in person. We wanna do that. We love seeing people in person. All this digital stuff, blegh. So why did long-term rates climb to the highest level in 24 years?

I mean- Rates went up, not down. The economy’s slowing. What’s going on? So one thing we’ve told you about is that when the 10-year Treasury yield, okay, so
there’s a, there’s a bond, right? This is when the government issues debt. They borrow money. They issue the, they issue bonds. The 10-year is kind of the one that they raise the most money with, and it’s kind of the bellwether.

It’s the benchmark against which interest rates for mortgages and, uh, uh, credit cards and car loans, et cetera, are kind of benchmarked against. So it’s a very important number. And at 5.36%, as we’ve said, if it gets above 5%, it starts to slow the economy down. So basically, what we have here is, uh, we have the Fed that has decided that the economy is less important than inflation.

That’s basically what they’re saying. We understand the economy’s slowing
down. We don’t care. We are gonna raise interest rates because right now,
inflation is the bigger enemy over, um, the economy. So number one, inflation
hasn’t left, right? They’ve done everything, all this stuff. They’re trying to get it
down to 2%.

They have, they’ve failed now for, I don’t know, six years. They really have not
accomplished their goal. Number two, the government is borrowing enormous
sums of money. Our deficit’s over 40 trillion now. Oh, my gosh. And so they
have to borrow a lot of money to do this, and the problem our government has is
that they now have competition.

The competition is these big AI companies. They are actually borrowing so
much money that it’s alm- it’s almost, like, on the level of the federal
government. They’re borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to build these
data centers and do all this stuff with, uh, with the, uh, artificial intelligence or
super intelligence, if you prefer.

Um, and so now, if you have competition for money, what does that do to the
cost of that money? It makes it go up. And what is the cost of money? It’s
interest rates. So you have the government that wants to borrow money. They’re
competing with these giant… And, and, uh, investors are saying, “Should I lend
money to the government or should I s- lend money to Microsoft or to Nvidia or
these companies over here that need all this money to build out, uh, you know,
the infrastructure?”

And that decision is kind of, uh, getting split, and when that happens, interest
rates stay high and maybe even go higher because the government needs
money. They gotta attract them by offering a higher interest rate. And that’s
kind of the, the thing that’s really not good about what’s going on here. The, the
people that are getting hurt by this are not the data center people, right?
Because they can afford this. They can pay these higher interest rates if interest
rates go up. The consumer is the one that’s getting hurt. They’re the ones that are
getting caught in the crosshairs of this, of this, uh, interest rate fight. And, uh,
it’s not fair because houses, you know, mortgage rates are, are high, credit card
rates are high, car loans are high.

It’s stymying the ordinary consumer who has to compete, you know, with the,
uh, data centers, uh, for the cost of the money. So What we’ve done about it, and
we talked about this last time, was, is we’ve lo- we’ve reduced the duration of
our portfolio. And we’re gonna be talking about this, this in more detail on our
October 15th, uh, webinar, right?

Our third Thursday of the month webinar. You have to make it, okay? This is,
it’s like, it’s mandatory for clients. You gotta attend it. We do it once every three
months. That’s all we ask of you. But we update you on what’s going on with
your investments, what’s going on with the changes that we’re going to make,
and we’re gonna…

We’ve already made changes to the bond portfolio, but we’re gonna go into
some detail as to what those changes were specifically so you know what’s
going on, and we want you to be informed. So that’s the first thing. The second
thing is that, uh, the minutes, right? This is when the Fed comes out, and what
they do is they publish the minutes, uh, of their meeting.

And in the minutes, what they said was that, what I said earlier, and that is
they’re more worried about the, uh, inflation than they are about the economy.
Jobs seem to be okay. Uh, those kind of things that they measure seem to be
okay, even though the economy is slowing down. So what they wanna do is
they wanna go after inflation.

They have two, two, uh, mandates, which is the, the economy and inflation.
They’re not worried about that. So what’s happening now is that, uh, the
consensus right now is because the jobs numbers came in so, so good, that on
October 27th, they’re gonna hold. They’re not gonna raise interest rates or lower,
they’re not gonna do anything.

But now the betting markets are saying that there’s, like, a 78% chance that
they’re gonna raise interest rates in December. So we might get one more rate c-
uh, increase before this is, year is over. So why does this matter to you? Well,
again, longer term bonds, it’s kinda like a teeter-totter. As interest rates go up,
the value of bonds falls.

And as, uh, interest rates go down, the value of bonds goes up. And the longer
the term is, the farther they out on that teeter-totter, the bigger the swing is for
them versus short-term rates where the swing is smaller. So as… So what we’ve
done is we’ve shortened the duration. We’ve moved our bond portfolio more
into shorter term bonds, which are closer to the fulcrum of that teeter-totter I
was talking about.

And so therefore, a change in interest rates has a much smaller effect. But at the
same time, those short-term interest rates are paying a much higher interest, so
it’s a double benefit. Now, was, what does this all do to the stock market? Well,
right now, if you’re an investor, you’re thinking, “Okay-” Should I invest in the
stock market or should I invest in the bond market because I can get higher
interest rates with less risk than the stock market?

So as the interest rates go up, people start making that… They start doing that
math. Should I invest it in this, uh, quote, unquote, “safe, uh, return,” or should I
take a bet that NVIDIA and Microsoft and, uh, IBM and all these guys, uh, uh,
OpenAI, that they’re going to, you know, give me a better return? And as the
return on quote, unquote, “safe money” goes up, the value of that extra return
that they are going to give you goes down, and therefore, the value of their
stocks could go down.

And the risk we have there is that they represent, right now, 40% of the entire
stock market. So if those guys get hit, it could be Katie bar the door. You know,
we saw in Y2K when only 26% of the stock market was those tech stocks, and
when they went down, they took the whole stock market down with them. And
in, uh, in the year 2000, from peak to trough during that bear market, we saw a
49% drop in the, in the stock market.

Right now, we’re even– we’re almost double the concentration in these big
technology companies. So does that mean we’re gonna have a big, bad bear
market? You know, when people ask me that, my answer is, “Time will tell.”
Okay? I don’t know. But I do know this, I wanna plan for it, and that’s why we
have our invest and protect, uh, strategy ready to be employed.

If the market decides it’s gonna tank big time because of these higher interest
rates, because of inflation, uh, we can’t stop it and we can’t predict it, but we can
plan for it. And our view is you, you plan for the worst, you hope for the best,
not the other way around. The other way around, we believe, is not very smart.
You don’t wanna do that. So where are we? We’ve shortened the duration of our
bond portfolio so as to get the higher interest rates that that represents without
as much risk. Um, and we’re also, uh, uh, looking at making some changes to
our stock portfolio, and we are looking to make some changes to our invest and
protect strategy that I think you’ll like for the better.

So all of this is an ad for make sure you register for our October 15, um, uh,
webinar, and it’s at 6:00 p.m. Central Time, so, uh, in the evening for most of
you. And, uh, we’d love to have you there. We’d love to inform you and tell you
what’s going on and answer your questions. It’s an interactive. So overall, we
don’t think a big, bad bear’s coming, but it could.

Certainly, the odds of it are increasing. And if so, I hope you have the peace of
mind of knowing that we have our invest and protect strategy there to, uh, to
address that to the best we can. So I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy,
and wise. And I know this is not healthy but, boy, is it good. Om. Mm, mm.
Oh. Thank you 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