• Gold has reached new all-time highs even without high inflation or widespread fear. History shows gold often moves more on emotion and global buying trends than on true inflation concerns.
• The market recently logged its 70th new all-time high of this bull run. This is a normal milestone during periods of sustained strength, not necessarily a warning sign.
• In a typical bull market, 70–100 new highs are common. By that measure, today’s rally remains within a normal range.
• Artificial-intelligence-related companies are driving much of the market’s momentum. This is a trend reminiscent of the early internet era.
• Just as internet infrastructure once fueled extreme optimism, AI’s rapid growth may be creating a similar “this-time-it’s-different” mindset. Something history tells us to treat with caution.
• Unlike the dot-com start-ups, today’s AI leaders generate real profits. However, that doesn’t mean their stock prices can’t fall if enthusiasm outpaces reality.
• When buying simply begets more buying, even solid companies can become overvalued. Recognizing that cycle early is part of our job as risk managers.
• Precious metals remain only a small component of your diversified portfolio. This is a measured approach designed to manage risk, not chase trends.
• Whether this strength continues or cools, our Invest and Protect Strategy is built to respond helping preserve capital during downturns while seeking growth in rising markets.
• Our team continuously tracks market shifts, so you don’t have to lose sleep over headlines. We want you to live your second childhood without parental supervision confident that your plan is managed with care.

Transcript:
Ken Moraif
Hello everyone, and welcome to our Market Alert Video for today, which is October 9, 2025 I hope that all you clients and SCWPerS are having a great time, and especially those of you in SCWPer nation. I hope you are out there enjoying your second childhood without parental supervision. And those of you who are not retired yet, our goal is to get you there happily and prosperously. So I hope that this video finds you well. We’re going to have more fun than a human being should be allowed to have when talking about all this boring financial stuff, as we always do. And so let me go over with you what we’re going to talk about in this our weekly excursion into the land of finance. So first of all, you may have noticed that gold has been hitting massive new all time highs. It’s been going through the roof. So what’s driving that? Also, speaking of new all time highs, the market just said, I think it’s like its 70th new all time high, which maybe might make you think that we should sell. I mean, this market’s gone crazy, hit New all time highs all the time. And so, you know, maybe it’s a top. So we’ll give you a little bit of a historical perspective when it comes to all time highs, and then continuing our theme about AI and are we in a bubble? And more and more it appears that maybe we are. And especially, what I love to hear is that this time, it’s different. Okay, that’s usually not a good sign when people start saying, yeah, yeah, you’re comparing it to like the dot coms. But this time it’s different because, you know, the dot coms, these were companies like pet pets.com that had no money, no revenue, no nothing, and yet their prices, their stock price, was through the roof. And these are companies like Microsoft and IBM and others that that’s not the case. So this time it’s different. And so we’re going to explain why we think that it may not be different. So we have a lot to talk about this week, but before we get into it, my youngest daughter, as you guys may know, is now engaged, and so the planning process for the wedding has begun in earnest, because the wedding is about a year from now. And what’s really interesting to me is that the the negotiations between me and my wife and my daughter, it’s, it’s worse than the government shutdown. I mean, you think the Democrats and the Republicans and their negotiations are are tough, you ought to be in one of our budget meetings. Holy mackerel. So. But you may have noticed I did not include in our topics this week the government shutdown. So just let me say that we think that this will go on maybe for three or four more weeks. This may be the longest running government shutdown in history, but President Trump took some measures in this particular after the last one, to protect the government against future ones. So it’s not going to be, for example, getting paid to military people, et cetera. So that kind of thing is going to make this government shutdown not as painful as maybe others have been, and therefore we expect the the impact on the markets and our investments to be muted for that reason, and also why it’ll maybe last longer because there isn’t as much pain involved. So we think about three to four more weeks before they finally come to some conclusion, and then, you know, they’ll pick it up in other ways after that. So let’s talk about gold. One of the things that, if you look back at history, gold has gotten this reputation for being an inflation fighter. You know, whenever inflation is high, gold is like the answer. And so right now we don’t have very high inflation, and yet gold is going through the roof. So why is that the case? Well, historically, gold has not been an inflation fighter. The way it got the reputation of being an inflation fighter is that back in the early 80s, when we had the hyper inflation, what happened was that people were terrified. Our economy was on its back. The dollar was falling like a stone. It looked like we were going to become a second rate nation. I mean, it was really bad news. And so that fear is what drove gold prices up. People wanted to put their their money in something that they felt they could hold on to and that is going to be there. The dollar was falling, the economy was collapsing. So it wasn’t so it happened at the same time that inflation was going up, and so because of that coincidental interact interaction, people said, aha, that’s the. Answer to inflation, it’s gold. But we’ve seen multiple, many times where gold has gone up without there being significant inflation. In fact, that’s one of the few times that it did actually happen. So that reputation was was earned by essentially a black swan event, but has not been the case even now. So the next thing you look at is, you know, fear. Are people scared? Well, right now, it’s the opposite. I just said, you know, we’re on our 70th new all time high. So people are apparently, are not scared. The economy seems to be okay. Things are good, jobs, etc. So there doesn’t seem to be panic or fear right now. So therefore, you know, gold, but yet gold is going up. So why? Well, it’s, there is a little bit of a concern about, you know, the dollar falling, and all that kind of thing. But sometimes these things take on, take on a life of their own, and they start going up because they’re going up. And as they start to rise, people buy them. And we just heard that China is going to start loading up on gold, and so because of that, you know, it’s like the buying causes it to go up, and that causes more people to buy it, and that causes it to go up more, and that’s when you end up with a mini bubble in gold, if you will, that could be developing. So the question you may ask is, do we have gold in our portfolio. We’re, we’re very, very diversified, and so precious metals is part of our portfolio, but not a very large percentage, just to be just to be clear. So let’s talk about that new all time high thing. So I did the math on this, you know, because it’s kind of hard to get the actual numbers of new all time highs that you experience in a normal bull market, because it depends how you define it and all that. So I’ve done some research, and it was, it’s all over the map. So I did my own math. All right, so bear with me on this one. So the average bull market, which means from the end of the previous bear market to the end of the current bull market. That period, it’s about 1000 trading days, okay? And generally speaking, the market during those 1000 trade is going up about 60% of the time. Now, it takes a while to get back to the new all time high, because you’re starting at a low right, you’re starting at the end of a bear market. So looking at that kind of math, what I’ve come up with is that on average, you might expect 70 100, somewhere in that range, new all time highs in an average bull market. So right now we’re at 70, maybe 80, depending on who you ask. So. And if you think about it, for a bull market to actually happen, every time it goes up, you’re going to have a new all time high. You know, it is higher than the day before that was a new all time high. So is it something for us to be, you know, overly concerned about? No, it’s a natural, normal part of what happens with a bull market. You get new all time highs by definition, and so it wouldn’t surprise us if we didn’t see another 30 new all time highs here over the next few months. In fact, we think it’s very likely, given where things are headed and what’s going on right now with the economy. So new all time highs are not unusual. They start to get headlines when you start getting this, this, how many we’re getting, you know, it’s all, oh my gosh. How many more can we possibly have? So probably I would, we would say, you know, somewhere around another 20 or 30, and then maybe start worrying. Now, what is driving these new all time highs? Well, of course, that’s AI, right? A lot of the AI companies are spending massive amounts of money, and they’re actually showing profits for it, so that is therefore driving a large percentage of the growth in the s, P and the Dow, the stock market. Now in last week’s video, Jordan and I went over, you know, is this a bubble building? Because, you know, in the last big, bad bear market we had, or the one prior, or the one before that, and y, 2k, you know, we had the.com crisis, right? The dot coms became a huge bubble. And then when it popped, it took the market, the entire market down with it, almost 50% so, and it lasted a long time, almost two years, two and a half years. So this was so there are a lot of similarities going on right now where those dot coms technology, internet companies that were building out the infrastructure of the internet, those companies drove the market to massive all time highs, and they represented at the peak, about 30% of the value of the entire stock market. So when they went down 90% 27% of the drop in the market was attributable to just those companies, and the rest was because people were panicking and the rest. Got sold. So are we in that place now? Not yet, but we’re pushing 27% of the infrastructure related companies that are building out the the AI infrastructure, if you will. So you know, and over the last two and a half years, those stocks are up to 200 250% very similar to those companies that built it out, built out the internet. So very, very, a lot of similarities. And you know what they say, History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes, so we have to be careful that we’re watching that for you. Now, what I’ve heard, which kind of made me laugh, several people on the talking head shows that said that, you know, this time, it’s different, okay, because last time we had pets.com for example, this was a company that had no profits, no customers, but because it had.com on the end of it, its stock price was at Like, 30 times, you know, or you know, 30 times nothing, right? They had no profits. So it was an infinite valuation based on on nothing, and so, you know. But this is different, because these companies, Microsoft, IBM, you know, these companies have profits, they have lots and lots of cash. I mean, you know, Microsoft has hundreds of billions of dollars in cash, so these companies are not going to go out of business like pets.com did. And so therefore, you know, this is different, the it’s not the it’s a completely different scenario. Well, from that standpoint, it’s true, but what could happen is that the prices of these stocks are so overvalued that reality sets in, and investors say, Wait a second, you know, where’s the beef? And when that happens, the stock price could fall 50% or more without putting those companies out of business, because it’s true, they have tons and tons of cash. They can they can withstand a storm very well. But it doesn’t mean their stock price doesn’t experience a big drop, because it’s overvalued, and that big drop could stay down for a long time, and if those stocks do crash, and they represent 30% of the stock market, as the dot coms did back in YK, then people will, you know, there’s just this whole psychology of, oh my gosh, the stock market’s going down. I got to sell all my stuff. And so people start selling, and selling begets selling, just like buying begets buying. And you get the big, bad bear, and then you’re waiting around for what’s going to happen with this. Ai, does. It’s not working the way it should, and it takes a while for that to happen, as is the case with the Internet. Internet, yeah, it’s working, but how do you use it? How do you make a profit? That took about two years to figure out. And so you get these, you get a big, bad bear. So not calling for that, not saying is going to happen, but saying that it is certainly looking like it’s rhyming, if you will. And so and when I hear several people say this time, it’s different, I start to get worried. And also, to quote Groucho Marx, any club that would have me as a member. I don’t want to be a member of so if the entire club is all about nothing, but you know, the sky’s the limit. These stocks are, they just keep going up, and nothing can stop AI, it’s going to transform and all that. When everybody’s jumping on board with that, that’s when I start to think, Hmm, maybe I don’t want to be a member of that club. And so the the caution that I would I would recommend at this point, given that is, is important. So what are we doing about it? Of course, we have our investment protect strategy. And if you look back over history, and you look at how it would have performed back in y, 2k and then also how it did in 2008 it is well designed, in our view, to protect against a big, bad bear market, if that in fact, ensues. So I hope that this gives all you clients and skippers peace of mind to let us worry about all this boring financial stuff so that you don’t have to to get the gray hair. Somebody commented that my they saw a picture of me from even five years ago, and apparently I’ve gotten a little grayer since then. So comes with the territory, but it’s okay. I enjoy it, and there are things I can do to affect that. So I’m not particularly worried about that, either. If I if I want to, I could go back to that color pretty quickly. So thank you for your concern. So yeah, but in terms of our sleeplessness, with regard to all of this, not really. We feel very confident in our strategy, our investment protects. Strategy to help us to navigate through if this, in fact, turns out to be a storm brewing. So I hope this video, as I said, finds you healthy, wealthy and wise. I hope that all is coming up roses for you. SCWPer nation, I hope you are out there, SCWPering your tails off and enjoying your second childhood without parental supervision. And for those of you who are not retired yet, we want to help you to get there the way you want to and when you want to, and when we do that, it’s a wonderful thing for us. It’s kind of like, you know, in when Clarence in, It’s a Wonderful Life. You know, when the little bell rings and he gets his wings,

Zuzu Bailey
Look daddy. Peter says every time I’m Angel gets his wings.

Ken Moraif
That’s how we feel when one of our clients turns into a SCWPer. It’s feel like we got our wings. So thank you for watching and make sure you like and subscribe. Share this with your friends and family, 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