Transcript

Hello and welcome to our market alert video for the Christmas week and I hope that all of you are sane, I hope you are healthy, and I hope you’ve gotten all your shopping done. That’s the one thing you got to make sure you do as well. So, this week we’re going to answer the burning question – is the stock market immune to COVID? Because we just found out that there is a brand new strain that apparently is 70 percent more contagious than the one we’ve been living with and yet, here we are with the market not selling off massively, so it immunized and the answer is, in our view, the vaccine for the stock market is what we’ve been talking about for several months now and that is the stimulus package coming out of Congress.

If there is a stimulus package, then since 70 percent of our economy is based on consumption, the consumer drives it. If they have money, they will spend. If they spend, the profits flow and stock prices stay nicely up, in our view. So, it’s still that, despite the fact that we have a new strain. Again, it’s terrible news, certainly not what we want to hear but if there is a stimulus package then the consumer will still be able to spend, so we’re still going to be okay, we think. Now, there is also a fly in the ointment here and that is the possibility that President Trump vetoes the stimulus package. He said he’s not happy with it and that he may veto it. So, if that were to be the case, then we do believe that there would be some volatility in the market, to say the least, but we believe it’s all short-term noise because there will be a package eventually. There is a vaccine, and we think that the economy next year very well may be an economy on steroids.

We still view that we’re going to see perhaps the greatest increase in jobs ever, as people go back to work as the vaccine gives people confidence to spend money. They have money in their pockets to spend because of the stimulus package. There’s a lot of pent up demand. I know that we have, you know, as I visit with clients they have postponed things they wanted to do, they’re dying to do them and when it’s safe to go back they’ll start doing it again, so there’ll be a lot of spending we think. So next year could be a fantastic year and so therefore, we remain optimistic about all of that. So, at this point, in terms of where we stand versus our sale signal, we are comfortably away from that so, should there be some short-term volatility if President Trump were to veto the stimulus bill, we think we should be able to weather that one and go on to new highs after that.

So, right now we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and we also wish you all the best, you, and your family. We thank you for letting us worry about all of this boring financial stuff so that you don’t have to and since it is a time to open up presents, we hope you enjoy it, as your second childhood, without parental supervision, that you get lots, that Santa takes really good care of you this year and that all is well. So again, thank you for letting us do this for you. We appreciate you beyond words and we will talk soon.

MMWKM Advisors, LLC (d/b/a Retirement Planners of America ) (“Retirement Planners of America”) is an SEC registered investment adviser with a primary business location in Plano, Texas. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. References to the “invest and protect strategy” (the “Strategy”) and recommendations made under the Strategy from 2007 through 2009 refer to strategies collectively employed and recommendations collectively made by Retirement Planners of America’s principals while employed at Eagle Strategies, LLC., and also at Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc. Four of the five principals remain as principals today, including the Retirement Planners of America’s founder, Ken Moraif, and Chief Investment Officer, Eli Dragon. Retirement Planners of America has been employing the Strategy since its inception in 2011. Therefore, any references to Retirement Planners of America’s performance or its investment advisory recommendations predating 2011 generally refer to recommendations made by Retirement Planners of America’s principals at the respective other firms described above. Like all investment strategies, the Strategy is not guaranteed. It is possible that it can incorrectly predict a bear market (generally accepted as a 20% drop in a market index), which has, in-fact, happened before at Retirement Planners of America and affected its clients accordingly. When the sell / “protect” portion of the Strategy is implemented, affected investors will incur transaction costs and taxable accounts will incur tax consequences. However, when implementing that portion of the Strategy, Retirement Planners of America generally believes that the benefit of avoiding bear markets outweighs the burden of these transaction costs and tax consequences.