Have you felt like something isn’t right in the economy, stock market, and even the real estate market? Did we really avoid a recession? Or is there something bigger coming?
In this episode, Chris Miles will share what we should be watching out for right now, and how you can take action. Tune in to discover what that is!
Get ready to take action and safeguard your financial future. Tune in now!
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Watch Out…Something Is Coming
I want to get into something very timely and important right now. I’m technically doing this at the end of July 2023, but I’m talking to you in mid-August and this is going to be a similar theme that I was bringing up in August of 2021. I was giving a warning. I’m starting to see some canaries in the coal mine. If you don’t know the story, canaries go into the coal mine. They send the canaries in to see if they die. Therefore, humans shouldn’t go in either. It sounds gruesome. I know.
I’m seeing some warning signs right now and some things that are interesting because we are seeing the stock market come back close to its previous high. You have heard me for a while say that you need to be careful and that there’s a crash coming. Do you think that crash has ended? Do you think that has changed at all? For me, I would say no. It’s not too uncommon to see the summertime be a good time in the market, but coming up is September. September is historically one of the worst months to be in the stock market. That’s one of the ones you want to watch out for.
I’m seeing the same signs again. I was going to pull up a lot of statistics for you. A lot of different things from the negative yield curve and the different stocks. What are the top magnificent seven companies doing? How they are manipulating the S&P 500? What are we seeing right now with the interest rates? What’s going on with the Feds and everything else?
The Feds aren’t backing off printing money. It’s almost like they are trying to drive up inflation on purpose and make it worse for us to drive a bigger and deeper recession. Even they are throwing hints at that. All these different things are happening right now and yet people are talking about a recovery. They are talking about even a potential boom market not just recovery, but things taking off.
Even the more conservative voices might say, “It might be stagnant. It might be a stagflation situation where the country is not growing much, but there’s still inflation. Hopefully, it will come down.” I’m here to tell you that I think there’s something bigger coming. I do. Every time I see this go up, the higher it goes, the harder it can fall.
It still has the same potential to fall. It is as big as before. I was looking at an article I was reading in April where an expert from JP Morgan said, “This is getting ridiculous. It’s irrational in the market right now. I only see the S&P 500 for example going up 5%.” That would be the S&P 500 only going up to about 4,300. As I’m doing this, it’s up over 4,500. It’s already higher when he thought the rational behavior got to stop and it’s going to come potentially crashing down 15% or more later in the year. I do agree that later in the year 2023, we are going to see some corrections happening.
I could be wrong. The thing is even if it gets postponed or pushed out later, it does not deny the inevitability of that. Here’s the real question. What should you be doing right now? I can’t give you any advice about what to do with your stocks or your mutual funds. I’m here to serve as a voice of warning that do not expect the balances of your mutual funds to be high forever. Psychologically what’s going to happen is that you are going to believe that all is well in Camelot.
Everything is going to be fine. Even if it goes down a little bit, it will come back up because that’s what’s always done, but at what point does that not happen? I’m not saying the stock market doesn’t go up because it does go up over time, but I’m especially scared because this could be your opportunity right now. When I talk about getting lean, get liquid, and get out.
When we are talking about getting liquid, this might be the ideal time. We have already seen home prices still be decent values in most parts of the country because there’s still a housing shortage. Now, people don’t want to go buy a house necessarily because they don’t want to pay more interest rates but they still have to do it at some point. Otherwise, they are just renting. That’s good either way.
If you are a homeowner and you try to sell your property, you could still get a decent dollar for it and at the same time still get a decent dollar for your stocks. This is a great time if you have ever considered cashing in your chips, if you have made money, then you have made money. That’s a great time to consider.
I’m not legally telling you guys to cash out or anything like that, but if you are looking to take things at the high, if you truly believe in selling high by low, this could be the high you are talking about. This could be the high that you were looking for. Psychologically people say, “I’m just going to hold on,” and here’s what happens. Even if it goes up, you will hold on, and then when it goes down, you hold on. Why? It’s because you say, “It can come back up.”
What if it doesn’t? What if it goes down for the next several years? You are going to ride that sucker down and flush down that toilet with the rest of your money. That’s what’s going to happen and then you are going to feel like crap. No pun intended but it’s a pun. You are going to feel horrible. You are going to feel miserable. You are going to hate the stock market, and then if you finally do something, you will do it right then as the market hits rock bottom and then you get out, but that costs you so much along the way.
Could you move your money from a place of saying, “Now I made money. Move it over. I locked in my gains. Can I use it somewhere else where I can produce good returns?” There are things you could do that even outside of real estate. People could go buy T-bills right now for 5% on them. Not fantastic. You can even do life insurance and make almost that much and it’s tax-free versus a slight tax advantage on those T-bills. You can do almost the same thing there.
You could move your money and keep it liquid in cash, sit on it, and wait. Did you know that there are still opportunities right now? Do you know that there are markets that are predicted to go up? I’m not talking about stock markets. I’m talking about certain types of real estate and commodities like oil and gas, gold, and silver. Some of those things have been pretty quiet lately. Usually, when those things are quiet, people ignore them. That’s when they come out of nowhere and then people only hear about it after it’s already boomed 20%, 30%, or 40%, and then you say, “Did you hear this?” “Yes, I did because I experienced it. I was in it.”
There are some things coming down the line here that are going to be good, but it requires you to be in the place surrounding yourself with individuals who know what’s going on and have their ears to the ground and can hear what’s happening. I do this all the time. This is why I joined mastermind groups. I want to know what’s going on. I want to be able to be the one who can say, “This is what I’m hearing right now.” I’m hearing a lot of real estate investors relax a little bit. The ones that got through the latter half of 2022, which kicked a lot of their butts, are now getting to a better place, but there are still some people suffering.
I have still seen some people in the real estate game especially if they are the typical buying apartment building and like, “We are going to refinance in a couple of years.” Those deals aren’t great right now. If you find a good one, it’s pretty rare. To hear that people have lots of them, you start to question, “Are they buying duds right now?” There’s still risk in those markets too.
Worst case scenario, you could store your cash somewhere where at least you know you won’t lose money. It has some guarantees as I mentioned with T-bills or infinite banking inside whole life insurance and things like that. You could do those things and stay safe. At least you can say, “I’m going to assess the situation and see what’s going on.” Especially if you are doing it yourself. You may not want to take a huge amount of risks. At least you know you won’t lose money when other people are complaining about losing money because things have overinflated. It’s getting ridiculous right now.
When that guy said he only saw a 5% upside on the S&P 500, it’s gone up 10%. Here’s what’s crazy. The S&P 500 right now, do you know what’s done? Most of that has all been those top seven companies like Amazons, Apples, Googles, or Meta or Facebook II. You got all those companies. These are mostly all tech-heavy companies.
These companies are the ones that are driving the stock market right now. I was looking at the S&P 500. If you wait it and make it even, because those 7 companies or 6 companies, 7 stocks, but 6 companies because Google counts twice. Those six companies make up about a quarter of the S&P 500. When you see the S&P 500 skyrocketing this year, it’s mostly from those seven companies. Otherwise, if you look at the weighted average, it’s more like 9%, not 20% gains. Even then, if you take those out, you are pretty much looking at almost nothing in gains in the stock market. The stock market overall hasn’t gone up. It’s been these particular companies in these sectors.
That’s a risk. I looked at those companies. If you look at the FAANG companies, I looked at those through the end of July. They have gone up about 80% in 2023 alone. That’s what’s influencing this S&P 500 the stock market that you are seeing. That’s why things seem questionable. It doesn’t add up because a few companies are booming right now and people are throwing money at it, but that also means they can come crashing out harder because 80% in 1 year is pretty ridiculous for any company, especially those bigger-sized companies. It’s like the AI stuff and everything else going on like Nvidia or whatnot.
In the stock market, it's a few companies that are booming right now and people are throwing money at them, but that also means they can come crashing out harder. Click To TweetYou have got to be careful of this. This is what gets people suckered in and this is why you lose come fall of each year because it’s not too uncommon for fall of each year for things to go down. We are moving into that period of time. I’m using this as education for you to be aware and to be watchful. This is not the time to not be watching your money.
I said this before, the law of atrophy. If you ignore your muscles, if you don’t use them, they decay. You ignore your teeth, they fall out. You ignore your marriage, you lose it. If you ignore your kids, you are going to lose them too. Everything that you ignore will leave you. Do not ignore your money at this time. This is the time to become intentional with your money and be strategic. Even if it means you want to be safe with it, the worst thing you can do is to ignore it and hope for the best because those are the people who will lose the most money.
I’m here to warn you not to be one of those people and I know many of you are already doing this. Many of you guys have already been telling me this and I love it. Thank you for doing that. I’m not giving you investment advice. I want to be able to be a voice of warning to make you aware and to make sure that you have a watchful eye on what’s going on. That’s my wish for you. You have questions. You can always reach out to us at MoneyRipples.com, but I want you to be aware, be real, and be honest with yourself so that you know how to make the best decisions with your money now. Make it a wonderful and prosperous week.