In this episode of FIN-LYT by EWA, Matt Blocki and Jamison Smith discuss how the recent presidential election could shape financial planning and investment strategies. They explore the potential extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, corporate tax rate adjustments, and new opportunities for estate planning. While highlighting how deregulation and tariffs could impact sectors like energy, defense, and infrastructure, they caution against making emotional financial decisions based on political beliefs.
The episode also examines tax-efficient strategies, including Roth conversions and capital gains planning, to help individuals maximize their savings amidst potential policy shifts. International market risks, inflation concerns, and emerging trends in U.S. markets are covered, emphasizing the importance of staying diversified. Throughout, Matt and Jamison encourage listeners to remain focused on long-term goals and proactive financial planning, regardless of political changes.
Welcome to EWA’s FinLit podcast. EWA is a fee only RIA based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We hope all listeners of this podcast will benefit as we deep dive into complex financial topics that we will make simplified for you. And we hope that this really serves as a catalyst so that you can make the best financial planning decisions for your family and also save time. Welcome everybody. Today’s episode joined here by Jamison Smith. We’re talking about the economy, stock market, all the effects that could potentially occur now that the presidential election has been decided. So Jamison, welcome and let’s get rolling.
S
Speaker 2
00:44
Yeah, I think before we dive in, what’s. What’s your take on the Jake Paul, Mike Tyson fight this weekend?
S
Speaker 1
00:50
Oh, that’s a good. I think Jake Paul will win. But I mean, Mike Tyson’s obviously a legend. He’s just. But I mean, Jake Paul is always this. He’s dedicated his life to the boxing now and like he surprised so many people. I’m excited to watch it.
S
Speaker 2
01:04
Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
01:05
Yeah, it’s free too.
S
Speaker 2
01:06
It’s on Netflix. Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
01:07
What do you think?
S
Speaker 2
01:10
I think I like Jake Paul. I think from what I’ve heard, power is the last thing that goes in a boxer. So, you know, Mike Tyson wouldn’t have his speed, but if he connects, he could really get them.
S
Speaker 1
01:22
So it could be over like that Could.
S
Speaker 2
01:24
But yeah, again, I think it’s my opinion, it’s totally speculation. I think it’s. Mike Tyson wants to make money. You know, this probably makes.
S
Speaker 1
01:31
How much they make it? Hundred. Like some crazy.
S
Speaker 2
01:34
I don’t know. I mean, I mean if you look like Tom Brady made 20 million off that roast on Netflix, this is probably bigger than that. Cuz they’re filling up Cowboy Stadium. They did a documentary on it. So like hyping it up 20 to 50. I don’t know.
S
Speaker 1
01:46
Yeah, it’s, it’ll be life changing probably for someone.
S
Speaker 2
01:51
And they’re saying. Mike Tyson was saying this is probably the biggest boxing match ever.
S
Speaker 1
01:55
So in ever history.
S
Speaker 2
01:57
Just because of how promoted. It’s how hyped up it’s been. Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
02:01
Wow.
S
Speaker 2
02:02
I mean, so Jake Paul is like the master just marketer, promoter, hyper.
S
Speaker 1
02:05
Yeah.
S
Speaker 2
02:05
Yeah. So I don’t know. I think that, I think Mike Tyson wants money and Jake Paul wants to win because he wants to keep, you know, keep his career. Good.
S
Speaker 1
02:12
It’s true. Yeah. And that I watched that fight with Fury that. Because he has one loss. Yeah, that was pretty close. I mean, I. Oh, yeah.
S
Speaker 2
02:18
And then he actually so he. He fired all of his coaches after that. Jake Paul. And so they had to, like, rework. He like, had to rework his whole style. They said they, like. He had like a bunch of. The new coach came in. He had like a bunch of just like technique issues, and so they just like, stripped his whole. It’d be like reworking your golf swings from scratch, so that’d be interesting. Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
02:38
He’s fought since then, though.
S
Speaker 2
02:39
He fought in July.
S
Speaker 1
02:40
And one.
S
Speaker 2
02:41
Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
02:41
Okay. What other. What’s your biggest, like, surprise sport in the sports world? I’d say Cavs right now. Undefeated.
S
Speaker 2
02:48
Two to know. That’s insane.
S
Speaker 1
02:50
I may travel out to go see him.
S
Speaker 2
02:51
Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
02:52
Donovan Mitchell. That’s legit.
S
Speaker 2
02:54
Steelers. I mean, they’re surprised.
S
Speaker 1
02:57
Big surprise. But I mean, Steelers always find a way.
S
Speaker 2
03:00
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, the Washington commanders were until.
S
Speaker 1
03:07
Who’s your super. Who’s your super bowl pick? Don’t say the Chiefs.
S
Speaker 2
03:10
I mean, you can’t. You can’t get 9 and 0 with like, what. They’re dealing with injuries. They have like half the roster. So, like, I can’t bet against the Chiefs. The Chiefs. And the NFC is wild.
S
Speaker 1
03:22
I’m saying Lions. I think Lions.
S
Speaker 2
03:23
Yeah. Lions are good. Yeah. Chiefs, Lions could be a good pick. Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
03:27
All right. All right.
S
Speaker 2
03:28
The NFC is just. It’s tough. I mean, it’s. It’s like kind of up in the air. Lions are probably the best team who I want to.
S
Speaker 1
03:36
I want Baker to make the play. The playoffs.
S
Speaker 2
03:38
Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
03:38
They still have a chance, but. Yeah, they dropped a couple close ones. All right. Anyway, should we get into this?
S
Speaker 2
03:43
Yeah, let’s do it.
S
Speaker 1
03:45
Yeah. So let’s just preface, you know, we don’t. We’re not taking any political stance and we recommend part of your financial plan and your investment policy. Do not mix the two. Don’t mix your political beliefs with how you invest. Don’t mix your political beliefs with how you financial plan. With that being said, absolutely. Use the information to educate and inform the decisions to make sure you and your plan is as successful as possible. You’re paying as little taxes as possible, legally speaking, and you’re making as much from an investment return perspective. That’s how we view it, you know, but Republican versus Democrats, very little difference investment returns of the last hundred years. Less than a percent. In fact, I think Democrats leading the Lido by a little bit, return wise, like S&P 500.
S
Speaker 1
04:33
But what’s very clear is you stay invested regardless of what parties and in Office.
S
Speaker 2
04:38
Yeah, I think it’s important. We’re going to look at this very objectively. Like black release, you know, pretty well. Hopefully nobody takes this as like we’re taking aside. We’re going to look at this objectively and see how this could impact things. But it’s just pretty funny after speaking.
S
Speaker 1
04:50
Of sides, like, who did you vote for? Stop. Just kidding. Let’s get into it.
S
Speaker 2
04:56
But I was to say it’s pretty like, even after the election, like, you have people on the left that like, freak out and they think, like, I’ve literally heard, I want to pull my money out of the market. And then you have people on the right that are like, so overly optimistic.
S
Speaker 1
05:09
So it’s like neither is true.
S
Speaker 2
05:10
No, neither are true.
S
Speaker 1
05:11
I think Scott Galloway has this quote, or maybe he took the quote from the book, I forget. But like. And he’s very left leaning. And so that’s kind of who I get my information from. And then on the right, there’s so much. Obviously that’s all you’re going to hear now in the news now that the election’s over. But he has the quote that says, you know, it’s never as good or as bad as it seems. And I love that quote. That’s so true. In life, like, things that are stressful always end up being okay. Like 99 of the time. And then things that are really good end up being not that good. You know, it’s like a nuke. Oh, it’s. Well, it lasts for two days, then it’s over. So the other quote, I’m gonna preface this, Seneca.
S
Speaker 1
05:52
We suffer more in imagination than in reality.
S
Speaker 2
05:55
Imagine.
S
Speaker 1
05:56
Yeah, I think that’s a really important one, is the political. Regardless of political beliefs, there’s. Regardless of what side you’re in, I mean, there’s stress because you’re. At this point, I mean, some people are thinking about moving out of the country, rightfully so, because some of their values are like, at risk right now. They feel like are being attacked. And then, you know, if this is the result you want, you know, you probably have a lot of like, judgment from some friends or family that disagree with you. So it’s a stressful time. We want to acknowledge that.
S
Speaker 1
06:22
But we’re taking the financial planning and investment side and we just hope, you know, in general the company has unity, has peace and can, you know, maintain its strength to be, we believe strongly is the best place to live, raise a family and to, you know, to operate.
S
Speaker 2
06:39
Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, let’s dive in. I think One thing to note, too. So the markets love certainty. And so that’s part of the reason why we’ve seen this, like, run the last two months, two weeks. What people thought was that, like, this election wasn’t going to be decided as quickly as it was, and it would be like some day, you know, a couple of days of uncertainty we’re not going to have. But, like, Trump won decisively and that’s what’s caused this uptick in the bomb. Yeah. But basically, if you look at overview of, like, his agenda and campaign promises, there’s a couple of just like key points. Again, let’s also preface, like, this all has to get passed. Yeah. He has control.
S
Speaker 1
07:18
Educational.
S
Speaker 2
07:19
Yeah. So this not like all this stuff could just never get passed if none of this happens.
S
Speaker 1
07:26
So it’s likely that some change will occur, being that the Senate and the.
S
Speaker 2
07:30
House are now at least for the next two years. Yeah, yeah.
S
Speaker 1
07:32
Republican.
S
Speaker 2
07:33
But the main promises are tax cuts, deportation, tariffs, deregulation, inflation reduction. So we’ll take a deep dive into those and how that will impact investing, financial planning. But, Matt, why don’t we start with what’s the lay of the land with tax cuts, the tax environment, what the tax code is like.
S
Speaker 1
07:50
Yeah. So in 2017, Trump passes, when he was in the office, his first terms, huge, this Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And so I think part of the negotiation to get it passed was it was going, it was temporary. It was end of 2020, 2025 is the last calendar year, 2026, that reset back to what it was under Obama. And so I think one of the first agenda items is they’re going to look to just extend those tax cuts. So the big things, like from a simplistic basis for individuals is just the tax brackets were cut for, you know, higher income earners. Like 39.6% was cut to 37. And how much of a Runway you had for some of the lower and middle brackets kind of, you know, extended. So definitely a cut for, you know, generally speaking, for middle and upper class. That’s.
S
Speaker 1
08:41
Some people had a big problem with this. I was like, this is a tax cut for rich people because, you know, some of the biggest tax cuts were shaving 2.6% off of anything. I think it’s over 700,000 right now. It could be a big deal for someone making a couple million a year. The other one that’s going to affect the stock market was he cut the corporate tax rates down dramatically. The market you saw going up even before the election, they Were pricing in Trump when is because if tax rates are cut, the belief is that corporations have more free cash flow. More free cash flow rises profits, more profits drive price to earning ratios and that’s what stock prices are driven by. And so there’s a belief now that those tax rates will stay at 21 or even be cut down to 15.
S
Speaker 1
09:26
Yeah. His proposal now I believe is 15. So that could be good news for stock market investors. But I just want to look historically, I don’t think it matters as much as the stock market typically moves, like expecting what’s going to happen in six months. And so even when corporate tax rates are really high, I just want to remind people like corporations have, and this is just an opinion. I think a lot of like governmental workers, they’ll make like a big case and then they’ll go find a corporate job. And so like the really good people end up, you know, the smartest people in the world, I believe are usually part of corporations, not government. So the point is they can figure out high tax brackets, low tax brackets. Corporations over decades have figured out how to make it work.
S
Speaker 1
10:18
So I think the tax rates are important to consider, but I don’t want to overblow it because even if tax rates went back up, corporations would figure it out.
S
Speaker 2
10:26
Yeah, they figure out some way to navigate, they’re still going to be profitable.
S
Speaker 1
10:30
Yeah. What else from a tax perspective, Jameson?
S
Speaker 2
10:32
Yeah, I would say the one thing to one of the big rebuttals or devil’s advocate to any of the tax stuff is that it’ll increase the deficit. So more debt, which I don’t know this for sure. I think when Trump was in office four years, the deficit went up because he cut the taxes. And so basically there has to be something to counter. You have to cut spending somewhere to make up for that. So that’s like the biggest question. But things like, so as far as financial planning, I mean the estate exemption is really high, $13 million person. Ish. That probably will stay for another four years. There’s a lot of talks to bring that down. So there’s a planning opportunity, like you said, low income tax rates and then capital gains rates are favorable compared to where they were historically.
S
Speaker 2
11:19
Other things he talked about was like exempting tips from taxes, exempting Social Security benefits from taxes and having deductions on car loans and increased like state and local tax deductions. So will that get past? Who knows? But the big thing is, could be a window of opportunity the next like four years to do some strategic tax planning, especially around estate exemption. If you’re in that net worth ballpark.
S
Speaker 1
11:41
Yes, it’s interesting. Exempting tips not to get too much in. I can, you know, I can see pros and cons for all of these exempting tips. You, you kind of make it more attractive for people to stay in that industry. And that’s, you know, obviously a services based industry. It’s amazing. I’ve. There’s nothing better than having like an amazing waiter, you know, good. And they can do very well. So exempting tips could be a game changer for a lot of families. I could see it as a detraction away from, you know, higher education. If they’re like, well, I can just go there and make the same as I would. I don’t have to take out school loans. I could see that as a pro and a con on both sides. Exempting Social Security benefits. You know, this one kind of undecided about.
S
Speaker 1
12:20
Social Security is a tax you pay into your whole life. Then you go to take the money out and you get tax on it again. And it’s either if you’re really low income, then it’s tax free or 50% of it’s taxable. But most people, it’s 85% of your Social Security benefits become taxable to you again. So I think it makes a logical sense that they’re not taxed. But we really have to examine the. So the majority of Social Security benefits just for most people. You read this clickbait articles. The trust fund is going to run out in the next, you know, whatever, 10 years.
S
Speaker 1
12:49
I don’t have the exact date offhand, but you have to realize most of it, like over two thirds of it funded from free cash flows of people like me and you that are funding the Social Security system and funding it out. So that’s not as big of a deal as people hype it. I know it gets weaponized a lot between candidates of like, you’re going to take your social. Social Security is not going away. 95% of people, and I’m sorry, two thirds of the population that’s retired right now. Like if you take their Social Security benefits away, they just can’t live.
S
Speaker 2
13:17
That’s one. When I was doing the research on this, that was one of the things that, you know, there’s all this talk of like, they’re gonna go in and clean up government, officially cut a bunch of spending. But I like really only goes so far from my research. Majority of the like spending in the government. I Don’t know. I don’t know if I want to say majority because I don’t know the stats. But a lot of it’s tied up in entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare. And Democrats and Republicans both agree that like there’s nothing you can do because some people rely on it.
S
Speaker 1
13:44
And I think some people with poor planning unfortunately or you know, just let’s face it, I mean the zip code you’re born into can affect your lifespan by 20 years plus. Right. So some people just didn’t have the opportunity. Some people have been more blessed from a financial perspective. But most everybody has Social Security benefits. I do think for it’s a way to really. Because you’ve seen a big shift of like the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer. And I think this taking the Social Security tax off away would be that basically the first time you are taking some money probably from the rich into the poor. So you fund the system by probably increasing the Social Security wage base for higher income earners or cutting, you know, we’re going to talk about the deregulation, all this other stuff or.
S
Speaker 1
14:29
But if you think about it, someone that’s maxed out in Social Security, they’re using their Social Security to eat up the first 10, the 12% tax bracket. So if you’re pulling 50 a year from Social Security and you’re married, you know, it’s probably five or six grand of saving. And if you’re a multimillionaire, is five or six grand going to help you? Like. No, that’s like a day of stock market involved. It’s nothing. But for a low income earner that has like a net worth under a million dollars, that’s going to save three or four grand. That could be life changing. An extra three or four hundred dollars a month for someone that’s living paycheck to paycheck in retirement. Life changing. So I actually, I do like the Social Security benefits. Taking the tax away. Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
15:12
And then what was the other one? The other one was. Yeah. So tips and the deductions for car loan interest in state and local taxes. Yeah, that I’d say that’s a very highly speculative.
S
Speaker 2
15:27
Yeah. Because what the salt tax capped at 10,000. I think it was uncapped before or maybe was higher. I know that was part of when the 2017 tax credit got capped at 10.
S
Speaker 1
15:36
Yeah. Was to recoup.
S
Speaker 2
15:38
Yeah.
S
Speaker 1
15:39
Some of the, some of the lost. The lost IRS money from the lower the brackets. So.
S
Speaker 2
15:44
Anything else on taxes?
S
Speaker 1
15:46
No. It’ll It’ll be interesting to see. And then he, I think, did it go. So Vivek and Elon Musk have been part of like the government efficiency. So they’re cutting. So it’ll be interesting. I read one article that was like, I think he wants to like not get rid of, like almost get rid of the irs. I’m like, what?
S
Speaker 2
16:05
Yeah, yeah, that’s one thing we can talk about. The deregulation is like, they’re really coming after the sec, the irs, like all these government agencies, they’re trying to just.
S
Speaker 1
16:14
Yeah. And I think, yeah, listen, there’s got to be church and state, there’s got to be accountability. But it’ll be interesting to see, you know, can this be simplified? Can we see more of a level playing field? And again, I’m not giving away my political beliefs here. I’m just thinking this is just human nature. Empathy 101. Does someone worth a billion dollars need $2 billion? Probably not. Someone living paycheck to paycheck need, you know, a couple hundred dollars a month. Yeah. So I mean, I, hopefully there can be an efficiency of, you know, instead of finding getting people speeding tickets or going two miles over the. I’m just using that as analogy. From the IRS perspective, we can focus on the kind of the big picture of the wealth gap that exists in America.
S
Speaker 1
16:54
Yeah, so, yeah, but yeah, it’ll be interesting to see lots of. So just in summary, from a tax perspective, like financial planning, it’s super important to know this, to work with an advisor that can navigate you through it to maximize tax savings, more money in your pocket. And then obviously from a stock market perspective, we’re monitoring it very closely from what companies are going to be set up, but we’ll get into that later for success.
S
Speaker 2
17:16
Yeah, for sure.
S
Speaker 1
17:17
You know, one of the big things that Trump used as a selling point, I guess would be the tariffs, how he’s going to slap those on, like China as an example. And then the other side was essentially like, no, this is going to hurt the middle class net. They did some studies, I think a couple thousand, 4,000 years and hurt like middle class families. So talk about this, how could it affect individuals, the stock market, etc. And what’s the purpose behind it?
S
Speaker 2
17:41
Yeah, the big question is, will it increase inflation if you’re putting tariffs on goods that are coming in, somebody has to pay for that. Or the increase prices if importers eat the costs, which probably unlikely, but one thing is like in his first term, a lot of that was just used as a threat when you’re negotiating. There were some things that got put in place with Mexico and China. China’s what he says is different because it’s, there’s a military threat, but in general it’ll be to be determined if that’s actually going to get put into law or if we’ll just be like a negotiating threat with other negotiating tactics with other countries. But yeah, the main question is will it increase inflation?
S
Speaker 2
18:15
Generally speaking, yeah, tariffs increase the price of the goods that you buy that are coming in. But there are things that could counteract that. And one would be like if the US Dollar rises in value, that could offset some of the inflation. So to be determined. But one of the, basically the big thing to watch is inflation.
S
Speaker 1
18:33
Gotcha. Okay. The next thing is he put, I believe Elon Musk and Vivek on his Committee for Governmental Efficiency. So one of the things that they’re pushing pretty hard for is deregulation. Pros and cons of this, obviously the con being more deregulate. People are greedy, corporations are greedy and there’s not as much accountability in place. But on the flip side is there’s a lot of inefficiencies that exist with these different agencies. Sometimes they’re just looking for speeding tickets one or two miles over, just as an example. And are they just revenue generating agencies or are they actually, you know, catching bad guys? It’s kind of the thought process out there. So what are some of the biggest industries that they’re looking at for deregulation? How do we see this affecting the stock market?
S
Speaker 2
19:22
Overall? The big thing or the big sector is energy, deregulating energy. But the, yeah, there’s a lot of attack on government agencies. Good or bad, who knows. But basically the impacts could be lower cost to businesses, so businesses wouldn’t, you know, have as much costs and compliance and regulation fees, increased competition with an industry. So lower barrier to entry if there’s less regulation, which could create competition. Would create competition and then you could see different sectors begin to grow. So like in the last two weeks, banking stocks have gone up because banking is obviously a really regulated industry. And if regulations stripped back, they could be more profitable. But finance, energy, tech’s another one. Tech’s very highly regulated. If some regulation gets stripped back, tech stocks could increase.
S
Speaker 2
20:14
And from my understanding of this, short term there could be some price rise in stocks, but could create long term volatility because there would just be more competition within these industries. There’s a Lower barrier to entry. So could. Could create some sector plays investment. But yeah, I guess that’s kind of.
S
Speaker 1
20:30
Yeah, it’s interesting. I think one way to look at this is like the heavy regulation. One of the things that people are worried about, rightfully so, is that there’s monopolies that exist like Facebook, Google, like, you know, they’re able to block certain. Like it’s very hard to be a competitor. But if you deregulate, then you can have more bad actors. But at the same time then you could potentially take some of those powerhouses down. It’s kind of like the government has aided in a way. They fought them, but they’ve almost aided away at helping them become monopoly because when it’s so regulated, it’s. It’s hard for a small fish to even get up and running. Yeah. And compete. So that could be again, pros and cons, any of this and you know, on both sides obviously would argue both ways.
S
Speaker 1
21:11
So I think the other. What, what else, if anything on deregulation would you see we should be looking out for? Obviously from a portfolio perspective, we have. Infrastructure is a concentrated holding. We have. We’re tilted towards growth, which would mean more tech over value at this point, which we’ll see benefiting under the next four years. Anything else to talk before we move to inflation?
S
Speaker 2
21:36
No, I think it’s really just watching what actually gets passed and how that impacts the industries and then, you know, different sectors could become more favorable.
S
Speaker 1
21:43
Absolutely. Okay, so inflation, you know, he’s come out and said overall goal is want to keep inflation down. What are we seeing out there as far as proposals and other policies could have an effect on this being true or not true.
S
Speaker 2
22:00
It’ll be interesting if like the tariffs, for example, like tariffs could increase inflation. Will he pull back on that if it’s going to. Right. You know, if the inflation starts to go up. But in general, I mean, deregulation generally would decrease inflation. Lower energy prices with deregulation would decrease inflation. Lower taxes could help inflation. Interest rates could. And then if the tariffs are successful in raising inflation, that could also spark rising interest rates. Interest rates, which could be unfavorable for a lot of reasons, but totally speculating on inflation. We really have no idea.
S
Speaker 1
22:35
Yeah, but it’s been a hot topic. Yeah. Because the record levels we saw after Covid affected a lot of people. So. Okay, well just to summarize, so you know, we’ve got taxes, sector investing. We want to talk about like markets outside of the US Tech and moment. So just taxes, I mean estate planning opportunities. If that gets extended past 2026, when it’s set to sunset, then really high net worth people have the Runway to do more thoughtful planning over a long period of time to get those exemptions utilized if they have the means to do so. It also means that the percentage of the population that would need something like an irrevocable trust older right now would decrease. We would still think for someone younger as a top 1 percenter should still be considering long term.
S
Speaker 1
23:25
They’re probably going to outgrow because with so much of the political power shift right now, that means usually in 4, 8, 12 years there’s going to be a shift back. So these things can ebb and flow. So if you’re young, you really say, oh, it’s increased. Well, that could change dramatically again if there’s a shift in power. The lower capital gain rates, we may want to look at intentionally realizing capital gains because the other side was saying we’re going to increase them to income rates for some high income earners. Roth conversions, Roth planning, if it’s still, you know, tax code continues to permit. And then we could see some additional tax benefits for small businesses that we’ll keep our eye on. So James, just summarize some of the sector investing.
S
Speaker 2
24:05
Yeah, like we mentioned energy, defense, infrastructure, finance. I mean anything that could benefit from this. You could see an uptick in stock prices mainly from deregulation and infrastructure spending. Defense spending, things like that. How are we implementing that and how have we implemented that portfolio?
S
Speaker 1
24:25
Yeah, so we’ve introduced right after the election we introduced a small position in gold. That’s more some of the bank regulations and what’s happening internationally. I address that in detail there. So infrastructure, we have a direct obviously exposure there on top of the natural exposure you’d have in some of the index ones. We have that specific fund and the energy and defense. It’ll be really, I think a momentum play. If some of the regulations happen, we have a specific factor investing in several of the funds, but the momentum will really pick that up as well.
S
Speaker 2
24:58
Yeah. And then international emerging markets could create some risks and uncertainty with the tariffs and everything. But generally if people think the dollar will increase, who knows, value of foreign investments begin to decrease because when you convert that money back to the US dollar, it’s worthless.
S
Speaker 1
25:16
So we’re staying with our over to domestic US investments versus international. So we’re overweight us and also we’re excluding China from the emerging markets strongly because of what’s going on in their economy right now, population crisis, real estate crisis and then also obviously not good relationship right now with the US I.
S
Speaker 2
25:37
Would say just to sum it all up, the big takeaway is don’t make any emotional irrational decisions based on political beliefs and stay diversified. If you hit all the asset classes it’s harder to lose.
S
Speaker 1
25:49
Well, good news is this was educational only. We’re going to be keeping a close eye on obviously taxes, how it affects your financial plan, then obviously the market everything portfolio we’ll be addressing as we go as well. But please reach out with any questions and look forward to catching everyone next week. Thanks for tuning in to our podcast. Hopefully you found this helpful. Really hope this is as beneficial and impactful to as many people across the nation as possible. So hit the follow button. Make sure to rate the podcast and please share with any friends or family members that would also find this beneficial. Thank you very much.
In 15 minutes we can get to know you – your situation, goals and needs – then connect you with an advisor committed to helping you pursue true wealth.
EWA, LLC dba Equilibrium Wealth Advisors, is an SEC-registered investment advisory firm providing investment advisory and financial planning services to clients.
Investments in securities and insurance products are not insured by any state or federal agency.
To view EWA’s public disclosure, registration, Form ADV and Part 2B’s, click here.
To view EWA’s Client Relationship Summary (CRS), click here.