#100 – AI Takes Center Stage: Market Trends, Economic Signals, And The Stories Shaping Money Today

Wes Moss [00:00:47]:
I wonder, were you on the list? CONNOR miller, I don’t think I quite.

Connor Miller [00:00:52]:
Cracked the top five. Hopefully I was like six though. It just wasn’t mentioned.

Wes Moss [00:00:57]:
So in the running, though, Jensen Huang, who is Nvidia CEO, he was, I think, part of the some of the high profile folks that I guess the betting markets were thinking might end up being the front runners for Time Person of the Year. Sam Altman, of course, this, I mean, AI has been in the news and in the, in the public discourse now for three years, but it just keeps ramping higher and I think we’re continuing to see that this year. So Time magazine has named, quote, the architects of AI as the 2025 Person of the Year. So it’s not a single individual, it’s not a group of researchers, it’s the collective of the architects and the scientists and the mathematicians and the coders that have essentially changing the world right before our eyes. When it comes to AI, look no further than the deal Disney of all companies just did this past Thursday. That is, it’s, it’s the first of its kind and we’re going to talk about that today. Before we do that, though, let’s talk markets for a minute here. The Fed had a meeting, of course, this past week, lowered rates again.

Wes Moss [00:02:12]:
We’re going to call it a hawkish cut. I want to know what that means to you. According to the Kobayashi letter. Is that how I say that? Kobayashi letter on I love to follow on Twitter, looks like the number of 401k accounts with balances of $1 million or more is up about 10% quarter over quarter, record 650,000 accounts. Now, that’s according to Fidelity. I don’t know if that’s just Fidelity or nationally, but it’s a big number. The average 401k balance is up about 9%. Again, that kind of, that tracks to an all time high of 144,400 bucks.

Wes Moss [00:02:54]:
The average IRA balance up about 7% year over year to a record of 137. So the all time high, that looks like the average 401k balances jump year over year to 144. Well, let’s call it around 140 grand. That’s the average balance. But we’ve got lots and lots of millionaires as far as just their 401k accounts. And then our famous, We’ve talked about this the last time the Fed cut because the stock market was within 2% of all time high, which is exactly where we are now. And if you look at the statistics around what happens to markets a year after or six months after the Fed cuts and we’re already close to an all time high, what do those numbers show us?

Connor Miller [00:03:42]:
A lot of green. So if you go one year out, on average the market’s 14% higher when the Fed cuts with that’s within 2% of an all time high. And then 100% of the time, again, historically speaking, 100% of the time, the market has been higher 12 months after the Fed cut.

Wes Moss [00:04:02]:
This is going all the way back to 1980. So this is, we’re setting ourselves up, at least historically, for a good period of time. Here’s a statistic from around the MAG 7. So the MAG 7 a couple of years ago, that was the only, that was, that was the only game in town. Last year we started to get a little bit more balance. And then this year, interestingly, five out of the seven stocks that are in the magnificent seven. Right. So we’ve got, we’ve got Amazon and Apple and Tesla and Meta and Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, five of the seven are underperforming the S&P 500 this year.

Wes Moss [00:04:37]:
That’s a very different picture than 2023, 2024. Only two have outperformed those two, Nvidia and Google so far outpacing the S&P 500.

Connor Miller [00:04:51]:
Yeah, this year has been definitely more of a broad based rally that we’ve seen than a couple years ago really. In 2023, the MAG7, I think accounted for north of 80% of the overall return in the S&P 500. We did some quick math before the show and at this point still only about a third of market participants or index members are outperforming the S&P 500. But what I found to be most interesting is that about half of the index is up more than 10% on the year, which is a good sign for balanced diversified investors.

Wes Moss [00:05:28]:
So 50% of the stocks in the S&P 500, let’s call it about 250 are up at least 10%.

Connor Miller [00:05:35]:
Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:05:36]:
And then a third of stocks in The S&P 500 have done better than the average itself. If you go back over historically though, what is that number normally?

Connor Miller [00:05:45]:
Connor Miller It’s a little bit south of 50%. Call it 45% usually of index members outperform the index. But again that could be years where the market’s down, years where the market’s only up 5%. I think the most positive sign is that stat where about half of the members are up more than 10%.

Wes Moss [00:06:04]:
It’s also interesting to see I’m looking at one of a dividend grower etf. So this would be. These are stocks that have five years worth of dividend growth in order to be included in the, let’s call this index or this ETF that is tracked and I think of that as the dividend stock market, if you will, is tracked very well with the S&P 500 this year. It’s not, it hasn’t kept quite up with the S&P 500, but it’s very, very close. And dividend stocks as a unit, depending on which ETF you look at, have done even a little bit better than the Dow. Also if you look at the aggregate bond index, include total return, of course, and include the interest that’s in the 7% range as well. So a good year if you’re looking at growth stocks, but also a good year if you’re looking at value in dividend stocks. And also a pretty darn good year if you’re looking at safety assets, which in a balanced portfolio would be the bond side of the equation, the dry powder side of the equation.

Wes Moss [00:07:05]:
That part has done pretty well too well.

Connor Miller [00:07:07]:
This makes me think back to remember the shows we did.

Wes Moss [00:07:10]:
60, 40 dead.

Connor Miller [00:07:11]:
60, 40 is dead.

Wes Moss [00:07:13]:
Well, not this year.

Connor Miller [00:07:14]:
In 2025 it certainly has not been balanced. Investors have done really well.

Wes Moss [00:07:20]:
What do you think about the Fed this week to the Fed cut? And it’s a hawkish cut. There’s dissents. What does that really mean for Americans?

Connor Miller [00:07:29]:
With this idea of a hawkish cut was really centered around the fact that there was wide expectations going into the meeting that the Fed was going to cut by a quarter of 1%, continuing their rate cutting trajectory. And then the hawkish piece of this comes in from the fact of well, how what were they going to signal for next year? And I believe the FOMC signaled maybe one more rate cut next year. Right now the market’s pricing in two more quarter point cuts. And so just hawkish from the standpoint of you got your cut, but we’re really not going to give you any more information and we’re going to be data dependent moving forward from there.

Wes Moss [00:08:07]:
And they always say data dependent. But I kind of took the message from Powell as hey look, we basically told you we’re going to cut, so we needed to cut. I called a quarter of a percent. Ryan producer Ryan Doolittle would call it 25 bips, which I think he’s also named his dog. Bips, as in basis points, a quarter of a percent, but don’t expect another one. That’s kind of what I’m getting now. What we also know will happen in May. We’re going to see a new Fed chair.

Wes Moss [00:08:35]:
We don’t know exactly who that person is yet. We have a pretty good idea that they’re going to be at least very open to even lower rates. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that mortgage rates are going to go lower. If you take a look at the way interest rates work, the Fed controls short term rates, but the general economic health of America is what dictates longer term rates. They don’t have a way to push the 10 year treasury rate up or down. They have no control over that. All they can do is the essentially a very short term, call it the 30 day rate or the overnight rate, but a very short term part of the interest rate universe. And mortgages are predicated on the ten year.

Wes Moss [00:09:18]:
And mortgage rates today are around six, call it six and a quarter, 6.2 and the ten year treasury is at about 4.1 and it hasn’t gone down like Americans would want it to. So I, I’m not holding my breath at this point, particularly if Powell were to stay as the head of the Fed chair to see dramatically lower interest rates. I think we are stuck in a range now for the foreseeable future.

Connor Miller [00:09:44]:
Well, and again, just look back to the last time they cut interest rates a couple months ago. So now they’ve cut half of 1% over the last couple months. Long term rates though really haven’t moved, haven’t budged. The 10 year treasury is in basically the same spot as it was to that point.

Wes Moss [00:10:00]:
Now there’s implications in a lot of different ways to look at this. I think that’s a, I would say a mildly good development for bond investors. And yes, if you’re a bond investor, you want rates to go down so the price of your bonds go up. But really as a long term bond investor, stability of interest rates is good in my opinion. So wild swings higher I don’t like for a bond investor as prices will go down when the seesaw goes the other direction. And when rates come down, sure it helps buoy bond prices a little bit. But we’ve been in this range where the 10 year has been stuck at that 4% level to 4 and a half. And I don’t see that changing dramatically.

Wes Moss [00:10:42]:
If you look at where the economy is, there are so many different pieces of the equation to look at. Just for the labor market, which is the other half of the mandate for the Fed, it’s stable prices or inflation and it’s the labor market and labor. There’s a balance. If you look at jolts, which are job openings, labor turnover that is matching well with open jobs and people looking. So we’re equilibrium there. The jobless claims are just. The last report was under 200,000, which is a really low number. That’s the lowest we’ve seen in several years.

Wes Moss [00:11:15]:
The rate is still in that for less than 4.5%. The unemployment rate and continuing claims are, I would say, in a relatively healthy spot. Labor force participation has basically stayed where it is. And then wage gains, even though they’ve come down a little bit, they’re still outpacing inflation. So you look at all that and you say, well, the job market is really not that bad. The only reason the Fed should really cut rates is if the job market turns negative and we’re starting to eye a recession. I just don’t think we’re eyeing a recession at this point. If you look at the tracker for recession probability, a couple of years ago it was at 60%.

Wes Moss [00:11:52]:
Today it’s at less than 5%.

Connor Miller [00:11:54]:
And the way we’ve been looking at this the entire time is yes, the Fed is technically cutting, but we really view this as interest rate normalization. So when you look back at history, the fed funds rate or the discount rate or the overnight borrowing rate, usually about 1% over the rate of inflation and then the 10 year is usually about 1% above that. And we’re getting much more in line with the historical norm.

Wes Moss [00:12:16]:
The architects of AI may be the Time Person of the Year, but CIA’s Person of the Year, the Mike Reiner Award, this year goes to the one and only here in the studio, Connor Miller, Chief Investment Officer. Connor, congratulations. Well deserved. Technically, there’s a little bit of time left because December 15th is the cutoff for the open enrollment period to get coverage under the Affordable Health Care under Health Care Gov, if you want coverage by January 1st, if you miss it, then you have until January 15th to enroll to get coverage by February 1st. If you’re looking at the the health care marketplace, Connor Miller, is health care confusing. You are the chief investment officer this capital but you are capital investment advisors. But health care is a whole nother world, isn’t it?

Connor Miller [00:13:11]:
If you think investments is complicated. Health care to me is just a whole different arena.

Wes Moss [00:13:16]:
I spent some time with it this week just helping a family go through and look at different health care options. And we all know that Cobra, they were faced with paying Cobra and Cobra is it was like $2,500 a month. And we’ve had this consternation between what the subsidies will be and that’s what the whole government shutdown was about. And I think I now I probably understand that a little bit more than I did during the middle of the government shutdown. When you’re starting to compare prices, you look at if you go to health care.gov and here in the state of Georgia, you’re going to end up use it’s Georgia, we have our own health care plan, but it’s essentially very similar to to the federal plan. The Kaiser foundation website, kff.org does a really good job of showing you you plug in your numbers and you say what you have to say what your income will be over the next year. So for 2026, it’ll give you what if you get an enhanced premium, as in healthcare premiums, you get the enhanced healthcare premium tax credit or just without the enhanced premium tax credits which are expiring at the end of this year unless something radical happens with Congress, which I don’t expect it to happen. If you are in let’s call it you’re a family with a couple of kids or you’re a single parent with a couple of kids and you’re looking at let’s say your income is 40,000 or 45,000, you’re going to have a really massive supplement.

Wes Moss [00:14:47]:
So your health care, I’m not going to say it’s going to be $0 per month, but it would be from my calculations, 90 to 95% less than having to pay for cover. And it’s not as daunting. So you can use the Kaiser Family foundation as a calculator. That’s kff.org you can go directly to healthcare.gov and look at this. And if you’re looking for where it does get even more complicated is that there are only certain healthcare companies that are going to be available in your county. And then once you let’s say there’s eight of them, then each of them will have a gold, silver and bronze plan. Then each one of those will have different iterations on the amount of max out of pocket and premium. So you may end up with 100 different choices.

Wes Moss [00:15:35]:
You either want to utilize someone and talk with someone through healthcare.gov or find an independent and this is what I use healthcare provider or healthcare expert that can help walk you through all those coverage options and then most importantly, to make sure that your doctors are included. The plan that you choose and maybe some of the big ticket prescription drugs that you know you need also included in the plan. More money matter straight ahead. Our team’s 2025 study of retirees found that happy retirees are two times more likely versus unhappy retirees to simply have a written retirement plan. Just think, you may be able to double your likelihood of happiness by simply taking an hour to sit down and put pen to paper. If you’d like a financial advisor to help you tackle the trickier questions that need answers, reach out to our team@yourwealth.com that’s y o u r wealth.com they snubbed you on Person of the Year Time Person of the Year. Connor for the quote architects of AI.

Connor Miller [00:16:49]:
I went to Polymarket. I didn’t see my name or yours on the list of candidates you could bet on.

Wes Moss [00:16:56]:
Here were the last couple winners. So 2021, it was Elon Musk for the influence over space flight, electric vehicles, tech, et cetera. 2022 was Vladimir Zelensky and the quote, Spirit of Ukraine. 2023, so we go from billionaire to world leader to Taylor Swift. Producer Mallory wouldn’t argue with that. I wonder that was her ERAS tour. So that was just the economic impact of era. Remember, you had to know when the Federal Reserve was talking about Taylor Swift concerts that she was in the running.

Wes Moss [00:17:38]:
2024, our current president, Donald Trump, he was recognized for his big political comeback in shaping US politics. And then 2025, not just a person, but all of a sudden now who really gets credit for that though? I mean, it’s a little bit like everybody gets a trophy. If you’re in AI, you’re part of the Time Person of the Year. All right, so speaking of, and this goes to the theme of AI, the army of American productivity. And I love when we see new economic developments and new industries and new versions of industries that we have never seen before that just didn’t exist only a little while ago. It’s because it’s hard to even come up with these now. I will get Ben Affleck credit on this. I remember over a year ago seeing him interviewed about AI and he said exactly what’s happening right now.

Wes Moss [00:18:34]:
He said the studios are going to have to license out their characters and their people to let the world be creators and then they’ll harness that creativity to get better content. That’s what he said. And that’s exactly or to some extent what’s happening right here. This is all about Disney and it’s OpenAI. Connor Miller and I know you, you do a lot of Disney. Not only do you go to the parks, but you have probably watch all of these characters.

Connor Miller [00:19:02]:
It’s a nightly staple in our house, having Disney, Disney.

Wes Moss [00:19:07]:
So here’s what’s happening. This is a blockbuster deal where the company, which is Disney in this case, just struck a three year partnership with OpenAI. That’s the parent company of GPT or ChatGPT, that lets users create these short little videos and images featuring more than 200 Disney characters. So now they are licensed and they say, they’re saying, here you go. If you log into your GPT and you go to their version of video creation, which I believe is core, I tried to do this, but it was our enterprise account, I couldn’t do it. You can now use the Disney characters, the Pixar characters, the Marvel characters, the Star wars characters, all to make little movies if you want. Now, I guess all of that for a billion dollar equity investment in OpenAI. So not only are they allowing this partnership and they’re allowing these characters to be used, they are.

Wes Moss [00:20:09]:
Now they’re going to own a piece of OpenAI. Now what do you do with that? Well, on the surface, is it just to create these short little videos? What does that really mean? What are they going to do? Well, now you can. Well, it’s the characters first of all, not the voices. So you may get Woody from Toy Story and you can make a movie using Woody here in the studio.

Connor Miller [00:20:33]:
Let’s say you don’t get Tom Hanks though.

Wes Moss [00:20:35]:
But you don’t get Tom. You don’t get Tom Hanks. Exactly. Then Disney is going to, and who knows, they’re going to be millions of these short videos created and Disney’s going to filter the top 10 of them and they’re going to put them on Disney plus and I bet you some of them will be fascinating and funny and great. So now they’re, they have the World as a creator for them. And this is just the beginning. This is 20 seconds. Pretty soon it’ll be 20 minutes.

Wes Moss [00:21:03]:
Pretty soon it’ll be two hours. And now everyone is a filmmaker around the world.

Connor Miller [00:21:09]:
Not to go on a tangent, I feel like the biggest thing that I’ve been blown away by the last couple months with AI is the video generation. You remember that video of Will Smith a couple years ago eating spaghetti and his hands were all wrong. It was all over the place. Someone just released that, an updated version, and it looks like it was an actual video of him eating a bowl of pasta. The other thing I think I’ve seen more recently is that the faces are on purpose less perfect. So it looks like an actual person with skin that’s not perfect. It doesn’t look like a doll, if you will. Like a year ago an AI person looked a little bit fake. They were all too perfect. Today it looks like a real person.

Wes Moss [00:21:32]:
And the other thing I think I’ve seen more recently is that the faces are on purpose less perfect. So it looks like an actual person with skin that’s not perfect. It doesn’t look like a doll, if you will. Like a year ago an AI person looked a little bit fake. They were all too perfect. Today it looks like a real person.

Connor Miller [00:21:55]:
That’s right. It looked like AI a year ago. Today it looks real.

Wes Moss [00:21:59]:
So from what I can see is that on the money side, first of all, Disney gets a big stake in OpenAI and maybe that’s worth a ton of money in the future licensing income every time a character of theirs shows up on Sora. So evidently OpenAI will be paying Disney for this is a licensing fee. And then who knows the marketing boost of all these fan made clips to maybe drive more engagement. As if the Miller family needs more engagement on Disney on any given evening. Now what does it mean for creators? It means that everybody can be a creator as long as you want to if you log in. I don’t. I wonder, is Sora only pay? Connor, do we know that? I remember using Sora without even paying, but that could have changed. And now I can’t use it because I have an enterprise account and it’s not allowed.

Wes Moss [00:22:52]:
At least right now it’s not allowed. But here, here’s another thing I looked up. So you get the characters. So again, you want to log into Sora, you can go create your movie clip. So who are some of these characters? Of course it’s Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Cinderella, Ariel from Little Mermaid. Some of these I didn’t really know because we haven’t watched all of these movies because I have all boys in my house, you have all girls. So my list that I don’t know, you probably know and vice versa. But Belle from Beauty and the Beast, you probably have seen that one.

Wes Moss [00:23:23]:
Yeah, we have Not Simba and Mufasa. I obviously. That sounds like the Lion King. Lilo which I don’t really know.

Connor Miller [00:23:33]:
Lilo.

Wes Moss [00:23:33]:
Lilo and Stitch, I’ve heard of them.

Connor Miller [00:23:35]:
They just remade it with a live action version earlier this year.

Wes Moss [00:23:38]:
When you say live action humans or.

Connor Miller [00:23:40]:
Yeah, humans. They did a animated movie 20 years ago, and they just did the live action.

Wes Moss [00:23:46]:
What was the actor? Like, an actual actor? Not a. Not a generated actor.

Connor Miller [00:23:52]:
No, like a little kid like Luke Will.

Wes Moss [00:23:54]:
I mean, these are kids.

Connor Miller [00:23:55]:
Stitch. Stitch was like an CGI generated doll.

Wes Moss [00:24:01]:
With a real person. Got it. And then you have Elsa. I have no idea who that is. Iron Man. I definitely know who that is. Black Panther. T’.

Wes Moss [00:24:10]:
Challa. Captain America. See, I know all these guys. Thor, Loki, Groot. Darth Vader, Yoga. But here was the question. What do you do, Thor? How do you utilize Thor? Thor’s a real person. His name’s Chris Hemsworth.

Wes Moss [00:24:25]:
Probably the best Marvel character that’s ever been created. But it doesn’t. You’re not getting Chris Hemsworth. It’s a cartoon version of Thor and the cartoon version of Loki, et cetera. Groot, I guess, is a cartoon. So you just go into Sora, you put in what scene you’d like to look at. Maybe you throw in Dumbo. You throw in Chip and Dale, the Chipmunks, Remy for maybe Ratatouille.

Wes Moss [00:24:54]:
And you create your own video. You create your own scene. So this is a brand new thing in the world as of this week. It’s incredible. This is an example of us saying a year ago and two years ago that we know AI is going to continue to do great things, but we don’t know exactly what it’s going to be. This is one of those things. This is one of those moments. So imagine we wanted to do a Money Matters clip in studio, and we say, okay, it’s going to be Groot, and it’s going to be Snow White.

Wes Moss [00:25:21]:
So I’m going to be Groot, and you’re going to be Snow White. And I’m going to come in and say, good morning, welcome to Money Matters. Except that doesn’t happen, because Groot only says one thing. He says, I’m Groot, and Snow White.

Connor Miller [00:25:35]:
Says, oh, Groot, you’re absolutely right. I thought about doing this tomorrow.

Wes Moss [00:25:37]:
You’re Snow White here.

Connor Miller [00:25:38]:
Yeah, I’m not going to do the voice, but you’re absolutely right. Markets have been climbing like one of your happiest trees lately. Welcome, everybody, to Money Matters. I’m Snow White, filling in with my wonderful co host here.

Wes Moss [00:25:50]:
I’m Groot.

Connor Miller [00:25:53]:
Exactly. Groot says, it’s a good reminder not to let short term market noise scare you out of long term growth. Smart advice from a guy with roots in the ground.

Wes Moss [00:26:02]:
I’m Groot.

Connor Miller [00:26:03]:
Yes, yes. Diversification. Even the seven dwarves don’t all do the same job.

Wes Moss [00:26:09]:
I’m Groot.

Connor Miller [00:26:10]:
And finally, and stick around. Groot and I will walk through why a calm, consistent savings plan beats trying to predict every twist in the market. Let’s get started.

Wes Moss [00:26:20]:
Wonderful work, Snow White. So just imagine that, that now we, it’s coming from the actual characters that we know and love in Guardians of the Galaxy and Snow White and you can combine them all together and maybe it’s a live studio audience of Storm Troopers and they’re applauding here on a Sunday morning listening to Money Matters. Now if you create one of these things, do you get money? And right now the answer is no. Let’s say you create a wonderful clip and the clip that we just did goes viral and it’s got, it gets a billion views. We don’t get any money for that because it’s non commercial use. We get to use it, do it, I guess to some extent for fun. But let’s say we got really good at these and we were YouTube influencers. We could, we could share it on YouTube, our channel, and gain followers.

Wes Moss [00:27:09]:
We could utilize it through social media to, let’s say, talk about our brand. But that’s, I think, how companies we’re going to start seeing advertisements where maybe Snow White and I don’t know the nuances of this, but why wouldn’t a company now, why wouldn’t Campbell Soup now be able to go ahead and have Snow White and the seven dwarves sitting around a cute little house eating Campbell soup. Now they have to voice it. We can’t use the Disney voice. But I wonder if that’s going to be part of the equation. Imagine what this does for creators. And then of course, for folks that are just looking for followers and they make a living through their followers on YouTube, this will potentially be one of the things that attracts people to their page. And then of course, the ones that do really well.

Wes Moss [00:27:59]:
And again, I think this is just the beginning. Now we have, these are 20 second clips, but imagine we get 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 30 minute shows that are just from the creator universe. Those could become really popular and then Disney can put those on.

Connor Miller [00:28:15]:
And I’m sure Disney’s gonna be working on this as well to try and create their content because probably a lot cheaper to create content this way.

Wes Moss [00:28:25]:
Oh, just through using Sora. Exactly. That’s the other Thing that Ben Affleck said is that it’s going to be a change in how the production of movies happens. If it’s, if it’s all through AI right now, I think it does take a little bit, it takes, it’s a lot to make a full length movie. There are some companies already doing it but the cost for that will come down dramatically probably in short order. As usual, a big data week. We get manufacturing data tomorrow. On Tuesday, interestingly, we get a catch up employment report.

Wes Moss [00:28:57]:
Connor Miller. We get the October which includes October.

Connor Miller [00:29:03]:
And November, part of October and November.

Wes Moss [00:29:05]:
It’S a one and a half month employment report. And then we get retail sales and business inventories and then we get Thursday we get CPI data. Friday we get existing home sales. So plenty of data coming up this week. You and our team have been working on our outlook for 2026 and we haven’t sent this out yet. This, it’ll come out in the next week or so. But what are kind of the main highlights of that share with our audience?

Connor Miller [00:29:34]:
We could have gone so many different directions for this one. The world has changed so much this year. Whether we’re talking about artificial intelligence tariffs, you know, Federal Reserve rate cut actions, government deficits, all those things.

Wes Moss [00:29:48]:
The media industry just changed on Thursday.

Connor Miller [00:29:50]:
Yeah. I mean like the world is changing so fast. But one question that keeps coming up from our families and we want to be, we want to listen to our families is just simply can the market, does the market have another good year in it?

Wes Moss [00:30:04]:
Because we’ve had such a good run.

Connor Miller [00:30:06]:
We’ve had a three year run where the market’s been really, really good. Can it keep running? Look, we’re not gonna bury the lead. Obviously we have no idea what the answer to that question is.

Wes Moss [00:30:15]:
We have an idea. We don’t know if we’ll be right.

Connor Miller [00:30:17]:
We just, look, we’re not in the business of predicting short term market fluctuations but we do think it can inform perspective on how we look at the next year. So a couple questions we’re gonna try to add perspective to is can a 3 year old bull market keep running? What is a 500 plus billion billion in tax refunds mean for economic growth next year?

Wes Moss [00:30:43]:
It seems like such a big tailwind. Yeah.

Connor Miller [00:30:45]:
Yeah. And it all happens in basically Q1. Is AI finally ready to deliver on the promise? We’ve had all this hype. Is it time for utilization?

Wes Moss [00:30:55]:
We’ll see. We’ll see. If you test out AI Sora, Disney make some videos.

Connor Miller [00:31:01]:
Yeah. How do Fed cuts both over the last year and potentially a few more in the next year. How does that reshape income investing stocks.

Wes Moss [00:31:11]:
If we get more cuts? If not, we may not, we may not.

Connor Miller [00:31:15]:
And then finally we’re in a. We’re going to be in a midterm election year. Those usually bring some volatility. How do we think that’s going to, you know, how is that going to impact the market?

Wes Moss [00:31:28]:
It’s amazing to start thinking about that. So we’re less than a year away from midterm elections and midterm elections typically create volatility, Connor.

Connor Miller [00:31:39]:
More volatile, usually less returning on a calendar year basis.

Wes Moss [00:31:43]:
And that gets solved though typically as soon as the elections are over. So you have a rocky third quarter historically, is that the way it is?

Connor Miller [00:31:53]:
Yeah. And historically the 12 month period post midterm is one of the best 12 month periods throughout the markets.

Wes Moss [00:32:00]:
Well, I think we have to wrap it up on that note. You can find our team and if you are going through the swirl of trying to figure out your own economic situation, financial situation, retirement planning situation, then this is what we do. This is what our team does over and over and over again helping families find happiness in retirement. I’d like to help people get there a little sooner than they might think. I do have a book coming out in 2026 called the Retire Sooner Method which I’m excited about. The Five Secrets behind the Happiest and Unhappiest Retirees. More on that in 2026. We’re going to wrap it up for today.

Wes Moss [00:32:40]:
You can find our team easy to do so@your wealth.com that’s y o u r your wealth.com Connor thank you for being here and all of you us have a wonderful rest of your day.

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