#81 – How Fed Moves, Inflation, and AI Could Shape Your Retirement Outlook

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Stay Informed and Empowered in Today’s Shifting Economy.

Get ready to navigate today’s retirement landscape with clarity and confidence. In this episode of the Money Matters Podcast, Wes Moss and Connor Miller unpack timely economic developments and explore how they may shape your financial decision-making.

  • Understand the latest Federal Reserve decisions, including two rare dissenting votes.

  • Break down recent GDP data to examine what may be contributing to—or obscuring—economic growth.

  • Track shifts in consumer sentiment and housing trends to see how affordability and inventory constraints could be affecting real estate dynamics.

  • Analyze the current interest rate and inflation environment, and consider potential implications for borrowing and investing.

  • Spot patterns in manufacturing, employment, and corporate earnings that may influence broader market behavior.

  • Examine the growing role of artificial intelligence—from market momentum to its potential reshaping of the job market and career resilience.

  • Explore how multi-asset income strategies are being used to support income needs and respond to market concentration and inflation risk.

  • Apply the CHIME framework—Consumer sentiment, Housing, Interest rates, Manufacturing, and Employment—to help interpret today’s economic signals with a structured lens.

Stay engaged with insights that aim to inform, not predict. Listen and subscribe to the Money Matters Podcast to stay educated, aware, and confident in your long-term financial planning.

 

Read The Full Transcript From This Episode

(click below to expand and read the full interview)

  • Wes Moss [00:00:02]:
    The Q ratio, average convergence, divergence, basis points and BS Financial shows. Love to sound smart, but on Money Matters we want to make you smart. That’s why the goal is to keep you informed and empowered. Our focus providing clear, actionable information without the financial jargon to help 1 million families retire sooner and happier, bigger. Based on the long running WSB radio show, this Money Matters podcast is tailor made for both modern retirees and those still in the planning stages. Join us in this exciting new chapter and let’s journey toward a financially secure and joyful retirement together. Wes Moss along with co host Connor Miller in studio.Connor Miller [00:00:53]:
    Connor Miller, Welcome Wes, thanks for having me on. Always great to be here.

    Wes Moss [00:00:57]:
    We’ve got so much to cover today. We’ve got the Fed blinks twice. We had a Fed meeting this past week. GDP numbers that were wonky is is probably the best way to describe them. They looked really good. They looked great on the headline. But the data is not great. But it’s still good.

    Wes Moss [00:01:15]:
    I’m going to at least very, very nuanced. Maybe you disagree with that.

    Connor Miller [00:01:18]:
    Very nuanced.

    Wes Moss [00:01:19]:
    And then AI in the labor market. Connor Miller I have not since the advent of AI, what two and a half years ago, at least conversational AI that we can all access. And the numbers are staggering, by the way. Something like open 700 million users now for OpenAI. And that’s just one of the big three that that people use. It’s just a tremendous growth and a tremendous nominal amount of people. And there were multiple articles this past week about how that’s impacting the labor market, the job market. So there’s a lot to talk about here.

    Wes Moss [00:02:00]:
    Conor Mueller Plus I know that we went through chime this week. We went through dividends this week. I don’t know if we’ll have time to get all of it to all of it this hour. But let’s just get going right out of the gate. First of all, let’s talk about that GDP number and then that relates back to the Federal Reserve which they they punted again. It’s almost I’m going to call this football season because we’re in August finally and it’s football season and the Fed punted. So they just did nothing again, kept rates at four and a quarter to four and a half. They had two dissenters for the first time since 1993.

    Wes Moss [00:02:36]:
    We haven’t had two people disagree with the Fed chair essentially what the dissent is since 1993. And we so we’re getting more and more pressure from all around, particularly the White House, they get lower rates for a ton of different reasons. Of course, housing probably being one of the primary reasons. That. And refinancing our debt at cheaper costs. But let’s maybe start there and go into gdp. What’s your grade on the GDP number?

    Connor Miller [00:03:02]:
    Yeah, I mean, I think if you’re summing it up, you say the GDP print was good, but not necessarily great. And so the headline figure was really, really good at 3%. You had the Trump administration touting the economic growth, because 3%’s a really solid number. When you put that in the context of the economy has been growing about 2% for the last 20 years. But under the surface, there was tons of nuance, just like we saw in the first quarter of this year.

    Wes Moss [00:03:35]:
    Which brings me back to. There’s not a whole lot of equations that I remember from school. There’s a couple of the Newton ones. I still probably get those wrong. Like F equals ma. I think it’s force equals mass times acceleration. I think about that again, watching football. You know, if somebody’s accelerating, you’ve got a ton of force.

    Wes Moss [00:03:54]:
    And if they’re 150 pounds, very different than 250 pounds. But the one that I really remember is about GDP. And that one, I guess, was drilled into me starting in high school and then, of course, through college. But GDP equals C plus G plus I plus X, and X is a net number, and that is C for consumer spending plus government spending plus I for business investment. So what, what companies are spending. And then that X number, which is, let’s say, the most confusing of the four, because it’s been a negative number for very, very, essentially for as long as I can remember, because we import more than we export. We’re an import heavy economy. And that’s the piece of the equation that changed so dramatically this week.

    Wes Moss [00:04:40]:
    So you said, look, we’re at 3%. That’s a great number. But if we were to look under the hood, what did that, the export number do that move that number so dramatically?

    Connor Miller [00:04:51]:
    Yeah. And so really, to frame the second quarter in context, you really have to go back to Q1, when the GDP print was negative. And there was some worries, Are we heading into a recession? You get two negative prints in a row. But as we said back then was what companies were doing ahead of all the tariff announcements was importing more goods than they normally do. And so what that did is it changed that net export number to, in Q1, be a negative on GDP, made.

    Wes Moss [00:05:22]:
    It look even worse. Now we’re importing even more than we’re exporting. That was Q1 and that actually that hurt the GDP.

    Connor Miller [00:05:30]:
    Yes, we were down about 0.5%. Well then in Q2 the exact opposite happened. Imports normalized back to a range that we’ve become accustomed to, which meant that actually contributed to economic growth because in relation to the two quarters we now the export number looked better relative to imports and that’s that caused a surge in overall GDP, the 3%.

    Wes Moss [00:05:57]:
    So when it came to this trade number, it was the largest trade related boost since 1947 because imports again we surged imports in Q1 and then we reduced our imports in Q2 in relation. So that X number changed in the overall formula and that piece of the equation added five points to GDP or contributed and then the overall GDP was three. So really if we were to dig down and look at, if you consider that wonky last quarter, we shouldn’t have been in a negative GDP territory, but we probably shouldn’t be in this high of the rate of growth. Probably a little bit too high in relation. So how do we better measure underlying demand? Consumer, business, government spending. That probably gives us a better. Why don’t you walk us through a better way to look at gdp, a more accurate way.

    Connor Miller [00:06:54]:
    So yeah, really better way to look at it is at least for today, taking out that net export number and then also taking out the change in inventories. And so what you’re left with is consumer spending, government spending and business investment. And what you’re left with is a number somewhere between one and one and a half percent in terms of growth in the second quarter.

    Wes Moss [00:07:17]:
    So if we strip out the, let’s call it that surgeon in a good direction and in a not so good direction, at least for the formula, and you strip that out, the consumer’s still spending more, there’s still consumer growth and you’re really getting to final sales and domestic purchases, which is essentially saying well what’s everybody spending? What are consumers spending? What’s business spending? What’s the government spending? Put it all together. And that final sales to domestic purchasers, that’s consumers business government was one and a half in Q1, it’s 1.1 in Q2. Last year it was about 3.4% total in Q3. So we’ve seen some change in this number, but we’re still at least growing. Even though this is the other thing I think it’s important to mention is that this is perhaps one of the most rear view mirror numbers you can get in economics. Takes forever for the all the numbers to get compiled. And here we are in August and we just got a GDP number that, that covers April, May and June. So it’s an old number, takes a long time to compile and then it gets revised a couple times.

    Wes Moss [00:08:27]:
    So but at least it is, it gives because it’s such a large aggregate snapshot of the entire macro economy, it’s still pretty accurate. And, and that’s about where we were. We had a little bit of growth in, in Q2 and that means the economy at least in the second quarter was pretty good. Not amazing, probably not a plus 3, which by the way, plus 3 doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but for the tanker size that we have, that’s the U.S. economy. A 3% growth rate is like a rock. It’s rocket ship growth. Two is good and that’s about where we want to be.

    Wes Moss [00:09:02]:
    One’s getting a little slower. The three arguably gets too hot and then we maybe get too much inflation and then that goes back to the Fed and if we get too much inflation then we, we have this conversation turns from lowering rates to not lowering rates. And that’s, I think it’s the last thing a lot of people want to hear.

    Connor Miller [00:09:20]:
    Well, yeah, I was going to say is when you think about it in relation to the overall size of the U.S. economy, about $30 trillion, you’re running 3%, you’re adding basically a trillion dollars a year to the overall economy, which is a, is becoming a massive number.

    Wes Moss [00:09:35]:
    Speaking of, let’s talk about the Fed, the Fed meeting this week. I know that there’s been lots of cajoling between the White House and the Fed and then different Fed governors. So Jerome Powell, obviously he’s the head of the Fed. And then you have other Fed presidents from around the country, from the big economic quadrants of the United States. They go on television, they get interviewed and they give their opinion about where rates should go. So even though the body itself, the Federal Reserve came out this past Wednesday and said we’re not going to move rates, we’re at four and a quarter to four and a half. It’s the same range we’ve been at for a very long time. So you got, you have no fireworks at call it first glance, but then under the hood, this was not really a routine meeting.

    Wes Moss [00:10:19]:
    You had two Fed governors, Waller and Bowman. They both want a rate cut and they want it now. So the dissent was, no, no, we don’t think we should leave rates the same. We, we think we should be lowering rates. And that’s really un, I Think to your point. The last time two members of the Fed formally dissented on a policy decision was all the way back in December of 1993. That’s 32 years ago we had this much dissent or out of sync when it comes to the Fed. So it’s Christopher Waller and Michele Bowman both said, look, we want rates to be lower, and that means then.

    Wes Moss [00:11:01]:
    But the Federal Reserve still has to be careful because they have two things they need to do. Keep as much employment as they can. So they want low unemployment and they want inflation at 2. The problem is that inflation’s not at 2. That’s the issue. It’s still at 2.7, 2.9. If you look at core, that’s really the issue. So do you think we’re, are we getting a Fed cut in the next meeting?

    Connor Miller [00:11:26]:
    Conor Miller at this point, it’s probably a 50, 50 chance. I still lean on the side that we’re going to get one to two cuts at some point this year, whether it’s September or October or December. But let’s be honest, the Fed is in a tough spot right here with basically the labor market being about at full employment. I mean, that’s what Powell said in their meeting this week was the labor market is right at full employment. And then you’ve got this inflation that continues to be a little more stubborn than all of us would like. And it’s still trending downward slightly. And so you can kind of forecast that out. But the Fed’s in a tough spot here and you can really justify either move of staying where they are today or getting a couple more months of data before actually making that move to cut lower.

    Wes Moss [00:12:20]:
    So there’s a good probability that we will start to see rate cuts at the next meeting in September. But again, time will only tell. Which brings us to taking a look at the economy as a whole. Not just the GDP number, but something that’s, I think of it as a much more current view of where we are in this economy. And that goes back to Chime, which we talked about for 15 some years about Chime, which is our acronym, to look at the big areas of the economy that can tell us how things are going right now. Consumer sentiment, housing, interest rates and inflation, manufacturing and then employment and earnings. Put all that together. We’ll give the economy a grade here for the first one in the C category, consumer sentiment.

    Wes Moss [00:13:04]:
    I give it a B. It’s still lower than where we were pre pandemic. It’s almost as though we got hit by this pandemic. The consumer still dazed and confused and a little nervous. Sentiment is still low, but it’s getting better, particularly since we’ve gotten a little more clarity around tariffs. Connor Miller, would you agree with a B?

    Connor Miller [00:13:24]:
    Yeah, I mean, I think it’s A. You’d give the consumer a solid passing grade here. Could be better, could be worse. I think. I think B is perfect.

    Wes Moss [00:13:32]:
    Housing is probably the worst student in the class right now. If I look at two different housing numbers, housing starts and existing home sales. Existing home sales are a C minus. You could potentially even say it’s a date. Housing starts. I give a B minus. Put those together. It’s the toughest, one of the toughest areas of the economy right now.

    Wes Moss [00:13:51]:
    And the reason I say that is that we were. A couple years ago, we were three or four years ago we were six and a half million existing home sales. That’s a lot of homes changing hands. Today it’s under 4 million. So it’s dropped dramatically. And we know the reasons for that. People are locked in. It’s a mortgage lock, in effect.

    Wes Moss [00:14:09]:
    You sent me an article this week that the average mortgage rate in America right Now is what, 4.3% and over 50% of mortgage holders have a sub 4, 4% or less mortgage rate. So people are locked in, they’re not moving. And inventory’s been climbing a little bit, but it’s still from a really low level. So that’s not necessarily. I don’t see that we’re going into a housing issue. It’s just housing is very much in this quagmire and that’s why it gets such a low grade.

    Connor Miller [00:14:38]:
    And it’s really the, the affordability component when you pair the home prices and where interest rates are. Yeah, it’s tough to give it a really good grade.

    Wes Moss [00:14:47]:
    It’s a struggling student, but we’re going to tutor housing and this is what could maybe help. Housing is the second category. The next category here. I. Interest rates and inflation. Interest rates. I would give a B plus. And you may disagree with that.

    Connor Miller [00:15:02]:
    I think that’s a little high. I mean, depends on how you look at it. If you’re a saver and you’re investing in bonds, well, then it’s. It’s probably more like an A. But if you’re a spender and you’re trying to borrow money for a house or start a business, it’s a little more challenging than it was a couple years ago.

    Wes Moss [00:15:20]:
    Interest rates are really the. Almost the, the oil that allows the engine to really run. And right now the Oil is a little clumpy and the engine’s not running quite how we’d want it to run, particularly when it comes to housing. The reason I give it a B plus, Connor, is because of our discussion earlier is that I think that they’re headed lower and that would be a good thing for the housing market, the consumer, et cetera. So that’s why I struggle between B and B plus. I give it a B plus because I could see rates coming down a little bit. And by the way, that would be good for those who have locked in bond yields today. So I’m trying to look at, be objective here, look at both sides of the equation.

    Wes Moss [00:15:58]:
    But interest rates get a B plus. Inflation, I would give an A or even an A minus is that’s gotten more much better. We’ll get to M and E manufacturing employment earnings. On the other side of the break, more Money matters straight ahead. Our research shows the number one fear for retirees, uncontrollable economic and market swings. And after the last five years, that’s totally understandable. But here’s the good news. Happy retirees are twice as likely versus unhappy to have a financial plan.

    Wes Moss [00:16:30]:
    A plan can calm those worries. My team at Capital Investment Advisors would love to help your family build a plan you can feel confident about. Just pick a time that works for you. @yourwealth.com that’s y o u r wealth.com we left off by saying inflation is an is an A. I think we could get some pushback on that. Connor. An A would probably be 2.1%. Inflation 2.2, maybe that would be an A plus.

    Wes Moss [00:17:01]:
    We’re in the 2.7range. It’s not terrible. We’ve lived through the hyperinflation of the 22 and 23 and now we’re at a much more normal pace. But that’s probably the biggest thing holding the Fed back.

    Connor Miller [00:17:16]:
    Yeah, I mean, I’d say yeah, maybe a B plus. I don’t know. We’re splitting hairs a little bit, but I think if the trend was continuing to go towards 2% more, it’d probably be in A. But look, I mean, being slightly below 3% is much better than where we were three years ago when inflation was averaging 7, 8, 9% and then employment barring.

    Wes Moss [00:17:39]:
    What I wanted to also talk about, which gets more nuanced into this economy and I think it’s just important to talk about. There’s multiple articles this week. I would say there’s hundreds this week around what AI is doing to the labor market. And there’s some very real changes around that. New college grads having a tougher time getting hired. Microsoft put out a list of AI jobs that jobs that AI will destroy and jobs that may not get destroyed. The visual capitalist did something recently on this, listed the five most AI proof industries. And we’re starting to see that if you’re digging into the employment data a little bit deeper.

    Wes Moss [00:18:18]:
    But for now I would as still looking at this on a bigger picture level. We’d still have to give employment an A. And then what about corporate earnings? Connor Miller, you look at that every single day. I gave that an A. Are you in agreement on that?

    Connor Miller [00:18:32]:
    Yeah, I mean we’re right in the middle of earnings season, just coming off a big week. 80, 80 plus percent, 82% of companies have beat earnings so far. Still seeing healthy growth. I think an A is a solid grade for earnings right now.

    Wes Moss [00:18:47]:
    Now we’ll dig a little bit more into artificial intelligence and the labor market. And it’s ironically two, let’s call it pillars of what we’re seeing in the world. AI is powering tremendous earnings growth and that’s been great for the market. It’s good for investors. And AI is supposed to add to efficiency. Again, good for corporate profits, good for investors. AI is also supposed to make us more productive. So profitability and productivity could go up.

    Wes Moss [00:19:19]:
    So those are all good things for investors. So you’re listening to Money Matters, you’re probably interested and care about investing and you want your 401k to go up over time. And in order to have that happen, we need a decent economy that’s growing at least somewhat year after year over time. And we want more productivity. And AI is, we’re already seeing that happen. I don’t think there’s any debate about that. It’s happening how much productivity and how much boost is still in question. And that’s all great.

    Wes Moss [00:19:49]:
    So I look at this as a is a very good for investors. The problem on the flip side of that is that there’s that we’re already seeing some real changes. You could call this demand destruction, creative destruction, just change in the labor market. And we’re seeing that impacting people on a very, very real level. And we’re starting to get those measures. The Wall Street Journal did an article this week. It was all about how new grads. So if you have a one year post college, go back to 2007.

    Wes Moss [00:20:23]:
    If you’re looking at participation in the labor force, it was up for anyone that was in the labor force. This is share of graduates in the labor force with a bachelor’s degree one year after graduation, up 3% in 17, up 1% in 2018, up 2% in 2020, up 2%, up 4% year after year after year. And then 2023 as their last measure. It’s negative now. I think they’re making a lot out of this and it’s only down one, it’s only down 1%. So it’s not flashing red just yet. But the anecdotal evidence is a little more concerning. Entry level job postings down, down 15% year over year.

    Wes Moss [00:21:09]:
    That’s a real number. Applicants per job are up 30%, which creates a flood of competition. The unemployment rate for new college grads is up to 6.6%. Back in 2019, the labor market for new grads was much tighter. The unemployment rate for that group was under 4%. And then the share of entry level hires, if you look at just big technology companies, is down 50% since 2019. So those are all really, really interesting and very real data points. And this just will be the continued debate.

    Wes Moss [00:21:46]:
    Connor, is it? How much bad are we going to have to take with all the good that is promised and we’re already seeing in productivity when it comes to artificial intelligence?

    Connor Miller [00:21:56]:
    Well, I think what you’re seeing, anecdotally speaking, is businesses are just taking an honest assessment at the work that they’re doing and how many people do they need to hire and how many of those new potential jobs can be taken or reduced by artificial intelligence. Because this really has been the year where the rubber has met the road. You think back to 2022 and ChatGPT was launched 2023, 2024 was really the. There was a ton of optimism around the stocks that were tied to artificial intelligence. And I think this year, and we’ve seen it at a massively accelerated pace, is where you’re starting to see the fruit of that in businesses both tech and non tech related to see, okay, how much work can we save by leveraging these large language models that are available to everyone today?

    Wes Moss [00:22:53]:
    And to your point, we’re seeing it in lots of different industries. Another piece I read this week in the journal about CEOs openly almost proud to be shrinking their workforces. And this isn’t necessarily because they have problems at the company. It’s that they’re able to do so and they want to keep their purse strings as tight as possible. That’s what any public, any company wants to do, particularly publicly traded companies. If you look at Wells Fargo, Charlie Scharf at Wells Fargo said the company’s headcount is down 23%. Conor, in the past five years. And again he’s quote, not stopping because he looks at it as a good thing and investors look at controlling costs, obviously as a positive.

    Wes Moss [00:23:37]:
    Bank of America headcount dropped by 1500 people this year. Microsoft, 15,000 job cuts in the last two months. Verizon, same thing. Headcount is going down. Intel cutting staff, streamlining layers of middle management. So we’re seeing it really in lots of different areas. Telecom, technology, finance. And so the way I’m looking at this is that AI.

    Wes Moss [00:24:03]:
    So we’re in the early, early innings. We’re in the first inning of an AI revolution. And I think of it as a macro win, big picture, good for investors, good for the economy, but a micro mess for some workers. So it’s a macro win, but kind of a micro mess for some workers. And I think that the takeaway as a dad thinking about what are my kids going to be doing in the future, that is a little concerning to me. So long term, investors win. Young people I think are going to have to be very mindful and very strategic and more than ever when it comes to their careers. What kind of.

    Wes Moss [00:24:44]:
    If you had a high schooler right now, and I know your girls are a little younger still, they’re not quite worried about getting an internship just yet. What would you tell them to do?

    Connor Miller [00:24:54]:
    That’s a tough question. I mean, to me the one thing that would be the, I guess the least impacted or the most unscathed would be some kind of trade work because it just seems like maybe eventually robots will be able to do those jobs, but I think it’ll be a long time before we actually get there. You know, ironically, we’re seeing a lot of the creative jobs be taken over by AI. A lot of the development, tech development jobs are being taken over by AI. So it’s tough. And I got this question a couple of weeks ago in an investment committee that we did and it’s like, well, what, what is everyone going to be doing with the productivity gains that we get from AI and taking over jobs? And there’s a stat that’s been thrown around Mark Zuckerberg this past week when Meta reported earnings quoted it 200 years ago, 90 plus percent of jobs were in agriculture. And today it’s a tiny fraction of that. Look, I think you’ll see the labor market adapt to it.

    Connor Miller [00:25:58]:
    The only difference is the pace that technology is changing today, it’s moving at a much faster pace than we saw over the last hundred or two hundred years or even the last decade or two.

    Wes Moss [00:26:11]:
    So jobs most resistant to AI I’ll go from the bottom up and this one really, you nailed it. Skilled trades. So electricians, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics. I’ve talked to my kids about building houses for a living and we just went through chime. Housing starts are 1.3 million. We’ve been under building. That’s a pretty solid number. We’ve been under building for a long time.

    Wes Moss [00:26:35]:
    We’re going to need houses built for the rest of our lives because houses don’t last. They’re not permanent. They seem kind of permanent, but after 10 years and 20 years they need work. After 50 years they need a lot of work. After 100 years, the house is usually gone. So it’s not a permanent supply. We still have at least a slightly increasing population so we have to be building. So I think that’s one area.

    Wes Moss [00:27:00]:
    Hopefully one of my kids will become a financial advisor as well. Connor I’m hoping we’ll get at least one of those in the family but if they don’t do that, I can’t think of a better place to be than a skilled trade building real estate and then healthcare professionals. Number one most resistant on this list according to the Visual Capital is healthcare professionals. EMTs, nurses, doctors, therapists, educators and professors made the list at number two, which is interesting because that seems to be a place that could be threatened by AI. But maybe you’ll see that they’re going to be leveraging AI as opposed to being replaced. Skill trades it was number three on the list. Managers, decision makers for artists, creatives, writers, illustrators, musicians. Again, I like that.

    Wes Moss [00:27:48]:
    But you can also make the case that a lot of writing is getting outsourced by AI but as a writer and somebody does it constantly, it’s still at a B minus level and it’s not ready for prime time. We’ll see if that changes. Multi asset class income investing why have we not talked about this today? Connor Miller Look, I think it’s an.

    Connor Miller [00:28:12]:
    Important topic for today. One because it’s the primary strategy that we use in serving the all of the families that we do. But it’s, you know, it really is a unique time in where we see the market being, you know, I looked at the weight of Nvidia in the S&P 500 yesterday. It’s all the way up to 8%.

    Wes Moss [00:28:36]:
    Of the entire market.

    Connor Miller [00:28:38]:
    The entire market. So if you’re buying an index fund, you’re getting 8% automatically. Going to Nvidia. And so we’re seeing a lot of concentration in traditional stock indexes and nothing against that. We want to be invested in stocks, but we also want to diversify and look outside of just traditional stocks and bonds. Because for families that are withdrawing from their portfolio or will be at that phase in life at some point, we think it offers a really attractive solution for those.

    Wes Moss [00:29:11]:
    And there’s something to the and this is a term we’ve brought back over the last month or so here on Money Matters because we did for many years we talked about how we like multi asset class income investing. We want to get income dividends, interest and distributions from lots of different sources. We want stock dividends, bond interest distributions that come from lots of other areas like energy pipeline companies and real estate, et cetera. Put it all together and you have at least some consistency over one part of the portfolio. We cannot control when markets are up or down on tariff news. And you can own the highest quality stocks, but they’re still going to get caught up in the market draft. And that can go in many different directions in any given short period of time, any given month, any given year, et cetera. But what should stay very stable, not perfectly stable because interest rates change, dividend payouts can change.

    Wes Moss [00:30:06]:
    But if you do it in a diversified way and you’re getting income from lots of different sources, let’s say 50 or 100 different sources, then there’s just a lot of stability in that staying consistent. And with the expectation that at least the dividend portion of that and the distribution portion of that should be rising over time. Just the S&P 500 alone, not looking even at particularly dividend stocks, but just The S&P 500 alone has grown the dividend rate at about twice the rate of inflation over the last 50 years. So if inflation’s grown at 3% on average, the amount that companies pay out to investors in just in actual cash, a dividend has grown at about 6. So just that in itself, that is one piece of the multiasset class income investing equation. Just that piece alone has been a really important piece of the equation. And you’re right, we’re in a period of time where the market is still somewhat top heavy. There’s a lot of concentration.

    Wes Moss [00:31:11]:
    I really love the idea of diversification, but taking that a step further and diversifying your income and still giving yourself the ability to have growth along the way to fight inflation. And that is really primary job number one as investors. That’s what we’re trying to do. Protect our purchasing power and that wraps us up here on a Sunday morning. You can find me and Connor Miller easy to do so@yourwealth.com that’s y o u r your wealth.com Connor Miller thanks for being here this Sunday, my friend.

    Connor Miller [00:31:44]:
    Thank you.

    Wes Moss [00:31:45]:
    And for those tuning in, thank you so much. And you.

    Connor Miller [00:31:47]:
    Thank.

    Wes Moss [00:31:47]:
    Have a wonderful rest of your day.

    Disclaimer [00:31:55]:
    This is provided as a resource for informational purposes and is not to be viewed as investment advice or recommendations. This information is being presented without consideration of the investment objectives, risk tolerance, or financial circumstances of any specific investor and might not be suitable for all investors. The mention of any company is provided to you for informational purposes and as an example only, and is not to be considered investment advice or recommendation or an endorsement of any particular company. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. There is no guarantee offered that investment, return, yield or performance will be achieved. The information provided is strictly an opinion and for informational purposes only, and it is not known whether the strategies will be successful. There are many aspects and criteria that must be examined and considered before investing.

    Disclaimer [00:32:42]:
    This information is not intended to and should not form a primary basis for any investment decision that you may make. Always consult your own legal tax or investment advisor but before making any investment, tax, estate or financial planning considerations or decisions. Investment decisions should not be made solely based on information contained herein.

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    This information is provided to you as a resource for educational purposes and as an example only and is not to be considered investment advice or recommendation or an endorsement of any particular security.  Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. There is no guarantee offered that investment return, yield, or performance will be achieved.  There will be periods of performance fluctuations, including periods of negative returns and periods where dividends will not be paid.  Past performance is not indicative of future results when considering any investment vehicle. The mention of any specific security should not be inferred as having been successful or responsible for any investor achieving their investment goals.  Additionally, the mention of any specific security is not to infer investment success of the security or of any portfolio.  A reader may request a list of all recommendations made by Capital Investment Advisors within the immediately preceding period of one year upon written request to Capital Investment Advisors.  It is not known whether any investor holding the mentioned securities have achieved their investment goals or experienced appreciation of their portfolio.  This information is being presented without consideration of the investment objectives, risk tolerance, or financial circumstances of any specific investor and might not be suitable for all investors. This information is not intended to, and should not, form a primary basis for any investment decision that you may make. Always consult your own legal, tax, or investment advisor before making any investment/tax/estate/financial planning considerations or decisions.

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