It’s episode 108, the last episode of the year. And let’s face it, everything’s interesting. Into the end of the year. Markets are extremely volatile. They’re not letting up. We have the most volatility since 2008. Are we going to a recession next year? The debate continues as Labor continues to be strong. The Fed keeps talking tough when it comes to Fed policy.

The big question is what are earnings going to look like next year? We’re going to about positioning your portfolio for the new year ahead. On the tipping point today, we’re going to talk about what financial products would you want in your stocking this Christmas and what financial products you definitely want to do without.

It’s episode 107 of Payne Points of Wealth and economic data continues to come in relatively strong. Meanwhile, inflation is starting to plummet, whether it's oil prices, lumber costs, supply chains easing. We're starting to see some relief within the economy. Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing or is this just a fake out? As Wall Street continues to tell us the economy is about to fall off a cliff? On the Tipping Point, we're going to talk about your EGO and why it's ruining your financial independence plan.

• Mortgage rates are coming down [1:28]

And I would say that one of the biggest mistakes investors make when you're trying to plan for your financial independence is you let your ego get in the way. And nothing makes for a worse financial plan than letting your ego dictate a lot of your financial decisions.

There's never been a company or an individual that's been able to consistently outperform the market. But what do people do? They've got to try and prove that because "My ego says I can do it. I'm going to go out there and underperform, even lose money trying."

• A recent survey shows 84% of companies are planning to hire in 2023.

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What's up! It's episode 106 of Payne Points of Wealth and the economy is looking a-okay! We've got the market rebounding into the end of the year. We've got wages going up, unemployment still low, and inflation is coming down. Are those economists and strategists on Wall Street actually, right? Are we going to fall off a cliff? Are we going to recession? Well, we're going to give you our viewpoint on that. We'll also give you our 2 cents on exactly where the economy's going. On the Tipping Point, we've got a special guest, Anthony O'Neill, a debt specialist. He's going to talk about money, his life, and relationship to money. It's a great show! Check it out.

• Missed opportunity in the international markets [2:01]

You go back to 2008 when we started Payne Capital Management, we believed it was one of the greatest bull markets in history. We were right on the doorstep of it. Everybody was pretty negative, especially in the US market. Now it's going full circle. Now everybody's positive in the US market and negative in the international markets. They don't see the opportunity. But it's smacking you right in the face. 

Who doesn't know that Taiwan could be invaded by China, who doesn't know that the US dollar is hurting non-US assets, and who doesn't know that there's an energy crisis in Europe? Meanwhile, most of the world doesn't know right now that in the UK, the British stock market, the Footsie, is outperforming the S&P, the DOW, and the Nasdaq. It's wild to think that England has gone positive for the year because when you look at the headlines their political system is a mess and they've got higher inflation than we do. But if we all know it then it's already priced into the market. It's kind of like this, it doesn't look good in Europe. Yeah, we know. But the market's already accounted for that. 

You'll need to check out the episode to hear all the wisdom dropped by Anthony O’Neal but here's a little teaser…

"I believe that if you aim at nothing you'll hit that all the time. I believe that the caliber of your future will be determined by the caliber of goals and decisions that you make today. If you want your future to be bright, if you want your future to be wealthy, solid, fruitful, and joyful then you have to make fruitful and joyful goals and decisions today. It's important. 

When I branched out on my own about two years ago, I said, "Where am I going? What do I want to accomplish?" My very first thought is I want to be intentional, I want to be impactful, and I want to be influential. Those three things will then produce income. So that's the main thing, are my goals intentional? Are my goals, if I accomplish them, will they be impactful to others? Will it be influential? And if the answer is yes to all three of those, then income will come. You can't anywhere without goals or without a vision. Really more so vision than goals when you think about it. Because goals mean that once you hit that goal, that comes to a stop. So I love goals but also, personally, I want a vision that is ongoing that is never going to stop. I'm going to keep going as long as I'm living on this earth."

• Apple has outperformed its peers by a wide margin this year. Apple is now worth more than Microsoft and META put together combined.

Anthony O’Neal debt specialist

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What's up! It's episode 105 of Payne Points of Wealth and the economy continues to chug along. We had retail spending up even with record-high inflation. We're starting to see on the ground floor inflation coming down, and unemployment is still strong, yet every economist and strategist still say we're going to fall off a cliff. We're going to address that today. We've seen a huge rally in the global markets over the course of the last couple of weeks, specifically internationally. Should you be playing that in your portfolio? Well, we're gonna break it down for you. Check it out. 

• Are we going to see a healthy end-of-the-year rally? [1:04]

Right now we're talking about how we don't know what's going to happen next, we don't know what's going on. But one thing I do know is what we don't expect is what's going to happen. We've seen this with what I call the pandemic hangover trade. We've seen disruptive technology, and it's still getting slaughtered here, even as markets are recovering, and I think one of the most obvious trends in the world is emerging markets. You look at the emerging markets right now, they've been growing faster than the US in terms of profits growth since like 1995, yet their stock market is in the same place it was in 2007. So there are a lot of places you can be allocating your capital right now that are dirt cheap that are poised to rise in the future.

When it comes to financial planning, sometimes it's good to take action, but other times it's better to maybe just hold back and let things play out. So let's talk about when you should be taking action and when you should not take action when it comes to your financial independence plan.

A point of confusion, when it comes to action or no action, is eliminating debt. It's actually a trickier conversation than it used to be because at the beginning of this year your mortgage would typically be your largest debt and you were getting a 2-3% rate depending on how long you're going out. Now you're paying like 6-7% and it really becomes a portfolio decision and with rates so much higher right now, I would say unless you're locked into a lower rate it might be better to start paying off debt and as opposed to mortgaging, maybe just paying out right if you have cash because that's a real hard spread to get over the long term if you're starting to borrow at like 6-7%. 

Another big

• India will have the highest growth rate of all countries over the next 10 years, there are also opportunities in parts of the Middle East, and North Africa, although capital markets in these places are still very early in development, you gotta have some money around the world.

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What's up! It's episode 103 of Payne Points of Wealth and the FED just doesn't want us to have a good time. J Powell, again, talking extremely hawkish in its comments as we're recording this. However, we've got a hot job market, unemployment is still staying extremely low, close to a 50-year low. We just keep adding jobs and wages continue to go up as this economy is still on solid footing. Should we be rooting for a bad economy or rooting for a good economy? Well, we're going to give you our view. On the Tipping Point, we're going to talk about end-of-the-year tax and financial moves you can make to make sure you're on solid footing. 

• The little boy who cries wolf [1:10]

It's time in the markets, not timing the market. Let's just take the Federal Reserve's conference call the other day, in the course of a half hour the market went up 400 points from what was perceived as dovish comments then closed 500 points down. That's virtually a thousand-point swing, a thousand points in a period of two hours! You're gonna invest in that mess? The whole idea is that this short-term volatility tells you nothing. Trying to game it or time it is so futile, it's ridiculous. Meanwhile, when you have a diversified portfolio, you're making money every day. Your dividends accrue, your interest is accrued, you earn it, it's yours, and you get paid to wait! 

It's the end of the year. It's coming up on tax time so this is the time to really look at your portfolio. We thought it would be a good time to talk about some of the pro moves that we use with our clients at our boutique firm Payne Capital Management, some of the strategies we use at the end of the year that our listeners can apply to their portfolio to optimize their portfolio for their financial independence. 

One of the things that we like to do towards the end of the year, especially with a volatile year as we've had, are tax swaps. Over time investments will have a lot of embedded unrealized capital gains so whenever we can do some tax loss harvesting it saves folks a lot of money on the back end. This may be the biggest year ever for tax loss harvesting. 

A few other tax strategies that are great at the end of the year that no one looks at are Roth conversions, charitable contributions from retirement accounts, and making sure that you're maxing out your retirement plan contribution.

• Alibaba holding group, a data-driven colossus in retail, logistics, lending, and more has generated 89 billion in free cash flow over the past five years. The equivalent in the US would be Amazon which has only generated 75 billion over the last five years. Yet, its shares are lower than their debut price back in 2014. Alibaba's market value of $168 billion is just a sliver of Amazon's trillion dollars. There might be some opportunity in China

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What's up! It's episode 102 of Payne Points of Wealth and tech is dead! Our prophecy has come true. We've warned you about tech for a long time. Meanwhile, markets are rallying hard here and the economy is actually growing despite what all those economists have been telling you. Is this just a big fake-out? Is this a bear market rally? Are we going into a big recession next year? We're going to give you our 2¢ on that today. We're going to tell you exactly how to play all the market moves and how to look at the economy right now correctly. We're also going to talk about financial planning, physical training, and what they have in common. We've got a great show. Check it out!

• Economists are so sus! [1:06]

If you look at the S&P 500, it accounts for something like 25% but the entire weighting is only in six or seven stocks. That's the problem, the S&P is so grossly overweight in tech that you're not benefiting from this rally. What blew our minds looking at the numbers this past week is that old-school boring value stocks like JP Morgan, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi are only down 5%, but tech growth stocks are down 30%. That's a 25% spread! 

This tells you that right now it's not about being in or out of the market, it's about having the right portfolio. If you're diversified you're not down that much this year and that's the whole point. You have to spread your risk out. The overall market is telling us that some parts of the economy aren't doing great like tech, but some parts of the economy are doing really, really well. It's like we are experiencing rolling recessions, not an all-or-none proposition.

There are a lot of principles that we can apply from the fitness world to your retirement or financial independence plan. What we've learned in our boutique firm, Payne Capital Management, is that our role as financial advisors is a lot like being a personal financial trainer.

The similarities are remarkable. You definitely work out better when you have a personal trainer. You get in shape faster and you have less injury because they get you to focus on every part of your body. They don't limit you to what you would limit yourself to. That's what happens when you're investing. "Well, I'm not gonna invest in that area because I lost money there once." or "I'm a brave investor, I'm going to roll the dice and go a hundred percent in crypto or the arc fund." You make a lot of mistakes because you don't know what you don't know. 

• John Deere and Company has 50 autonomous tractors in its global testing fleet but intends to ramp up commercial production next year.

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What's up! It's episode 101 of Payne Points of Wealth and earning season is not so bad. Bank earnings looking relatively strong. Everything's still in the backdrop of what is the FED going to do. Are they going to keep raising interest rates? Are they going to pause? Are they going to start lowering interest rates? Nobody really knows. Meanwhile, the market's like a rollercoaster ride up one day and down the next. It can't really find any footing and uncertainty is high. Russia is still in invasion of Ukraine. Sounds like Xi Jinping is the ultimate ruler forever of China. It's a crazy world. We're going to give you our thoughts on exactly what's going on in the economy, what's going on in the stock market, the ying and yangs, everyday moves, and how to play it. On the Tipping Point today we're going to talk about how every investor on Wall Street gets treated the same. No matter how much money you have, it's bad. We're going to explain why. Check it out.

• What’s going on in the mind of J. Powell? [1:24]

We're at a point in the market where good news is bad news and bad news is good news and then there's a little mixed bag of both. You have a GDP number coming out this week and some economists say it may be very, very strong. They've been a little weaker than they were last quarter, but they're still positive. Then you get these rip-your-face-off rallies from companies when they come in with really decent earnings. Lamb research came in the other day with decent earnings, really good earnings stock going from 300 to 370 in one week. The same thing happened with Lockheed Martin. 

The problem with trying to time the market is that you can get on the sidelines and wait for the good news, but the good news happens, you can't get back in. So it's one of these cases where we're in a corrective phase of the market and it's going to stay a corrective phase until the FED stops. That may very well be happening right now but nobody can predict what's unknowable. 

We've been looking at a lot of cases over the course of the last couple weeks at our boutique firm, Payne Capital Management, and we see every strategy under the sun. As we analyze portfolios, we look at all the underlying investments and the thing that blows my mind is it doesn't matter if you have $10 million or $10,000 Wall Street treats you the same. They sell you the same high-cost tax-inefficient products. It doesn't even matter how much money you have. It's kind of criminal and it's important as you build your net worth to make sure you're not constantly being treated like a retail investor.

It all comes down to the fiduciary rule. When President Obama proposed the fiduciary rule for the financial services industry, it was amazing. Banks, Wall Street firms, and insurance companies all fought it because they don't want to act in the investor's best interest, they wanna act in a shareholder's best interest. If you're ever going to invest with a wirehouse or a bank and insurance company, it's better to buy their stock because they're working in the best interest of the shareholder. 

• Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter for $54.20 a share is at a price that is double the current valuation of Twitter's main rivals Meta and Snap. In line with Meta and Snap Musk should be paying more like $24 per share for Twitter. No wonder why he fought so hard to get out of this deal.

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What's up? It's episode 100 of Payne Points of Wealth. It's hard to believe it's been two years already! We've got unemployment still at the lowest levels in 50 years. We've got wages going up, and we've got an employment market that just won't cool off. What's the FED going to do? Will they finally pivot or are they ready to take this economy off a cliff? Are we going to a deep recession depression? We're going to give you our viewpoint on exactly how to play the economy, play the strong dollar, play the higher interest rates, play the conflict in Russia. There are so many issues, I can't name them all. On the Tipping Point we're going to talk about financial planning red flags. You're on your path to financial independence so what red flags do you need to avoid at all costs to make sure you stay on your path to reach your goals? 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>.PLAYER GOES HERE

What's up? It's episode 99 of Payne Points of Wealth and there is no good news. Inflation is not coming down as quickly as expected. The FED continues to talk tough and interest rates are skyrocketing. There is a threat of nuclear war in Eastern Europe. As usual, we're going to break it down for you today and talk about our views on where everything is going. Are we going to have this huge recession that we're hearing about week after week? On the Tipping Point today we're going to talk about roulette, chess, and poker and what they have to do with your financial life. Go have a listen!

• If it weren’t for mistakes the FED wouldn’t make any decisions [1:03]

The only thing going up this year has been inflation and short-term money market yields. As financial advisors and planners, we're in a position where we have portfolios that we can actually sink our teeth into. 

You have forward earnings at about 16 times, which means stocks are valued where they are in the average PE ratio. You have bond yields that are significant, where there’s a decent return in our intermediate bond portfolio and there's great opportunity. We were more concerned in January when we saw interest rates at zero than we are today. Now we know we can generate the income, generate the total return, that we need to help all of our clients overcome unexpected inflation and taxes to achieve their financial goals.

We don't wanna have a portfolio that's cool. We want to have a portfolio that's like the revenge of the nerds, and that is the kind of market we have now! Yes, having bonds that come due, how boring. I love it! Having dividend stocks that increase their dividend every year. How boring. I love it! That's where we have to be. The key is you have to take action. If you have losses, do some tax swaps because you want to put money in the loss bank. We are taught as children to put money in the piggy bank, put some money in the loss bank, there will be gains in the future.

Today we compare some different strategies that we see deployed in the financial world to chess, poker, and roulette. Rollette is basically luck and how the dice roll. If it's chess, it's a real strategy. And poker we'd say is both a little bit of luck and a little bit of strategy. 

The first strategy that we see deployed a lot in our industry is market timing. Another strategy that we see is deciding how much money to convert from an IRA to a Roth IRA where the money is tax-free for the rest of your life. The other one that comes up, especially when we're doing our annual reviews, is deciding on when to retire. What's the date in the future that you're going to definitively say, okay, I'm done, I'm going to live off my portfolio. The last strategy we compare is going to be picking stocks. Which of these strategies is comparable to which game? Check out the episode to find out!

• At some point in late 2022, the 8 billionth human being will enter the world ushering in a new milestone for humanity. In just 48 years, the world population has doubled in size, jumping from 4 to 8 billion people.

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What's up? It's episode 98 of Payne Points of Wealth and it's officially apocalypse now! The FED will not relent with interest rates. They're going to be more hawkish than ever. It seems like bad news comes on the installment plan, Putin is looking to double down on his war in Ukraine. Is this the end? Is everything going to fall off a cliff? We're going to give you our view today, we're going to tell you exactly what we think you should be doing right now with your money to make sure that you're in the best position given so much uncertainty. You, awesome podcast listeners, have been asking a lot of questions so on the Tipping Point we are going to answer some of those. You can't miss episode 98. 

• The stock market isn’t a video game [1:08]

There are two things that get discounted way too much when it comes to being an investor. 

First is American business. Even this year, as we've seen supply chains that are a mess, inflation's been a mess but companies have been able to navigate it relatively well. We've seen more surprises in the positive, not the negative, when it comes to things like earnings. 

The second thing that you can't discount is the American's ability to spend. I don't care what anybody says, if you look at retail sales last month, even with 8% inflation, retail sales were up. People were still spending and not just on necessities. They were going to restaurants, they were buying clothes. The bottom line is the death of the consumer is always greatly exaggerated.

Our industry tends to come with plenty of cookie-cutter advice so we get a lot of questions because our expertise lies in the planning component of managing wealth. At PCM we focus on customized financial planning. Well, we have a new place where you can submit your questions and we'll answer them here right on the show. Head over to bebullish.com and ask us anything you'd like to hear us talk about on the show.

Today we are answering two questions that have to do with ETFs. The first is from John asking if we recommend ETFs or exchange-traded funds with an expense of 0.25% or even 0.39%? The second question is from Brian who asks if the S&P is so highly weighted with FANG stocks, what's another good total market ETF to invest in during a period of rising rates? Listen now to hear our answers to these great questions!

• Since 1926 the S&P 500 was positive 71 of those 96 years. On a probability basis, the market goes up 74% of the time. That's pretty good odds.

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