If you’ve been keeping up with our State of the Markets classes and Half-Time Reports (and you all have RIGHT??), you’ll know that the last couple of those we have gotten on Ed about leaving the roller coaster slides in every presentation. There are about 3 slides in there that show pictures of people’s faces as they handle the exhilaration and/or terror of going up and down on the roller coaster. We regularly point out that if you stick to our bucket strategies – formerly baskets until we realized that baskets, of course, leak – that you’ll be smiling knowing that, by following our Wealth Shield System, you should have the income necessary to make ends meet without having to sell off shares of your stocks and ETFs. However, the last couple of weeks has me thinking those roller coaster slides are going nowhere.
Every headline carries tremendous weight, whether it’s confidence-inspiring or brings on the panic. We’re all so determined to get some peek around the corner of the future. We all want to know where this is headed. (At least on a roller coaster you can see where the track lies ahead). So when Nvidia reports that the US will require a license to sell its H20 chips to China, it not only craters its own stock but brings down the entire semiconductor space and the Nasdaq 100 with it for the day1. When Fed Chair Jerome Powell says it won’t intervene in markets and makes a rather obvious statement of what ought to be true in the first place, people panic and cry “The Fed Put is Gone!” as if a banking cabal should ever be trusted to save us all.
The last couple of months especially, l have been very proud of our clientele here at The Wealth Training Academy. I’m so impressed about how well you’ve all learned our system for managing your wealth and feel a great sense of respect for you all. In the midst of all this uncertainty in this market downturn one thing has become very clear to me. We seem to have converted you to our system, and we are now preaching to the choir! Why do I say this?
The market roller coaster has everyone lurching around every bend nationally screaming at the top of their lungs in a great panic to go to a place where it all makes sense again. Yet here at The Wealth Training Academy, it’s remarkably quiet on the phones (with the exception of normal tax season calls of course). Because during this downtown, we’ve barely had anyone reaching out to us telling us to take them out of the market or clamoring for a meeting. We’ve had to reach out to you! And we have been steadily doing so – reaching out and scheduling meetings, all in the due course of business, because here at least, it is business as usual. There are opportunities we made you aware of and certain pitfalls that should be avoided but this is a proud moment for all of us here that most all of you understand where your income is coming from now and in the future and this market turn is just a turning of the wheel (any Wheel of Time fans out there?)
Yes, tariffs will have an impact. If you want a buy a Made-in-China Xbox for your grandchildren for example, now’s probably the time before the price doubles or triples. But we’re not seeing calamity here whether the tariff on Chinese goods is 245% or 0%.
China needs us as much as the U.S. needs China. We need their factories (until we can build more at least); they need our consumers to keep their population working. We need them to keep buying our debt so we can keep spending like drunken sailors. They need us to keep allowing them to the use the SWIFT banking system (see Russia). We need their Rare Earth minerals. They need money from the sale of those to finance government infrastructure projects. We sure do like those cheap Amazon outdoor cabinets, even when we curse loudly on the back porch that the drill holes are in the wrong places and the ones that are don’t line up to screw them into place (not speaking from experience of course). They sure do like the elevated wealth of such a large percentage of their population that’s transitioned into cities off of rural farms, all born from the patronage of the American consumer.
The point is there are two forces here that need each other. And to borrow from our enemy, the US and China are the Yin and Yang, the opposing forces that balance each other out and need each other to prosper. Whatever happens with the tariffs going forward, the negotiations will work out somehow, because they have to for each side to get some extremely important things it needs. And when they do, the market will right itself.
So while the market lurching up and down the roller coaster track might make you sick at times, if you stick with our system, take advantage of opportunities your advisor is suggesting where you can, you can be the one in the picture grinning wildly riding the coaster instead of the one in terror.
Thanks for your continued trust. We’re proud to have you as clients, and we’re extremely grateful that you’ve learned, that if you listen to us, we’ll change your financial world …
Source:
1 https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/15/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
