Transcript:
Hello, everybody, welcome to Monday, the S&P 500 was down about .3%, today. And really the big story of the day, and it will continue to be big story for a while here, is just the debt ceiling issue that’s happening. And unfortunately, the debt ceiling expires at the end of this week. Looks like there’s another couple of weeks that the Federal Reserve or Treasury can probably do some different financial maneuverings, to pay the bills and pay past debts and things like that. So we’ll see what happens. But I feel like this is going to go to the edge, and the market’s not going to like that.
I do think that that gives us some opportunity, because if they do solve the debt ceiling, then maybe we have a chance to kind of really scoop some things up. But, both parties have some motivation here, to kind of take this all the way out to the edge. The Republicans are trying to make it harder for the Democrats to pass the Reconciliation Package, by not voting for, or threatening to not vote for, the debt ceiling increase. The Democrats are trying to use the Reconciliation Package, and put the debt ceiling increase inside of it. And so that would give some motivation to everybody in their party to get everything together on this package and try to get it through, because it’s definitely been hanging up on a lot of different issues.
I can see the political pieces of this. But again, the market doesn’t like uncertainty, especially around something like this, because it could create all kinds of other problems. I don’t expect it to happen, but I do expect there to be some volatility and some uncertainty as we head through this process. So, it’s a good time to kind of keep a hold of your existing portfolios, and just let things play out. We have tried to make in our portfolios a little bit more conservative, to ride through these areas. For example, we have Healthcare, and Utilities in Large Cap stocks, to a large degree, in our overall model for example, and that’s why. We’re just waiting to see what’s going to happen here, as far as that goes.
Again, I think this will play out, but I would suspect that there will be volatility as we go through this process, and I have a hard time imagining it really run off, to the upside, either. So, anyway, that’s what’s happening right now. As usual, very interesting timeframe, and look forward to seeing what’s going to happen tomorrow. Thank you very much.