Transcript:
Tom Vaughan:
Hello everybody, welcome to Monday. The S&P 500 was up 1.2% today. And we actually use this as an opportunity to lighten up on the stock market exposure that we have. We specifically did this in our IRA accounts and not in our taxable accounts. And I really don’t want to generate capital gains right now, because of the scenario that I’m seeing. So on Friday, I talked about what I call ‘Positive Friday,’ my attempt there is to talk about all of the positive things that I see happening in stock and bond market, really to offset all the negative things that keep coming out in the news.
But right now there’s one negative piece that’s kind of tilting the scales towards being more conservative, and that’s this debt ceiling issue. So we’re supposed to be running out of money, according to the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen by December 15. It is December sixth, and we still don’t have a resolution. I do not think we’re going to default on the on the debt itself, although that would be catastrophic. But I do think we’re going to get very close. And as we get closer, the market’s going to have more and more trouble with this.
So we might make some adjustments to taxable accounts if things get bad enough. But the problem with those is, of course, we have to pay capital gains. And so really, with the IRAs, and the 401Ks and the Roth IRAs and those types of things, I don’t have to worry about taxes. Any new money that’s coming in, we’re holding on. And we’re basically just waiting for this debt ceiling situation to resolve itself. And we’ll probably buy back. We did the same exact thing back in September and early October, when we had the debt ceiling issue there. It worked out quite well, we got in back in at a lower point, so we’ll see what happens this time as far as that goes. But, you know, hopefully, this is something we can fix and change and make so it doesn’t happen anymore. But it is happening right now. Something I think, you know, got to be a little bit cautious.
We’ve had a great run up from the you know, early October when they move the debt ceiling up to now. It’s a great time to take a little bit of profits off the table and not have to worry so much about what might happen with this debt ceiling. We’ll go right back in if things get better, we’ll get more conservative if they don’t. So, you know, we’ll see how this plays out. But we’ll be definitely watching this you know, all day. So, look forward to seeing what’s gonna happen tomorrow. Thank you very much.