Education

Wealth Unplugged
The past month has brought a staggering V-shaped market recovery—one sharper and faster than even the post-COVID rebound. As Joey Loss and Adam Van Wie discuss, it serves as a reminder that markets don’t just bounce; they whiplash in ways that defy headlines, sentiment, and short-term logic.
Despite being just a few points off their all-time highs, the S&P, Dow, and NASDAQ are surging not on hype, but on breadth. This isn’t just the Mag 7—it’s a recovery touching unloved sectors and small caps alike. Even international markets have shown surprising strength. But the core message? Don’t mistake momentum for certainty.
Tariff fears, inflation concerns, and a Moody’s downgrade have made noise, but history shows that markets often rally in the face of doubt. As Adam notes, the smartest investors weren’t market timing; they were quietly rebalancing portfolios, letting discipline, not panic, guide strategy. That’s where the wins were.
Retail sentiment, social media echo chambers, and political divides muddy perception. Yet the fundamentals tell a clearer story: inflation is trending down, optimism is rising, and earnings will be key. Momentum may carry the market, but valuations demand scrutiny.
Whether you’re navigating trade policy, rate cut speculation, or the ever-louder digital noise, the same lesson holds true: stick to the plan. Don’t react to every scare. Stay diversified. The market may be rigged—but it’s rigged in favor of those with patience, perspective, and a long-term view.
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Key Topics
- The Current State of the Market (00:00)
- Winners and Losers Over the Past Month (04:49)
- Fundamentals That Have Shaped the Market in the Last 4 Weeks (09:27)
- Why It’s Dangerous to Try to Time the Market (11:57)
- Escaping Your Echo Chamber (14:04)
- Is Inflation Going Up Or Down? (19:59)
- Key Economic News (23:14)
- What We Currently Know About Changes to the Tax Law (26:57)
Joey Loss 00:14
Hey, Adam Van Wie, welcome back.
Adam Van Wie 00:15
Thanks for having me again. Joey, it's good to be here.
Joey Loss 00:18
The last episode we had, I ended up titling it is the light coming, and I think that worked out. Okay,
Adam Van Wie 00:25
pretty crazy. What's happened over the last month? Yeah, I mean,
Joey Loss 00:28
we've had our heads down here doing new plans for clients. And so in a way, this recovery has kind of happened a little bit more quietly than, you know, we look, I think it was last Friday we pulled it up and we were like, Oh my gosh. Like, look how good this has really been. I mean, we knew it was good, but just the scope has been pretty stacked.
Adam Van Wie 00:46
It's been nothing short of just a V shape recovery. It's even more traumatic, I think, than the COVID recovery in terms of time to retake the prior high where it started to go down.
Joey Loss 01:00
Yeah, it's been amazing. Do you have some data on what exactly has happened and maybe where we are relative to previous all time highs?
Adam Van Wie 01:08
I do, and we're still off the all time highs on all three major indexes, but not by a whole lot. If you look at the Dow, we are 5.2 ish percent off of the all time high that was set on September 30. If you look at the NASDAQ, we're 4.7 4.8% off of the all time high set on December 16 of last year. And then the S and P actually hit a new high on the 19th of February this year, and we're 3% below that. So really close on the S P,
Joey Loss 01:43
that's incredible. I mean, we there were points where the NASDAQ was down over 20%
Adam Van Wie 01:46
Yeah, the S and P was almost there too. It was 19 and I think on a intraday, it actually crossed 20% but it didn't actually close down over 20%
Joey Loss 01:56
gosh, that's amazing. And how does the breadth look of the recovery
Adam Van Wie 02:00
actually looks pretty good. It's not the mag seven solely leading this way higher. We're seeing lots of new 52 week highs. We're seeing some, really, some of the unloved categories within the S and P are actually the ones that are recovering the quickest. So I would say overall, the market looks pretty healthy. This rally is not I don't think it's a head fake. I think it's for real.
Joey Loss 02:24
And what about small caps? So small caps
Adam Van Wie 02:27
are still lagging. There's no doubt about it. We have seen some really good days in small caps. But if you look at the chart, it is over the last two years compared to the S and P, and you know which one you're going to want to be invested in. It was the s and p, but that is sometimes a place to look for a buying opportunity.
Joey Loss 02:45
What is the international stage look like? International still going strong,
Adam Van Wie 02:49
vastly outpacing the US. This year, we thought that rally was over, but it doesn't appear that that has been the case yet. So a really good year to be invested in international. Maybe even if you were overweight, going into the year, might look to trim some of that, because I don't know that this is going to be here forever. If you look at most of the innovation, most of the exciting new companies that are developing new technologies, they're still based in the US. I don't think that's changing anytime soon. International is great. If you want low PE ratios, dividend income, steady, stable, established companies. Look at some of the European companies for that. But overall, if you're looking for growth, which most people have been over the last 10 years, I think the US is still the place to be. It's funny,
Joey Loss 03:38
we were talking about on the radio show this weekend, like what really marks the bottom, and I know that you have a very good habit of like, talking about contrarian indicators, and how, pretty much whatever we think we're feeling or what the headlines are saying tends to be the indicator of the opposite is about to happen. And I don't know if there's a greater indicator than the fact that the major banks updated their previously bullish projections for the beginning of the year, before the tariffs, before the downfall, they updated their projections much lower, and then it was like the second that they did that the bottom of the V was found, and we
Adam Van Wie 04:10
started, I think my favorite one is the is the legacy media all predicting the same thing at the same time. So if they're all screaming recession, that it will absolutely we will not see a recession. It'll be the exact opposite. And so the other one that I really like is is in retail investor sentiment, because they always get it wrong in this survey. Now, retail investors actually bought into this dip, so they got it right. But if the people that were polled in the sentiment survey were bearish throughout this last 17 to 19% rebound? Yeah, well,
Joey Loss 04:49
let's talk about winners and losers over the last month, like if we had to create archetypes of people that react certain ways? I think that's kind of an interesting exercise to do. I've never seen a better period of my life. For strategic asset allocation and rebalancing protocols than the last six months. I mean, the end of last year, we saw the market rally a bit the election results. And if you had rebalanced then going into q1 then you were in pretty good position for what happened. And then if you were rebalancing as a result of big drift in your portfolio between international and US stocks during this then you would have sold international at a high, not because you were market timing, but because things got far enough there's enough of a valley between the performance of your international and your us to justify potentially a rebalancing. And that would have happened at what would have been the beginning of a recovery for us. I mean, it's just all around. I mean, this was one of the few markets I can point to where it seemed really obvious that if you had a good rebalancing protocol, you were making money while the market was basically going sideways, no doubt
Adam Van Wie 05:53
about it. But also, don't fret if you didn't, because what ended up happening is that the US market rebounded, and international kept going up. So it was kind of like a good scenario, whether you rebalanced or not. So that's fair. Don't stress out if you didn't, but I think you probably came out a little bit better if you did rebalance at the lows
Joey Loss 06:15
and then on the losing side. I guess it would be anybody who reacted to it was very easy to do this, I think given the intensity of the headlines, the fear that was around to react to what felt like a situation that's never been seen before. Now that we're seeing the market recover and the tone is changing, it's amazing how quickly that tone can change. By the way, I think it's starting to feel like, oh, this was just another market event,
Adam Van Wie 06:39
yeah. And I think history will look at it that way, just yet another in a long line of things that caused a panic sell off that was probably unwarranted. I've said this to so many people. Going into this year, the market was overvalued. It really was by every traditional metric. And then it kept going up. We saw a new all time high in February. So what was justifying that? I don't think there was much justifying that, to be honest. I think it was optimism, perhaps, around the new administration being pro business, but that's something that's going to take months, if not years, to implement and flow through. The economy doesn't turn on a dime, so I think it we were just got ahead of ourselves. And if it wasn't the tariffs, it could have been 20 other things that caused the market to see a correction or even a bear market, in the case of the NASDAQ. So I I think the market will just chalk this up to one more incident that happened that we is quickly forgotten about.
Joey Loss 07:39
Yeah, I think that's right. And the takeaway, I think, is just, I always explain it like this to clients, like, Look, if the market really tanks in a way that's unrecoverable, your digital balance is not the thing you're worrying about at that point. It's, do you have seeds to plant food? Do you have bullets? I mean, it's dramatic, but I mean, like that situation you're looking at if the entire market goes down, you're talking about hundreds of trillions of dollars wipe of wealth wiped off the planet. That is a totally different situation, right? So if it's money that you're investing that should be invested in the first place, it should be possible to just let things play out. And historically, they've always gotten better, but it always feels like it's not going to it feels like this time is different. It feels like it does XYZ factor is was a factor that wasn't present in the other ones, or it's different this time. And that's where the premium for being an equity investor comes from, is your ability to weather that.
Adam Van Wie 08:33
That's why you get the premium. That's why we've been able to see 10 plus percent returns on the S and P over a long period of time, because you have to be able to weather the down years. And that 20% drops that happen every three to five years, and the 10% drops that happen almost every year, every 18 months, at least,
Joey Loss 08:53
yeah, and it's 18 months when you're looking back like, it feels like a lot longer than 18 months between when these things happen, but it really is that often it is, it is, and each one feels like it's been 12 months and the market just sprinting, and then all of a sudden, Doom is here.
Adam Van Wie 09:10
Yeah. Well, it's psychological, plus the downside always happens faster than the upside, not always, I guess not this month, but normally you see the downside happen in a matter of a couple of weeks, and you see the upside come back over a couple months, generally. So
Joey Loss 09:27
what do you think's changed behind the scenes that has contributed to what we saw in the market over the last four weeks? Well,
Adam Van Wie 09:35
I think the biggest driver was just the change in tone from the administration on the tariffs. I think that the way the market is viewing it now feels to me like they're looking at this strategy and saying, A, okay, so he really was negotiating trade deals. I guess B, that it seems like China is the ultimate goal here, and they are in talks with China now China has a lot more to lose. Than us, in my opinion. So I do think that we can come up with something better for us than what was previously in place. And C I think that basically the market is looking at it like there really isn't going to be that many tariffs when all is said and done. And then the stuff that does have tariff, they're going to accept all the important things like microchips and iPhones. So really, the threat of 80% tariffs on Vietnam, it's just not real. The market doesn't believe it. I don't believe that it will happen. And I think that those are the major things that have changed in the market over the last few weeks.
Joey Loss 10:36
I think that's fair. And I feel like I've written that exact wave, like I there's receipts on this podcast I'm happy to point to where I was like, this is a very bad idea. I don't like the approach. I don't, you know, and it's just maybe it's revealing of my risk tolerance for international trade policy, something I've never really thought about. But it whatever it was, it was past what I was comfortable with and what I can understand and see with the information I had, which, like the rest of us, wasn't that much if you're not on the inside, and whether it was a master plan or not, and it was just like a starting place, and each day you could tactically see what was opportune and move on that. I think that's probably more likely, but it's moved in a positive direction. And like you said, I think most investors at this point are, like, whatever's being said today as a concrete foundation of the trade that's going forward is probably not true. So, like, it's not going to be forever. It's just a point in time, and they're looking past it clearly. And I'm kind of curious if this, the market loves momentum now more than I think it did 10 years ago, like, and in fact, there's all these funds now that focus on momentum. There's more. There's billions and billions of dollars going into these funds. So I kind of wonder at moments like this, will the market go past the point of reason in this bull recovery, and will we see more volatility for the rest of the
Adam Van Wie 11:56
year? It absolutely will go past what it makes reasonable sense. It always does. I think that's a signature characteristic of the stock market, is that it goes past on the upside. It goes past on the downside. And so that's the danger of trying to time the market, because when you can reasonably make a case that the market's overvalued, it keeps going higher, and when you can reasonably make a case that the market has overreacted to some event that's causing it to go down. It keeps going down, and you don't know when, when it's going to turn because it won't make sense when it turns. It just doesn't you. It goes way past what's reasonable during COVID. I use this example a lot. During COVID, the market went down enough that it was pricing in a 30% reduction in corporate profits on the s and p5 100 in infinitely like they would never recover that 30% of profits. That doesn't make any sense, like for a pandemic that A, you could see pretty quickly, wasn't going to be as severe as what they were saying. And B, it was changing the way the economy worked, but the economy was still working. And so maybe there were people out of work for a while. But as people got on Zoom and figured out how to work remotely, and it just didn't make any sense that Americans were going to buy 30% or more or less stuff in infinity, like the it was such an overreaction, and it became very obvious, but it kept going down. You couldn't it was like, you just couldn't explain it. This is I was shaking my head on the radio show saying, This is ridiculous. I don't understand this reaction. This points
Joey Loss 13:27
to something that we talked a little bit about on the radio this weekend that I want to bring up with you, and that is the worlds that we live in, in our respective social media algorithms, our newspaper, periodical choices, and the vast difference of reality that exists within these places. You know, we talked a little bit about the Michigan study and how Consumer Sentiment Survey, yeah, I kind of want to touch on that if you could. And then also just the impact that this has in your perspective as an investor, and how it makes it more or less challenging to make good decisions based on whatever echo chamber you're in. It's so
Adam Van Wie 14:04
true. And that's, I think that's where we really earn our money, is that we can, we need to sort of parse through all the politically divided information and say, No, this is hyper one side or the other, and find that middle ground that is the truth. And I think that there's no better example right now than the consumer sentiment survey out of the University of Michigan. Right now, if you look at the overall expectations for inflation, they're somewhere around 3% going forward. But if you divide it, divide that by Democrats, independents and Republicans. It is vastly different than that. Republicans are probably underestimating they're down at like 1.5% but Democrats and now independents have broken with the Democrats, and they're up around five four and a half 5% are where they expect inflation to go to. And personally, I think that is a function of social media and the internet. So if you're reading articles, and there's plenty of them out there that say that that these tariffs will cause severe inflation, your feed is going to give you more of that, until you really that you are convinced, and that's not your fault, per se, it's just what you're reading, and that feedback exists. And then on the other side, if you're reading about how tariffs are going to change the way that America does business on the world stage, and it's going to be this big win for the country, and you're pro Trump, you're probably believing that the tariffs won't cause anything, and then that's going to reinforce that, and so, I mean, this survey is almost garbage now, because it's so split along political lines that it doesn't even make sense anymore. It's incredible. It is I've never seen anything like it. How did we get here? I can't stand it. I wish that we could go back to when people were civil to each other and realize that both sides have good ideas. Elizabeth
Joey Loss 16:02
and I were watching this Osama bin Laden series on Netflix this weekend, and they had clips of like George W Bush and Obama. And I remember there being such intense divides at that time, but relative to what it's like now, and especially since COVID, I mean, Trump won, yeah, the pot was stirred for both sides during that but it was really towards the end of Trump one into COVID. But I feel like this, all this stuff, got so much more stated.
Adam Van Wie 16:28
Yeah, I think that all coincided with the rise of the Internet and Twitter and everyone having a voice. And we can't just watch a movie anymore. We have to know how the actor feels about the situation in the Middle East. So, I mean, it's honestly, things were just simpler and better prior to having that information, because it caused so much of a hatred towards one another. And it's, I find it personally, very frustrating.
Joey Loss 16:56
Yeah, well, and that the upside of all this, all these tools are just this vast democratization of access to trading, you know, like, look at what Robin Hood has done to even the other custodians. So Robin Hood was the first to introduce free trading, quote, unquote, free, you know, they make their money somehow. That's its own subject. They're paid for order flow, which is a whole topic. But they've moved the other custodians away from 499, or 799, for trade pricing, and that made investing a real thing that people could access. But you know, at the same time, this divide was building on the information front, and so good with bad, I guess always Oh
Adam Van Wie 17:34
yeah. Don't get me wrong. I love the internet. I think it's done amazing things for the world. It's just this one aspect of it that I find very frustrating, the rest of it and the what it's done for bringing down trading costs and things like that, it's, I think it's absolutely amazing. The information flow is incredible. But that comes with a downside
Joey Loss 17:54
for sure, regarding that study, I would bet that long term, that 3% figure is probably right, because that's what the average came out to. And what's interesting is, when I was working with dimensional funds a lot in the past, and we're learning from their their team about how they look at investments and everything, they kept pointing to these studies that were done where they had huge samples of people. Guess how many jelly beans are in a jar? You know, something silly like that. Not a single person got it right, and the high number was like 1000s away from the small number, but the average was like four off. And there's something to that when it comes to investments, or when you pull mass populations about what is inflation going to look like? What is X, Y, Z going to look like, any particular metric as a whole, the population is not that bad at kind of getting close to the nugget on getting it right. Problem is no individual person, despite you know whether their volume on their microphone is loud or quiet, gets it right. It's just as a whole, we tend to be kind of pointed in the right direction. So as far as the study goes, that's kind of what I look at, is the average. And I think, okay, there's probably something to that. Something to that, but any particular voice you ask about it's probably not going to be that useful. Yeah, it's
Adam Van Wie 19:08
just that. I guess I'm looking at the inflation data right now, and everything's pointing to it going down, not up. And so you're seeing headline after headline about the tariffs causing inflation, but there it's just not being realized. And so sure, could it happen six months from now? Absolutely, that is a possibility. But if you look at the actual hard data right now, the PPI was down point 5% that actually negative last month, and then the CPI was up point two, and it is now at the lowest it's been in five years. So the actual data says that inflation is much lower and trending down, not going up back up to 5% so so I just prefer to look at that rather than look at what the experts in the media are predicting will happen going forward. Because, like I mentioned earlier, they never get it right. Yeah.
Joey Loss 19:59
Definitely, I might have missed part of what you were saying earlier, if did the study say that it was going up right now? No,
Adam Van Wie 20:05
this is just a poll of basically retail investors or average Americans that says, What are your expectations about the future of inflation?
Joey Loss 20:16
Yeah, in the last few episodes, we've definitely been talking about how it is going down. And if you look outside of government data, which, in my opinion, tends to lag what's actually happening, there's private organizations like we like this site called trueflation, truflation.com they tend to have really good data. They've been saying 1.3 or 1.4 for a couple months now for CPI, yeah,
Adam Van Wie 20:37
I'm pulling it up right now just to double check that. But it's, it has been, it's been even lower than that recently. For some reason, it's loading really slowly today. But I would like to know what they are saying. I was it's definitely below 2%
Joey Loss 20:49
Yeah. Well, that's a healthy place. I mean, the target for the Fed is always two, 1.99% okay, well, yeah, so their metrics have risen a little bit, but still. I mean, it's almost dead on target for the Fed.
Adam Van Wie 21:01
Yeah, exactly. That's the target so well,
Joey Loss 21:05
I guess we'll see. You know, last month, I think it was before the most recent meeting that we last recorded, they did not lower rates, and there wasn't as big a commotion about that as I expected there to be, which is probably a good thing. What do you do? You think we're getting closer to a rate cut? I guess we have to be technically. Yeah, I definitely
Adam Van Wie 21:25
think we are. I think there's two camps here, and I think they both have a valid argument. One camp is the Fed always reacts too late. They need to get ahead of it. They need to lower rates now so that we don't have a recession or start or the economy doesn't soften more. The other camp is, if we go into a recession, you want to have as much dry powder as possible, and so keep rates a little bit higher, a little bit longer. That way, if we do start seeing the economy start sliding more, they can lower rates at that time to address that. And so I honestly, I can make a case either way, and I don't think that there is 100% right strategy here, but there are a lot of indications that rates could come down now, and I do think that we may see a cut at the next meeting. Yeah,
Joey Loss 22:16
I'm kind of leaning that way, and I feel like it's if optimism is validated throughout the economy, as it seems to be, relative to three weeks ago, I think we can confidently say people feel a little bit better about the situation, not totally better, depending on where you are in the camp, it feels like there's it makes a little bit of sense to ease money a little bit if the recession, Chance has gone down in a material way since we've been last talking about it. That give some latitude for these smaller companies that are having challenges with capital or maybe feeling an outsized impact from the tariffs, it could go a long way for those particular companies to have a little bit easier access to money.
Adam Van Wie 22:57
Definitely, if you're borrowing to support your business, it makes a huge difference. If you're getting a it's no different than shopping for a home and getting a 6.5% rate versus a six and a quarter rate. It's a material impact at these interest rates. Yeah,
Joey Loss 23:14
some notes that I have about particular things that have happened. Trade deal with the UK seems like that definitely had a positive impact, although they're obviously one of our bigger trading partners, but they're not a massive economy to us in the world. Americans don't depend on a ton of UK goods, but it's a good thing that that got done. I think that was important for the market to see, and contributed to positivity. The biggest piece, as you said, everything kind of centers around China, trade, peace, for the time being with China, and we've got those exemptions, those carve outs, I think that de escalation of what was actually really tense for a couple of weeks there really contributed to what we're feeling now. Yeah,
Adam Van Wie 23:53
I completely agree. I think all those were very important. I think that if we can get a series of agreements done, whether it's probably won't be China right away. But if we could do some easier ones, like Israel, I think Vietnam would be a relatively easy one that has they do a lot of manufacturing for us now. I think India is very interested in a deal. So if we could get some of the other dominoes to fall in place somewhat soon, within the next month, I think that will go a long way. Yeah,
Joey Loss 24:24
if I pretend to be an international trade negotiator, I feel like we get those done first. Our leverage is better with China. Yes,
Adam Van Wie 24:30
I would agree. The more that we can get done before China, the better off we would be, from a negotiating standpoint. And
Joey Loss 24:37
then the last the other big news that really hit the market this morning. Friday was the downgrading from the last crediting agency, Moody's. They downgraded the US government from their top tier rating to their second tier rating. Those scales have like 15 to 20 ratings, so first or second, still very good, but not immaterial to the market, at least. Is well,
Adam Van Wie 25:00
the market shrugged it off, and it's up now. So I guess, yeah, started off pretty negative this morning. The futures were pretty ugly, but it's up at this point, while we're talking and so is it important? Sure, a little bit. Is it surprising? No, we have a tremendous amount of debt relative to our tax revenue we spend more than we take in. I mean, yeah, of course we're getting downgraded. This is why businesses get downgraded. That's why countries get downgraded. So I think those are all things that we need to address and be a little bit more fiscally responsible moving forward. And we could probably reclaim the highest rating quite easily, if we did some of that housekeeping.
Joey Loss 25:44
Yeah, some accused this downgrading of being a political thing, but I looked at, since it's the last one to downgrade, I looked at, when did the other ones happen? And the first one was Standard and Poor, aka the s, p, they downgraded from AAA to double A plus in August of 2011 so that was year three of the Obama years, and the reason for that was fiscal consolidation, plan concerns and political gridlock, if you can imagine Congress not working well together and Fitch the second one downgraded from triple A to double A plus in August of 2023 which was towards the end of Biden's years, year three of Biden fiscal deterioration and growing debt and governance concerns for the citation. So really, nothing has changed. It's just when they've each decided it was time. Yeah,
Adam Van Wie 26:35
I think it's actually the I don't disagree with them. If I looking at the US, I'm thinking, wow, they spend a lot more than what they take in, and their debt is out of control relative to GDP and so and I don't see it getting better anytime soon, no matter which party is in power. So yeah, that's a real problem in my mind.
Joey Loss 26:57
So the last topic I'd love to touch today is the tax deal seems to be moving farther along, depending on how you look at it. I mean, it's certainly more and more details are becoming clear. The types of it was expected that this deal, this the current tax law, would be extended in some fashion, if not made permanent. I think we're probably looking at either a 10 year extension or a permanence situation. And right now it's kind of within the Republican Party. Can they come to agreement on what they want those terms to be? What do we know at this point? Well,
Adam Van Wie 27:28
I do think that we'll get a deal done. That's my prediction. I think that they're not really that far off. I think there's some details that they want to different people have different incentive structures. There are some Republicans that are in high cost states where the state taxes are high that want to see salt limits increase. There are everyone has their own constituency. And so I think there will be some deals made, and maybe it won't look exactly like whatever Trump laid out in his campaign, but I think it's going to look pretty, pretty close to that, and I think it's going to be a net win for the US, if returning to the prior tax law with the higher rates and smaller brackets would have been, we would have all felt it. There's no doubt about it. They say it was only for the rich, but that is absolutely not true. The 10 and 12% tax brackets up to almost $100,000 of income is a big deal for low income earners. It really, really is. I promise you do not listen to the media about this. You would have felt it. It is a big deal,
Joey Loss 28:36
as is the standard deduction increase. That was a big deal. Yep, itemizing your deductions helps people who give to charity, people who have high mortgage notes, people who have properties in in states that have a very high property taxes, or just expensive properties anywhere. Yeah. And what's the fourth thing? Maybe there's only three, oh, people, anyone who has, like, a huge sales tax in a given year, that salt deduction that Adam was talking about is a sales and local tax. So it covers your property taxes. It covers the sales tax if it occurs within a given year. So like, if you bought $100,000 car that would contribute to you hitting your salt deduction currently that sits at $10,000 there's no doubling of that for married couples. It's just $10,000 on a tax return. That's the cap. And previously, a lot more people itemized because the standard deduction was very small. It was like 6950 or something per person. Now it was 12,000 per person. To the enactment of the law, that's probably up to about 14,000 now, with inflation every year. So basically, whether you own a ton of property or not, or have these things, these assets that end up contributing to a potential tax deduction on your return, is much less relevant than it used to be. What does that mean? It helps people that don't have the kind of financial situation to own a lot of assets. It helps them pay less taxes. Yeah,
Adam Van Wie 29:55
it does. And so there was a lot of good things about the 2017, Bill and extending it, I think is is something that if it you probably won't notice anything, because the tax rates will continue. But if it had gone the other way, I think you would have definitely felt it, and you would not have been happy about it. Yeah, I
Joey Loss 30:14
think that's fair. Do you think the market is sort of assuming that that's going to happen at
Adam Van Wie 30:19
this point? Yes, I believe that to be priced in. I think
Joey Loss 30:23
so too. I think if we see a shock wave of tone change on that front like somehow it just falls apart, I think the market would absolutely react. So I think that's how we know it's in there. Definitely.
Adam Van Wie 30:33
I think you'd see the market down a good deal more than it had been. I don't think you would have seen the recovery quite as strong, or you would have seen it go down from where it is today. All right,
Joey Loss 30:43
so last thing, looking forward, we talked a little bit about expecting volatility through the end of the year. I mean, do you think we're out of the woods on all this? Is there a lot more like is q2 information? Could we be surprised by what happens with profits and otherwise?
Adam Van Wie 30:57
Yeah, that possibility exists. I think that I don't know that I'm it's something that I'm particularly worried about. I'm more worried about the valuation, because we're right back where we were coming into the year when we were overvalued, and I think we're, we're still in the same boat. So I think you need to see some significant profit increases on public companies over the next probably two to three quarters to justify where we are, or if that doesn't happen, if you see flat or very modest growth, I don't think the market will sustain at these levels. So that's what I'm more worried about, than volatility from political events and things like that.
Joey Loss 31:38
I think that's fair. Yeah, I would guess a lot of the major tech companies are probably north of 20 times earnings. Again, isn't that patent? We're back to that?
Adam Van Wie 31:48
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's not crazy for a company in growth mode, but they have to show the growth. And so that's what I'm looking for. Can they sustain these growth rates? And I think it's possible for a while, but I do worry about it more now than I have over the last few years.
Joey Loss 32:07
Great. Well, Adam, thanks again for coming on and man, I look forward to seeing what has changed in two weeks. We always have something to
Adam Van Wie 32:13
talk about. It'll certainly be exciting that I can guarantee. All
Joey Loss 32:17
right, until next time you foreign thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed the podcast, please consider sharing it with your friends or family. This is the best way to spread the word, and we want to keep turning out great content for you guys. Show Notes and episode transcripts are available on our website at strives wealth.com/podcast special. Thanks to bode leesons for the intro outro music and to the podcast man for producing this show. Until next time,
Disclaimer 32:50
The Wealth Unplugged podcast is sponsored by Strivus Wealth Partners, Joey and Adam’s SEC registered investment advisory offering Financial Planning and Investment Management services to clients across the United States. The opinions voiced in this episode are for general informational purposes only. Nothing any host or guest says on the podcast is meant to serve as advice or recommendations for any individual security to determine which investments may be appropriate for you. Consult your financial advisor prior to investing. This information is not intended to substitute for individualized tax insurance or estate planning advice. Please consult your tax advisor, insurance agent or estate advisor regarding your specific situation.
