Podcast Episode - Suze School: What To Do, As We Start The 4th Quarter

For this Suze School, Suze gives us an update about what the current state of the economy looks like so we can be prepared for the 4th Quarter and so much more.

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Podcast Transcript:

October 6th, 2024. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast as well as everybody smart enough to listen, Suze O, here and today is Suze School.

But before we go to Suze School, some of you have been writing because you're not on the Women and Money Community app. So you don't see the pictures that I post there that I really don't post anywhere else. But you're sending an email to me saying, tell us about how the trip was to Las Vegas. How did you do? Speaking? Did Colo like it? What did you think of Annie, all of those things? And I love that you're also curious about my personal life. So for those of you who are here just for finances, just wait, we're gonna get to them.

However, this is a story that's important for you to hear.

So Annie came from Colombia, her son that she hadn't seen in one year, came from Boston 19 years old and Colo flew in from the island and they all met one another at the airport at the same time. And I have a video of it. I haven't posted it, but maybe I will of an incredible love fest between the three of them.

Now, Colo was as nervous as could be to bring Annie to our condo to meet us. We had never met Annie. They've been married now for a while, but she never had the ability to come to the United States or the island. Really, because she didn't have a visa till two months ago. So he's so nervous and he's like texting me, Suze, if you don't like her, can you just go easy? Don't worry. You know, please Suze, you know, just go gentle.

Ok, because sometimes people are afraid because I have no qualms about saying I don't like that relationship, get rid of them, not to the person themselves but to somebody like Colo. So anyway, they arrive and really it was love at first sight. KT sees her, goes to her, put her arms around her. She's cute. She's got great energy and it was a wonderful, wonderful love fest. Totally part of the family. Everything's great.

And so they leave because the next day we're supposed to go to Las Vegas because I was hired to give a talk for the women of color. And it was fabulous, by the way, what an extraordinary, extraordinary organization if you are a lawyer out there and you are a woman of color, you should look into this seminars that they give this whole thing that they do. That's three or four days. Unbelievable. That is, besides the point. So I thought all right, because I was hired to go there.

Then why doesn't just Colo and Annie come with us and they were so excited and the Women of Color, which is Laurie Robinson is the head of it. Laurie. I love you so much. She actually gave Colo and Annie their own suite in the Bellagio, which is where the event was and everything was set. We were ready to go and Colo gets a call from his mother saying that his brother passed away about an hour ago.

He was standing in front of his mom. He said, mom, my chest hurts and she said, let's go to the doctor's right now. And he said, no, it'll go away. Mom. My chest is still hurting. Let's go to the doctor's now. Mom. Maybe if I just stretch, maybe I've pulled a little muscle or something. Let me just stretch and see what happens. He stretches, drops dead.

So that's the news that Colo got. So obviously he got on a plane not to Las Vegas. He and Annie got on a plane going to Colombia and I have to tell you it absolutely broke my heart because you've seen Colo, you know how emotional he is. Like he took out, do you remember this one year where I was showing you videos and he took out a picture of his dog Toby and because he miss Toby so much, he started to cry. So he is an incredibly emotional and sensitive and fabulous and always happy human being.

And as you know, over the past 10 years that Colo and KT and I have been together, it's almost now as if he is our son. He lives with us and does everything with us. And about two days later, I get a text from Colo and he says to me and this broke my heart everybody. He says to me, Suze, I'm not the same Colo any more. I'm so sorry.

Now I know eventually he'll be the same Colo because there's no way for Colo to really change who he is. So I understand that he will mourn his brother who we loved, who was only 53 by the way, so much.

And that I tell you that story also because there's always a lesson to be learned in a story. I tell you it number one so that, you know, Colo never made it to Las Vegas. But number two, do you have everything in order if that were to happen to you or to a loved one? Do you, do you have your will trust advance directive and durable power of attorney for health care? Do you have everything in order as to a place where everybody knows where your bank accounts are and this and that do you? I can only pray that you do.

On the better side of the news, however, it was very fascinating because this was going to be my first large talk to thousands of women and I had given two talks, one in Abu Dhabi, but that was only to like 200 women and the other one at Telemundo. And again, that one was only to 200 women. It's very different when you walk on a stage and you can't even see all the way to the back of the room.

And all you see are thousands of women and it takes a different power, a different energy to carry thousands of women and keep them with you. Then it does 200 or 50 or whatever. Once it's over three or 5000, it's the same as if it's 50,000, believe it or not because you can't see anybody anyway, but it's, it was a different energy and all morning I was, and I'm not joking about this and KT can tell you we were getting dressed, KT was doing my makeup because she does do my makeup and I was almost hyperventilating everybody.

I mean, I was literally hyperventilating. What can I tell you? And it was a long walk from our hotel room all the way down to where the ballroom is at the Bellagio and the whole time I'm trying to breathe and people are waving at me and I'm just trying to breathe and I get to the little dressing room finally and I change my clothes and I'm ready and I'm still a little bit nervous or whatever you want to call it. And KT kept saying, Suze, you've done this a million times. Come on, get it together.

And what was so great is as soon as I took the stage and I walked on the platforms there and in front of the audience and all thousands of those women stood up and they were applauding everything, my fear, everything went away. And it maybe was one of the best talks I've ever given in terms of engaging with the audience and engaging with the moderator, Laurie and the things that came out of my mouth fabulous. So it was so successful, I can't even tell you.

And then right after the talk, just an hour after the talk, we packed up, went to the plane and came home and we were home four hours later and I'm so happy to be so. All right. That's the update, whether you were interested or not.

And just one more thing before we start true Suze School, which is the other day, I met a woman in a store by the name of Patti and we had this incredible connection and she told me that she always listens to the Women and Money podcast. And I said, listen on Sunday because I'll give you a shout out. So, Patti. Yeah, that's for you.

Let's do a little recap about what's going on right now in the economy that will affect you and really what should you be doing? What shouldn't you be doing and everything like that.

Now, let's start with what happened a few days ago, which is the jobs report. Now, everybody thought in the jobs report really everybody is how many people have gotten jobs and the more people that get jobs, the unemployment rate goes down, which is good.

And the more people that get jobs, the more money they make and it just shows that the economy is strong and the prediction was 100 50,000 jobs were going to have been gained. Instead, it came in at about 250,000 jobs, which means everything is strong and things like that good news for the stock market. Maybe you saw the stock market go up, maybe you've been watching it go up, maybe you've been watching the stocks we've talked about in the past. Go up and up. Especially Palantir. Can you believe it's at 40? Really? Everybody just say him anyway.

So because of that, however, we may see Jay Powell slow down in his decreasing of interest rates. At least that's what everybody is saying.

So for some of us, that's good news for some of us, it's not that good of news for those of you who have been used to keeping your money in money market accounts or six month T Bills or, you know, one year, two year CDs or whatever they are. You've been liking the interest rates that you were getting and you were afraid that if he continues to lower the Fed Funds Rate and everything, your interest rates will go down in all of those instruments and in fact, they will, and then you start to write me and you're thinking, well, Suze, does that mean if he's not going to be lowering the Fed Funds Rate as fast as everybody thinks that interest rates will not go down as fast as they would have before. Did that make sense? Everybody? Ok.

So here's what I want to tell you, in my opinion, it doesn't exactly work that way. And given that, you know, Alliant Credit Union sponsors this podcast and they sponsor this podcast because I absolutely love Alliant Credit Union. Just a week ago, by the way, Dennis Devine, the CEO of Alliant Credit Union and Sumeet Grover. He's either the coo or CMO or something like that. But I love him dearly anyway, they came all the way to Florida to talk about. What else can we do? What else can we provide for you, the listeners that you need and that you want and how can we make things better and things like that? And I talked about the safety of Alliant Credit Union and what backs everything. And I left feeling more secure than ever.

And as I've told you many times, it's not necessarily about getting the highest interest rate, it's about getting the going interest rate with the most safety in terms of what's backing that interest rate. So that you never have to an experience using NCUA insurance or FDIC insurance if you're at the bank. And I feel that way about Alliant Credit Union. All right.

So the reason that I'm talking to you about this is that I just have a feeling not just with Alliant Credit Union, but all the banks, all the credit unions that rather than interest rates going up are just staying the same even, they're probably going to continue to lower interest rates by either 0.20 or 0.30% because that's just how it works or that's how it's worked in the past. So currently, and the reason I'm telling you this is that if you have money, you want to invest and let's say you wanna do it at Alliant Credit Union and to do so by the way, you would go to my alliant.com and let's say you want to buy a certificate, a deposit there.

Currently, the interest rates, I want you to listen to this, the 12 month is 4.5%. And remember these are variable in terms of maturity. So if there's a 12 month maturity and the next maturity is 18 months, then you can actually get a 17 month and 30 day certificate of deposit for the current rate of 4.5% which is what the 12 month is at the same with the 18 month. If you want the 18 month, the next maturity is two years, you can go all the way to 23 months and 30 days. Do you understand how it works? So, just know that, but currently the 12 month is at 4.5%. The 18 month is at four and a quarter percent. The two years is at 4%. The three years is at 3.80%. The four years is at 3.65% and the five years is at 3.65%. And you would add another 0.5% for amounts of $75,000 or over.

So like the 12 month for 75,000 or more would be 4.55%. So that's how you would do it if you are thinking about getting a certificate of deposit. If I were you, I would act on it tomorrow. I just would because remember these rates changed on October 1st, they changed very fast. They caught all of us by surprise and they did come down. I don't see a reason why you know that can't happen again. So this is the interest rate environment that you take. What's being offered, especially with certificates of deposits that work different than treasuries.

So, if you are going to do it now is the time to do it. Um, just in case and maybe I'm wrong, maybe the interest rates will go up, but just same, that's interest rates when it comes to certificates of deposits.

Next, interest rates on treasuries. I'm still sticking by the fact that if you're going to invest in treasuries, you should stick in the medium area, which is three years, five years, seven years right in there. That's what I would be buying if I were buying treasuries.

However, the third year has ticked back up again to almost 4.2%. And if you wanna lock in 4.2% and if you don't care if it goes to 43 or 44, forget about that for a second here. You wanna lock in 4.2% with some of your money and maybe you just want to keep it there for a long period of time and see what happens. You might dip your toe into that as well. So that's what's happening with interest rates. Let's talk about oil for a second.

Do you remember how for the past, I don't know, month or so? I've been telling you, it scares me. We may go to war and it's just, you know, I just want us to be careful here, but the stock market itself kept marching up and up and up straight north, everything was great about that and oil was going down and down, which meant that especially Devon symbol, DVN and Diamondback, which was another oil company that I told you. I really, really liked, especially when Pioneer got called away from all of us, or in fact, you sold it that those were two stocks you might wanna get into. And what was fascinating is that even though there was threat of war and everything, oil was still going down, which meant when oil goes down, the price of your energy stocks like FANG, which is the symbol FANG for Diamondback or Devon go down as well.

So it was around that time October 1st that Israel really went for it in Lebanon talking about possibly attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, possibly their oil fields. Some of them anyway, are speculating about that. That oil actually now turned around on October 1st. That's like five days ago. It was at $66 a barrel today. It's right around $75 a barrel. That's approximately a 13% increase in five days. Now, a lot of you have been writing me and you've been saying, should we get out of Devon, should we get out of FANG? They're only paying a four or 5% dividend and things like that. What should we do, Suze?

And sometimes I answer sometimes I don't, but I've wanted you to keep them for times like this. You can't just have a portfolio made up of energy stocks or you can't just have a portfolio necessarily made up of biotech stocks or mega cap stocks or whatever it may be. You need some diversification but it can't all be in just one area. That's my belief, doesn't mean that you can't have a few, quite a few.

But a lot of you, when I give you the name of a stock or an ETF, I like you go ahead and you buy it, but you don't buy anything else. You just buy that one stock and that's when it starts to get hard. Because if energy gets hit, all you can see is the one stock that you have go down and down and down and down as energy is going down.

But then when things like this start to happen, hopefully they will go up and up and up, we'll see where they go. Therefore, at this point in time, I would pretty much hold on if I were you just to see where they go and what happens just that simple, everybody.

Next, gold. KT and I last week actually gathered, I'm telling you to all be doing this as well. Gathered all the gold necklaces, thin ones, little tiny bracelets, little rings, things that we haven't worn in maybe 20 years that have just accumulated. And we took all of that down to a gold dealer here in Boca Raton, Florida. And we waited and did all of that and walked away with a very, very nice check.

And so therefore if you have gold sitting around your house right now, little chains, little, this little that, that you might not think is worth a lot. It, it kind of is just so, you know, everybody, it wouldn't kill you to find a reputable dealer where you could take your gold to some place near you where you live and just get an estimate of what it's worth for us. We got on things honest to God, we haven't used, we haven't looked at, we didn't even know they were in the drawer because mainly we're on the island and we don't wear anything anymore. We got enough to fund, if I was allowed to, fund it a Roth IRA.

And so, so many of you are looking for extra money, you're looking for a way to put more money away or dollar cost average in the markets or whatever it is or to pay down your credit card debt. I got news. You might even if it's $100. Oh my God. $200. That's a whole lot of money. Sometimes everybody that can help you exactly how you need to be helped.

Next, the stock market. I mentioned it briefly a few minutes ago but it seems that the market doesn't want to stop. Especially NVIDIA and the ETF SMH and Palantir, especially at $40 a share and those kinds of stocks are doing relatively fabulous. Fabulous. And so currently the markets are going up.

I still think there will come a time when they turn around and come down for a brief period of time or I don't even care how long they stay down. But that's obviously when you would be dollar cost averaging into your positions with these. But all of you should be feeling really, really good. Now, as you know, we're waiting to see when does Mr Keith Fitzgerald come out with his program.

But what I realized is that for many of you, you don't have to wait.

It doesn't mean that you don't participate in what's going on now with the markets forever. I've told you that one way to invest in the stock markets is through dollar cost averaging with the ETF VTI, the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, over 2000 stocks in there.

Buys the whole market or the Standard and Poor's 500 index, either the Spiders, the SPY or the VOO, all of them are doing fabulous. So if you're one of those that you really don't care that you're getting maybe the best returns, but you're getting really great returns and you just wanna be able to do one thing and not worry about it and do it month in and month out and just like clock work, then that's what you should be doing and you should not be waiting for anything else. I also like the QQQs, as you know, if you just want to make your life easy, you can do that.

Also, in August, when I gave you stocks, you're gonna have to go back and listen to the podcast, everybody. As well as January 7th, the January 7th portfolio that I gave you back on January 7th is up 16.63% as of today, I gave you seven ETFs back then And they are XLC, XLK, XLV, XLF, ITB, XBI and DIA are the symbols and they've done fabulous. But then again, maybe we decided to change a little. So then it was on August 5th that I also gave you eight more stocks, ETFs things like that, which were GLD, IBIT - IBIT, XLV, IYR, CTRE, O, XLP and XLU and we're up approximately 7% from that date and that was only two months ago.

So those are still names that I like and that you could participate in. But I really want you to have diversification and not only buy one stock. So when I say buy such and such, I don't want you to just buy that and nothing else. And again, I want you to dollar cost average into anything that you are purchasing.

I just have to make a quick comment here. I was reading on the Women and Money app and somebody said, why does Suze only say how well she's doing and never how bad. She's done well. The truth is I haven't done that bad.

You know, I'm looking and I can't wait because I may go back on CNBC. You never know. I was looking at my CNBC portfolio. I just have to say this because I'm so proud of it.  And if you remember back in October of last year, I went on CNBC and I gave them, they wanted to know my stock picks for the year and I gave them Amazon, Broadcom, Microsoft, Shopify and Palantir. And today as of today, one year later, almost all of them on average, that portfolio is up 46.35%.

So I am proud of what I asked you to do or what I tell you to do. That doesn't mean that I don't make mistakes. I blew it big time on Ark, ARKK - Kathy Woods ETF. I blew it so big, I can't even stand it. I blew it on Upstart. I can't think of what else I blew it on. But obviously, oh, I know I blew the call when I said all of you, I would be selling the Small Cap ETF and we shouldn't have sold it because it's been going up and up ever since. Also with the stock HIMS. I didn't like HIMS for many reasons. We got in at 10 and it was going up and up and up. It went as high as 20. I think it's still back at 16 or 17 or whatever now. But I didn't like how they were doing business. So I said sell it. Mistake? Probably. But not for me because I don't like when people do things in a way that just doesn't sit right with me. So I tell you all this because of course, I make mistakes. Of course, I tell you to do things that surprise me and they don't work out.

But when you combine those things with all the things over the years that we've told you to do, especially the oil stocks back in 2020. The best call I've ever made in my life, then it all works out and averages out. So losers lose, winners, win and when you average them all together, hopefully you're up more than down. So for that person who says I never talk about anything other than how good I've done and pat myself on the back, you're so wrong. I can't even tell you.

Now, today I told you that I was going to do a podcast on make a date with your money. So I may hold that. I may hold it for next week if that's ok with you because I got carried away with everything.

Now, a lot of times all of you asked me, well, not all of you, but some of you ask me, Suze, can you just summarize and tell us in a very succinct way what you think we should do where things are going, what we should buy, what we should sell and things like that. Now, it's hard for me to be specific because I don't know enough about your each individual situations and your financial makeup. But here is a summary of what I just told you ready.

Number one, don't be surprised in my opinion, to see the Standard and Poor's hit 6000. It's at 5700, which is why I said to all of you, you could dollar cost average into the S and P 500 index or the VTI ETF So that is why next, so many of you again are asking about SMH. So if it fits your profile of what your goals are with your money and as I said in the podcast a while ago and highlighted again today, yes. Now I would be a buyer.

I think you could see it go up 20% at least to, 300. But remember we are in volatile times and you never know what can happen. Also, I just want to tell you NVIDIA, which I think you could easily see go to 150 NVIDIA and Broadcom make up 28% of SMH. And by the way, those two stocks make up 8% of the S and P.

So I would be a buyer depending on your financial situation. And by the way, I still love Microsoft. Gold, I told you that I thought you should gather your gold. Now, if you need the money and things like that. However, if you don't, I do think you could see gold go up to 3000. It's right around 2600 right now. But if you need or want the money, then follow the advice that I just gave you on today's podcast. And by the way, for those of you who are metal buffs and you wanna know, well, what other commodity? Well, you easily should be buying copper then because I think copper will be the leader.

Speaking about commodities, don't be surprised to see crude. I talked about oil. I talked about what I thought could happen. So don't be surprised to see crude at $100. However, it first has to break through resistance at 78,79 and 80. China, China. And I know I didn't talk about this in the podcast, but as I'm doing this, I might as well just add this, right. I think China is positioned to run. So depending on your situation, there are many ETFs such as FXI and FXI stands for the Ishares China large cap ETF. And I think you could easily see that run.

Also, there's another one that I find interesting, symbol is EEM and those are the Ishares emerging market ETF. Now, why do I like that one? Well, if you look back at the electionin 2020 what this was doing. It's exactly where it's at today. At 46 after the election, it ran all the way to 58. So I'm just saying, and last, but not least because I talked about treasuries and interest rates, you will see treasuries go up and go higher, but not for the long time. So, their upward movement is not to be considered as a lasting one. All right.

And that brings us to the end of another Women and Money podcast. And there's only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money and it is this people first, then money, then things. Make sure you've taken care of your loved ones. If you do that, stay healthy and happy. Oh, you will be unstoppable.