Smart Investing Newsletter

In an effort to balance trade relationships across the globe, several new tariff announcements were made on April 2nd. This caused the markets to decline sharply in Thursday’s session with the Nasdaq closing down nearly 6% and the S&P 500 closing down nearly 5%.

I believe it is good news retailers are not pushing back against the US, but against countries where they buy products from. Companies like Home Depot, Walmart and Target are pushing back against production coming out of China.

Both the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 have now hit correction territory and people are hoping that the worst is behind us. I would tell people to be prepared for more pain. The tariffs are still a big concern and the uncertainty around them has not cleared.

70 million Americans have roughly $12 trillion in retirement accounts and the high fee private equity firms want a piece of that. Private equity comes with higher risk than traditional stocks and bonds that are found in retirement accounts.

I hate to say this because we all want to believe that one of the safest places to go is church. Unfortunately, there are church pension plans like Saint Claire’s Hospital in Schenectady, New York and Saint Joseph Hospital in Rhode Island that had no or very little money left for retirees when it was time for their retirement.