👀 Investing at All-Time Highs

Together with Preserve Gold

Good morning,

A quick breakdown — in case you just don’t have the time.

1. ⭐ The S&P 500 hit all-time-highs, adjusted for inflation.

2. ⭐ Your savings rate is more important than your rate of return.

3. ⭐ 8.3 million Americans are working multiple jobs.

4. ⭐ Credit card delinquencies are trending higher.

5. ⭐ Elon Musk might ban Apple devices at his companies.

6. ⭐ Automatically buy stocks where you shop with Grifin.

Market Overview

Chart of the Week

The S&P 500 Index adjusted for inflation — and as you can see, we’ve officially made new all-time-highs!

There’s been a lot of chatter recently during our Instagram and TikTok livestreams stating “We’re headed back down!” or “Watch out below! The stock market is going to crash.” In our humble opinion, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Together with Preserve Gold

If there’s something we’re always preaching to the Rich Habit community — it’s that diversification really does matter. Investing in precious metals like Gold and Silver can help hedge economic uncertainty and market downturns — especially when you see the amount of demand that comes from Central Banks:

During and after the last three recessions (2001, 2007, and 2020) — gold rose significantly. Since the U.S. Dollar abandoned the gold standard — there’s been a -87% decline in the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power. As former Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan once famously remarked, “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.”

In Case You Missed It…

👉 Episode 68: Financial Concepts You Need to Know

In this week’s episode of the Rich Habits podcast (linked here) — Robert and Austin touched on the following:

1. Reinvest Your Dividends — don’t make the mistake of letting your hard-earned dividends just sit in your brokerage account. Make sure you turn on your “DRIP” settings, as 75% of the total return of the S&P 500 since inception has come from dividend reinvestments.

2. Savings Rate vs. Rate of Return — if you’re building your base ($50-100K) optimizing your savings rate is much more important than your rate of return.

3. Free Cash Flow vs. Profits — as you begin to diversify your portfolio by including single stocks, it’s important to keep an eye on their “free cash flow,” and not just their “profits.” As Austin always says, if you can predict the cash flow you can predict the stock price.

👉 Q&A: Stuck in a Real Estate Investment, 3X Leverage ETFs, & HELOCS to Invest

We try our hardest to introduce important financial topics in a way that’s easy and fun to understand, however, this week’s episode was a bit more technical. We love challenging you all with these in-the-weeds topics — because what’s more important than learning how to secure your financial future?

During this week’s Q&A episode posted this morning — we answered questions from Tom S, Josh S, David G, Jeff, John W, Eric F, and Hanin A.

We prioritize questions via Instagram DMs — if you’re not yet following us, be sure to follow here! Thanks for keeping all of the great Qs rolling in!

Robert’s Callout

The number of people holding multiple jobs recently hit record highs.

This is very telling. At the moment, over 8.3 million Americans are working two or more jobs. Sometimes this is for good reason, like paying off debt or generating extra income to invest — things we encourage! But most of the time these Americans are working multiple jobs just to make ends meet.

If you tuned into the Federal Reserve’s meeting on Wednesday, you might recall Jerome Powell stating “Payroll jobs are still coming in strong, even though there’s an argument that they may be overstated.”

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is hinting toward the idea that the underlying economy, specifically the job data being reported, isn’t truthful. This is why, despite seeing all-time-highs in the S&P 500, things still feel weird. The job market still feels tight. Your neighbor or your cousin still lost their job.

Austin’s Callout

The percent of credit card balance going delinquent is rising.

Robert’s callout above pairs nicely with mine — both the number of people who are 90+ days late paying toward their credit card balances as well as 30+ days delinquent is rising rapidly.

These statistics are alarming. The American consumer is getting squeezed as the Federal Reserve’s neck-breaking speed of raising interest rates in 2022 and 2023 continue to ripple through the American economy.

The Rich Habits Radar

• 👉 OpenAI’s annualized revenue has doubled to $3.4B.

• 👉 The Federal Reserve is projecting only one rate cut in 2024.

• 👉 Apple hosted WWDC 2024, AI took center stage.

• 👉 Elon Musk threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies.

• 👉 Broadcom announced a 10-for-1 stock split.

• 👉 Citigroup projects 2025 to be a “down year” for oil.

Check ‘Em Out

Below is a list of our featured partners that we’ve vetted — with whom we have a personal relationship. Browse these exclusive offers curated just for you:

• Budgeting — Download our FREE Budgeting Template

• High-Yield Cash Account — Earn 5.1% on your savings

• Public — Trade stocks, options, and crypto

• Frec — Use direct indexing to automatically tax-loss harvest

• Grifin — Automatically buy stock where you shop

• Acorns — Get $35 free when you subscribe

• Suriance — Protect your family with term life insurance

• Video Course — Use code “Newsletter” for 15% off

• Seeking Alpha — Optimize your portfolio

• Credit Card Matrix — Find your next favorite card to swipe

• Roi — Use code “Habits” and start tracking your net worth

• Dynasty — Protect your home in a trust

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.