WCG's Leger: 'Valuations matter zero' when earnings are driving everything

0:00Rubric is the security and AI operations company, built for what happens after an attack hits. Not just the moment before, AI has turned the threat landscape into quicksand, moving too fast for any human to fully predict. That's why an agentic cyber resilience platform matters. Automated recovery, clean data, a business that keeps moving, no matter what hits. One platform, not a patchwork of stitched together tools and gaps. Don't wait for the next attack. Secure and accelerate your business. At rubric.com. Again, rubric.com.

1:00In the long history of money life, I don't think any guest has ever said this before. Valuations matter zero. But Tally Lajé, Chief Market Strategist at the Wealth Consultant Group, will back up his talk that valuations mean little and earnings mean everything in this market. We're probably going to rally into the first quarter of 2027 and race for something real good. That is earning season, which starts in a week. I think that will get the narrative back on track. And the point is that earnings drive stocks and rates make noise, Chuck. That's from our big interview. But we start today with Paul Benda, Executive Vice President for Risk, fraud and cybersecurity for the American Bankers Association. He's here talking about consumer fraud and a campaign they have called banks never ask that, which hopefully will help safeguard you in the highly likely event that someone tries to scam you.

2:03Plus, Massey Williams, head of Wealth Management at Vanguard is here, discussing the results from their latest women in wealth study, which busts for classic myths that supposedly describe how women make and execute their financial decisions. Welcome to Fantasy Island. Yeah, you may think you're coming to Fantasy Island when you hear valuations matter nothing. When you hear that we're going to be busting some classic myths about women and investing, then when you've got these things where people are being scammed and it seems impossible to be taken in yet it's not impossible at all. So we're going to try to protect you and it's really important. I mean, I haven't had much chance to discuss this event that Gail and I had. I've mentioned it in passing where we wake up on a weekend morning to a phone call. She had gotten a text and then a phone call reporting to be from Citibank.

3:03And Citibank, according to the phone call, is saying, hey, you had a fraud incident last night in California. Here's what it's going to be, etc. And she puts it on mute and goes, could this be real? And I said, well, it could be. Let's keep listening. And they go on and it seems very real because they've got a card number for her. It's like her second card that she doesn't use very often, but it's a real number. It's a real card. She had actually used it like the day before online for something. That's when you start to get worried. Like did I use it someplace and it was compromised when I used this website. And only when they started asking for information, did I basically say, no, this is a scamp, they're trying to rip you off. But they went at the early part and were super convincing. And the ABA, the American Bankers Association has this campaign. Banks never asked that. Yes, that's exactly what you have to remember. It's like, wait, no, bank wouldn't ask me that. And I'll say this again in the interview with Paul Benda.

4:04I went with Gail to Citibank's website where everything was suggesting, oh, contact us. Do this. Make sure. And we did contact them. And there was no record of the transaction that supposedly had happened. So there was no fraud, nothing else going on along those lines. Other than the fraud that was potentially being perpetrated against us that we hadn't fallen for. I'll also point out I've invited Citibank to come on and discuss the Citibank, which has pages and pages on its website dedicated to this. And I've gotten zero response. Other than then someone saying, oh, well, it would be this person, etc. They'll take a look at your request. And then I've said, okay, great. Got my request. Are you coming on to talk with me? And the answer has been silence. So guess what? They want to help you, but they don't want to do something where they talk in a place that would put themselves theoretically in any form of liability. Ha ha. That's funny. Well, you need to protect yourself. So we're going to do some talking about that today. The Vanguard Research, really cool and interesting. And it shows that women, and I know plenty of women who are phenomenal investors,

5:07but they deserve more credit than they are perhaps given because we tend to lump them in and say, oh, here's how women invest. And then Tally Lache always a great interview. Basically, his call when he was on in January, if you go to our archives was spot on, a little soft in terms of he expected the market to finish higher than it's at right now. But he does think we're going to see a rally. He's just not sure it's going to get quite to the level he was forecasting. But in that quote, he's talking about how it's going to pick up. And he does say it could carry to the level he was expecting early next year. So very interesting call there. The valuations mean nothing, quote, you're going to want to get all the context on that because he does say, well, they have longer term implications, but it's the long term implications. And he backs it up with numbers. It's not going to make everybody comfortable. Certainly, isn't going to make me comfortable. I'm a value-oriented investor. And at the end of today's show, we've got a quote from Seth Klarman. That's our quote of the day.

6:08That's all about value investing, kind of funny. That's what we had picked. So make sure you're listening to this one closely because this is one of those ones where a sound bite could make you say, oh, well, I'll just believe this. And that would not necessarily be right. So do that. If you've got questions about any of it, chuck at moneylifeshow.com. And remember, we've got a contest. It's still going. I'll tell you at the end of the show again, how to get in on it. Please get in on it. We've got tons of things that we're giving away. So we've got a lot of prizes. We'd like to make sure that everybody who gets a chance is in and the maximum number of people win. Right now, we think you're going to win by listening to what we've got. So it's Paul Benda, Massey Williams, Tally Lige, we'll kick things off talking consumer scams when we come back from this short break. Still waiting in line? Again, that's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now.

7:13Print postage for certified mail, register mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply. Welcome to the other interview on today's edition of Money Life. And this is one that frankly, whether you want to hear it or not, whether you think you know or not, you need to hear it. Because my guest is Paul Benda. He is executive vice president for risk fraud and cyber security for the American Bankers Association, which has revamped and revisited a campaign that it has designed to raise awareness around the growing threat of financial scams. They're using the hashtag banks never ask that. And there is a lot of supporting materials. You can find them at banksneveraskthat.com and practicesafechecks.com.

8:15Paul Benda, thank you for joining me on Money Life. Chuck, thanks for having me. This is a problem that pretty much is going to touch everybody. The question is whether or not they're prepared and going to know, right? Because between audience members, myself, my wife, my family, it seems like there's always somebody who's talking to me about, here's a, you know, is this a scam? And it's a question a lot of people need to ask on a lot of things, don't they? Yeah, well, I mean, everyone's gotten that text message pretending to be their bank fake fraud alert. We know we get phone calls every day and you're looking at your email inbox and there's someone who's kind of heading in to be Amazon or FedEx or the postal service or the package that supposedly couldn't be delivered. From that perspective, telling the difference, my wife recently wakes up on a Sunday, gets a notification about a credit card, fraud alerts, being used, gets the text, then gets the phone call. Yep. Saying it's city calling her and really hard to tell, like starts to go down the rabbit hole

9:20where I'm listening and they're, you know, there's like, okay, we're legitimate, legitimate. Oh, there it is. There's your trap, et cetera. What are the things that, like, what is the steps to put in? Because I can tell you, having seen real fraud alerts from city, this was really convincing. And that's the problem, right? I mean, the criminals who are no longer dealing with guys, you know, the Nigerian prince of yesterday or where they're, you know, sending money to me with these typos and the emails, they've gotten really good. They're using artificial intelligence so they can make those emails look exactly like they come from the bank, make that fake fraud alert and look exactly like comes from the bank. And the scary thing is they're going to target you and they can even change voices that come in and so they might have information about you. They might have done their due diligence. They know your name, your address, last four years social and they'll call you up. But the one thing is, you know, your bank has never had to call you up out of the blue and ask for that one time you've passed code. They're not going to try and instill a sense of urgency in you. Oh, you know, we've seen suspicious on your transactions on your account. You need to move your money immediately to protect it,

10:22move it to another account. So really, the only way you can be sure is if you call the bank yourself. So someone does call you up just like they called your wife and anything sounds off or suspicious. Just hang up, call a number on the back of your card, call a number that's on the bookmark website. And that way you know who you're talking to. Yeah. And indeed, that's what my wife did. Got off the phone with the one called the institution. The institution said, we have no record of any of this. But that's great. But about the urgency, it's not that a fraud alert or something along those lines is not an urgent situation because there are protections that you have under the law. And the clock is ticking. They're a little bit longer than like they're not ticking. Oh, you're going to be out of your money in an hour. So it's really about efforts to move efforts to get passwords, etc. Right? Like those are the things that people need to be thinking about or when did they ask for something that they're asking me to unlock the keys, right? That's exactly

11:23right. So, you know, speed is of the essence you do have. You know, your bank does protect you if someone does hack in and they transfer that money out of your account without your knowledge, your bank's going to make you whole. But you've got to report that within a certain time frame, did to make sure those protections account for. And we don't want to fund the criminals. And so, you don't want them going to different accounts. It's still a big pain if you have to change on all your credit cards, change all your passwords. So as soon as you see something suspicious, call your bank immediately. They can secure your account and make sure no more money is stolen out of it. While we're talking about this in terms of the frauds that kind of reach out to connect to you, etc. I know I was a victim last year where my computer was hacked. They wound up getting access to a bank account. What they wound up doing was diverting emails so that they could say, oh, we'll put an account on this, etc. I never saw the bank sending me the emails going, hey, are you adding this account, etc. Although I caught it very quickly. I was very lucky in that.

12:27And then I had to deal with the bank. I think that there were things there where because I do what I do and I have the knowledge of the rules, that got better response. I know you represent the bankers and bankers are usually great. But city, for example, great at answering my wife's questions, refused to discuss. They have massive fraud protection efforts. It's all over their website. Would not come on my show to discuss the situation we had just gone through. I don't understand that. And as somebody who represents the banking industry and clearly banks are trying to do better. What does a consumer do if they're contacting their bank? And their bank kind of says, you've reached a dead end because that didn't stop me and I would have lost thousands of dollars if it had. So if you think there are suspicious transactions or other things, you can reach out to your bank. You can put a freeze on that account. So that doesn't require the bank to do that. There are things that the consumer can do to ensure that that account is locked if you're really

13:29worried because that's what I'd recommend doing. We do know banks are doing the best that they can. They spend billions of dollars to do on fraud prevention. You get those text alerts. Not everyone's perfect. But if there's something suspicious, your best bet, you always hold that money, freeze that account. So there are techniques that people can do to ensure that accounts stay safe. How much in all of this does it also short circuit us because you get some sort of an email or a notice and we've been trained now. Don't open them. Don't click on them. Don't download them, etc. But at some point, your institution will be sending you your statements or something where you're going to click and you're going to do this. How much do we have to kind of learn? This is what we really can open. What we really should open or maybe we just need to let our anti-virus do this stuff if we're going to have a good relationship and a safe relationship with our banks. Well, and you're hitting the point on the head there, Chuck. It's really hard to tell when these scams come in. If it's a normal transaction or it's a normal thing, such as a statement,

14:32you know, it's potentially safe. It's probably safe. But honestly, in this day and age, you really can't trust those emails that come in. You can't trust those phone calls that come in. That's why we have banks never ask that.com to look for those red flags. The best bet is, frankly, logging through your banking app or directly to the website, download them directly from there. That's how you monitor your account. You can see there's any suspicious transactions. That's really the best way because when you reach out, you know exactly who you're reaching out to, you know, the channel you're reaching out to, when something comes into you, they're really good at making those fake emails and they could make it look legit and you don't necessarily know where you're going. Part of this campaign that you guys are doing at the American Bankers Association includes the website practicesafechecks.com. I mean, I deal with guys who have to write me checks for a lacrosse league that I run and I can't tell you the number of 20 somethings who barely know how to fill out a check. So I don't know whether that means they're really vulnerable to check fraud or they're not vulnerable at all because they're not doing it. Where are we on the check fraud thing? Like is

15:33obviously still a problem, but I would imagine much less of a problem than it used to be. Unfortunately, no, after the pandemic, check fraud doubled, tripled in volume and it stayed at that level. You know, the criminals realize, you know, a check is simply a piece of paper with your name, your address, your bank account number and your bank routing number on it. And that's really valuable information. And yet you give it to strangers, people in your lacrosse league who really don't know you from Adam are giving you their bank account number. And if you wanted to, you could take that bank account number and that router number and print out checks in their name and start writing them. And that's what the criminals have realized. And so we highly recommend use electronic payments, use that banking app, use that website much, much safer than writing a check. You know, the movie, the beekeeper, starring Jason Stath that starts with a woman who gets scammed and she loses her money. And sadly, in the story, she commits suicide after all of this has happened. If she had known that she had the beekeeper, maybe she would have just said, hey, I'll get my revenge that way. Since we don't want to be at either of those extremes and we probably don't have our own

16:36beekeeper to help us, if we click on something and we have that uh-oh feeling after we do or we talk to somebody, what is your suggestion at the point where you go, oh, did I just do something really bad? Yep. So time is of the essence. You know, people feel, they feel ashamed of this, they shouldn't. You know, you're up against a criminal industrial complex. There's hundreds of thousands of people around the world trying to scam you out of money. They have national level resources. They spend billions of dollars. So don't be ashamed. If something like that happens, and especially if you've logged into your bank account or you sent money, call your bank immediately. They're going to secure your account. They're going to lock it down so no, no further money can be lost. They're going to do what they can to try and recover those funds. If you've lost a lot of money, contact the FBI. Go to ic3.gov, file a report there. You now have a law enforcer report that you can reference going forward. And maybe they can help you recover those funds. But if you've given up any information, unfortunately, you're going to have to change those passwords. You're going to have to ensure that the rest of the accounts in your life are locked down because we know people

17:38reuse password, use your names and passwords instead of the bad guys. Paul, great stuff. Thank you so much for joining me on Money Life to talk about it. Chuck, thanks for having me. I appreciate your focus on this. Paul Benda is executive vice president for Risk, fraud and cyber security for the American Bankers Association. It's online at aba.com. But the campaign banks never ask that. It's banksneveraskthat.com and you're wondering about checks then is practicesafechecks.com. We're going to practice paying the bills. We'll take a quick break and then Money Life will be right back. Stick around. This holiday, the difference between buyers just checking things out and checking out comes down to the last few clicks. PayPal Checkout is a trusted conversion engine fueled by 400 million active PayPal and Venmo accounts. Add Pay Later and turn Holiday Shoppers into Regulars. 96% of Pay Later Shoppers are repeat users. PayPal is built for all business. Get started at Paypal.com

18:41slash business. PayPal Data 8 Markets March 2025 to February 2026. Repeat users defined as more than one pay later purchase in the past year. Now Money Life looks at what the survey said. Yes, this is the survey said on Money Life where we dig into surveys, studies, polls, any kind of research that's going to help us understand what people are doing for with and about their money. Today, we might be looking at what women specifically are not doing. Or maybe they are doing it when it comes to their money because there is a new study about women and wealth out from Vanguard and it digs into what amounts to myths. Or better yet, let's calm fallacies because that's what they are. There are really things that people have made kind of stereotypical assumptions about how women handle money or what they're doing with money and they're not necessarily right. Here to discuss it, Massey Williams. She is head of wealth management at Vanguard. If you go to

19:43vanguard.com you can get plenty more information on the firm. If you look in today's show notes, you will find a direct link that gets you to research at vanguard.com on the survey we're discussing. Massey Williams, thank you for joining me on Money Life. So that will be here, Chuck. Thank you for having me. This is a really interesting bit of research because like I said, you guys were kind. You basically explored what you called for myths. But functionally, they're lies. They are stereotypes and lies that suggest that women are maybe not as competent. They lack confidence in some of these other sorts of things. And the truth is, yeah, that's not the case. Women have broken past those stereotypes. So help us understand first why these myths themselves are bad. Well, I think maybe less grand audience into what the myths are and then I can answer the

20:43right there question. So what we have seen with traditional assumption are the women at less confidence that they are less engaged, that we take too long to make decision. And what we did are actually pointed to is quite the opposite. Right. What we saw is that women are actually confident. 75 76% of them actually taught us that they feel really confident. What we saw is that we are very thoughtful, deliberate, they take the time to ask you right questions to weigh in the options. And really looking at recommendations as the partner with financial advisors to be able to make sound financial decision. And I will tell you, Chuck, one of the striking numbers that we saw there as well is that once we are aligned with the financial advisors, these women actually stick with plan 97% of them follow through. That's incredible. And I think it's the level of financial discipline that shows that many of the myths that we're hearing about women really are not true.

21:46You know, I've written a couple of books on choosing and working with financial advisors. And I one of the stories that I tell all the time is about men who I've met on the trail supporting those books, et cetera, who have kind of said things to me about like, hey, could you like my wife doesn't like our financial advisor? Could you help me figure out how to make her like the guy? And my answer to that is no, you need to find an advisor that works for her or that works for the two of you. Not let me go get my buddy. You know, if she does it because if they have an advisor, they trust this is what happens. How much is this also showing couples dynamics and things along those lines because we tend to default to certain roles and they are based on those stereotypes. And I would imagine, especially when it comes to things like getting help, getting advice, how you manage the money, that this is not just that this is a women's issue, but these are couples issues.

22:49Yeah, absolutely, Chuck. And maybe two things I would say about that, like, let me respond a little bit to your conversation that you had with others, right, as they are thinking about women don't really want to be engaged. That is not actually what we see. They want to be engaged, but what I would say to the advisor is bring them early into the conversation, right? So what we have found is that advisor have been engaging mostly with a primary decision maker. And what we are asking them is start engaging the families. And that is not just a woman in the equation, it is also the children, right? Because what we see, which is the second data point that I want to share, is that women actually receive this wealth. When it passed to them, within the first 12 months, most of them actually leave a relationship. About 70 to 80% of them will leave that relationship, because they do not have an established relationship with a financial advisor. So it's very important for us at an industry to understand that and start building that trust in the relationship right now.

23:54That's interesting to me as well. It was funny, my sad, when my brother died, my brother knew that his wife would want a different advisor, but she would want it not because she didn't like their advisor, but because she wanted, she was going to want someone who was close to home, who she could see more easily and have more contact with. At the same time, my sister-in-law knew that she didn't want overcomplicated. She didn't want someone who was making this more difficult than it had to be. She wanted someone who was bringing things to her level. How much does that play into the research? Because financial advisors often justified their existence by looking how complicated it is. I've got to build you this portfolio that's got to have 21 funds in it. It's got to cover every little niche. She basically said, I'm not going to work with any advisor. It doesn't say, I can do this in five funds. That's kind of things. I would say what you are also hearing there is expertise and sophistication doesn't have to be

24:56equal to complicated. I tell my team a lot, if you can't actually explain something down to a four-year-old, then you're not really clear and understand what you are explaining. It's very important for people to understand that knowledge and expertise doesn't have to be equal to something that is complicated. I can totally see where the system law is coming from with that sentiment. What we really want advisor to understand is that you have to make it simple. What does that mean to make it simple? Start by understanding the unique circumstances of a person you're talking to. Whatever goes, whatever trying to accomplish not only for themselves but for the families, are you very clear about the education that is needed and are you listening? That's a very key word, a very listening to what the woman actually are trying to do. I do very make sure that it's a collaborative approach when they get into those decisions because that's something we saw

25:58very clearly in the data is that women actually were looking for a partner, someone that could bounce ideas with them and somebody that can be there and bring the knowledge that was needed for them to make the decision. Ultimately, they will make the decision, but that collaboration was very, very important and you can't make it complicated if you're trying to really explain things that could be very simple in nature. Your study was done for really the advisory community to get insights to this. My audience is individual investors and people who are dealing with money, men and women, heads of couples, secondary people and couples, whatever it might be. One of the interesting things that you found was that the myth about women, they care much more about somebody who's going to chat with them, somebody who's going to show them empathy than they care about expertise. That was pretty much the opposite of what the survey found. It seemed like the women were,

27:01I want the expertise, talk down to someone else. How important is that for people to recognize when it comes to, hey, if I come away feeling like this person was really more interested in being empathetic than in being my partner on the expertise side, they're not the right advisor for. The woman should be looking, and I will say actually this extent beyond women, we should be looking for an advisor that can understand you and an advisor that brings a full value proposition. Ultimately, we are in the business of trust. When we think about trust, yes, empathy is part of the equation, but it's not all the equation. It's just one element of it. What is the value that you're bringing? What is the expertise that you bring into the table? Acculaborative IU, when you are having this conversation, do you understand the goals of individual in front of you? All of those things matter a lot. We also heard that education matter

28:03to the women, and in addition to empathy. I think we've studied a shed that 14% on the other women that we talk to say that empathy matter. I don't want that to be misinterpreted as empathy. Doesn't matter. I think only is a keyword here. It's not the only thing that matter. It's much more than that, and it's important not only for women and the investor in general to understand, are you in face of somebody that can drink all of those things to you, but it's also as important for the industry to understand that that is what women are really looking for. From the standpoint of consumer advice, one of the things that I get asked all the time is, what's the biggest mistake people do when hiring an advisor? This study kind of hammered home, what I always say is the biggest mistake, which is that people only interview one. They decide they need a financial advisor. The first person they talk to sounds great, because how could they not? And then they go off and do this, and if it works out fine, but when it doesn't, it's a problem.

29:09This study, by the way, goes into reasons why people leave advisors. But does this study, not just for women, but for everyone, reinforce the idea that, look, if you're going to hire an advisor, have a hiring process, that includes a couple of interviews so that you can truly decide who is the best partner. You don't pick a partner necessarily. On the first, I had a short conversation with them in life or in finances. Yeah, absolutely. Chuck, and then you just nailed it at the end. They already think about all the big decisions that we make in our life, whether it's true to a doctor or choosing something very significant in your life, including a partner, like you just said, you do have to have multiple engagements. And before and understand all your options, and really be comfortable about the decision that you're making there. And picking a financial advisor is no different. I would say, actually, this is a partner that you're looking for, and you're really trying to make sure that it's somebody that is aligned with your value.

30:11Somebody that understands you, somebody that can be there to really make sure that we're bringing VS expertise, education, and everything else, transparency, clarity that is needed. And for that, you, I would just advise people to really think about doing a little bit of research and understanding who is the best fit for you and your family. Massey, this has been great. I really appreciate you taking the time to join me on Money Life. And that was my pleasure, Chuck. Thank you for having me. That's Massey Williams. She's head of wealth management for Vanguard, which is online vanguard.com. And if you want to dig into their women and wealth research for yourself, check out our show notes where you can find a link today or find Massey on the guest page at MoneyLifeShow.com. There's a link there as well. And we've got much more to go on today's show. So we'll take a quick break. We'll come back. You should too. Stick around.

31:13What if you could have more wins, more support, more sound effects? At LPL Financial, we like the sound of that because LPL offers more. Advisors, what if you could have more ways to help your clients? Ready to invest? What if you could find an advisor that really understands you? When it comes to your finances, your business, your future? At LPL, we ask, what if you could? Pay an advertisement investing involves risk, including potential loss of principle, LPL Financial LLC, member Finra SIPC. Welcome to the big interview on the October 8th edition of Money Life. Returning to the show now, Tally Le J, he is chief market strategist at the wealth consulting group. By the way, he's one of the hosts of the Bull of Wall Street podcast. And the Bull of Wall Street, a fairly young podcast that back when he was starting it, he had been a guest on my show. And we had talked to him about it. I've been a guest on his show and had some fun with him.

32:16And that show recently won a wealthy award. That's for podcasts done by wealth managers and advisors. So I'm not eligible for any of those. But he won a wealthy award. And literally in the time where he and I were just catching up before we started recording, he found out that Titan investors had announced that he is their allocator of the year for 2026. If you want to learn more about Tally and the wealth consultant group, go to wealthcg.com or stick around because you're about to learn a lot more. Tally Le J, congratulations on the award. More importantly, great to have you back on Money Life. How about that? Thanks for having me on Chuck. Great to catch up. Lost to talk about on this episode. Yeah. Well, you just got named allocator of the year. So let's talk about how you think people should be allocating two different things. They're money, of course, but also their attention. Because right now we're focused on a lot of things. The market is focused

33:17on a couple of stocks. It's been looking for bad news, headlines, et cetera. So should we be allocating our attention to the good or the bad right now? And then how should we be allocating our money to respond to that? So Chuck, look, my gut feel here or sense is, and we have to look past the data when we're dividing the the future. Because that's really the ask here. The data only gets you so far. What we know, and I'll start with the calendar years, that September is known for being, and it's notorious for this, the weakest month of the year. So as an optimist, and this gets to Le J's law of dynamic optimism, I'm inclined to look past the recent sluggishness in equities and prepare for what is also known as normally the best season for equities. So my view here, and I haven't changed my tune, Chuck, is that we're probably going to rally into the first quarter of

34:212027. And race for something really good, that is earning season, which starts in a week. And so, I think that will get the narrative back on track. And the point is that earnings drive stocks and rates make noise, Chuck. Okay, before we go any further, because I really don't want to forget it, I think you better explain Le J's law of dynamic optimism. So Le J's law, thank you for the prompt, because I wasn't going to indulge, but it basically says that optimism isn't a static trait of the universe. It's not just being an uber bull. It depends on the swings of the sentiment pendulum. And when I look at my proprietary sentiment and positioning indicator spy for short, we've got chronic fear, negativity, and pessimism, which is also another way to get to my higher

35:22outcome for stocks over the next year. And it's because we've got plenty of buyers on the sidelines and a mountain of cash that could be put to work or cycled into risk assets, including stocks. It's interesting, because you talk about September being a terrible time of the year. October is the month that I'm very worried about, because while September is worse, October seems to have more big events. Midterm years tend to be terrible. This one hasn't been but post midterm elections tend to be great. So that would support going into next year. But I know that you only went as far as the first quarter of next year. So once we digest this, what happens then and is part of the issue that is you look a little further out. We're going to come to a point where earnings could stay spectacular, but Wall Street values earnings growth more than it does just earnings and you can't keep growing at this pace forever. So that's the big question.

36:25And I actually, I tried to peer out using my crystal ball, which isn't any better than anybody else's to be fair. But look, for now, and this is the point, the immediate runway, as I say, I think is primed for risk-taking. And that's because the earnings engine is running hot. Now, to your point, Chuck, I don't think we can keep growing at this pace indefinitely. So I assembled a handful. In fact, four global leading indicators of earnings growth that suggest that we could enjoy peak earnings growth, not peak earnings, but peak earnings growth in the fourth quarter of this year. And we may downshift to a slightly lower pace in the first quarter of next year. Again, all it is is high watermarks and comparisons that become more difficult. It's not because of something, sister, it's just the laws of economic gravity setting in.

37:30That said, if laws of economic gravity set in, you wind up with a downturn. You wind up with a correction, the normal sort of thing that you expect. Bull markets don't end because of that. And they don't end because of old age. They end because something breaks. What are you worried could break? So on the list of things to worry about as a responsible steward of capital, there are many. And the one that I kind of showcased in my December 2025 outlook for this year was geopolitics. Now, I did not know that the US is going to attack Iran. That was the case, that lands squarely in the geopolitical bucket. So that was one of the, I'd say, seven headwinds that I laid out for stocks. And we've had setbacks. I don't have to come up with anything new. I've already laid them out. And we've actually kind of followed the playbook pretty nicely. And these are

38:32I think bricks in the wall of worry that temporarily derailed this or diverted this raging bold market below its minus two standard error. But the point is if I'm right about the fundamentals, which are very strong, very booming earnings, Chuck, I can't emphasize that enough. These are gifts, not punishments. And I think we want to buy stocks on the pullbacks. When I become concerned or worried, Chuck, is when we have excessive bullishness and optimism. And we are on the other side of the zero line right here. I will point out that on your last appearance here on money life, it was at the start of the year back in January. You said at the time, we would see tailwinds over power worries. But you also were pretty clear in making a forecast. And the forecast was S&P 8500. Now in this rally that you're talking about into the fourth quarter, is that coming true?

39:32Are we going to follow a little short of that? So you know, look, I had the presence of mind again, to your point, Chuck, to lay out the headwinds and the negatives. But I think at this stage, given those setbacks, 8250 is a more realistic achievement by the end of this year. But I have not changed my price target. It just got pushed out to the first quarter of next year. So definitely, I think achievable in that three to six month time frame, the literal read across from my technical time trend indicator would be 8600 by the end of the first quarter, 2027. So while I haven't changed my 8500 price target, it could end up being about 100 points to conservative in that longer time horizon or forecasting horizon. I want to go back to the answer to the first question, because before I detoured us to the Vligez law of dynamic optimism,

40:35right before I did that, you were talking about basically bonds and interest rates being much more about noise than they are about substance. So you're not worried about what's been happening with treasury yields and that you are not buying into any of the, we've got a problem if we get too many rate hikes or yields get stuck above five and a half on the long bond, etc. The short answer is no and there's so many different ways I have parsed through this big issue in markets. I think it's a false narrative and I love this kind of conversation and debate. So the driving force behind higher rates here is not inflation, it's real growth. And as we say, that's another major tailwind behind the booming earnings story. So that's kind of point number one, but when I take a step back quantitatively, my valuation model for stocks is driven by

41:39arguably the two most important determinants and that is earnings and the corporate bond yield or discount rate for stocks. Not the risk free rate, that's not the one you want to look at. The investment grade, long duration, corporate bond yield, which is kind of an apples to apples way of looking at or discounting equity cash flows and earnings. So the regression coefficient speak for themselves, Chuck, and I can't, I can't, I'm literally not exaggerating. The coefficient for earnings when it comes to explaining the movements of variability in stock prices is almost a hundred percent. It's point nine six. It doesn't get any better than that in macro research. So what that means is basically a 1% increase in earnings gives you almost a 1% increase in stocks. So all the good stuff that is happening fundamentally, which I talked about at the top of the conversation, swamps the negative effect of interest rates. Domestic versus international right now. I mean,

42:45we've got a bunch of things going on in the world. There are some markets that look attractive. There are some that look a little scary. International did great last year, but it was much less about valuations, which everybody thought would be the reason than it was about currency stuff. So where are you on domestic and international? So I think at the same time when we talked, I had embraced international, I still do like non-US stocks because of the more attractive valuations. And as a result, the better or above average implied long term returns. In the near term, however, I think US stocks are looking pretty good. So the way I like to to frame that more tactical conversation is using nominal economic growth and the prevailing rate of interest. In the US, there is a nice, comfortable growth cushion of about 2%. So we have an economy that's growing about 6% to 7%

43:48year-to-year. And our 10-year Treasury bond yield is 5% or a little bit more. So that's the math there. You cannot say the same thing of places like Japan and the UK and Germany, probably not even France or Europe in general, where the situation is more acute. And that's when you want to worry when the rate of interest is choking off an economy's ability to generate returns and income. So I think in a relative sense, and that's the world in which we live and invest, the US is probably a safe haven right here. I should point out to my audience, we were so busy talking about the success of your podcast and things along those lines. And again, if you want to get more information on tally and the wealth consultant group, it's wealthcg.com that I didn't suggest that people should maybe follow you on LinkedIn, where you post regular commentaries. Again, go search for tally there,

44:49but in those commentaries, which I read, you have talked a lot about valuations. So here you are saying the market's going to go, you're going to reach the S&P forecast that you've got etc. Where are you on valuations right now? Because we've got a market that's been led by a few stocks, which fundamentally means those few stocks are the valuation concerns and the rest maybe not so much. So this again, it gets back to good old fashioned quantitative analysis. And so when you look at the relationship between valuations today and equity returns over a selection of different holding periods, this should calm listeners down. Valuations matter zero when you're thinking about the R squared or the coefficient of determination. It's less than 0.3 over a zero to five year horizon. Valuations are meaningless over the typical forecasting horizon that you and I

45:56talk about Chuck. So the next question is, okay, well, when do they matter? Well, you can optimize the R squared and it goes up above 0.8. I think it's like 0.8 sex or something over a 16 year horizon. So what does that really mean? Valuations help define the structural guardrails for our long term expected returns on equities. And so that's the cautionary note here. And that's why I said those things about US versus international equities earlier, given the lofty valuations. This is the Cape Fear dynamic, right? The sickly adjusted PE when to worry about valuations. That was a reference to a movie and a book, by the way, if you're unfamiliar, check it out. It's pretty awesome. But also a reference to the Cape index, the Cape Schiller measures. Absolutely. And so that's the point. You're kind of today you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, but the good thing is the good news is that

46:58that bill won't come due for another 16 years in the US. Okay. Well, I think for a lot of people, they would certainly take that. Does that mean if that bill's not coming due, we're crash proof that like, you know, how do you explain to somebody that bill's not coming due valuations, not going to be a concern for 15 or 16 years, but nobody expects this market to just keep rolling that way. Do they? Well, so again, like I say, valuation for these reasons is not a timing tool. The underlying driver here is the boom in earning. So it's another reason why I like to parse out the performance regimes. And so and ironically, I get this question a lot. Aren't the warning signs flashing with a high PE on US equities? Well, actually, no, you know, the other question is aren't they getting more and more expensive? Actually, not because of that positive denominator effect. US stocks are actually

48:00growing into their multiple. Well, the next question as well isn't that kind of unusual? Absolutely not. It's like clockwork. It's a typical business cycle dynamic. Whenever you had a peak multiple, this goes back to the early 1990s late to 1980s, you had a trough in multiples. And when earnings were booming, you had multiple compression. Well, isn't that a challenging environment for equity returns? Absolutely not. Earnings are the dominant forests or factor for equity returns irrespective or irregardless of what multiples were doing. In fact, most of the time in those regimes, and that's the regime that we're currently in, multiples were actually compressing. It didn't matter. So we've had six of these regimes. Every time 100% of the time, you had a positive return on stocks, five out of six times, you had a double digit gain on equities. And in most of those, multiples were compressing. And I think that's the mix of ingredients that we're working with

49:04today, Chuck. Tell you if I'm listening to you correctly, I think I hear music playing. And the tune is don't worry, be happy. Am I wrong? Yeah. And get some skiing on. We're about to enter the e-season here. Where are you happiest when it comes to investing right now? If this is how you feel about the market, how much are you leaning into AI? How much would you rather be AI adjacent or AI touched on or improved, but not AI direct? So I think the, again, the pendulum has swung tactically here. The names that had previously been benefiting from tech diffusion. So this would be the S&P 493, the equal weighted, the sector's outside of technology. They've actually kind of taken a breather here because of that typical September weakness that we normally see. But I think at the same time, it's nice to see technology and the magnificent seven kind of do the heavy lifting

50:10for the rest of the market when they're needed. But if I had to make a bet here, I'd be zinging when others are zagging. And I'd get back on track with that broadening trade that I think the market could enjoy for the next quarters and years, Chuck. In doing that, the broadening trade, are you buying into small caps and believing that the rally that we've seen bits and pieces of that hasn't been able to hold is coming back that like we'll see small caps get into the next good cycle. Is it that kind of a broadening trade or is it just I'd rather own the 500 than the seven. So when you talk about small caps, small caps have done very well since April of 2025. It's only, I would say in the past three to six months where the rise, I'm writing about this this week, it's kind of the growth quality paradox. The rise in real interest rates and the growth proxy in the marketplace, ironically, it's actually forced a defensive rotation into large caps,

51:17which have the earnings. That's what we were talking about earlier away from small caps, which are I think notorious for having more losses or more or less profitable companies. So I think what we have to see is a way to ease the pressure from rising real rates without sacrificing growth. So this is at once economic sensitivity and financial sensitivity. So again, we need to find a balance between those two to bring small caps back into the equation. And in all this, we've talked for over 20 minutes, no real concern. I don't think you've mentioned the word inflation more than once in passing. So none of that to you is the wild card that ends the tune we're playing. So I hear inflation a lot and that's probably why I'm less one of the reasons I'm less concerned about it. But there's a useful indicator out there from the San Francisco Fed. It's called the

52:19inflation shock momentum index, ISMI for short. And it compares the inflation categories in the PCE index that the Fed prefers. In fact, we all look at and what we have seen is persistent negative momentum in the categories that are below the horizon line. And so that personally calms me down. Again, when we look at or disentangle, this is called decomposing the tenure treasury bond yield. The reasons why it has been rising again, this goes back to what I was saying earlier. It's not because of inflation expectations. Inflation break evens have barely moved. The bond market is looking past these supply shocks and high or elevated oil prices. It's really coming from real growth, as I say. Well, Talley, always great to connect with you. I appreciate you coming back.

53:20We'll be watching your forecast. And if things get ugly early next year, we'll have you back and see if you can come back with more dynamic optimism for all of us. I appreciate your time on Moneyline. Thanks, Chuck. That's Talley, Wajay. He is chief market strategist at the Wealth Consulting Group, which is online at Wealthcg.com. Again, if you want to find his commentaries, follow him on LinkedIn. If you want to find his podcast, it's called the Bull of Wall Street podcast. There will be links at Wealthcg.com. And again, you can go back and find the one that I was on, but you can also find the ones that actually won him the awards. We're not getting any awards. We're just taking a quick break. We'll come back and wrap up this show right after this message. With LPL Financial, we provide the services to help push you forward. When it comes to your finances, your business, your future, the only question should be, what if you could?

54:21PaynefrietizeMagnacentric is not a client of LPL Financial LLC and receives compensation to promote LPL investing in Falsaris, including potential answer principle LPL Financial LLC member FinnRas IPC. We are back to wrap this one up. Thank you for sticking around till the end. We are still in the throes of a contest. We want to give you every chance to get in on it. We have six different books that we are giving away. They are the case for quitting, the surprising benefits of opting out by Lindsey Krause on the September 17th show. Stock Picker, how to develop the mindset, temperament, and strategy to outperform Wall Street by Ian Castle from the September 18th show. The madness of markets, why smart investors make crazy decisions and how to exploit them from the September 21st show. Inside the owner's box, conversations on power and leadership in sports from David Rubenstein on the September 22nd show. The morality of money, remove fear and discover

55:25financial freedom through simple economic principles and universal truths by Renee Brian on September 23rd show and the retirement answer. The six key decisions every retiring needs to make by Daniel Goldie, that was on September 30th on the show and to be entered, well, you have to put the following events in order. You have to give us the event and the year in which it happened, the events that you have to put on your timeline are the first time the Dow Jones industrial average topped 10,000 and also the year when it topped 25,000, then you have the first time the standard and poorest 500 crossed 1000 and then 5,000. The three more events, the last year when the United States reported a budget surplus, the fiscal year in which the US federal budget deficit first topped $1 trillion and the year in which the national debt topped $10 trillion and I will just point out the federal

56:28budget deficit, the national debt to different things. So make sure you're looking this up. Look for the right things. Put your answers in order by year, first to last send them to Chuck at MoneyLifeShow.com and then you'll be entered for the books. If there's a book you do not want to win, let us know. We'll will make sure that we leave that prize for somebody else. Tomorrow on this show, man, what a great lineup. Brandon Thurber, chief market strategist, regions asset management, Martin Pring, investment strategist at Pring Turner, a legendary technical analyst, a Nate Shetty, the chief investment officer at S E I. So we're talking closed-end funds and interval funds, but with a focus on alternatives with him, broad market with Brandon, technicals with Martin Pring. It's a great day to live the MoneyLife. Meanwhile, if you're looking for something to do today, it's National Hero Day. Which is all about heroes, not about hero sandwiches. It's world octopus day, American touch tag day,

57:33and on the food front, National Fluffernutter day, my cousin Michael who listens to the show was always a big fluffernutter guy and he grew up and like became a chef. Who knew? I was never the fluffernutter guy, but my stepkids still love them. National salmon day, I can't eat salmon after a bad incident I had a few years ago, a National Parogi day, and I love a good parogi. I love good guests too, and we had them today. They were Paul Benda, executive vice president for Risk, Fraud, and Cyber Security for the American Bankers Association, online at aba.com, but it's more importantly, banks never ask that.com to practice safe checks.com. Massey Williams, head of wealth management for Vanguard, Vanguard.com, and we have the link to the study in our show notes and Tally Le J, Chief Market Strategist at the Wealth Consulting Group, wealthcg.com. Thanks to them. Thanks to Rob Floyd, my producer. Thanks to Maho, my dog. But mostly thanks to you for being here, because you make this special

58:36and worthwhile for me, each and every day. The money life quote of the day comes from Seth Claremont, but it's kind of ironic to have this quote on a day when Tally Le J made comments about valuations and valuations being worth zero. But Seth Claremont said, once you adopt a value investment strategy, any other investment behavior starts to seem like gambling. Well, yeah, I can see why you might say that. I don't know that everybody would agree, but you don't have to agree. What you do have to do is remember, until we do this again the next time, the best thing you could do for your money is not worry too much about it. Have a great day, everybody. Stay safe. Stay warm. Stay calm. We'll see you here on Money Life again tomorrow. The people who appear on Money Life are here for you or and their own entertainment. Don't take advice from us or any other podcast without doing more research and or consulting your financial advisor. We believe our guests provide reliable information, but we can't and don't guarantee the accuracy or completeness of their statements. Opinions expressed on Money Life are

59:38those of the host and guests only and reflect their personal thinking. They're not representative policy or strategy of any employers or sponsors. This show is produced by Money Life Radio, which retains all rights to the content. If you want to use any part of this show for your own purposes, be they good or evil. You must get our written permission first. And remember, with great financial information comes great responsibility. Please act responsibly. You're finished. Fethic, baffalin, ballant, baffalent, fagcac. What if you could have even more and more and more help to pursue your goals? At LPL Financial, we offer more ways for advisors and their clients to thrive. So what if you could? Paid advertisement investing involves risk including potential asset principle LPL Financial LSE member Finder SIPC.