Week Ending 09_12_2025 Stock Market Recap

Markets pushed higher this week but we might be setting up for a “Sell the News” event next week. How so? TUNE IN TO FIND OUT!

Episode Transcript

(00:34):
Hello and welcome
to this week's edition of the Big Money Report. I'm
your host, David Boothe, President and Chief Investment Officer at BIG Investment
Services. That's B-I-G, Boothe Investment Group.
We're a full-service financial advisory based out of Dover, Delaware, serving
clients all across America. And you can read

(00:56):
all about us at abigplan.com. That's www.abigplan.com. I
like to put the show together once a week just to give you a recap of the week
behind and a peek at the weekend weeks to come. Trying to
keep you up to speed with you and your money and the competition informed
because some of them tune in week in and week out, and that's quite all right. And we're glad you're with
us today. It is Friday, September 12th, 2025. Some shout outs to

(01:18):
Tony, Sue. Val, it
was good catching up with you this week. My friend, Steve. Steve is
an amazing guy. Multi-talented Steve. He is awesome. He
can do just about anything, this guy, except play fantasy football, but that's
all right, buddy. You keep at it. Anyway, no, Steve is awesome. Awesome
guy. So big shout out to all those folks. Before we jump into things
today, I do have to take a moment. It's been a sad week, I

(01:41):
would say for America, but really humanity. I mean, it's just really sad
to see that things are going on out there. I personally didn't really track
Charlie Kirk closely. I didn't really watch a lot of his stuff. I saw
his posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, et cetera. But
this week I've seen a lot of his videos and what a nice guy, really.
I mean, I tune out the major cable news networks, MSNBC,

(02:04):
Fox, they get so nasty, they grate on my nerves, they're calling each
other names all the time, just really truly nasty. And
this guy was like the complete exact opposite. He
had strong opinions, but He went into these debates, from
what I've seen, just with a kindness and caring about the people
he was talking to. Even if he vehemently disagreed with them, he just seemed to
have a very caring spirit. What a sad thing to see happen here

(02:27):
in America. Our prayers certainly with his wife and his children and
his followers. There's a lot of folks that have really been deeply moved by what happened
this past week. So our prayers are out there for the whole situation. And
many times I wish God would just play the puppet master hold
the strings and control, micromanage everything, keep
this type of stuff from happening. And that's not how it works. You know, things are set

(02:49):
in motion, people are free to do and be what they will. But
hey, look, you know, Romans 8, 28, God says, I work all things out
to the good for those who love Him and are called to His purpose. And I believe that dude definitely
loved God, was called to His purposes, so I know things will be worked out for him, and
I'm sure God's hand will be on his family as well. So
let's go ahead and jump into the numbers and tell you what's going on there with

(03:10):
the markets. Markets pushed higher this week. This market
just defying gravity. Defying gravity.
Dow Jones up 0.9% this week. The S&P up 1.5%. Nasdaq Composite up
2%. Small caps not moving a lot, only a 0.2% this week. I kind of find
that interesting because there's some things that happened this week that I think should have

(03:31):
benefited small caps. So kind of scratching my head on that one a
little bit. The volatility index drifted lower this week, down
2.7%, 14.7% on the VIX. moving
further down into that complacency area there,
something to keep an eye on. And long-term bonds, as
measured by the TLT, finally getting a little bit of love here, up 1.5% on

(03:53):
the week, moving higher as there's anticipation that
rates are moving lower, and we'll talk why in a moment. Looking
at the different sectors of the market, retail sales are a bit down this
week, down 1.1%, but semiconductors up 3.7. They
had a big move. Utilities up 2.4. Again, that's
kind of interest rate related. How about the laggards? Stables
are down 0.6 and materials down 0.3, but everything

(04:16):
else is doing really, really well. And communication services having a strong week
too, up 2.3%. You can thank Google for that. They really push things
higher. And then when it comes to the metals, gold and silver, gold
up 1.3, silver up 3%, so
the metal's moving higher too. So what moved markets this week?
Well, a few things, really two big things, two inflation

(04:38):
numbers, PPI, producer price index, wholesale inflation
number came in, I think better than expected, a little bit better
than expected, the market really loved that a lot. And then we have
the consumer price index, the very next day, I wouldn't say it was better
than expected, but it was definitely, It wasn't a number that
caused the market to think that the Fed will rethink cutting

(04:58):
rates next week. The market felt that number was fine and
in line and will give the Fed cover to cut rates. As a matter of
fact, some market participants are starting to price in a 50 basis point
rate cut next week. We also had some negative data this week. The jobless
claims number was higher than it's been in quite some time. So that
was interesting. And one thing I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there's some tension in the

(05:18):
economic data. The jolts, the job openings number, that's
actually gotten down to a point It hasn't been here since COVID, where
we actually have more workers looking for
jobs than we do have jobs available. So it's been quite a long time
since we've seen that number, like I said, down all the
way back to 2020. So there's some tension. in

(05:39):
the data and the market believes that tension is going to
lead the Fed to cut rates next week. I think the Fed will cut rates.
I think they do have enough cover at this point in time. I think there's been
enough signaling by some of the Fed governors leading into this
coming week that we're going to see a cut. The question is, what
will they say afterwards? And what will they

(05:59):
say about it? Will it be a dovish cut where they cut and
they anticipate cutting more in coming months
and they're open about that? Or will there be a hawkish cut
where they cut the rates and are really stingy about cutting more? And
either way, hawkish or dovish, this market is setting itself up
for a sell the news event. What do I mean by that? The market

(06:22):
has a history, a very strong history of
buying the rumor, getting ahead of the news that's coming
down the road and trying to get ahead of that. And then when the news comes,
the market tends to react the opposite direction. So the
market right now has been pushing higher, higher, higher. and in
anticipation, I think, of next week's rate cut, once that cut comes,

(06:44):
even if it's a dovish cut, this market could do some give back.
We could see it press down a little bit lower just because it's getting
so far ahead of itself, I think, in some regards. So we'll see how
that plays out. So what did we do this week? Well, we did a bit. We
moved some stuff around this week. One of the big things we did is I trimmed Ken Ross
Gold this week, KGC, And look, I know some

(07:04):
folks like, yeah, David, why sell that? Right. I mean, it's like
the number one performer in the portfolio. It's up 151% on
the year. We got a couple of others that are up a hundred percent things
that we bought during that downturn in April. And Alibaba is up quite nicely
too at 83% on the year. But yeah, why sell something that's doing
so good, right? Well, there's an old adage in our industry, okay?

(07:26):
Bulls make money, bears make money, hogs get slaughtered,
okay? So look, if you're a bull, you're placing trades in
the market to make money if the market goes up. If you're a
bear, you're placing trades and make money in the market if it goes down. And
if you're just greedy, then you're a hog and you can get burned badly.
And, you know, it's not just amongst individual investors that

(07:48):
get that way. And I've seen that quite often over the years. It's also the
firms. I go all the way back to the tech crash back in
2000 to 2003 and year 2000. working
with mutual funds back then. I wasn't managing the stocks myself then. I was
using mutual funds. And I can remember these firms, these value funds,
growth and income, these blue chip stock funds up

(08:10):
30%. And I'm like, what? And value stocks were not doing
well at all back then, yet they're up 30%. Why? Because the
portfolio managers were greedy. They were swinging for the fences with
all these dot-com stocks that had no value to them. And
then when the whole thing crashed, they imploded in a
major, major way. So it's not just individual investors that get
caught up in that. It's also the firms themselves. Because look, a lot of

(08:32):
these firms, they'll go far more aggressive than they should, thinking
that the more the portfolios grow, then the more money they're going to make off
of it. So they really tend to sometimes be much
more aggressive than they should be. But as a fiduciary, which is what we are, We've
got to look at both sides of the ball, right? We can't just look at trying to make you
the most money we can possibly make you at any given time. We also have

(08:52):
to look at preservation of principle, right? Preserving your
capital. And with that, there's a level of prudence you bring
to the table. So when you have a stock that you bought for $5.50, like Ken
Ross, and it's at $23.28, You
got to be trimming that thing on the way up. And when a stock is
5% of a portfolio, if it runs into a bad time and it

(09:15):
drops 20% in the blink of an eye, which can happen in a day,
folks, in a day, well, that's a big hit to your portfolio if
it's 5% of your holdings. But if it's 3% of
your holdings, not so much, right? A lot easier to contend with. So
we trimmed that one back this week. I still like it. I still think gold
looks relatively constructive, but it is in the stratosphere

(09:36):
and I do get concerned that we could see things roll over
in that regard. So, hey, if it doubles again, great, we'll trim it again.
Go for it, Ken Ross. Go on up, buddy. We still have a position
in it. But we did trim that back. And then we also did some trimming in
energy. Look, we work with some of the best folks in the world. And
when I say that, I don't mean like your drunk friend that

(09:57):
says he loves you over and over and over again. I'm talking about like we literally work with
some of the best people in the entire world, folks that you see on CNBC frequently and
whatnot. And I'm talking to them each week. I'm email communications back
and forth. And one of them pointed out some really compelling data
to me about energy stocks and the things that energy have
done here over the last really recent weeks. And

(10:18):
when you look at history, energies just didn't perform very
well after going through similar periods and doing similar things. Looking
at the economic data and some of these other things, I just felt it was prudent to pull
back on that a little bit. I still like these stocks. They're very cheap. Even
sitting here where they are right now, they're cheap. They're paying great dividends. But
if they're going to underperform, there's a high probability that they're going to underperform

(10:40):
here in coming months, then maybe we can reallocate those
dollars elsewhere. So trim that back a little bit as well. So
it made some moves this week, building up the cash a little bit more. And I've
got to tell you, I got a shopping list of stocks I would like to
buy. There's some things I really would love to see come down and
give us an opportunity to step in and pick up some shares. But I

(11:00):
have to say that moving forward, things are looking touch
and go to me in some ways. There's some things I don't like. First of all, the data
has got chinks in the armor. There's no doubt about it. There's some chinks in
the armor when it comes to the data. It's a little backwards though. Normally when
it comes to the economy, the economy will start to weaken in certain
areas, but the jobs number will be really strong and people will be hanging on

(11:22):
to that great jobs number until it's no longer great. Jobs
number crashes and then everyone starts to panic and we slip into a
recession. All right. What we've got going on right now is that the economic data is
all in all is pretty good. I mean, GDP growth is pretty strong. I've
been on some conference calls with banks and retailers, even
things that we don't have in the portfolio. I've been on some of the conference calls

(11:42):
or quarterly reports to hear the commentary and the commentary
on the consumer has been pretty strong consumers hanging in there. So
you've got this economic data on one hand that looks pretty good, but then the
jobs numbers are looking pretty lousy. And then there's some
other cracks here and there. I mean, look at lumber prices. Lumber
prices are a harbinger to recession. You

(12:04):
have to be on your P's and Q's when you see lumber collapse. Lumber,
folks, is collapsing. I mean, we're talking crashing hard just
over the last 45 days has my attention in
a major way. So where I thought I might be looking
to buy even more stock in coming weeks with
a pullback, I'm leaning more towards maybe adding a

(12:24):
little more to our defense heading into 2026. Look, cyclically speaking,
We're entering into a period of time where recession is more likely,
just from a simple standpoint of cyclicality. The last
one we had was 2020 with COVID. We normally have one every couple
of recessions every 10 years. I think I mentioned that last week. So cyclicality
speaking, we're kind of entering into a period where there's a little more concern there.

(12:47):
There's chinks in the armor in regards to the economic data. And
then this. Everybody on the street
is bowled up, man. I mean, everything I'm
tuning in, listening to, every talking head, just,
hey, we are in a bull market. We're going higher, higher, higher.
And I think we are. I think the technicals and some things point to us heading

(13:09):
higher into 2026. I don't doubt that. I'm looking at
6,800 and change on the S&P, which is about 5% higher than where
we are today. I think we can push our way towards that. Maybe
we'll hiccup along the way, but I think that's where we're headed. But i have to
say one of the things i learned many years ago is when everyone's on the same side
of the boat in this business you better watch out the market loves to

(13:29):
give a big middle finger to as many people as i possibly can
and everybody's really getting a bit overly
optimistic and i think that it's a good time to mind
your p's and q's and cover your bases so. That's
what we're going to be looking to do. I mentioned that maybe a month and a half, two months ago, that
as we entered into the end of 2025, I

(13:51):
was going to start to look at doing some repositioning and that process is
beginning. So you may see some tweaks to the portfolios. Look,
I would rather us make a little less than our benchmarks. Cause
you look, when you're well diversified, you really shouldn't be beating the market anyway. We happen to
be, but that's not the goal. I'd rather make a little bit less in our
benchmarks next couple of years and be a little

(14:12):
bit better buffered and prepared for the unexpected, because I just
don't like some of the things I'm seeing, and I don't like the fact that the
sentiment is so overly optimistic. So we'll
be looking to add a little bit more, I think, to some defensive positions, but still keeping
an eye out for opportunities. There's still some stocks I'm salivating to
own. I want to buy them badly. So if they give
an opportunity, I'm probably going to do that as well. But you may see some trimming, you

(14:35):
may see some repositioning. That's all part of what we're doing. And also it's
that time of year where we're trying to look for any opportunities to
try to help with taxes. Unfortunately, we just don't have any big
losers in our portfolios right now. So that's kind of hurting our
opportunities to harvest any tax losses to
help with capital gains, but looking for them. And if we
can squeeze a little bit of loss out of there to help with taxes, we'll do that. So

(14:58):
anyway, I've talked quite a bit. It's a big update, right? Can I tell you
what's going on out there? Moving forward, headlines will push things
around. Your earnings season is still some weeks away here. So I
don't expect a whole lot except the overall headlines. The Fed's going to be the big
story next week. That's really going to be the key. And
depending on what they say, how they say it, the market's going

(15:18):
to have some reactions. I'll be looking and probably make some moves prior
to September 17th, just to be a little bit better prepared. I
do think the market is positioning itself for a sell the
news event. So a downward move, even on a rate
cut, would not surprise me one bit. So between now and next few minutes, you're thinking about
your future, your long-term goals, all the things you want to do with

(15:39):
you and your money. Maybe it's hire a fantasy football
coach, an expert consultant to help you get your team right.
Steve, maybe it's buy that boat or that RV
or that second house, retire a little early. Hey, you know what your goals are. Don't just
think about them. Think big. Think B-I-G. And I will talk to
Thank you for listening to this week's edition of The Big Money Report with

(16:02):
your host, David Boothe, President and Financial Advisor at
BIG Investment Services. For more information on BIG and
how you can access their planning and investment management services, visit
them at abigplan.com. That's abigplan.com. Or
call them toll free at 866-946-PLAN. That's 866-946-7526. The

(16:26):
foregoing content reflects the opinions of David Boothe and Boothe Investment Group,
Inc. and is subject to change at any time without notice. There is no guarantee
that the statements, opinions, or forecasts provided herein will prove to
be correct. Content provided herein is for informational purposes only and
should not be used or construed as investment advice or a recommendation regarding the
purchase or sale of any security. All investing involves risk, including the
potential for loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment plan or