Preview of what we’ll cover today:

📉 Fed rate cut watch – 50 bps could boost markets; no cut may trigger declines.

📆 Seasonal volatility – September/October historically shaky, but context matters.

🤖 AI and automation – Long-term bullish trends, but potential job disruption.

🕒 Time horizon > age – Investment allocation should match when you’ll actually need the money.

Subscribe On Your Favorite App:

YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyAmazon MusiciHeartRadioTuneIn

More About This Episode:

Markets are unpredictable—sometimes rallying on bad news, other times tumbling for no clear reason. So how do you stay focused when headlines scream about rate cuts, job reports, and volatility?

In this market update, Ryan weighs in on the Fed’s expected rate cut, why September and October are historically tricky months for markets, and why short-term noise shouldn’t derail your long-term strategy. What are the possible outcomes of different rate cut scenarios and what will the lasting impact of artificial intelligence and automation be on the market?

With so much going on, we wanted to carve out a little time to provide some perspective on what we we’re the final few months of the year.

Go Deeper Into The Episode:

0:00 – Intro

1:06 – Rate cuts

1:48 – Longterm bullish?

3:33 – Rise of AI

8:23 – How to invest right now

Resources:

Retire Pilots – https://retirepilots.com

Get your FREE Retirement Toolkit – https://bit.ly/3ZmZsaX

Pilot Tax – https://pilot-tax.com/

The Pilot’s Advisor Podcast is also on video. Watch & Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3EIEBW2

Connect with Pilot-Tax: https://pilot-tax.com/

Episode Transcription:

(Note, this is an automated transcription. Please forgive any errors.)

Walter Storholt  00:00

Welcome to another edition of the Pilots Advisor, and today it’s a market update edition of the show, because Ryan, there’s a lot happening out there in the market right now. And even though we’re getting psych bad news, it seems like here on the left and the right and a lot that we’re trying to, like, pull our attention away to different things. The market, at least for now, has been up and up and up, despite some of that bad news swirling around. So I’m really interested in kind of what your read is on things.

Ryan Fleming  00:30

Yeah, we’re recording this on September 11, so just a quick moment of silence for all those lost in that horrible tragedy. Obviously, we had an assassination yesterday too, which I mean is, I don’t even know what to say about that. Historically, August and September, the market historically, has not had good months, and I feel like the last couple of days, we’re getting a little bit of traction. And I’ve been saying lately that, you know, it feels like the market’s been in a little bit of a holding pattern. We have, job reports. We have all these other things are going on, but it really hasn’t been doing that much until the last day or two. And I really, really think next Wednesday is when they’re supposed to cut rates. And I think that it’s going to be significant. Meaning, if we get a 50% rate cut, I could really see the market taking off. If we don’t a 25% rate cut, I think the market will probably react a little bit and on the positive side. But I think if we do not get a rate cut at all next Wednesday, I could see the market reacting in a negative manner. So no matter what I think the market is going to react. Obviously, I feel like the Fed’s been very, very behind, and I think we are do a rate cut, but I really think that if I was to look at everything that’s going on next Wednesday is what we’re really watching for. And I think if we get at 50% rate cut, I really could, I could really see things taken off a little

Walter Storholt  01:47

bit, which is kind of amazing, because, like you said, historically, September and October aren’t the best of months, and so a lot of people get very wary during this time of year. And I think the early success in the month has made people even more wary that this is just like the a little bit of an up before the rug gets pulled out from underneath this. So I’m sure a lot of people are a bit worried and hesitant about, you know, trying to read this whole thing.

Ryan Fleming  02:10

Well, markets are completely, completely unpredictable. And if you look at this year, there was massive pain back in February and March, and everybody’s kind of forgot about that. And so anytime things get bad, I, you know, I constantly remind myself that this too shall pass. And you know, that’s the markets are all over the place all the time. The news affects the markets, and I think that that’s why investors have such a hard time getting good returns over the long term, because they make those short term, emotional decisions based off of what’s going on in the market, and you you have to be unemotional. You have to play the long term game. I’m very long term bullish. I’ve been saying this for a while, like, you know, even the tariffs, I felt like it was a short term pain for a long term gain for our country. And I still believe that, you know, not all those deals have been Inc and we still don’t have a clear direction of what the long term looks like. But obviously evening the playing field globally with trading is actually going to help us long term. And then with AI, I mean artificial intelligence, the money that’s being dumped in tech right now, I think, is going to really have a positive impact on those that can get in the market. I really think that I’m so bullish. I believe the market could double in the next five years. I think it’s going to be that big of a growth now. I don’t think it’s good for the American worker. I think if you’re in a job that can easily be replaced, you should really be thinking about that, because artificial intelligence and robotics, I think, is going to be a real thing. It’s coming. And I think just in general, we look at how people are using chatgpt and other AI type stuff, or day to day activities, work, scheduling all kinds of things. I mean, what are you seeing on your end?

Walter Storholt  03:51

Walter, Oh, absolutely. I mean, it’s a daily part of life for me, sometimes using it as a support staff writer, sometimes using AI as a brainstorming partner, right? What do you think of this idea? How about if I tweak it this way? So, absolutely, it was pretty funny. I had a friend the other day send me a song, and the song was all about him and his garage. And I was like, where did you like, you know, where did you get this? Like, how did you create this? He’s like, took five minutes. Ai, I gave it some details, and it made a song for me. It was pretty easy. And I’m like, that’s it’s just incredible. We had a baby shower recently, Ryan. And you know how you do games at baby showers and things like that? Ours was sort of a family reunion slash baby shower. So we did some games. And one of the games was like, Baby prices, right? And so, you know me being, you know, an announcer, and probably, you know, at one time in my life a dream to be the host of The Price Is Right? I had some fun with it. I had chat GPT write me a great script of all these baby products, but written in that. You know, kind of fancy prices, right way. This little, you know, this little booger remover is created by the Oogie bear folks, and you’ll never have to worry about wax again when you apply the, you know, it just it wrote this great little script that sounded like Bob Barker himself, you know. So every, every day, you’re dabbling with it and using it

Ryan Fleming  05:18

well, it’s extremely powerful. And of course, I don’t think that using it enough for day to day activities within the business, it’s actually a big compliance thing right now, because, yeah, the SEC does not want you using artificial intelligence for anything on the investing side. And I think it goes back to that. There’s so much that you can grasp from artificial intelligence, but you got to fact check it. Really, you know, really. Have to fact check it. And of course, it comes back to not speculating and gambling with people’s money, however, for simple things like making a schedule or proofreading something, you know, my if I was a kid, man, I’d be trying to figure out how to use it for everything in my day to day life, because that’s the way it’s going to

Walter Storholt  06:02

1. Attention. Aviators, when you’ve spent years in the cockpit managing the complexities of flight, isn’t it time you navigated your retirement with the same precision? Introducing retirepilots.com right at your touchdown zone on our homepage, there’s a beacon flashing. Get my free toolkit. Click that, and you’ll be cleared for a direct route to Ryan’s retirement toolkit, tailor made for pilots like you. Inside, you’ll find two of his important works, the pilot’s advisor and pilots retire early. Between these two books, you can decipher the nine critical decisions when retiring before 65 and discover the seven lessons to help pilots land safely in retirement. But that’s not all. This toolkit is packed with altitude high value, including extras to get your retirement plans off the runway and light the afterburners on your 401k vector on over to retirepilots.com to grab your toolkit and let’s embark on this journey together. I saw a video the other day where a professor was addressing his class, and he showed a he says, I’ve been teaching this class for 30 years. Here’s the grade distribution of you know of of that 30 years of data, right? How many people get Ds and CS and Bs and As and very clear Bell clerk, like very tough grader. He said, 90% of you got an A on the test. He’s like, explain it to me. And somebody raised their hand and was like, we were using an AI that blah, blah, blah. And everybody in the class was like, Oh, be quiet. But I mean, you know, just just your to your example, absolutely, they’re going to be crafty and trying to use it in those ways

Ryan Fleming  07:47

well, and then it’s getting probably harder and harder to find out and see if they’re actually using it, because you can use AI now and make sure that this doesn’t flag when you get fact checked for AI, right? You know, college classes, but not. My brother in law writes music now with it, I have a good buddy that, you know, we at first thought he was just like, the most inventive, amazing person sending out all these memes and everything else. And of course, now that everybody’s using AI day to day, we’re like, Ah, I get it. I know exactly what he’s doing.

Walter Storholt  08:15

He was just ahead of the bell curve on it. Yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah. Well, that’s going to be interesting to watch. Obviously, that’s a long term view kind of thing, although maybe shorter term than we think, with how fast that growth is happening. My question for you, Ryan is, you know, I’m getting close to 40, so let’s say I’m a 40 year old pilot. Do I approach next week’s news and the rest of the year investing wise, differently than someone who is a 60 plus year old pilot. How would you advise the two differently over this next couple of months?

Ryan Fleming  08:48

Well, I don’t really think that your age matters so much as people think it does. From the standpoint of, you know, you I talk about all the time like people think they get to a certain age and they need to really change how they’re investing their money when it really has everything to do with your time horizon for that money. Are you retiring in five years? Or are you not? Or do you need you know, all that money that’s in your foreign K because that’s going to determine how your money’s invested, what allocation it has, and you have some safe money assets to handle sequence of returns risk. These are all things that we’ve talked about in prior episodes. But yes, in general, should a 40 year old’s outlook be different than a 60 year old’s in general, it probably should. They’re definitely thinking about different things. When you get to be closer to retirement, you really start thinking a lot more about the legacy planning aspect. But I think that time in the market is always the biggest factor, even with a market pullback for the 40 year old, I mean, they should look at that as a massive opportunity. I know it gets a little bit scarier. If you’re close to retirement, we have a 20% drop in the market for but for somebody that that’s in their 40s, I think it’s just a massive opportunity to continue buying while things are low. You’re not using your retirement assets and. Anytime soon. So buying more while things are down, like we all know to buy low, but you should be taking advantage of that. And I think regardless of what happens next week, forced discipline is what I call it. And I think it is so, so powerful those people that set up automatic investing, which is dollar cost averaging every single month. I think most people are pretty good at doing that in their 401 K, but those that that do that outside their 401 K in a taxable investment account. And I always say, I don’t care if it’s 50 bucks or 5000 but somebody that sets up that automated, forced discipline, automatic investing every single month or end up light years ahead of those that don’t. And I highly recommend, if you don’t have a systematic way of investing your money like that, that you should definitely look into it and set something up, no different than setting it up. And also, you go, Wow, where did this $100,000 come from? The same thing happens when people turn it off. You know, if they turn on, oh, I got a couple of hard months. Next thing you know, it’s been a year and a half, and they haven’t put any other money in. And I guess I get to see the the reward for doing it, or the massive missed opportunity for not doing it, if that makes

Walter Storholt  11:13

sense, yeah. And we want to see it one way, not the other. That’s for sure.

Ryan Fleming  11:17

Well, exactly. And we all want choices in retirement. We want to be able to do the things that we want to do. But unfortunately, it takes discipline. It takes a lot of discipline and and I love seeing younger, you know, younger pilots that are disciplined and put money away, versus the ones that come to me and they’re 56 and they’re like, Yeah, I got 200 grand in my name. And I’m like, What have you been doing? Where have you been? You know, because it’s definitely a whole different ball game once you’re that far in to your working years and you just haven’t, haven’t, you know, probably saved for the most important thing in

Walter Storholt  11:49

your life. Yeah, any other guidance that you have for us, Ryan on this market update, edition of the episode, anything else we should keep an eye out for?

Ryan Fleming  11:57

No, I don’t think so. I appreciate you talking about today’s market. Let’s get that out there once again, remembrance of 911 and then let’s watch for hopefully, a large rate cut next Wednesday. And then let’s see how that affects mortgages in the real estate market and and I think we’ll finish up this this year of 2025 on a positive note,

Walter Storholt  12:18

definitely feels like a rock sitting on top of a point and it’s going to tilt one way or the other. It feels like we’re heading for that day, rather than just sort of this stagnant approach. So we will see. If you want to get in touch with Ryan and talk a little bit more about specifics of your financial plan. Obviously, we’ll talk about some of the generalities here on the show, but if you want to get into the specifics, it’s very easy to do that. All you have to do is go to retire pilots.com and order the retirement rescue toolkit specifically for pilots. It’s packed with lots of great information. It’s going to include Ryan’s books in there as well. So you’re going to get a lot of resources at your disposal. And best part, you’ll also qualify for a free portfolio analysis. So in addition to being able to kind of learn a little bit about Ryan, the team and investing as a whole, you’ll be able to get that analysis of your portfolio, find out where you stand now, where you need to go into the future. But it all starts with ordering that toolkit. And again, you can find that@retirepilots.com we’ve got a link in the description that’ll take you right to where you put in your information for the toolkit. It’s free, so check that out and get some help with your finances, with retirement planning, specifically information built for pilots. All right, Ryan, thanks so much. We’ll talk to you

Ryan Fleming  13:29

soon. Thank you, Walter, as always, we’ll see you next time, right

Walter Storholt  13:33

back here on the pilots advisor take care.

Speaker 1  13:40

Information is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute tax investment or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified investment legal or tax professional before taking any action.