Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Thomas Winmill, portfolio manager for the Midas Funds, says that while war typically is good for precious metals generally, the case for gold miners being able to deliver outsized returns is particularly strong now. Moreover, Winmill says the forces that contributed to gold being up more than 50 percent in the last 12 months — despite being down more than 10 percent in the last 30 days — are intact, and while war in Iran and geopolitics generally are creating a downturn, the longer-term forces will return once there is more clarity about economies around the globe.
Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, looks to a relatively young, actively managed, concentrated, equity-income fund that uses an options/derivative strategy as his ETF of the Week, noting that it's an addition to a portfolio that adds stability, but that should be used in moderation.
Plus, Tom McIntyre of McIntyre, Freedman & Flynn — who was the show's first-ever Market Call guest in 2012 — returns to Money Life, bringing his news-sensitive investment style with plenty of news to talk about. McIntyre was last on the show nearly a year ago, when he was positive on energy and oil stocks; he discusses where they fit in a portfolio now, amid the turmoil in the oil business due to the war in Iran.

Danielle Labotka, behavioral scientist at Morningstar, discusses her research into how retirees withdraw money from their lifetime savings accounts and found that about half rely exclusively on simple approaches, like calculating expected expenses or taking required minimum distributions. As a result, she says, retirees are short-changing themselves, leaving money in accounts and cutting back on needs and wants rather than doing the math to come up with something more tailored to their situation. Worse, she says, 98 percent of retirees say they have no intention of changing their strategy.
Speaking of spending strategies, Brian Vines, an analyst at Consumer Reports and co-host of the Talking Carts podcast about shopping, discusses their comparison of the most and least expensive supermarket chains. Chuck, who considers himself a careful shopper, learns that his preferred chain finishes next-to-last in the study, so the conversation turns to how consumers can do more and better with their money if they are careful, shop around and know pricing.
In the Book Interview, Brett Steenbarger, an educator and authority on trading, discusses his new book, "Positive Trading Psychology: Turning personal strengths into trading strengths."
Plus, Chuck answers a listener's question on sequence-of-inflation risk, why it has just recently been coming to the fore and how it could be impacting retirees and near-retirees now.

Alex Coffey, senior trading and derivative strategist at Charles Schwab, says that since the conflict in Iran began, there has been more of a tug-of-war market and that the bears have been winning the battle, and while the decline has not been swift, the longer duration of the turmoil the more traders and investors are on edge. Coffey notes that the market's short-term trend is bearish, but the market is testing the longer-term 200-day moving average and the longer-term uptrend may be breaking.
   Karl Mills, partner at Cerity Partners, says in the Big Interview that investors need to recognize that there is always drama going on around the markets, and that the concerns create worries, but "You generally do best by doing the least, if you have a well diversified portfolio and a strategy of how your assets are invested and you stick to that strategy." He discusses how investors are dealing with the war and much more, and how calm is the personal commodity that most people should be investing in right now.
   Financial journalist Allan Sloan discusses how one share of stock in a Detroit bank — purchased for about 40 bucks a half century ago so that he would be allowed into the company's annual meetings — has turned into about $5,000, highlighting the power of dividend reinvestments and time. Sloan — who made several small stock purchases in his wife's name over the years in order to access meetings and information that non-shareholders would have been excluded from — talks about how reinvesting turned insignificant payments into something much more meaningful.

Sean Clark, chief investment officer at Clark Capital Management Group, says that while markets tend to whipsaw around headline events like the war in Iran, the initial market reaction — historically a decline of about 7 percent — gives way to a bounce-back that helps investors a few months after the turmoil starts.  As a result, he's suggesting that investors "be cautious with their allocations and don't make any big changes" despite their nervousness over the news cycle.
David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs, says that recent layoffs at Meta Platforms are a signal of bigger troubles brewing, and that broader tech layoffs at companies like Oracle and Amazon are a sign of rouble. While not expecting stocks like Meta to crater, Trainer makes the case that as a weaker player in the artificial-intelligence game, the company could be looking at a lot of capital expenditures that don't necessarily boost the bottom line. As a result, he pegs the stock's value at hundreds of dollars less than its current trading range.
Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, says that Micron Technologies has the fundamentals to be a darling on Wall Street, but the market sentiment has soured on the company, dropping the stock prive hard despite recent guidance that was well beyond what analysts' have been estimating for the company. In "The Week That Is," he also discusses higher oil prices and how consumers should expect them to stay higher for about two months — noting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's quote about 50 days of discomfort on pricing — before expecting substantive change. He also discusses the latest wave of artificial intelligence that now seems to be taking over thinking that was current as recently as a week or two ago, and how the fast developments are an issue investors need to be aware of, even if they should not be too reactive to them.

Nick Venditti, senior portfolio manager and head of the municipal fixed income team at Allspring Global Investments, says that in a world worried about the macro picture and geopolitics, municipal bonds are a safe haven that is almost completely unaffected by global strife. The sector is delivering reasonable yields and is "fundamentally very strong from a bottom-up credit perspective," Venditti says, calling it a "no-brainer, free lunch kind of trade" for investors to move from money-market funds to short-term muni bonds, where rates are better and tax benefits create a boost on return.
  John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors — the Chairman of the Active Investment Company Institute — says that closed-end funds are being buffeted in two directions due to current headlines, with war in Iran impacting net asset values and anchored interest rates impacting levered closed-end funds, with discounts moving as a result. He put his firm's "Trifecta analysis" to work, with four funds to consider now: ticker symbols AFB, ARDC, CSQ and MEGI.
   Author Lee Freeman-Shor discusses "Stock Market Maestros: The Winning Habits, Strategies and Mindsets of the World's Best Investors," discusses how he identified a group of lesser-known investment stars and what they do that makes them great, and that individuals can do to learn from and replicate those results.