Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

It's Day Three of Money Life at Schwab IMPACT, the world's largest conference of registered investment advisers, and the talk ranges from buying the hottest emerging tech companies before they go public to how the artificial intelligence giants don't look so great when viewed through the lens of free cash flow, because all of the spending they are doing isn't going straight to the bottom line.
Here's today's lineup:
— Som Priestley, head of global investment solutions, Americas, for T. Rowe Price
— co-manager of the T. Rowe Price Goldman Sachs Private Markets Fund, an interval fund that launched this summer — discusses the pre-IPO market, how it's not just about the big names that are making headlines and the risk if the headliners fall short of expectations.
— Laurence Russian, founding partner at ABS Global Investments and portfolio manager of The Pre-IPO & Growth Fund — and interval fund that opened in January — addresses the same issues as Priestley, noting
— Bonnie Treichel, founder and chief solutions officer at Endeavor Retirement discusses the generation of retirement savers that have never faced a bear market and how that lack of experience demands that they prepare now for that event, no matter when it might actually happen. 
— With portfolio personalization being one of the biggest topics at Schwab Impact, Adam Gebler, head of wealth for the Americas for FTSE Russell, discusses the company's recent survey on direct indexing, which found that advisers believe it's going mainstream now, and that advances in technology will make it easier for average investors to participate.
— Michael Mack, client portfolio manager for VictoryShares, who says investors should be looking beyond the A.I. hype and use free cash-flow to determine the quality companies in technology now. Using that free cash-flow model, he notes, would eliminate a lot of the biggest A.I. names from a portfolio of quality stocks.

On Day 2 of Money Life at Schwab IMPACT, Collin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy at Charles Schwab & Co., says he thinks that a "nice disinflationary trend" that was emerging prior to the outbreak of war in Iran could return without a recession to break the economy. Martin says it will take more time before inflation diminishes to the Fed's target, but the strong economy should allow it to calm without a bigger market catastrophe. He also talks about the parts of the yield curve he finds most attractive, how investors should view junk bonds versus private credits and other riskier forms of fixed income, and the messages the bond market is sending with yields now standing at multi-year highs.
The Schwab IMPACT Conference is the largest annual gathering of independent registered investment advisers, and it has returned to Boston this year, attracting roughly 6,000 members of the financial community. Money Life is airing more than 20 interviews from the event over the course of five shows.
Today's other interviews include:
— Brent Leadbetter, head of RAFI Distribution at TMX VettaFi, who discusses changes in the indexing world, ranging from personalized indexing to how well benchmarks are functioning at a time when two companies represent more than one-third of the earnings growth for the entire Standard & Poor's 500. He also discusses how indexing may change in the future, and about the unusual times in the growth-versus-value debate.
— Chris Ainsworth, chief executive officer of Pave Finance, a firm that provides artificial-intelligence technology to advisory firms, who discusses whether the new technologies changing financial advisory relationships are actually improving them, and how the A.I. boom is changing the way many individual investors want to put their money to work.
— David Lau, chief executive officer at DPL Financial Partners, discusses why investors don't want to wait for rate hikes to lock down attractive rates on annuities, how the Secure 2.0 Act made annuities more accessible in retirement plans, but may not be the best way for workers to actually secure their future income streams and more.
— John Belton, portfolio manager for Gabelli -- where he runs, among other things, the Gabelli Growth Innovators ETF, Gabelli Growth fund -- talking about how to invest "in a monothematic world" where the one-note market keeps singing the praises of A.I. but investors need more to succeed. He talks about investing around A.I. and the opportunities the market is currently overlooking amid its obsession with new technologies.

Schwab IMPACT — the largest and longest-running annual gathering of independent registered investment advisers -- is back in Boston, and Chuck is one of the nearly 6,000 people in attendance, but the only one recording more than 20 interviews with experts, all airing in the next few days.
Headlining the first day of programming from IMPACT is Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab & Co., who was part of the first keynote at the conference on Tuesday. She says that "uncertain" is a common and incorrect descriptor of the current maret, noting that it is more "unstable," where investors should be wary of multiple "fault lines" that could be setting the market up for a big shift. Asked if the current warning signs are smoke or a sign of fire, she says that, "arguably, there already is fire ... you just have to open the hood" and she makes the case for why the market troubles investors fear are already happening.
Also on the show from Schwab IMPACT:
— Charles Champagne, chief executive officer and head of ETFs at Allianz Investment Management, who discusses "buffer ETFs" and "defined-outcome" investing, and how investors are using new tools to hedge their bets on the stock and bond markets.
— Derrick Irwin, senior portfolio manager and co-head of the Intrinsic Emerging Markets Equity team at Allspring Global Investments, who discusses the global investment picture and why foreign markets represent a vastly superior value to domestic stocks, as well as why the war in Iran hasn't impacted global markets the ways experts expected when the fighting first started over six months ago.
— Trey Prescott, head of business development for Advisory Services Network
— Gabe Deiderich, portfolio manager at Baird, discussing the bond market and just how attractive current yields — now standing at multi-year highs — really are. He also discusses whether he thinks investors need new products like buffer ETFs as an alternative to traditional fixed-income funds and more.

Patrick O'Hare, chief market analyst at Briefing.com, says he is concerned about the sustainability of earnings growth, and what it will mean for the market as profits, even if it's more a normalization of profits and not some implosion. particularly in artificial intelligence-powered sectors — normalize. O'Hare has concerns about sticky inflation and high interest rates, mixing into a strong cocktail of side effects for the market. He noted that while the 10-year Treasury has come down from its recent highs, the market hasn't benefited as might be expected "because there are concerns that are starting to percolate about the growth outlook."
Kendall Dilley, portfolio manager at Vineyard Global Advisors, says he is concerned by the market's narrow focus and lack of wide stock support to the upside, but he's still bullish through at least the end of the year, noting that markets historically see choppy consolidative price action heading into a midterm election, then rally afterwards. He noted that post-election day gains have averaged roughly 5.5 percent, with that increase happening in 85 percent of midterm election years. Dilley hopes that rally will broaden the market's upside participation; if it doesn't, that will be a red flag, alerting to potential trouble in the new year.
Chip Lupo of WalletHub discusses the site's 2026 Halloween Spending and Financial Fears Survey, which found that more than two-thirds of Americans think Halloween is too expensive, with slightly more people saying they're planning to cut their financial layouts this year compared to last year. Speaking more broadly about financial fears around the holiday, the survey found that 88 percent of people are "fearful" of this economy, with a large chunk of that group being most scared about sticky inflation.

David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs has been warning about off-balance sheet debt concerns — particularly among popular artificial-intelligence stocks — for months, but he returns to the subject today by putting "companies with the most hidden debt expenses" in the Danger Zone. While he says they are a lot of big names with messy balance sheets, he identifies four stocks by name, Meta Platforms, Oracle, Disney and Lockheed Martin as companies where adjusting earnings to reflect hidden expenses would dramatically drop profit numbers. Trainer noted that the majority of the S&P 500 companies do not have this kind of hidden-debt expense, but the ones that do indulge go for it heavily, to where profits could easily be 10 percent or more less than Wall Street thinks they are by sticking with ordinary accounting disclosures.
Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital discusses the good and bad for investors in having a few companies driving Wall Street to record highs while the majority of stocks are struggling, how it's possible to be building an A.I. bubble in the middle of a bull market, and how investors should deal with the duality of those conditions, and more.
Robert Farrington, founder of The College Investor, goes Off The News with Chuck, discussing a decision the Trump Administration made last week to end its legal fight that would have overhauled a popular student-loan forgiveness program. Judges had previously ruled in favor of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which under proposed rules changes could have become a weaponized tool for political retribution. Farrington notes that while the decision keeps the plan in place, it does not end the logjam on proposed student-loan rules changes, nor does it clear the way for a lot of graduates to get out from under their debts.