Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Latest Episodes:

Chuck was hacked and robbed; here's how he's fighting back Sep 02, 2025

Show notes

Chuck warned listeners a few weeks ago that he had been hit by a computer virus, and that they should not open a spam e-mail that was being sent from one of his accounts. But that was the beginning of his online misadventures, because he hadn't just gotten a virus, he was hacked. Thieves have stolen nearly $4,000 from an online bank account, and they did it right under his nose. He explains how it happened, how he caught it, why he thinks he will eventually get restitution from the bank and more.

Stephen Kates discusses a survey on financial regrets from Bankrate.com, which showed that the most common regret for Americans now is not saving for retirement early enough, followed by racking up too much credit card debt.

Nick Pisano talks about research from Clever Real Estate showing that 60 percent of Americans believe that having a nearby short-term rental unit from a site like AirBNB lower's a home's appeal and value. The problems run from rental guests not caring about the neighborhood they're staying in to the constant in-and-out reducing the quality of life for the locals.

In the Market Call, John Cole Scott, president of CEF Advisors, discusses his "trifecta analysis" of closed-end funds and how frequently he will add or drop funds to take advantage of market conditions but also tax circumstances.

Veteran trader sees rally, rate cuts pushing gold to $4k within a year Aug 29, 2025

Show notes

Dana Samuelson, president of American Gold Exchange — a former president of the Professional Numismatists Guild — sees "a meaningful rally in gold" coming once the Federal Reserve makes multiple rate cuts, but adds that turmoil over Fed leadership and concerns that government data could be compromised or less transparent would build "a better bed from gold to rise from." Samuelson said he expects gold to be in the $3,900 to $4,200 per ounce range within a year, and that his forecast might be conservative if there is any sort of global debt problem or currency collapse.

Kimberly Flynn, president at XA Investments, discusses the recent executive order signed by President Trump that allows a dramatic expansion of alternative assets to be part of 401(k) and other retirement plans. While headlines have made it seem like crypto bros will blow up their retirement plans with alternatives, Flynn discusses how firms running life-cycle and target-date funds may decide to make allocations to alternative asset classes, exposing everyday investors to alternatives, but in safer ways than most industry watchers are imagining.

Jay Hatfield, chief executive officer for Infrastructure Capital Advisors, brings his macro-first approach to the Market Call, noting that rate cuts should be "tremendously positive for the market" and are keeping him bullish even as the market enters September, a seasonally weak time for stocks.

Does your savings rate measure up to the average American? Aug 28, 2025

Show notes

Jeff Clark, head of defined contribution research at Vanguard, says the firm's latest "How America Saves" report for 2025 shows that consumers are doing a better job of setting money aside for their future, helped by rules that have made it easier for employers to help. The average total savings rate — including both worker contributions plus employer contributions — is now up to 12 percent, a potential target for all investors to try to achieve.

Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, turns to the first active bond ETF — a 15-year-old iconic fund from PIMCO — as an ultra-safe alternative to cash with his "ETF of the Week."

In the Market Call, Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager for Argent Capital and the Argent Large Cap ETF — which launched just as the market was bottoming out after the tariff announcements in April — discusses looking for enduring business models.

Plus, Chuck talks about the Federal Reserve and why its independence is so important to the long-term functioning of the economy and the ability to keep inflation controlled.

How to generate a lifetime of savings for a newborn Aug 27, 2025

Show notes

Chuck became a grandfather for the first time on Sunday and has been planning how he will help his grandson financially for years, but today he chats with financial adviser and author Chris Carosa, author of "From Cradle to Retirement," about "Child IRAs," and how he plans to create an income for the baby and then invest that money into a Roth IRA to provide decades of tax-free growth. Carosa also discusses the new "Trump accounts," which give newborns $1,000 and allow parents to contribute more, and discusses how he would prioritize saving for a child's future.

Sudipto Banerjee, global retirement strategist at T. Rowe Price, discusses the firm's research into retirement savers which showed that younger savers tend to follow a homogeneous path as they start out, but older investors — while generally getting more conservative as they age — take personalized, diverse paths as they age and get into their retirement years.

In the Market Call, Aniket Ullal, head of ETF research at CFRA Research, discusses exchange-traded funds and why the firm's methodology has him high on developed international funds right now.

ProShares' Hyman: Recession is unlikely, but so are big gains from here Aug 26, 2025

Show notes

Simeon Hyman, global investment strategist at ProShares, says that with inflation running above the Federal Reserve's targets — forcing both the Fed funds 10-year Treasury rates higher — there's room for the Fed to cut rates but not much room for the market to respond to it. As a result, he's saying the market has room to broaden out, with small caps likely to be helped out by upcoming Fed cuts, but not much upside if large-cap stocks have to keep being the engine for growth. Hyman says that recession is unlikely for several quarters, as there is room for modest earnings growth to continue.

Russell Rhoads, associate clinical professor of financial management at Indiana University — cohost of the Academic Market Insights videos on YouTube — says he expects the economy to be sluggish while rate cuts work their way into the next cycle. He says that he'd be looking to underperforming stocks and areas of the market to take the lead as the economy changes and, like Hyman, believes there is potential for small-caps to step forward, helped out by the changing rate environment.

In the Market Call, Jeff Auxier, manager of the Auxier Focus Fund, discusses his long-term value approach and how he's looking for stocks that have been beaten up by bad news that have a chance to regain their good name and recapture their market value.

Touchstone's Thomas: Solid earnings, but slower growth, will slow the market's progress Aug 25, 2025

Show notes

Crit Thomas, global market strategist at Touchstone Investments says the market can move higher — though with a path that is more bumpy — and the economy can avoid recession, but he also notes that the market is particularly hard to read because current conditions are dramatically different than many past situations. He cites a lot of reasons — from index concentration to fallout from the pandemic — for why looking back at market data seldom yields accurate forecasting right now. Thomas does expect a market slowdown, as earnings have been impressive but growth has been muted, which should make for slower markets ahead.

Sarah Wolfe, senior economist and strategist for thematic and macro investing at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management — the chairperson of the Economic Policy Survey for the National Association for Business Economics — discusses the NABE survey released today, which showed a record number of economists view current economic policy as too stimulative. The economists viewed tariffs as the biggest long-term obstacle to growth rather than a stimulator for economic activity, and they also see recession coming into focus in the long-term, noting that current conditions have backed off any downturn to where economists now don't expect to see one until late in 2026 or in 2027.

Kyle Guske, investment analyst at New Constructs, puts Five9 back in the Danger Zone because the company has fallen back into the territory of a "zombie stock," effectively due to run out of money in the next two years. Guske makes a case that the stock — currently valued at roughly $28 a share — is worth maybe six bucks, though he makes it clear he could make a case for it to go to zero.

Plus, Dan Skubiz, chief investment officer and senior portfolio manager at F/m Investments, talks small-cap stocks in the Money Life Market Call.

Via Nova's Gayle: 'Stocks are excessively valued, bonds are fairly valued' Aug 22, 2025

Show notes

Alan Gayle, president of Via Nova Investment Management, is concerned about economic sluggishness and "how the world is going to look and who is going to win" after tariff and rate changes fully play out. Coupled with a stock market where he sees equities as overpriced, that leaves Gayle wanting to be fully diversified, including a full allocation to domestic bonds but also international stocks, where he finds compelling values that he thinks can continue to run. Gayle says that he expects the Federal Reserve to cut rates soon, but "anything the Fed does today takes at least nine months to work," so he thinks it will take that long for the market to get some clarity; as a result, he wants to stay invested and buy any dips while waiting for opportunities to become more apparent.

Xander Gray, chief executive at XG Capital Strategies, says that current price levels are high compared to moving averages which suggests that there might be a consolidation or pullback in the offing. Gray — who was last on the show late in 2024, when he called for a market downturn and a recession — says spending and other factors have helped to hold off the recession, though the numbers are showing signs of a weakening that makes the market's current rally hard to trust.

Mitchel Penn, managing director of equity research for Oppenheimer & Co., says that business-development companies have moved past concerns about a spike in credit losses and are now "fairly valued" by the market, meaning that their biggest potential gains for the remainder of the year will come from simply capturing dividend payouts. That's not bad, especially because he expects payouts to remain in the high single-digit range, even after likely interest rate cuts that will carry into 2026.

Veteran journalist says 'The Magnificent Seven is over' Aug 21, 2025

Show notes

Financial journalist Allan Sloan, a seven-time winner of business journalism's highest honor, the Loeb Award, says in his latest piece for Barron's that no investment strategy works forever, and that time is now up on the Magnificent Seven stocks. Sloan notes that during the first seven months of 2025, NVidia and Microsoft accounted for more than half of the gain of the entire Standard & Poor's return, but that Apple "was totally rotten and knocked 18 percent off the S&P's return." His point is that most of the seven stocks that have been driving the market for the last few years "are now hitting below their weight," and the top stocks are now losing ground as a group to the index/market itself.

Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, makes a high-income fund that invests in options on bitcoin -- and that yields a whopping 27 percent -- his ETF of the Week. The fund is relatively new and just topped $500 million in assets, and Rosenbluth says it can be an allocation choice for investors who might otherwise avoid cryptocurrency because they want investments that produce income.

In the Market Call, Cole Smead, portfolio manager at Smead Capital Management, talks about the firm's approach to value investing and what is standing out during a period where he says market leadership is going through a rotation.

Strategist McDonald says a 10-20% selloff is about to start Aug 20, 2025

Show notes

Lawrence McDonald, creator of The Bear Traps Report, says that as "tertiary assets" like meme stocks and momentum plays have started to break down in the last week, it's a sign that volatility will pick up and that the market is "coming into a 10 to 20 percent pullback in the next month to month and a half." McDonald says that the selloff will be part of a rotation, that the market broadly can recover but with new leadership. He is worried about the potential for the Federal Reserve to start cutting rates before inflation has been killed off, which he says will force investors into "portfolios that are much more focused on hard assets."

Dan Sotiroff, senior manager research analyst at Morningstar, discusses this week's news that Vanguard is opening ETF versions of three popular, actively managed stock funds, and talks about the mechanics of the new issues but also what the news means for the broader fund industry.

And with Chuck about to become a first-time grandfather, he chats with Matt Gellene, head of consumer investments at Bank of America, about what families can and should do to save and invest for raising children, paying for college and more, and for helping youngsters develop healthy attitudes about money.

Glenview Trust's Stone: 'Softening' equals sluggishness, not recession or worse Aug 19, 2025

Show notes

Bill Stone, chief investment officer at Glenview Trust, says that there are signs that the economy is slowing, but he believes rate cuts can help the economy keep earnings growth going and can forestall any recession. "Betting against things to get better over the long run is not a very smart bet," Stone says, so he's suggesting investors don't let worries get the best of them now. Stone says that "A bet on Europe is a bet against technology," so while he understands concerns that investors have with valuations — particularly with the prices of tech stocks — he is not tilting in directions that might move him away from what has been working during the current bull run.

Avi Gilburt, founder of ElliottWave Trader, does think the bull market will be coming to an end — and a long, slow, difficult end at that — but he says the signs of the bear market he has been anticipating for several years now are not clear yet. "Until the market gives us the sign that a bear market has begun," Gilburt says, "upside is still very much intact,m but you need to be very cautious as you approach the market over the coming years." He discusses the signs he is looking for and just how ugly he thinks the eventual downturn will get.

Corrin Maier, vice president at TruStage, discusses "payment-protection products," a form of insurance that consumers can make on big-ticket purchases that can protect them in the event of job loss or other hardship. She helps consumers determine whether these options are worth their fees.

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