 open and boy is it tumbling. And this is just, you know, coming after several days of a tremendous rally, a record-breaking rally, you know, since the 1930s. So things not looking good so far this morning. That's right. Stock market is down. In fact, I've got my computer here that I've been using to follow along with the market. I see the market down at 900 points. So let's get to, as we always do when we're talking about the stock market, let's get to Melissa Arno. She's the founder and owner of Stock Swoosh. She's joining us on the telephone to talk to us about what's happening there on Wall Street. Melissa, it is so good to talk to you after the last couple of weeks. Thank you so much for being available to talk to us. Look, the market is down today after a couple of days of rallies based on the legislation that is making its way through Congress. What can you tell us about what's going on today? Well, good morning. Thanks for having me this morning. I will tell you that this rally, I watched it take place for the last three days and I personally didn't believe it was going to go anywhere. I was surprised that we even rallied yesterday because they came out with a huge number for unemployment filing claims of over three million yesterday and yet the market rally. I really thought we still had more selling to come in. I believe that today we're starting to see the beginning of what's going to turn out to be going into next week, which could be another very volatile week and more selling in the market. But you know, Melissa, the expectation is that the house will vote on and pass the stimulus package. There's an awful lot of money in there dedicated to big and small businesses to stabilize them. And even we're hearing some talk about, you know, beyond this phase three, perhaps a phase four to continue stimulating the economy. Is that expected to ease fears at all? The bottom line is that without a vaccine, how are you going to ease people's fears? One of the reasons we're all inside, particularly in New York, is because there's so many cases and people are getting sick and they're dying. I don't see how a stimulus package, even though it helps people out, which is tremendous, I don't see how that's going to ease people's fears dying. And not only that, right now businesses are closed. So if you have a business and you even go into a bank, you go into a bank, you want to get a temporary call and a bridge loan, a line of credit to get you through to pay your employees. And that is part of the stimulus as well. You don't know how long this is going to go on. And we don't know how long it's going to go on until a vaccine comes out. And they were talking about 12 to 18 months. Well, what does that mean for 2020 for the stock market? That means that we may not see highs at all before the end of the year. And some people are talking about the fact this could take us into 2022, 2023, till we even see new highs again. So I think that that is problematic for long-term investors who are in retirement or near retirement. But if you're young, if you're under the age of 60, then I think the market will come back at some point. But to buy this step right now that happened in the last three days, I think was more like gambling to me, unless you were an active trader and you just chose to buy it or not. So Melissa, let me ask you, you sort of touched upon it there in your response. But let's get to some practical advice for people who are looking at the markets and are perhaps a little concerned. Give me a sense of what, if you are a long-term investor, so somebody like myself who is hopefully many, many years away from retirement, what I should be thinking about, if anything, and then dig a little deeper into folks that I worry about. For example, my parents who are retired, who are in some cases for folks who have parents that are the age of my parents living on a fixed income, should they be worried at this point? So you got two tracks there, long-term investors and people who need money now. Okay, as far as, let's talk about you first, long-term investors. If you're in the market already, then I would stay with your positions, hang tough. I believe the market comes back in the next three to five years. I would not buy any new positions though. I would wait for that. And I'll tell you, when I would think you would want to buy new positions, I would wait until at least the sky, which is the ETF for the S&P gets well over 300. I would wait to go in long anything at that point for someone like you. Now, for people that are ready in retirement that are older, they still could sell their positions if they want to into rally. In other words, they could get another rally next week or the rally that we had yesterday. People could have sold their positions into the rally because they could have sold out at better prices than they had on Monday, for example, when we sold off. Or they can or they can wait to see if we hold this low that was set on Monday. But the bottom line is, I don't think that holds. And if people wait to sell till we get back down to those levels, because if the Dow broke 20,000, if they wait to sell down there, then they're really going to be scared if they wait. And they'll obviously be selling out at lower prices. There are some people that have sold out. There are people in retirement. That's why we saw selling in the last month of March. And now, getting into next week, we're going to be in April. So I think for people that are long, long-term in retirement, you've got to make some hard decisions here right now. Do you need this money to live on? Because if you need this money to live on, then you really have to seriously consider selling. I hear a lot of people saying, well, if I sell now, then I, then I lost. No, you didn't lose. The market has been rallying up. You've lost gains. You didn't lose your initial investment if you've been in the market for a long, long time. But it's a big difference between losing the gains or losing your capital. Do you understand? Yeah, I do understand that. I'm wondering in this sort of craziness, are there opportunities? I know you said, were people like Vlad and myself just sort of like stay the course. But I mean, seeing all sorts of chit chat on social media about, you know, why did I, why didn't I invest in Zoom or any of these other platforms that people are finding themselves using a lot right now? Are there opportunities? Zoom is a new issue. So I don't think it's been out long enough for track record or transferring. So if you buy something like that, I would say that that's, that's fairly risky to buy. I like companies that are still open and providing good services to, to Americans target Walmart companies like that. If you really, really feel the need to purchase something right now, you want to look for stores, they're still open. Companies are in business. That would be the best buys. And a lot of big retailers that that's what you have. But I mean, again, it goes back to the point. If you're going out shopping and you can pay a dollar for something or 10 cents for the same item, which would you rather pay? I'd rather pay 10 cents for the same item than a dollar. You're never going to pick the bottom. But right now, the trend is still despite the last few days of rallying, the trend is still way more selling than we've seen buying. And you got to remember who moves to market, big institution of money, large banks, you know, big companies, big corporations, right now, everyone is kind of trying to preserve their cash. And that's why the Fed came in and did that big stimulus within the last week, because they're, they're trying to get banks to continue lending money because banks want to tighten up on their cash. But people still have to go, companies love to go to banks, still going to buy bank people. And they may say to ABC borrower, well, you're closed right now, we'll give you a line of credit till May 1st or whatever it is. Well, what if this goes on and on and on? We don't know when we're going to get back here in the city of New York. So the question, I guess, Melissa, going forward is a lot of economists that I've spoken to have said that they expect this to, this, the stimulus package, it can't even really be called a stimulus package. This isn't, this is money that people across this country are going to need so that they don't starve to death so that they can pay their bills so that they can pay their rent or their mortgages or their car payments that they need to get to work if they're an essential worker. So that will enable what a lot of economists call a v-shaped recovery. In other words, you get, you get back to where you were before this first stimulus. Do you think then after this is all said and done, after this pandemic is contained that we will need another stimulus package from Congress? I think that they're probably going to do another package if this doesn't go off, right? Because you got to look at it this way. I know they're giving a good amount of money to people, but there's a lot of people that aren't going to get a stimulus at all. And I know they're trying to look at, at certain income levels. But what about a family of four or five where the parents maybe are out at work or maybe the father even loses the job and they've got four kids, five kids, and they may make over the 150,000 limit, but they still have a mortgage and they may have two car loans and they have a lot of bills. And so that's going to be a problem. I think you're going to see default rates increase possibly even for what would normally be A plus credit borrowers because people are not going to be able to pay their bills on time. And you make significant layoffs. I think the point yesterday, and I think the reason why the market rallied is that when we saw that big number, there was a, we expected there was going to be a big number yesterday with unemployment claims. But if we get another geimungous number the next time around, that is going to be unexpected because people think, Oh, this is it. Everybody filed this last week. This is it. It's over. If we get another big number, that's going to be a problem. Remember, there's a lot of people that also rely on bonuses. If people are, I'm talking about people in higher level wage positions, people in New York. And when you look at the real estate market in New York, no one's doing any showing. Who's going to buy a $4 million apartment, a $2 million apartment, a $1 million apartment if they haven't been able to go inside of it? The market in New York in real estate is probably going to tank in the next six to eight months as well. And I'm not, I'm not trying to be negatively. I'm just trying to be a realist here as far as what people are looking at. And I think there's going to be a lot more people that are filing for unemployment. And I think that this, we got a long way to go through this if we're really waiting for a vaccine because you can't, like right now for cruise ships, you wouldn't go in a cruise if someone paid you. I mean, I think they shut down, but I'm just giving an example. It's the idea that you don't want to get sick. And that's very problematic. And I was out in the city the other day because I had to get a few groceries. People are still walking around. People are still way, way too close. Governor Cuomo was on yesterday talking about it. The kinses are up in the city. And, you know, people are just not adhering to the rules. You know, and often when we listen to experts talk about the coronavirus, they sort of remind us that whatever we're seeing now, we're kind of two weeks behind what's actually happening. And Vlad pointed out something to me when we were talking earlier, that, you know, the idea that the stock market is a great barometer for the economy has kind of gone out the window. Melissa, what do you look at to get an accurate gauge of just where the economy is? Well, they don't always go hand in hand. That's for sure. But, you know, I think that we're, I think the economy is going to be greatly affected by the fact that banks are going to get hit with the fault ratios going up. The unemployment is going to continue to increase. And companies are not going to meet your earnings estimates pretty much in the second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter. And again, I believe this carries into 2021. So when you think of the stock market, the stock market is made up of what companies? If companies aren't going to meet their sales estimates, then how's the market going to rally? Then the market is made up of companies. When you talk about the Dow, it's made up of companies. What are those? It's Boeing, for example. Boeing is probably today's big time. And why? They're Boeing now doesn't want the government to take an active equity stake with the stimulus package. So now Boeing's down today. So that got bought really big in the last three or four days. Now it's down. So what's going to happen? They don't want them to take an equity stake. So now they're not going to take the bailout. Now it's going to fall off the cliff again. You know, there's stockholders here in Boeing too. I mean, I mean, this stock now looks like it could time all the way down to 150. I wouldn't be surprised if it all the way gets down to the previous low, which was 89. And Boeing is going to drive down the Dow, because it is a big participant of the 30 stocks that are in the Dow. All right. Melissa Arno, always great to talk to you about this as we continue to see the market down about 832 to my eye right now, down 3.71%. Really important information there, Melissa. We thank you as always. We are going to take a quick break, Annmarie, but we're going to be back and we're going to be back over the next couple of hours because we are