 on 600 points, the S&P and NASDAQ also ended the day in negative territories, you can see there. The S&P dropped by just over 2%. Tech heavy NASDAQ fell by about 2.5%. Joining us now is Melissa Armo. She is the founder and owner of the Stock Swoosh, an international education company that teaches people how to trade stocks. Welcome, Melissa. So tell us, what was driving you as stocks today? What do you make from today's closing market? Well, we sold off Friday, too, if you remember. So we had a follow-through day today from the selling for Friday, and I think we're gonna have more selling. We can even have more selling tomorrow. There's a lot of things going on that are affecting the market right now to sell off the last 24 to 48 hours and into the coming days this week. One is there's a big meeting for the Fed that doesn't happen until Friday, but a lot of people, market participants, investors are predicting that the Fed is gonna talk about raising rates even more. And also we have all of the conflict that's going on in Ukraine and Russia, and that could come to more of a head this week, too. So there's just so many things right now that are weighing on the market and nothing really to alleviate fears in the market. There's no reason really to go long right now or to buy, unless, of course, you wanna go long in your retirement account and you're nowhere near retirement. Yeah, if you're seeing these decreases in the market, you have the ability to take advantage of them. Let's talk a little bit more. You mentioned the predictions about the Fed. There's a lot of investors that are fearing more aggressive interest rate increases. Tell us what your take on the possibility of more rate hikes. Where do you estimate that, or where are you expecting the Fed is likely going to go? Well, they're definitely gonna increase rates in September. That's the next big meeting where they could increase. Now, whether or not it's gonna be 50 basis points or 75 or even 1% remains to be seen. I think people are looking for an indication of where they're gonna go with that in the meeting on Friday and Saturday. But my take on this is that raising interest rates is not going to prevent a recession. First of all, some people are saying that we are already in a recession. Some people are saying we are headed into a recession into the end of 2022 and into 2023. In my opinion though, raising rates is the worst thing for consumers right now because it's going to just mean higher costs for consumers. The reason that we have high inflation is because we're still having issues with getting everybody back to work. There's still too many jobs open, still too much to do. And also we have high gas prices. Raising interest rates isn't gonna lower gasoline prices. And gasoline prices aren't going to get lowered until we start drilling actually here in the United States. That would help lower the price of diesel fuel. And that is really affecting food and everything else that we buy. So again, raising interest rates isn't gonna pull the price of food down. It's not gonna pull the price of housing down. And in fact, it's gonna hurt the housing market, which of course we saw a boom in in the last couple of years. A lot of people took advantage of the housing boom. We're able to sell their houses at higher prices. And now people it's gonna slow everything down because of course more good rates have gone up. Either gonna go up more in the next couple of months as well. It's all a delicate balance. One that the Fed is considering as they're trying to hit that sweet spot. But as they are raising interest rates, China cut benchmark interest rates on loans to households and businesses on Monday a week after cutting two of its policy rates. How is the overseas economics slow down and officials efforts to combat it impacting the US economy? Well, that's a good point. That's another reason the market was down today too because of course China is the second largest economy. First is the United States and the second largest economy is China. China is a huge massive country. And guess what? We buy a lot of products from China. So if they're slowing down economically, it's not a good sign for the United States to slow down economically because of course if they're not manufacturing and producing enough, there's not enough for us to buy over here. And again, we're buying things a lot cheaper from China that we manufacture them in the United States. So it's a sign that again, they could be going into recession, we could be going into recession, but I will say this, they're doing the right thing I think by cutting rates. You know, the Fed is a difficult balance, but I think they overshot it because they kept interest rates too low for too long. Now they're gonna overshoot it again because they're gonna raise, they're gonna raise rates too quick, too fast and too soon. So they're gonna overshoot it again. I know it's a difficult job. You know, the Fed chairman has a difficult job, but the Fed really kept interest rates too low, too long. And then of course we had so much stimulus since COVID. I think actually that stimulus hurt the economy in the United States. We're talking 24 months past COVID, it's too much. And now they're talking about doing more stimulus. That's just not gonna help what we need right now. We need people to get back to work. We need these jobs to be filled. We need to keep interest rates steady. I would say don't raise them anymore between now and the end of the year. Just let the economy be, see where we go. I think it's gonna hurt the economy if they keep raising them. And again, as you pointed out, China's doing the exact opposite because they're trying to promote growth. They don't want growth to slow down anymore. They want growth to continue. And they've had a pullback and that isn't gonna be good for them being such a huge superpower. Certainly some criticisms that we have heard reflected by others as well, but it does look like the Fed is likely going to increase those rates. All right, Melissa Armo, thank you so much. Thank you.