 Well, let's turn back to the major indexes. We do see losses to round out the month of August, four straight down days for the major indexes. As you see the NASDAQ down six-tenths of a percent. The Dow down nine-tenths of a percent today and these major indexes ending near their session lows. For the month, the major index is all down a little more than 4%. So I do want to bring in Melissa Armo, founder and owner of the stock Swoosh. Melissa, it's good to see you. And what was a very strong July couldn't hold through throughout the month of August? What was behind this market action? Well, there's a lot of things behind the reason that we sold off. First of all, I really wasn't a big believer that we'd carry through in those June 16th lows. We had a pretty big rally when you look back it lasted for about five, six and a half weeks, but we really didn't get anywhere near the market highs. If you look overall where we started the year and where we are now was tomorrow, September 1st. We only have four more months left in the year. It seems almost impossible that we'd even close break even on the year from where we open and we're definitely not gonna make a new high. So one of the reasons that we've been following this whole year and even the last couple of days since last Friday we had a big sell off is because the overall market is concerned that the Fed is going to continue to raise interest rates, not just this year, but well into 2023 and specifically the warning by Jerome Powell last Friday was that this could bring pain to households. Well, no one wants to hear that. That's not good news. It certainly isn't good news. And I think for consumers already digging into savings just to get by Melissa, this could portend some bad news for them. So we do know the correlation, right? Higher rates mean downward pressure on the stock market. What does this mean about the ongoing concern of a recession and whether or not a soft landing at this point is even feasible as the Fed continues to raise rates? I think we're way past the soft landing. You know, if you even look at the year, the way we've had such high levels of inflation, while we had a slight drop in gas prices in the last month, we're still almost double, really, where we were a year ago or two, definitely double where we were two years ago. Raising rates isn't going to prevent a recession. Some people are saying we're in a recession, but it's definitely not going to bring us back down to a 2% level of inflation, which is the Fed's stated goal. And the thing is that we kept rates too low for too long. Now they're going to raise them too high, too fast, too quick. It's going to create a bigger problem. Again, raising rates is going to slow down the economy. Number one, that's going to create some hiring issues where employers choose not to hire people, people that are looking for jobs. They may also get laid off from jobs. That's a problem. And one of the reasons that we have such high prices and everything we're buying right now is we're still supply chain issues. Not enough people are back to work because a lot of jobs available, they're still open right now. And we also have too high costs for diesel fuel. How do you get everything you buy? I live here in New York City. Everything comes into the city in Manhattan in a truck. So against the liver to the stores, tear you directly through trucks, people have to drive on the road. These are big costs. And until we want to drill here in the United States and basically open up American oil, we're going to have the problem here with diesel costs to fuel. And if you could raise rates to 10%, it's not going to bring the cost of fuel down. So what should investors do in this environment? Melissa, if rates are going to continue to rise, do you think that people should wait on the sidelines or maybe start to dip their toe back into the market? It really depends on your personal situation. It depends if you're in retirement. If you're in retirement, you probably should have sat down with a financial advisor like three, four, five, six, seven months ago. It's a little late now to be thinking about selling. Could we still be lower in the market? Absolutely. In fact, we can be lower into this week, going into a long weekend when everybody's on vacation. We can sell off. We're selling off tonight. As we're talking right now, we're selling off post market for no reason because really nobody wants to go long here. But if you're young, you could go long if you can hang in there with another drop, but you might be in for some pain, which you don't want to see in your long-term retirement account if you see that you're down in something before you're up. Because could we break the June 16th lows? Yes. 100% that we will know, but that's even a long way from where we wrote up. So that's gonna be painful for people if they buy right now. It's very difficult to pick a bottom. It's very difficult to pick a top. No one probably thought that the first week of January this year was gonna be the high of the market for the whole year. And that, as it turns out, is exactly what it will be. So it's hard to pick the low. I think it depends on how young you are and how close you are to retirement. And not only that, how much risk you can take. If you can't stand being in positions while they're down till they flip around because the market's gonna recover. It's gonna recover and it always does. It could be 12 months from now. It could be two years from now. It might not be till 2025 after the next presidential election. And that's a long way away for some people that are close to retirement or in retirement. Yeah, I think that's a really good point because we did see, you're right, record highs at the start of the year for the first few days. And then, wow, the selling that kicked in after that. I don't think many people did see that coming with all of the optimistic rhetoric with the pandemic, getting behind us, vaccines, treatments, everything available to fight COVID. But it has been a rough year. Are you of the expectation that the Fed will raise rates for a third straight time by 75 basis points come this mid-late to September meeting? Absolutely, absolutely they're gonna raise rates. And you mentioned a good point about the economy, the optimism we saw in 2021 that was a very bullish year. Why? It was a recovery from COVID. When you talk about how low unemployment is and you talk about the jobs being added back, there were jobs that were just added back jobs since before COVID. So you really can't say, oh my gosh, we grew the economy so much, it's so fabulous, we were shut down, of course the whole world was. It wasn't just the United States. And I think that that destruction, that devastation that happened, it's gonna be enduring in the overall market. It's one of the reasons that we are having a problem now with inflation. Again, we're still having supply chain issues. So yeah, they're gonna raise rates. That's why the market fell Friday because the Fed is not gonna take their foot off the gas and that's what I'm saying. Interest rates for mortgages, for example, 30 year fix could be over 8% by the end of this year. They're on 6.9 right now. We have four more months left. They could be well up to eight and depending on your credit could be higher than that. That's gonna slow down the housing market. That's gonna slow down real estate. Of course, if you wanna go out and you wanna buy a house, you're like, oh my gosh, I missed the boat, I should have done it. So you're gonna wait. You're gonna wait. So that's gonna slow down that industry, which has had a wonderful boom actually in the last two years. So another 75 basis point rate rise on the horizon, Melissa, as you and I think the broader market does expect to come this mid to late September meeting. No rate cuts in 2023. That's the message that we heard from Cleveland Fed president Loretta Mester earlier today. At what point do you think policy starts to change and we see an easing again? How long is it gonna take to get inflation under control? Right, no rate cuts, they said this morning. So the market was up to start today, but then we fell off. Again, the market doesn't wanna hear that. So the market wants to hear that not only are they going to ease off and raising rates so quick, but they may cut them. So initially we had that rally back at the early period of August because they thought there was some scuttle but that they were going to cut rates in 2023. As you see, that's not the case. The Fed thinks the answer to preventing a recession and curbing inflation is to raise rates. But I'm telling you, they're not at the crux of the problem. These people are flying at 30,000 feet. They're not going to the store. They're not even probably ordering stuff for many of the places that you and I do. I mean, they're in such a bracket that they're not living day-to-day lives. And to say that it's okay for people to suffer, to say that it's okay for people to bite the bullet, I think that's terrible. And I think when you have regular everyday people that are living paycheck to paycheck that really support most of the economy and pay the taxes in the country, you want to have a system that supports that. We tried to do that through the stimulus. We tried to do that by getting right back in their feet with the PPP, with the small business loans. They tried to do everything they could in the government, the administration with that. But now it's time for the Fed to back off a little bit. I'm not saying they have to drop rates. I'm saying they have to slow down on raising rates. I bet if you saw, then only raise rates a quarter which you're not going to do. They're going to raise in three quarters. Like you said, if they only raised them a quarter I bet you'd see a big rally. And I'm not saying we don't have a rally in December, Christmas rally, but we're so far off the highs right now that even into the next certain season, even if Apple, Amazon, all the stocks you love, Tesla, even if everything blows out their earnings, which they're not, which they didn't last quarter, but if they do, you're not going to see the market have a big enough lift. So you say, why would you go long here? If you know you can get a price of something lower, you wait. If you could be patient, you wait. And again, if you're in retirement now, I think you missed the boat to get out of your positions when you were up more, you know, in the first quarter of this year. Melissa Armo, thank you as always for the breakdown. Melissa is the founder and owner of the stocks.