Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Mark Hamrick of Bankrate.com chats with Chuck about his firm's latest research, which showed that despite a decade of economic expansion, nearly 40 percent of Americans still list catching up on bills as their biggest financial priority, followed by saving more and paying down debt. Also on the show, Sally Outlaw of Worthy Financial discusses how her firm's crowd-funding of small-business bonds ha...

Money Life adds a new regular feature today with the debut of The NAVigator, a segment that will cover the ins and outs of avtice investing in closed-end funds, today featuring John Cole Scott of the Active Investment Company Alliance and Closed-End Fund Advisors. Also, Bill Kornitzer of the Buffalo International Fund says the world is on hold waiting for US-China dispute to end, but he expects th...

Katherine Renfrew of the TIAA-CREF Emerging Markets Debt fund discusses how the bond market in China and around the world is reacting to headlines about trade wars and interest-rate hikes, while Yung-Yu Ma of BMO Wealth Management talks about how today's low-rate, high-volatility market should have investors considering yield-driven alternatives like structured notes and preferred stocks for a sma...

Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco, said that while the domestic market is overpriced relative to historical prices, while international markets are underpriced, a condition which suggests that investors might want to seek more opportunities even as they ride the current long bull market out. Hooper noted that cuts to interest rates will likely determine just how long the m...

Joe Quinlan of Merrill Lynch and Bank of America Private expects a truce, rather than any 'grand deal' on China, but despite those concerns he believes the market is headed higher so he suggests that investors view downturns as buying opportunities -- 'especially in large-cap, dividend-paying stocks' -- for the foreseeable future. Also on the show, Gene Peroni of Peroni Portfolio Advisors expects...

Omar Aguilar of Charles Schwab Investment Management joins Chuck to talk about BeFi 2019, a new behavioral-finance study which shows that focusing on recent events, being too adverse to losses and more can wreck solid financial plans. Also, Scott Lynn of Masterworks discusses investing in fine art in ways not possible until recently, Sam McBride of New Constructs puts another popular IPO in the Da...

Neil Hennessy, founder of the Hennessy Funds says the Dow Jones Industrial Average is going to 30,000 'before we have any worries,' making the case that the market is well-positioned to continue its long run of growth with only minimal disruptions. Jurrien Timmer, head of global macro at Fidelity, meanwhile, is focused on those disruptions and the yellow warning signs in the form of the inverted y...

Josef Schuster, founder of IPOX Schuster -- which tracks the market for initial-public offerings -- said that the IPO market in 2019 has held up, with start-up numbers generally being similar to a year ago and then pushed beyond those levels thanks to the debut of Uber. Also on the show, Tom Lydon of ETFTrends.com discusses palladium with his ETF of the Week, John Sweeney of Figure Technologies ch...

Allan Sloan, award-winning business columnist for the Washington Post, said that while interest-rate cuts are being talked about as good for the market and the economy, there are long-term negative impacts to protracted periods of low rates, affecting pension plans, Also on the show, Giorgio Caputo of J.O. Hambro Capital Management says that the Federal Reserve is 'helicopter parenting' the market...

Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, said that the Federal Reserve will cut rates again at its meeting that starts today, but he noted that savers who have been doing reasonably well now need to expect to lose ground and consumers who have debts need to aggressively pay them down before there is any long-term bounce back in rates, something he says will happen the next time rates...

David Wright, lead portfolio manager for the Sierra Funds, said that the market has mixed fundamentals and technicals that individually might scare investors but that ultimately are no cause for worry in the short run, because they aren't pointing to a recession in the near-term. That said, he did discuss taking a defensive posture for the current markets, using preferred-stock mutual funds and mu...

Eddy Vataru, portfolio manager for Osterweis Total Return Fund, said that while the market is pricing in the high probability of a recession, he thinks it has been too aggressive and that there won't be a protracted economic slowdown in the near future. He noted that the inverted yield curve may be less of an indicator than in the past because rates currently are so low, which was not the case wit...

Tom Lydon, editor at ETFTrends.com, said that with interest rates going down andcentral bankers working to manage inflation, many investors should be looking towards gold, both for its traditional role as an inflation hedge but also because it can turbocharge results. He made GOAU, the US Global GO GOLD and Precious Metals Miners ETF his 'ETF of the Week,' noting that the fund has shot up but that...

Ed Cofrancesco of International Assets Advisory said in the Big Interview that it's a sideways market with factors that could push it significantly out of the range it has traded in towards new highs or recent lows, but that investors should not be over-reacting to news and to headline risk. Cofrancesco said he ultimately expects the market to move higher once a trade deal is agreed upon with Chin...

Lorna Kapusta, head of women and investing at Fidelity Investments, said that recent research by her firm showed that more than half of women keep nearly all of their savings in cash or bank accounts, compared to about 30 percent of men. Those staggering numbers show why it is hard to anyone to grow their savings into an appropriate retirement nest egg. Also on the show, author Dana Look-Arimoto t...

Chuck closes out his coverage of #FinCon19 by chatting with five FinCon stars, including Doug Nordman of The-Military-Guide.com, Philip Taylor, the founder of both Fincon and of ptmoney.com , Andy Hill of the Marriage, Money and Kids blog and podcast, Sarah Li-Cain, writer and host at Beyond the Dollar, and Steve Stewart, podcast editor and the community leader of FinCon's Podcast Network.

Chuck is at FinCon 2019, the giant meeting of podcasters, bloggers, writers and other content creators from throughout the personal-finance world. His guests today cover a wide range of subjects and programming. You'll hear from Gwen Merz of Fiery Millenials, Stephanie McCullough of Sofia Financial, Dustin Heiner of MasterPassiveIncome.com, Kent Brown of the Daily Money Show, Australian Paul Benso...

Tom Lydon of ETFTrends.com made the PIMCO 25+ Year Zero Coupon US Treasury Index ETF (ZROZ) his ETF of the Week saying it's that -- despite the inversion in the yield curve -- it's an appropriate investment response to today's common investment concerns, because long-term bonds stabilize a portfolio in low-rate, recessionary environments. Also on the show, author James Pattersenn looks at stocks a...

Jim Welsh, macro strategist and portfolio manager at Smart Portfolios, said he expects the market to rally to rpughly 2,950 on the Standard and Poor's 500 ahead of the next Fed meeting, only to have the central bankers issue some sort of disappointing news around a rate cut that puts the market into a short tailspin down to the 2,750 range. From there, Welsh said, expect an oversold bounce that he...

Ted Rossman of Bankrate.com said that more than two-thirds of people with credit-card debt are making a financial mistake by trying to maximize credit-card rewards rather than forgoing the bonuses for a card with a lower rate and fewer costs that will help them eliminate debt faster, noting that gaining a few percentage points in cash back or airline miles is not worth the average credit card's 18...

Vincent Reinhart, chief economist and macro strategist at Mellon, is not forecasting a recession in the United States but he said that trade uncertainty has been a drag on economic activity worldwide, creating a global recession. Moreover, even when the trade and tariff disputes are resolved, he said things will not be better than before, as it will take time to recover from the damage being cause...

Jerry Parker of Chesapeake Capital Corp. -- an original member of the famous Turtle Traders -- said in the Market Call that he'd rather find the most-diversified portfolio than simply trying to find the best stocks, noting that investors need to be taking a defensive posture -- using precious metals, commodities and betting against stocks with short positions -- to be well positioned in today's un...

Brent Wilsey of Wilsey Asset Management said in the Market Call that his form of value investing -- which relies heavily on the PEG ratio -- has seent he number of bonafide investment opportunities shrink as the market has slowed down. He expects the trend to continue, even as he does not expect the market to hit a full-blown recession soon. Also on the show, Richard Flahive and Ray Baraldo if Hig...

Brad lamensdorf of the Ranger Equity Bear ETF said that the market has been getting weaker with every correction, recapturing old highs more slowly and showing signs that a real downdraft with longer-lasting results could be on the way, particularly once sentiment turns ugly. He noted that if the Standard and Poor's 500 breaks through current support levels, it would likely fall at least 200 point...

Andrew Foster of Seafarer Capital Partners said that trade and tariff wars have not stopped growth in emerging markets, but they have exacerbated a slowing trend, particularly in China, that will make developing and emerging markets harder to profit from in the near future. Foster noted that valuations in emerging markets are reasonable, but without growth to help drive the market, investors shoul...