It’s been a busy month!
As I am writing this on the afternoon of October 29th, the government has been shut down for 29 days, the Fed just cut rates by 0.25%, the market has continued to go up, and a baby is likely to arrive a month early! In the middle of all of this, we had our educational event on 10/16/25 at Trento in Farmingdale (those are the pictures you see above).
Let’s get to that last part first.
As many of you know, Tony V. Zambri and JaiCe Zambri were expecting their first child to arrive on or about 12/7/25. Well, it seems the good Lord had other plans! Jai’s water broke 7 weeks early. The poor young woman has been in the hospital for the past 10 days on complete bedrest. She’s going stir crazy!
The good news is, she’s doing as well as can be and the baby’s vitals are all strong. Assuming no other new developments, there will be another Zambri baby (first for Tony and Jai) arriving the first week of November via C-Section!
With that…
It certainly appears that we are going to break the record for the longest government shutdown. That was 35 days spanning from December of 2018 and January of 2019, during Donald Trump’s first term. To this point, the market does not seem to care. As I mentioned last month, that’s usually the case with markets. Of course, if it goes on indefinitely, it should have a negative effect as we could start to see it having a negative impact on GDP.
The 1/4 point cut by the Fed today was entirely expected by the markets. When it was announced at about 2:30 pm, the market held its gains from earlier in the day. After Chairman Powell began speaking, those gains evaporated and the market slipped slightly with the DOW closing down .15%, the S & P closing flat, and NASDAQ closing up .55%. This reversal is likely due to one comment made by Powell…that a further rate reduction in December “is far from a foregone conclusion.”
With all of this as background, we made a slight tactical adjustment in our diversified managed models last Thursday, 10/23/25. Across our discretionarily managed risk model portfolios (conservative, conservative-moderate, moderate, and moderate-aggressive) we reduced equity exposure by 4% and increased fixed income exposure by that same 4%. We had made a similar, but larger, move in November of 2024.
Like last year, this was not done because we are anticipating systemic issues with the stock market. Rather, it is because we have experienced returns in excess of what we had expected for the year and felt it prudent to take some profits while slightly reducing the risk in the models. No doubt, if you are in our models, you noticed the trade confirmations!
Please reach out to us if you’d like to discuss.
I’d be remiss if I did not give a shout out to the folks at Trento. Once again, they provided a great atmosphere, amazing food, and phenomenal service! Thank you! A hearty thanks to the folks who came to the event as well. The topics (Cyber Security and Investor Psychology) were very interesting and the attendees asked some very good questions.
Finally, I would like to remind you to tune into my radio show, Financially Speaking, every Wednesday evening at 5:00 pm. It airs on 103.9 FM, LI News Radio. If you are out of the station’s listening range, you can go to their web site, www.linewsradio.com, and click on the “listen live” link or you can download the LI News Radio app. This is a great way for you to keep up with what’s on my mind, my thoughts about current conditions, and some timely information about financial planning topics.
Until next time, be well and God Bless!