← Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)
Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)
The Certainty of Uncertainty
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Hi, everybody. Suzio here. Now, what is the goal of money? The goal of money is for you to be secure. And there is no better way for you to be secure than having an emergency savings account. It is essential for your financial foundation. So all of you should be participating in the Ultimate Opportunity savings account at Alliant Credit Union. Go to myalliant.com to find out more. And be secure. October 12, 2025. Welcome, everybody, to the Women in Money podcast, as well as everybody smart enough to listen. Today is Suzy School. So get out those notebooks. Are you ready? Today, Suzy's school is titled the Certainty of Uncertainty. Because the stock market, the stock market doesn't hate anything more than uncertainty. If there is uncertainty in the air, that's when the markets start to go down. And why is that? I want you right now to think about your own life. When you're really uncertain about something, you're either afraid or it's just. You're just uncertain about what's going to happen. You know, should you do this, should you do that, you tend to do nothing, or let's say you're uncertain. Is it going to rain? Is it not? You stay in the house. You protect yourself when you are uncertain. So why does that affect the stock market? Because you, whether you know it or not, you. You are the stock market. I know you think the stock market is made up of shares, shares of stock in companies, either individual shares or bundled as mutual funds, ETFs, whatever it may be. But what you have to understand is it is you, me, kt. It is people that buy and sell those shares. Just that simple. And when you get uncertain about anything or you see something that upsets you and you're like, oh, my God, here we go again. I'm uncertain of the outcome. I'm uncertain in how this is going to affect me. What do you do? You will tend to sell, especially if the markets are ticking down. Especially. Listen to me closely. If you have incredible gains in some of your stocks, incredible gains, 100%, 200% gains in stocks that so many people want you to be afraid of. Because why? We're in an AI bubble. They want these stocks to go down. Why do I personally think they want these stocks to go down? Because they missed it. And who is they? Many of the institutional investors, many of the big traders, they missed it. So if they can get everything to start to go down, they get to do what? They get to go in and buy it again at a lot lower price. However, when you hear things like that, Because I'm getting emails from all of you going, susie, do you think we are in an AI bubble? I keep saying, no, I don't. Do you think, Suzy, we're going to have a stock market crash like we did back in, in 2007, 2008, 2009? No, I don't. The situations are so different today than they were back then. So different today. Many of these companies are creating the future of the unknown, the future that we don't even have an ability to comprehend what's going to happen, but it's a coming and we all want to be a part of it, but we're afraid to be a part of it because in our limited minds, in my opinion, you made so much money, we can't possibly make more. It can't possibly go higher. You have to get a grip on the reality of the future because as I've said to you before, the future isn't the future. The future is now. It's already happening, and I personally want you to be a part of it. However, there are powers that be that will offset the track of the markets by inserting uncertainty in many different ways. And there is so much uncertainty going on right now, it's not even funny. The truth of the matter is, Friday morning markets opened up, everything was kind of good, no problems, until President Trump came out and he made an announcement of, well, I guess there's not going to be a reason for me to have to go meet with the President of China. In fact, I think I'm going to put tariffs back on China. And why did he get mad at China? Because China decided that importers, people who imported it into the United States, needed to get a license from Beijing that contained anything that had to do with real rare earth elements that were more than like 0.1% or more of the value of the whole thing. Which means that those companies like India, Nvidia, that use rare earth materials to manufacture what they make, it's going to cost them more or they're going to have to get a license to do so. And Trump retaliated. And as soon as that happened, bam, These markets started to go down and down. And once, like a snowball, it starts to roll down the hill and it gets bigger and bigger, it gathers up all the other snow, the unexpecting snow that's so beautiful and so white, it just comes along for a ride. That's what the majority of you did out there, causing these markets to go down considerably. However, did they really go down that much overall, while that depends on what you were invested in. Now, I want you to put a pin in that for a second, because the overall advice that all of you have been given is you need diversification. Absolutely. And I've said this before, Maybe you need 50% of your money in something like Voorhoe, which is Vanguard Standard and Poor's 500, or the SPY, or VTI, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, or whatever it is that you're invested in. And then if you want other types of investments in individual things, such as the AI stocks, but that would give you a total balanced approach. Okay, so let me give you an example now of really what happened on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial average went down 878points, but that was only 1.90%, not that big of a deal. The Standard and Poor's went down 182 points, or only 2.71%. And the Nasdaq, which contains a lot of our favorite stocks, went down 820 points, but again, only 3.56%. Okay, now what's important when you look at numbers that you look at percentages more than you look at the actual dollar number that it went down or the numeric number that it went down, because you could look at the screen on your TV and you could see, oh, my God, the dow went down 878 points and the NASDAQ went down 820. And the stand and poor's went down 182. It crashed. It didn't crash. 1.90%. 2.71%. 3, 3.56% is not a crash, everybody. Do you understand that? Now, let's just look at ETFs, and really, what did they do? Did they follow the Standard and Poor's 500 index? And in fact, they did. The index itself was down 2.71%. So your Voo finished on Friday down 2.69%. Spiders, spy finished down 2.70%. The Vti finished down 2.68%. And if you happen to have the spyd, which is the dividend. Spiders, 1.80%. Not a big deal. However, now we start to get more specialized and we look at SMH as well as qqq. That's where our technology stocks, especially SMH semiconductors, yeah, finished down 5.76%. And the QQQs finished down 3.47%. Okay, now let's look at the decline of some of our absolute favorite stocks. Nvidia, down about 4.5%. AMD down 8% but after a tremendous run, truthfully, Tesla down 5%, IonQ down 8.84% Palantir down 5.40. Microsoft down 2.19. They were down. But if you look at what they were down, they're down almost the same amount as SMH was down. And again those stocks, a lot of them got hit because of talk of tariffs, rare earth metals, things like that that they all need. However, what was also interesting is that gold went to about 4,029. Bitcoin did not hold where I told you if you are my women in money community app that I wanted to see if it would hold at 123 or so this last Friday it did not. It closed at about 116, although it's never really closed. So I wouldn't be surprised if I saw it go down to 108, which is its support level, but not a big deal. Ibit, which is Bitcoin ETF went down 3.70%. Oil, which I just haven't liked and I've said that before was about 58. What went up happened to be the price of bonds, which means their interest rates absolutely went down. So a one year now is only at about 3.6%. The 10 year was at about 4. So depending what continues to happen, we just might see what mortgages down where we wanted them because it looks like it could be going down there. But none of this, none of this is everything crash. Now could it continue to go down? Oh you betcha it could. You have to understand that many of the people, big traders, all kinds of things that go on on Wall street would like the markets to go down and down so they could pick up more. I mean there's all kinds of complicated ways of explaining how trading works and it doesn't work. But here is the real bottom line. Just like I said back many months ago, don't panic. You are not to panic and you are really not to panic if it continues to go down even more. That is why you dollar cost average, that is why you take advantage of times like this. But you don't have to do it tomorrow. You could take it and you could put it in order, 10% below the market, 20% below the market, whatever it may be. And I've told you this time and time again, so if it dips more so you pick it up, maybe it goes down very quickly for a second and then bounces up. Or you can just wait and see. For me, what am I personally doing? I'm not doing anything. Remember How a while ago I told you I thought that I had enough Ionq, I had enough Palantir. And even though I was tempted to buy more on Friday, seriously tempted, that would make my positions in those two stocks way too. Too heavy for my portfolio. I have a considerable amount of money in those two stocks and if I continue to add to would not be wise. Even though it was the hardest thing for me to do, not to add more shares. I like where I am positioned. I'm happy where everything is and I don't need to get greedy. I don't need to sell out of fear and I don't need to buy out of greed. It's just that simple. So you have to look at your own portfolio, at your own situation, at your own timing. And you need to decide what is it that you want to do now with that said, the tariff possibility and all these AI companies really having significant exposure to China in both manufacturing and they're a large customer, by the way. So, all right, legitimate reason to figure out what's going to really happen here. But that's not the only thing that's going on. So on Friday, what else was going on that really, in my opinion, spooked the market. What spooked them was that we were still in the uncertainty of what is going to happen with the federal government. And the federal government really does have a major effect on everybody. On Friday, it was its 10th day that it was still shut down. But what's really affecting people more, in my opinion, than even it being shut down?
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And now all of a sudden the news is out that layoffs of federal workers are actually happening not only for the furlough workers, that are they going to get back pay or are they not? But now actual layoffs are starting to be implemented and that affects everything all the way down the road. It really does it. Now sometimes we think, oh, well, this doesn't really affect me. I don't work for the federal government. Everything today affects every single one of us. And when you see that they're still arguing, they can't come to a decision, who knows how long it will last. And you combine that now with tariffs again, and all of a sudden the two most powerful political figures in the world now not getting along. President of China, the president of the United States, it affects you. And what affects you affects the stock market because you are the stock market. And that's what's going on. So what can you do about it? As Ayanna Van Sant, remember her? She used to be on Oprah. And she had that show Fix My Life. As a very dear friend of mine, she would always say, take a breath, just take a breath, everybody. So can we just do that all together right now? Take a breath and just know that you were not in the stock market for a day or a month or a year. Didn't we have an agreement that you were going to be investing for at least five years or longer? So if something goes down, let it go down. Will it come back up? If it's good quality stocks, it is going to come back and it might come back a lot faster than you have any idea. So do yourself a favor and just stop looking. If you don't have the money to dollar cost average anymore, if into these markets you invested everything good, just stop looking. Ask yourself the question, is what I have my money invested in, Is it diversified? Are you doing the Strategy where maybe 50% of your money is in VU or the Standard & Poor's 500 index somewhere and the rest in individual stocks that you really like? If that's true, or all of your money for instance, is in voo, then just do that. If you're invested properly, you will be okay. So the real problem is not is the stock market going up or down and what are you going to do and things like that, it's what are the people going to do who work for the federal government who have now just lost their jobs, or people who haven't been told they've lost their jobs but they're on furlough and who knows if they're going to get back pay or not, what are they going to do? And the question becomes, do they take money out of their TSP or their Roth IRAs, what do they do? And here's just something I want to say to everybody. You know and I know. When you have a 401k or a tsp or 403b, you can take a loan from that retirement account and therefore use it for whatever you want and pay it back over a five year period of time in most cases. Please be very careful if you're on furlough right now and you don't know if you're going to get back pay or not. And especially if you think you're going to lose your job, do not take money via a loan from a TSP or any retirement plan like that that you may happen to have. Because if you lose your job, that money that you took out will be taxed to you as ordinary income this year. In fact, if it is this year that you took the money out and you will get a 10% penalty on it if you are not at least 55 years of age or older this year I said 55. I did not mean to say 59 and a half. Because there is a rule that says if you are 55 or older in the year you've lost your job or leave service any money that you take from a 401k, a 403b, a TSP, not an IRA, but those three employer sponsored plans, there is no 10% penalty. You are of age, but if you're under that age, you take a loan now, you no longer have a job. That money now will probably be due and payable within a month. It just depends on what they decide. And if you don't have it to pay, you're going to owe ordinary income tax on it and a 10% penalty. But Susie, I don't have any money. I have to do something. Listen to me. Money that is in your employer sponsored plan as well as an ira, by the way, Roth or traditional in most cases is protected against bankruptcy. If you don't have any money, you cannot pay your bills. It's no fault of your own. You thought you had a solid job and all of a sudden the government has done all of these shenanigans and now you don't have a job. You may have to claim bankruptcy and therefore you need need to protect what you have in a retirement account. I rather you charge up your credit cards to the max, do whatever you can, but do not, and I repeat, do not touch money that is in your retirement accounts. Now there may be some of you federal employees that you know you are absolutely going to get back pay. Let's say you're an air traffic controller or whatever it is and you're not getting pay right now, but you know that they are going to give you back pay because you're absolutely still working. What do you do if you happen to have a Roth ira? Never forget that you can take out any contributions that you originally put in with without taxes or penalties whatsoever, regardless of how long the account has been open or your age. But also don't forget you can do what's called a Roth IRA rollover and you can do this with a regular IRA as well, where you withdraw money with the intention of putting it back within 60 days. And you can only do this by the way, once every 12 months. Therefore, if you are in a situation, listen closely to me now and you really need money. And you know that as soon as this ends, you're going to get this back pay. So then you'll have that money to put back back in your roth or your IRA within that 60 day period. It's something that you may need to take advantage of if there is just no money to pay your bills and you live paycheck to paycheck. But if you do not get that money back within those 60 days, listen to me again with your Roth IRA, you are only to take out that amount which you originally contributed. Because if something happens and you cannot put that money back, okay, it is still your money without taxes or penalties. If it is a traditional ira. Any money you take out, if you do not get it back within 60 days, you are going to pay an ordinary income tax on that money plus a 10% penalty if you're not 59 and a half years of age or older. So be very, very careful, everybody. Bottom line, the certainty of uncertainty. And until the uncertainty goes away, you should expect these markets to be absolutely going up, going down and all over the place. But trust me, the uncertainty will go away. Many of these stocks that are favorite stocks will return. You will be happy that you either kept them or dollar cost averaged into them. And again, they could go 10% lower, 20% lower. They can go lower, but they could also go a lot higher over time. All right, so that brings us to the end of this SUSY school, the certainty of uncertainty. Two things though I do want to talk to you about as well. The one year treasury right now, as I said, is down to about 3.6. Alliant Credit Union. For new money, their one year certificate is at 4.10. For amounts of $75,000 or more it's at 4.15. But that is for new money that you put in there. Again go to myalliant.com and check it out. Also, I want you to support me by subscribing to my YouTube channel so that you can be notified when a new video goes up. So you go to YouTube.com susieorman S U Z E O R M A N and subscribe. Got that? So Until Thursday when Ms. Travis joins me again. Can you believe I'm even lonely for her today? I better go find out what she's doing. There's only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money and it is this. Be certain people. Be certain about what you do and don't let others uncertainty get you off the track. Remember the certainty of uncertainty. So people first be certain about your money. Then you can invest your money wisely and then in the end, you'll have money to buy things. Hopefully things that you need. All right? Until then, stay safe, secure and healthy. Bye bye now. We are strong, we are wise we will not apologize we are here we will thrive Together we will rise we're the faith and everything it takes we are strong, we are wise Together we will rise. Hi everybody, Suzy O here now. If you are looking for a way to start saving to get the most out of your money, I want you to go to myalliant.com that's M y a l l I a n t dot com and look into opening an Ultimate Opportunity Savings Account. Put in at least $100 a single month for 12 consecutive months, earn 3.10% interest on your money right now and get a hundred dollars at the end. Are you kidding me? It's the best deal out there. Start saving right now.
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Neither Susie Orman Media nor Susie Orman is acting as a Certified Financial Planner Advisor, a Certified Financial Analyst, an economist, cpa, accountant or lawyer. Neither Suze Orman Media nor Susie Orman make any recommendations as to any specific securities or investments. All content contained in this podcast is for informational and general purposes only and does not constitute financial accounting or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, legal and financial advisors regarding your particular situation. Neither Suze Orman Media nor Suze Orman accepts any responsibility for any losses which may arise from accessing or reliance on information in this podcast and to the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all liability for loss damages, direct or indirect, arising from the use of this information. The must have documents discussed in this podcast are legal documents created by a lawyer and distributed by Hay House.