Recent Questions From Investors

LIZ ANN SONDERS: I'm Liz Ann Sonders.

KATHY JONES: And I'm Kathy Jones.

LIZ ANN: And this is On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, we analyze what's happening in the markets and discuss how it might affect your investments.

Well hi, Kathy, and hi, everybody. This week, we are going to do something a little different on the podcast, something we haven't done in more than a year, which is to take stock of the repeat and frequently asked questions we are hearing from our investors when we are out doing client events or, frankly, just talking to our people in our day-to-day lives. We've each got about five questions here, and I thought we would go back and forth discussing each of them. We put them in no particular order, but I think there's an obvious topic maybe or a couple of topics that have moved to the top of the list. So why don't you start it, Kathy? What is number one on your list these days?

KATHY: Yeah, and I'm sure that this is probably very much in line with yours. It comes up around tariffs. At least the answer comes up around tariffs. But the question is, "Why are bond yields falling when inflation's still high and the Fed's on hold?" It's counterintuitive. But I think the answer is, "We're going through a shift where we have been very focused on inflation to now we're focused on growth. And we're in a growth scare."

And a lot of this has to do with tariffs and the impact that tariffs have on economic growth. And we're seeing that sort of play out with the counter-tariffs now. Trade wars are not pro-growth policies. They're negative for growth. And I think that that is resonating through the markets. We also had some activity, I think, from last year was sort of pulled some economic growth into the fourth quarter that might have been spread into the first quarter, and now we're getting indications first quarter growth is soft. We look at the Atlanta Federal Reserve's NowCast, GDP NowCast, and what that is is they track the economic data as it comes in during the quarter to estimate where economic growth is, gross domestic product.

And it's early days in the quarter because it takes a while to get the economic news. But that has plunged on various indicators, and particularly on the trade balance. That's been one of the factors. Also seen some indications that consumer sentiment is souring. Consumer spending was down in the first month of the year. Some of that might be weather related, but some of it may just be people pulling in, in terms of being more cautious about spending, given the likelihood of more price hikes. And then we've seen the federal government layoffs, which, even if it doesn't affect you personally, kind of puts a chill on the labor market, as you might see your neighbors or hear about friends and family that are losing their jobs. You know, for every federal worker, which is only 2% of the workforce, federal workers. But for every federal worker, it's estimated there's about two contractors. So what we're seeing is throughout the country, a lot of these contractors are getting pink slips as well. And if your neighbor is losing his job, that may affect your willingness to spend or make you much more cautious. So there's a number of indicators pointing to the likelihood that growth is slowing down. Tariffs could accelerate that slowdown, even perhaps risk recession down the road. And I think that that is what the bond market is capturing. They're no longer focusing on inflation. They're focusing on growth. And given that the Fed isn't in a position to lower rates right away, the yield curve is starting to invert. So the fed funds rate, which is the base rate that the banks use to lend money to each other overnight, it's the one that the Fed targets with its policy, is now higher than yields across the Treasury yield curve. And that oftentimes can be a recession indicator. So all signals from the bond market is "We're worried about growth now more than inflation."

So Liz Ann, what about you? What's number one on your list right now?

LIZ ANN: Tariffs, DOGE, tariffs and DOGE. Sometimes immigration policy is thrown into the mix, but, you know, usually the first two or three questions is something on government policy and the uncertainty surrounding it, and totally agree with everything you said with regard to why that's put pressure down on 10-year yields. Interestingly, as it relates to the stock market, when yield moves are tied more to the growth outlook, you tend to see a move back into positive correlation territory in terms of yields and stocks. And we'd actually been for a while there in negative correlation territory. And when yields are moving based on actual inflation or concerns about inflation, bond yields and stock prices tend to move in the opposite direction. So what that's effectively meant, certainly over the past month or so, is that as yields have come down, stocks have been under pressure. And I think that's because yields are reflecting that weaker growth backdrop. 

I'm glad you mentioned Atlanta Fed's GDP Now. I posted a chart of that twice on my X feed in the last week. And it's incredible how quick I get kind of nasty replies saying, "Well, aren't you just cherry picking some forecast that agrees with your negative view?" So I've had to go back and explain, just as you did, that this is a NowCast as they call it. It is just tracking data as it comes in, the data that feeds into GDP ultimately. We're into the third month of the quarter. There's lags in data, so you're right, we don't have all of the data yet, but this is what it's tracking at, −2.8%. And before this update, it was negative, I think, 1.2%, so clearly decelerating to the downside. 

I think we've talked about on this show that what we had already started to see show up in the data was weaker soft economic data, so survey-based data, confidence-type measures. We saw a drop in both consumer sentiment and consumer confidence. We saw it in the National Federation of Independent Business, the NFIB data that tracks small-business sentiment. We see it in things like capital-spending intentions, plans to buy large-ticket items. The problem, it has now started to morph into some of the hard economic data, consumption actually showing up weaker, a bit of weakness in industrial production. And I think that's likely to persist, particularly if we continue to see that weaker soft data. It already has, and I think will continue to translate into weaker actual hard data. So I'm not going to try to guess what, say, Atlanta Fed GDP is going to do from now. But if you continue to see weaker data, expect NowCast-type assessments of the economy to worsen from here. 

Tariffs are seen as, all else equal, and maybe combined with DOGE spending cuts as stagflationary, to use a generic definition of the word, meaning puts downward pressure on economic growth, upward pressures on inflation. And one of the counters to that I've often heard is, "Yes, but the upward pressure on inflation is more of a kind of a one-time level reset in prices, not a sustainable rate-of-change increase in inflation," which is how we tend to track inflation. The problem is that consumers think of inflation that way. Prices are more now than they were before. That in turn feeds into confidence in animal spirits. And we can talk about soft versus hard data, but we have to admit that whether it's markets or the economy, it is confidence that is a driver. It's animal spirits that's a driver. And that clearly is where the uncertainty is most significant.

So what are another sort of couple of top questions you've been getting, Kathy?

KATHY: Well, my number two is always, you know, "What is the Fed going to do? You know, what's the outlook for the Federal Reserve?" And given how much the economic outlook has shifted, I think it's actually a pretty relevant question. You know, sometimes it's sort of like, the Fed's doing nothing, right? The last time we got comments from the Federal Reserve at the last meeting, it's like, "Well, we're on hold for the time being. Inflation is still too high for our taste. Economic growth is still moving along. The unemployment rate is still near 4%. We think we're in a modestly restrictive place, meaning our policy rate is high enough to slow down some of the excesses in the economy. So we're in a good place for now. We're just going to wait and see what all these policies mean, and we're going to stay on hold," which I think is the operative scenario for right now, probably the first half of the year.

But things are changing really quickly, and I think the option to cut rates is there for the Federal Reserve. We had penciled in one to two rate cuts by the end of the year, and I think that if this economic slowdown that seems to be unfolding in the first quarter pushes into the second quarter, and we do start to see some of those inflation pressures come down, this is going to be the difficult part for the Fed because tariffs lift at least one-time prices, lift prices. So we have some flow through on the inflation front. But a slowdown in economic growth means, down the road, inflation should go lower as demand softens. And we're seeing signs of demand softening. So the Fed is in a difficult spot right now because they're going to have to kind of try to balance the deteriorating growth outlook, if it persists, against the ongoing stubbornness of inflation above 2%. And right now, inflation as it's measured by the price index for Personal Consumption Expenditures is roughly around 2.5% and staying there. And the momentum, if you look at some of the numbers, is actually kind of on the upside. 

So what's the Fed to do? I think they sit on their hands for the time being, but in the second half of the year, if the slowdown in growth persists, then we're probably going to see the Fed cut rates, maybe reluctantly, but nonetheless, it's going to come down to what the labor market does. If the slowdown in economic growth materializes into a situation where the unemployment rate is rising, payroll growth is slowing, then they'll have no choice, I think, but to try to lower rates, particularly with the yield curve now inverted. They'll try to get those rates down. 

That being said, I don't know that Fed rate cuts are going to solve our problem. Certainly not quickly or easily. So it's not a quick fix. This is not a financial conditions problem. They don't need to stimulate the economy by boosting bank lending or anything like that.

It's already the ample availability of credit. So it's going to be tough for them to be effective in this sort of environment if it persists. So not a happy description of what the Fed situation is, but I'm afraid that looks like where it is. How about you, Liz Ann? What's next on your list?

LIZ ANN: You know, it's interesting. In years like last year where the market was strong, I tended to find that questions that are asked are more about concerns. "What are the risks? What are the concerns?" And in a year like last year where the market was doing well, more of the questions were of the macro variety, election related, of course, in advance of the election, policy-related, geopolitics. But now quickly, attention turns from the first question, which we already discussed on government policy, tariffs, and DOGE to what's going on in the market. And in particular, a pretty heightened focus on the Magnificent Seven group of stocks because of pretty significant underperformance this year relative to how darling they were in the eyes of investors as recently as just calendar year 2024. 

In calendar year 2024, six of the seven Magnificent Seven stocks, and by the way, for those that don't know what stocks they incorporate, there's three technology stocks. So Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft. Two communication services stocks: Meta and Alphabet (or Google). And then two consumer discretionary stocks: Amazon and Tesla. So those are the so-called Magnificent Seven, which I've now been dubbing the Meh Seven, because unlike last year when six out of the seven outperformed the S&P, and the only underperformer to the S&P, which was Microsoft, still had double-digit positive returns. So you had very strong performance and very strong earnings growth collectively from the group. Now, as of yesterday's close, as you and I are taping that, the best performer, which is Meta, is ranked 81st among the 500 stocks in the S&P. Tesla is almost dead last. It's ranked 499th. 

And in a reversal of last year, instead of only one underperforming the S&P, only one is outperforming the S&P this year. And it has meant that technology as a dominant sector is now the second-worst performing sector this year. And the best performing sectors are actually the classic defensive sectors of healthcare and consumer staples. There's lots of reasons for it, just general uncertainty about the economy that tends to feed more into the cyclical side and into the growth side of the market. You've also got decelerating pace of earnings growth for the Magnificent Seven from a year ago growth being about 52% for that group of stocks versus only 1% growth for the rest of the S&P. Those are starting to converge, and you're seeing now growth decline from that recent peak of more than 50% growth a year ago to, by the end of the year, maybe high teens, 20%. That's based on consensus expectations. So clearly deceleration in the rate of earnings growth for that group, yet at the same time, the rest of the S&P, so S&P ex-the Magnificent Seven, is actually seeing accelerating growth throughout the course of 2025. And I think that brings up an adage that I've used forever in my nearly 40 years doing this, which is "When it comes to how the stock market or individual stocks deal with incoming economic data or earnings data, better or worse can often matter more than good or bad." So it's that rate of change. It's inflection points from accelerating to decelerating. And I think that has contributed to some weakness in that still very popular to talk about group of stocks. 

KATHY: That's funny, so much talk about the Magnificent Seven, and I, until you told me that, I didn't really realize how un-magnificent they have been recently. So good to know. 

LIZ ANN: So what else is on your list, Kathy?

KATHY: So one I get and have been getting for decades is "Will the high level of U.S. government debt push bond yields higher?" And the answer is probably not, not likely.

And I don't mean to dismiss concerns about the deficit. It's high. It's growing faster than GDP is growing, which means that it will continue to expand, which isn't a good thing. And it does mean there's more supply of bonds, of Treasuries on the market, for the market to absorb. So on the margin, it could push up rates a bit. But I've been doing this for about 50 years now, I hate to admit, and I have spent an awful lot of time trying to find a correlation between deficits, the growth rate in deficits, overall debt, and bond yields. And it's not there. And there's a couple of reasons for that.

Largely because the Treasury market is kind of unique. It's a huge market. It's very deep and very liquid, and it's used by investors around the world. So it's certainly used by investors in the United States. All the banks hold Treasuries for regulatory capital purposes. Institutional investors like insurance companies, pension funds, hold Treasuries for safety and liquidity. Foreign central banks hold Treasuries for the same thing, safety and liquidity, and for transactional purposes. About the reserves of U.S. dollars in the global economy, about 60% of total reserves. And that's been pretty stable over the years. And those are held in Treasuries for safety and liquidity. And so there's a built-in market. And that market continues to provide buyers even as the supply expands. And what we do see that drives Treasury yields, though, is not so much the size of the deficit or the overhang of debt that we have relative to the size of the economy. What drives it is Fed policy, inflation, and economic growth prospects. When you do those correlations, you come up with some pretty high correlation numbers. 

So again, not to dismiss it, nobody's a big fan of large and rising deficits. It does create concern. But in the long run, what we know is that as long as the U.S. has the largest, most liquid, perceived-to-be-safest bond market in the world, there is a built-in audience. There's a built-in buyer. And it's a question of how much it can affect yields when you pretty much have a captive audience now. We are abusing that privilege, I think, by running high and rising deficits. But I don't, on the long list of things that move yields, it's at the bottom of the list, I'm afraid. Counterintuitive as it is. So we keep an eye on Fed policy—that's the biggest correlation with long-term yields. We keep an eye on inflation and inflation expectations.

And then we keep an eye on economic growth. And I think we're seeing it play out right now. We have large and rising deficits. As far as the eye can see, bond yields are falling. Why? Because the economy is at risk. Economic growth is at risk. And inflation is expected to decline. And eventually, the Fed's likely to ease. And that's what the market responds to. So that's my evergreen question. Do you have one of those on your list, Liz Ann?

LIZ ANN: Well, yeah, debt and deficits is the evergreen question. In fact, sometimes I have a little fun, at least inside my own head. In the formal remarks I'll make in advance of Q&A, I'll purposely not talk about it to see how quickly a hand goes up and asks about it. More recently, though, too, getting questions about the dollar, specific to tariffs, sort of parroting what many economists assumed, which is that as tariffs were put in place, that we would see an offsetting rise in the dollar. And as tariffs were being discussed in the lead into the election, between the election, for the most part, and Inauguration Day, the dollar was doing well, but it was also because the equity market was doing well. Yields were up a fairly substantial amount. That is clearly not the case anymore, and the dollar has been weakening. So going against that sort of parroted view of "Well, a rising dollar will offset the impact of tariffs." And that U.S. equity market is weak relative to other markets. And we have a Fed in a moment of uncertainty with regard to that. So a lot of the assumptions made about currency moves specific to tariffs have not borne out, at least at this point. But the other big question I get is about valuations and the market being richly valued.

Is that a concern? And the answer is yes, but it's more of a back-pocket concern, not an imminent the-sky-is-falling-in-the-market concern simply because valuations in whatever form, whether it's a forward P/E (or price to earnings) or trailing P/E or other forms of valuation like the Fed model or price-to-book or price-to-sales, there's lots of ways to slice and dice valuation. They pretty much all show the market historically on the expensive end of the spectrum, but you take any one of those metrics and then track historically what subsequent one-year performance was for the S&P 500®, and there's basically no correlation. So it just tells you that the market can get expensive, and it's not necessarily a hindrance to markets continuing to do well. We all learned that in the mid-to-late 1990s, where the market was expensive in the mid-90s, and the bull market didn't end until the early part of 2000.

It's also important to slice and dice because of the impact of the concentration of groups like the Magnificent Seven or the top 10 stocks, whatever category you want to use. In the case of the Magnificent Seven, recently traded to as high as close to 30 times forward earnings. That's in contrast to the S&P trading at about 21, 22 times forward earnings. And then if you look at say the S&P ex-the Magnificent Seven or the S&P 490, meaning excluding the top 10 stocks, or if you look at equal weight relative to cap-weighted—cap-weighted is how the S&P index is constructed—you're looking at more like the high teens. So there is somewhat more reasonable relative valuation when you exclude the impact of those high-flying stocks. The rub, course, which I already touched on with regard to the Magnificent Seven, is you've got this group of very expensive stocks, and now you've got deceleration in the denominator of the P/E equation. And that, in particular, is often cited by some of the institutions that have been paring back exposure to those names, is the fact that you have valuation concerns now not being supported by accelerating earnings growth. That's become one of the top-of-mind issues for investors. Anything else on your radar or list?

KATHY: Yeah, well you mentioned the dollar, and I often get the question of whether the dollar is going to lose its status as a reserve currency. And you know, we've alluded to it before when I said 60% of all reserves are held in U.S. dollars, and that's been stable. And I think the short answer, I could go on and on about this for hours, but the short answer is there's no great alternative to the U.S. dollar. Again, you have the depth and size of the U.S. Treasury market. You have legal protection, safety, and security. And that makes it a reserve currency. That makes it viable and also have the largest, most powerful economy. And that means that people who hold reserves in U.S. dollars or use U.S. dollars, it's hard to move away from it, and most trade is conducted in U.S. dollars globally. I know that there are countries trying to form their own trading blocks using their own currencies, but so far, it is not terribly successful. 

And the reason is they don't, again, necessarily have the size and the protections that the U.S. market has. So I don't see it happening anytime soon. Never say never, the British pound was a reserve currency for, you know, long, long time before the U.S. took that crown away, and it took two world wars and a huge amount of debt to the United States for that to happen. So things can change over time, but I think of, you know, where would the alternative be? You could look at the euro. Euro has gained since its creation in terms of the amount of reserves that are held there as central banks try to diversify their holdings, but it's still roughly around 20% or so of holdings. And the trouble with the euro is that you have 17 different bond markets, one central bank, but very different bond markets that are not as deep and liquid. So that's one issue. And economies that don't always move as one. So then, you look beyond the euro, and you say, "Where would you go?" Well, you know, other, other bond markets are very small. China is a very large economy, but its currency is not freely convertible, meaning there are controls on it. There's, it's set, they have capital controls on the flows in and out of money. So nobody wants to put their money in not knowing when they can get it out or at what value.

And so you just don't have a good substitute. You don't have a good alternative. So don't see it changing anytime soon. In the course of history, sure, but not yet. 

So Liz Ann, how about one last one from you? And then I'll finish up with one from me maybe.

LIZ ANN: So one last one for me is often a fairly simple and generic question that I think the assumption is that there's going to be a fairly simple answer. And that's where it gets tricky, and it's on growth versus value. And the question might be, "Do you like growth stocks versus value stocks?" Or "Do you think one will outperform the other?" Different forms, but it's usually a very simple growth versus value. And the reality is it's a lot more complex because I think there's three ways you can think about growth and value.

There are our preconceived notions of what are growth and value stocks. You ask anybody that's familiar with this and say, "All right, where do tech stocks fall?" They'll probably say in the growth category. "Where do utility stocks fall?" In the value category. So that's one way to think about it. Then there's the actual characteristics of growth and value, actually screening for growth characteristics or value characteristics. And sometimes you can find that there's growth in stocks that might be housed in the value indexes. Sometimes there are stocks that are housed in the value indexes, but they're really expensive, meaning they don't really offer much value. It just happens to be where they're housed. And that gets to the third way to think about it, which is what the indexes are that are labeled growth and value. 

And there's myriad indexes. You've got the four major Russell indexes, and they categorize by size. So they've got Russell 1000 Growth and Value, which are basically the large-cap growth and value indexes. And then they have the same for Russell 2000. So the small cap growth and value indexes. Then S&P has, at least for the S&P 500, they've got S&P 500 Growth, S&P 500 Value, but then they also have S&P 500 Pure Growth. If you're in that, you don't exist in a Value index.

If you're in Pure Value, you don't exist in one of their growth indexes, whereas in their regular growth and value indexes, just like with Russell, there can be overlap. There can be stocks that are housed both in the growth index and both in the value index. And that makes sense, frankly, because there are stocks that offer both. But there can be performance differences. And it's really important to understand how these indexes are constructed, what the sector biases within these indexes are, to help explain why, for instance, right now, as you and I are doing this, on a year-to-date basis, the Russell 1000 Value Index is the best performer among the eight major Russell and S&P growth and value indexes. 

So that would say, "Oh yeah, value is outperforming," but the Russell 2000 Value Index is a big underperformer. So the Russell 1000 Value Index is up about 4% year-to-date. The Russell 2000 Value Index is down about 4% year-to-date. So to just say "Value is doing well," well, it is within the Russell indexes as long as you're looking at the large-cap indexes. So it's really important to dig that one level deeper when you're talking about or thinking about investing in growth versus value. My preferred way is to think of the characteristics of growth and value and don't worry so much about what indexes they're housed in.

KATHY: I had to chuckle when you said you started in on that because people often tell me the bond market's really complicated. But then I hear you talk about all the different indices and the way you slice and dice them. And I think, I don't know. It sounds to me like equities are kind of complicated as well.

LIZ ANN: Well, not only that, they rebalance at different times. S&P does a rebalancing in December. Russell doesn't do it till the end of June. That can cause big differences in that span of time.

KATHY: Yeah, there you go. See, it's not always as easy as it sounds, right? Hence why we have active managers to work on all this stuff. 

LIZ ANN: So back to you to wrap us up.

KATHY: I'm just going to finish up with one last thought that I always finish when I'm talking to clients. It's like, "What should I do?" So I get a lot of people say, "All right, you gave me all this information, but now I don't really know what to do with my bond portfolio." And I always try to sum it up real quickly with, "Your bonds are there for income, because generally they generate income. For liquidity, meaning usually if you're in a high-quality bond, especially Treasuries, you can get in and out pretty quickly. For capital preservation, because barring a default, you're going to get your money back at par at a certain point in time. And for diversification from stocks," which sometimes works, sometimes it doesn't. But in general, when you need it, bonds will offset a big drop in the stock market. And they'll move in opposite directions at those really critical times. So with that in mind, I always say, "Just keep it simple. Match your duration, the time period of your bonds, with what your goal is, with your time frame. And stay in high-quality bonds with very low risk of default. And you'll probably be in pretty good shape." So that's always my parting message and of course, you know, we can always get help here at Schwab with that if someone needs it. So do you have a parting message before we close out, Liz Ann?

LIZ ANN: Yeah, actually, I'll carry on with what you just said, we do get a lot of questions that not just are asked to us at live client events, but come to us via our financial consultants from their clients. And it runs the gamut on every topic, including into things like crypto. And you know, "How do I reset my password?" That kind of question. So if you are a Schwab client, and you do have a question, it's worth looking at a part of our website at schwab.com/FAQs to see if your question is answered there already because that's something we keep up-to-date, and I think it's a really helpful resource. 

So Kathy, let's wrap up with what we always do and look ahead to the coming week. What do you think investors should be watching?

KATHY: Well, at the time we're recording this, we still don't have the unemployment report. So clearly that's going to be a big one because it's part of the Fed's dual mandate is to aim at full employment. We've seen a lot of revisions and confusing data over the last couple of months. So I think I'll be watching that closely. And there's actually the private survey, the ADP survey, comes out. It doesn't correlate exactly with the nonfarm payroll numbers because it's a private-sector survey.

But I do pay attention to that because it's really rich with underlying information about what industries are hiring, what are not, who's finding work, who isn't finding work, etc. They can slice and dice it by age group and region. So it gives us a little preview, not in terms of guessing the number that we get from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but it gives us a preview of how the labor market's looking for the private sector.

So I like to look at that one. And then we just have a host of other indicators coming up. And then not too long from now, we're going to be getting the next Fed meeting. And that's going to be interesting. But meanwhile, it's less about the calendar, I think, than it is about what's coming out of Washington. 

How about you, Liz Ann?

LIZ ANN: Yeah, so we're awaiting, haven't gotten it as you and I are taping this, the ISM, Institute for Supply Management, Services index. We got manufacturing and it was not very pretty. So to see whether that's corroborated by services, which has started to show some weakness. We're also doing this in advance of claims. I think it's important to start watching claims a little bit more at the state level, whether it's impacts from the fire in California—those are maybe largely in the rear-view mirror—but the D.C. and surrounding area. So D.C.-level claims, Maryland, Virginia. So I think that'll be important to watch. And we get the, I mentioned earlier in the call, the NFIB, the Small Business Optimism Index, and that often has some interesting tidbits. And that tends to be interestingly a very Republican-leaning crowd in terms of the respondents to that. So sometimes that can cause big biases, certainly in the immediate aftermath of the election, but that has started to roll over, and concerns have crept in. 

We also get the JOLTS, the Job Opening and Labor Turnover, data next week, and we get Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index. So those can be more market moving than, say, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which is the Fed's preferred measure, because that doesn't tend to be reported way outside the range of consensus expectations because once you have the CPI data and the PPI data, you can map some of those components into PCE. So you can often see more of a needle mover in terms of relative-to-expectations market reactions. So those are on my radar for next week as well. 

So that's it for us this week. Thanks as always for listening. You can always keep up with us in real time on social media. I'm @LizAnnSonders on X and LinkedIn. Those are the only two sites I'm on. Beware of imposters on other platforms, also on X. And you can read all of our written reports, including charts and graphs, at schwab.com/learn.

KATHY: And I'm @KathyJones—that's Kathy with a K—on X and LinkedIn. And if you've enjoyed the show, we'd really be grateful if you'd leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or feedback wherever you listen. We'll be back next week with a new episode.

LIZ ANN: For important disclosures, see the show notes or visit schwab.com/OnInvesting, where you can also find the transcript.