00:00 Speaker A
CBOE VIX volatility index known as the fear gauge spiking above 40 today following a selloff in the wake of President Trump’s tariff announcement. So how can nervous investors lean into fear and make it an opportunity? I want to bring in Larry Spran, Midlant Financial founder and author of financial planning made personal for our weekly FA corner brought to you by Capital Group. Larry, thank you for being here. How do you use fear in your favor in this environment?
00:47 Larry Spran
Well, if you’re young, this is a great opportunity. I have two young kids, 18 and 21, and we’ve been talking about using this as an opportunity to uh add to their investments because this may be a once in the next five or 10 year experience for them, uh similarly to what we saw in 2020. So, if you have the time horizon to take advantage of this, there’s there could be, you know, no better opportunity to enter. And uh if you’re afraid, enter at 50% today and uh, you know, hold the rest of the capital for a later date if possible.
01:41 Speaker B
Larry, what’s the right way to position in this environment? Cyclicals have sold off, defensives have received a significant bid, at the same time the valuations are elevated, and their earnings growth is limited due to the rise of GLP1s and other threats. Do you look at domestic or international? And how do you position?
02:09 Larry Spran
I think right here in the moment, you have to take a deep breath because I I think when you see new news hit the market that is not received uh positively, like we’ve seen over the last couple of days, uh typically it’ll take a few days for the markets to digest. So, you know, with the families we serve, it’s not necessarily making moves today or tomorrow based upon what’s going on in the environment just at this moment. It’s taking a look at their long-term financial plan and how does this impact things. And you know, as we’ve seen in in years past, we can see downtrends like we are now and, you know, we could see things rebound rather quickly. So I I think it’s really one of those times to take pause, evaluate, and uh wait and see at this point.
03:16 Speaker A
At what point though does the selling make you pause and say, okay, it is time to reassess. It is time to potentially think about reallocation, even if that means locking in some losses.
03:42 Larry Spran
Yeah, I I think what you have to look at is fundamentally, you know, where we’re at today, right? We we’ve been here before and markets can always deal with good news, obviously. They can also deal with bad news, surprisingly. The one thing that’s problematic is that uncertainty, and we’ve we’ve heard some of your guests talk about that uncertainty. So I I think that that uncertainty is going to continue and we need to have some resolution to which direction are we going. Are these tariffs staying in full force? Are they going to be retracted to some degree? So I think we need a little bit more information before we make some holistic uh changes to people’s uh financial portfolios for their long-term goals.
04:47 Speaker A
Larry Spran, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
04:53 Larry Spran
Thank you.