Ep 51: What is the Business Cycle? Why Does it Matter NOW?

This week, the stock market is continuing on its rocky roller coaster ride, like we talked about in the last episode. The market is shifting its focus to the health of the consumer to understand if we are in a recession or not. We know recessions are called in hindsight by the NBER, and we discussed this in great detail on our earlier episode 13 titled, Are We In A Recession? However,

Couldn't we look at today's data to get an indication of the health of the consumer and what the potential turning points might be? absolutely. A recession is called by the NBER. It's really subjective, to be honest. However, there's a whole dashboard that we could look at that we did discuss on that episode that we'll definitely link into this. But we need to revisit the business cycle, what those turning parts are, those periods of the business cycle, and what a recession is.

the current data as well. Sounds good to me. You're listening to Market MakeHer, the self -directed stock market education podcast that breaks down complex financial topics in an easy to understand manner from her perspective. We're your host. I'm Jessie DeNuit a never too late to the game investor here to ask all the questions about what am I supposed to be doing to have a retirement and how do I do that thing rich people do and make our money make money?

When I make your money, make money. Make my money, make money. I love your phrase. I'm Jessica Inskip, here to make it make sense. The resident finance expert, here to answer all of those questions and more. And the goal of today's episode is to understand how the business cycle works and how it relates to the stock market. Because the business cycle has to do with the economy, and the stock market's not the economy, but it's related. That's I I didn't complicate it already, but here we go. Still here. Awesome. OK.

So why is it so important to talk about the business cycle right now? Right now, we keep talking about the Fed and we are assessing the importance of the economy because the Fed's actions normally end in a recession. They're normally the ones that tip us into a recession because they're trying to slow down spending, which subsequently slows down growth, which is a component of the business cycle. And it hurts the consumer, which is a piece of the economy.

Market MakeHer (02:19.534)
people aren't the stock market, companies are, but people are part of the economy. So we need to understand what the whole business cycle is because now the stock market is paying attention to the health of the consumer where the economy is. I haven't looked at unemployment data this close in my 15 years because of just where we are in the cycle, we call it. Wow. The are we in a recession question, it helps us understand if we're going to have

What type of landing? The soft landing, a hard landing, no landing? It really depends on where we are in the business cycle if we're in a recession, if we're having a period of contraction, and if it's subjectively called or might be. Hold on. OK, so before we get into the business cycle, let's go back and define what a soft landing, hard landing, and no landing is again real quick because I want to make sure I understand it. A soft landing is

like a slow, slow down in economic growth with controlled reduction in inflation. So we're thinking of a pilot making a very slow controlled descent under the cloud cover to safely land a plane. And it's usually followed by a period of growth, right? Yeah. So it's soft because we're coming down from our expanding economy, which we're going to get into a little more detail. But we come down slowly. We're not we're not hitting hard. And then usually after you

You land, you take back off. That's the growth period. OK. And then a hard landing is when the economy contracts sharply due to the central bank or the Fed's efforts to control inflation. So in this scenario, the plane has had an emergency landing, I guess. Yeah. So it's like right now we're trying to assess that. Did the Fed tip us into a recession? They are reacting to unemployment data.

We had a spike in unemployment that surprised us after the last Fed meeting where we were surprised that they didn't cut. And we would rather them cut slowly rather than quickly because now they're using tools because they broke the economy because the consumer is so constrained and that's bad. That's what a hard landing is. Their efforts to control inflation pushed us too far. There's not any growth. The consumers can't spend money. Their savings are drained. Hard landing.

Market MakeHer (04:38.548)
Okay. And then a no landing situation occurs when the economy continues to grow despite a series of contractions and monetary policy. And that seems like that's kind of what was happening maybe late last year, early this year. Am I wrong? Like we were kind of in a no landing situation and now we're like worried that we're heading towards a hard landing. Yeah. And it shifts. It depends on what happens. If there's surprises in the economic data, then there's surprises within the market. And then people freak out and be like, my God.

landing and it's like no landing, hard landing. It's gyrating. Yes. yes, and I really think that attributes to AI. There was this spending and this technological boom that led to an increase in productivity. Then we had an increase of immigration, which added to our worker supply because we had a labor shortage. So there was a lot of moving factors. And that's why it's subjective to call it recession. You have to look at a lot of different data points to understand if we're N1 or not.

OK, so the Federal Reserve, aka the Fed who controls the central bank in the US, controls the landings as much as possible. But the NBER, the National Bureau of Economic Research, analyzes all this data and determines whether or not the Fed has actually tipped us into recession or not. Exactly. And just like that really great TikToker, the reason why you have to look at it from hindsight and it is subjective because you can't look at one piece of data point. So for a Monday.

You can't say you had a bad week on Monday because the week's not over yet. Then you've got to analyze the whole week. So it's always called in hindsight. Just like we said, they look at it in 3D depth diffusion duration. So how bad was it? How widespread was it? How long was it? And there's typical business cycles that we can go through and understand what that is. But that's really the question that.

the NBER is asking and assessing and there's that whole dashboard like we said that you have access to. Yes. And as always we will link the NBER .org website and like I said check out episode 13 to see us go through the dashboard in detail. OK. So let's go ahead and talk about what is the business cycle and why do we care about it. The business cycle is just periods of expansion and contraction with turning points. So are we growing.

Market MakeHer (06:59.894)
as an economy or are we contracting as an economy? And there is nothing regular about these cycles. We should always be in an expansion phase, but at some point that has to come to an end. So the economy is always growing. We're doing great. There's innovation, more goods and services are being produced within the economy that creates that expansion and output is what is increasing economic output, economic growth.

But when that comes to an end or reaches its peak, that's when we get this downward movement that's called the contraction, but that's a turning point. And the NBER determines those turning points. And that's when economic output starts declining. There's less goods and services that are being produced. That's related to GDP. That's why we look at the gross domestic product, all the goods and services that are being produced within the country borders. Yes.

Am I getting ahead of myself again? No, I mean, I was actually wondering, like, why can't we just keep expanding? And I guess, like, some things are out of our control, like the pandemic, you know, like those types of things happen. But are there other things besides a global pandemic that halts the expansion of the economy? Like, why can't it just keep always performing? Well, everyone has a job and everyone's making money and everything's profiting like forever.

That is the best question for this entire episode. And again, I didn't plant it. I love it when that happens. a to me. So that's where we say, what causes a recession? It's when the economy gets knocked off of its natural growth path. And it's a shock that happens. And normally, it could be a supply chain disruption. It could be a pandemic. They can be positive, and they could be negative, too. Like, a positive is going to get you in a boom. That negative is what gets you in a recession.

It's disturbances. guess it could be. mean, there's like political things going on and, you know, agreements with other countries and trading and all kinds of things that can kind of throw a wrench into things, right? Absolutely. It can be international. It could be energy shocks because of geopolitical tensions, actions that basically constrain monetary policy. But if you think about it, at least within the United States,

Market MakeHer (09:15.584)
Everyone wants the stock market to go up and everybody wants everyone to spend money. Corporations, the government, individuals, because if their economy is growing, that means that your wages are going up and everyone has a job. And most everyone wants that. And if that's happening, then you're spending money and then companies are recognizing revenue and they're going to go up. So expansion is good for everyone involved. I would say like another thing that could shift.

All of this is depending on how the younger generations feel about capitalism, which we've talked about before. But, you know, if younger generations don't want to spend their money the way previous generations have, that could also shift things and make room for change in the whole society we've created. we'll just have to find out how that goes.

Yeah, well, and that's that goes in with consumer sentiment, too. Looking at trend shifts, you know, we have an aging population. Crew stocks are doing well. Things go hand in hand where people want to spend money and where the consumer is. And we are the consumer. And if you're the concentrated consumer, you have a lot of power. Where can we see consumer sentiment? So not necessarily consumer trends, but consumer sentiment is a type of indicator where you can see how people are feeling about inflation and things of that nature.

That's the other website that we've talked about before. The like St. Louis Federal Reserve website, right? Yes. Yeah. You can go through that. Absolutely. But yeah, to answer your question very directly, we should always be an economic growth and something kicks us out of that. And it could kick us into like a spiral down. It's a shock. It's negative. Or it can be a spiral positively like a boom. I think

both at the same time. And that's why we're in this weird area. We had a positive boom with AI, increasing productivity, which increases output. Think about that. And then we also have this negative supply shocks with COVID and geopolitical tension that really needed to normalize. So maybe they offset each other. And that's why we keep, I think, gyrating back and forth between no landing, soft landing, hard landing. Yeah. I'm always like,

Market MakeHer (11:32.458)
Wondering where we're at right now. Like which one where we're heading. We're kind of all just You know letting the pilot the Fed take control I think we need to cut rates or we're gonna get ourselves into hard landing scenario. Yeah, we're I'm in soft soft camp right now but Well, let's let's go back to really breaking down the business cycle then so we can understand How this all affects the economy which can affect the stock market?

We've talked about this, like we said, in episode 13, but let's really break it down to understand how the business cycle works. Yeah. Is this where we're to bring a very fun analogy back, my favorite one of all time? Yes. The business cycle, it's like the menstrual cycle, more than just a period. It's way more sophisticated and complex than that. There are so many...

activities that are going on between our brains, our ovaries, and our uterus, all linked to hormone levels that are changing. So think about that as data. Our cycles have two phases. So we have before ovulation and after ovulation. Our hormones change and subsequently our energy levels change. So we could be in this period of expansion or contraction and have turning points based on our hormone levels. Just bear with me here when we bring it all together.

But it's so similar. The business cycle is because expansion means a period of economic growth. So think of this when your hormone levels are increasing, you're thriving. But then that turning point in the cycle, it happens after ovulation. You're not pregnant. Your hormone levels start plummeting, and you lose your energy. That's like the contraction phase within the business cycle, which could lead to a recession.

Just a little disclosure, we are obviously not medical scientists or doctors. And today's analogy is more of a comparison of how our menstrual cycle works in phases and makes us feel and how that can relate to how the business cycle works when we are looking at how it all comes together. So to continue this analogy, let's say the uterus is the economy and the business cycle is the menstrual cycle. And the stock market would probably just be like the companies involved in your menstrual cycle, like tampons or...

Market MakeHer (13:47.362)
discs or whatever, birth control, things like that. I digress. Dina cups. I've been using the discs lately and I like them personally. I don't even know what that is. I will tell you all about it. We're not sponsored, Okay. No, but they're, yeah, they're better than the cup, I think. Okay, so the business cycle, like we said, is economic phases of expansion and contraction, similar to the follicular and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle.

And the business cycle has peaks and troughs, which are the turning points, similar to ovulation and menstruation. So we have the four phases of the business cycle, right? Do you want to go over the four phases of the business cycle? Yeah. So it's very, very simple. It starts with a trough, so at the bottom. And then we move into expansion. The economy's growing. We're thriving. Everyone has a job.

Unemployment is low, productivity is up, incomes going high, inflation is even getting higher. That eventually comes to a halt. And again, it's normally by a shock of some sort, some type of thing out of nowhere. That moves into the peak. So that's our third phase. It starts to get into a slowdown. Then we go into a contraction. Monetary policy could have been the one that tipped us there. Normally it is because it's an expansion is coupled with inflation.

Once we reach that peak and go into contraction, then GDP starts going down. There is less productivity. Companies are protecting their profit margins because there isn't spending. And then eventually the last leg of those profit margins is layoffs. And layoffs are coupled with recessions. Then the Fed might come in and start stimulating the economy. We go to a trough and then we expand again. then it's so you go on this continuous cycle. However, there is nothing regular about it. This is like an irregular.

Menstrual cycle well and so what we're called so what we would call the four phases of the menstrual cycle It'd be the follicular phase ovulation Lodeo phase and menstruation And we know that day one of the menstrual cycle starts with day one of your period menstruation Which also means you are in the follicular phase. So let's start there in our comparison So we're talking about expansion, which would be the follicular phase like let's say you're kind of out of your period already So we're in the follicular phase of our period

Market MakeHer (16:13.186)
The economy is growing. Our egg follicles are growing on the ovary. have follicles stimulating hormones and estrogen growing in this phase. So everything's growing, right? That's the expansionary phase. Then a peak or a turning point. These are the things called by the NBER. So the turning point peak would be ovulation. We're at our highest energy point. It's like the five days leading up to ovulation, the day of ovulation. That's when you can get pregnant typically.

and your estrogen is interest rates, let's say, and everything is like raising to kind of try to level things out. I mean, that would make sense because you're getting a lot of inflation in the expansion piece, and then you need to slow down the growth and you need to get those hormone levels to come down. The peak of expansion, interest rates are high, right? Yes, because they tipped us too far. Because inflation was high, interest rates are high at the peak.

So that's why the NBER calls the peak turning point, because we've turned into a peak now where something like inflation is getting too high. No, because the Fed is the one that is tackling inflation. That is their mandate. They are attempting to slow down the economy. But if they slow down the economy too much and put us in an economic contraction and economic output declines, right?

So the peak, it's like, yeah, you're ovulating. I've seen some studies on this. When we're ovulating, we're feeling a little sexier and dressing different. And we're more sociable. We're out there more. But you got to not let things get a little too out of control or you could get pregnant, unless that's what you're trying to do. But the peak in this ovulation analogy is we're saying that things are getting too high, though, expanding too much, too fast. Yeah, that could be a piece of it because inflation happened somehow.

Just in where we are, kind of in this cycle. Remember, not all cycles are the same. Not all menstrual cycles are the same. they change over your lifetime. Yeah, but it was also coupled with an economic shock as well. But we're still expanding beyond that. So yeah, this analogy absolutely still works because you feel that way. You feel good. You put makeup on. You feel great. I feel like I could conquer the world. I get all creative.

Market MakeHer (18:36.982)
And then it leads to sad and frumpy once that turning point happens, imploded and headed. When we're at this peak and the NBER calls that peak, that's what turns us towards the contraction? Right. You could see that with the data. It's just the contraction is normally coupled with a recession. They call the recession. So the NBER calls turning points, and they tell us if it was a recession or not. OK. So the contraction phase of the business cycle, which could or can it be a recession?

Like usually is not always. It would be like our luteal phase of our menstrual cycle where, you know, your body didn't get pregnant when it pushed that egg out. So now your uterus is contracting, AKA you're cramping, you're bloating, you're getting headaches, you're giving zero Fs and hate everything and on edge. And Jess and I happen to be in luteal phase right now.

But similarly, the economy is struggling and unemployment is on the rise and GDP is down. The Fed is lowering interest rates, hopefully this month, to try to soothe us and these symptoms, you know, like if we were to take my dollar, IB Profen or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You'd feel it just like you feel it in your menstrual cycle. You feel it in the economy. You have high levels of debt. People are losing their jobs. You can't afford anything.

Yeah. Like, when is it going to end? Our hormone levels are dropping. And this is what the NBER is looking at in terms of economic data to determine the recession, which has already happened in hindsight, like we've talked about. So it's possible we're already in one and it hasn't been called yet. And so that's the contraction luteal phase part of this cycle. The next would be another turning point called the trough.

which would be your menstruation. You get your period, energy's low. Start all over. trying to do much. And it does. The menstruation starts to cycle over again and you still have your low energy. Hopefully you're resting a little bit, kind of recovering, just like the economy is recovering from the trough turning point. Exactly. Yeah. The lags that are involved. Like we literally could have already been in this period of economic decline because it's subjective.

Market MakeHer (20:53.216)
and they look at it in 3D, depth, diffusion, and duration. We have already had two consecutive quarters of negative GDP, but that's just one component of it. That doesn't tell us that it's widespread or if it was deep or how long it was even. I mean, we just feel it as consumers in the economy. You can start feeling when things are getting rough, not just within yourself, but the sentiment of your friends and your family and other people and what people are posting on social media about.

Prices are too high or credit debt or whatever. In the great financial crisis, the 2008 housing crisis with the CMO collateralized mortgage obligations. That peak was December of 2007. They announced that peak December of 2008, a year later. We were already in a recession for a year. And then we were only going to be in it for another six months, but we didn't know.

So it's difficult because it's a subjective thing, but we could look at history to understand different cycles. Where did the shocks come from? That one was a housing crisis. Always some type of shock is associated with a turning point or recessions. It's like when you're tracking your period in an app and you can go back and look at how your cycle has shifted over time. Yeah, maybe you're like, I don't know, eating some different food and then adjusted your hormone levels.

Or you're getting a little older and your cycle is getting a little shorter and you're like, wait a minute. And it's just like that hindsightness where sometimes you're not understanding why you're feeling so irritable and everything sucks and then you get your period. That's the boom, like, period, duh. Now it's all making sense in hindsight. Exactly. So let's go through what a recession looks like, a typical one. Remember, there's not typical ones. And then we can think about the data.

Now that we know it, it's like with feeling. I love that analogy. So maybe we can think about what you feel. So first what happens is there is that shock. We had supply chain issues. The shock is COVID, right? No one could travel, so supply chains were cut off. Geopolitical tension, hard to get oil. Inflation is a global issue, wasn't just a US issue. There's our shock. When that happens, firms start reducing their investment. No capex spending, because they're preparing just like

Market MakeHer (23:19.982)
we say, hurricane's coming, something like that, we prepare, right? We don't know when, but it usually starts with no more business investment spending, which is a component of GDP. So you should be able to see that in GDP. So we already had two consecutive quarters of decline in GDP in Q1 of 2022 and Q2 of 2022.

We've said in the past, like the last time we talked about this, that two consecutive quarters of decline could indicate recession, but not always. That's right. You could miss your period and still be pregnant. know? mean, you could have your period and still be pregnant. yeah. That's what I meant. Not necessarily correlated or not necessarily a indicator. goes with a decrease of output. And that's why.

So then when that happens, normally hiring slows down. No more demand for the people helping us. Spending is going to stop in the discretionary pieces, which consumer discretionary is a sector. like automobiles, things that you want, not that you need, like Carnival Cruises, Lululemon, stuff like that. that's how it translates into the stock market. Yes, instantly.

into the stock market. So if people have money, they're going to spend it. The water's on, even if there are cracks. When spending declines, then there's a decline in sales. And then if there's a decline in sales, they want to protect their profit margins. And the way that they protect their profit margins is when layoffs happen. And then when layoffs happen, we have an increase in unemployment. And then if there's an increase in unemployment, not everybody has a job, then their sales can't go back up. So then there's further decline in spending.

which hits revenue, hits EPS on the stock market. Makes complete sense. Yep. Yep. The decline ends at some point, though. They're cutting expenses as much as they can, trying to get their ability to spend back up. And normally that's coupled with lower interest rates to start stimulating the economy. So that's where the Fed comes back in and does something like lowering interest rates. Because if interest rates are cut, that means companies can get

Market MakeHer (25:46.304)
loans for cheaper or like we can get credit cards for cheaper, things like that. And we can start kind of like money back into the economy again. The money effect would kick back in. So that's where we're at right now, right in that piece. And there's still more that goes into that, but that's where we're trying to understand. And so that's why when we saw that increase in unemployment, everyone freaked out. And what the worry is, is now that there's an increase in credit cards, is the last leg of the expansion.

Yeah, OK, some companies are doing really well and retail sales are up, but not in dollar general, but they are in other places like make it make sense. Is it being fueled by credit card debt? And if it is, that's a bigger issue. Yeah. Is it? Yeah, I mean, I don't know what that says that the sentiment that people are people depressed and they're just like racking up their credit cards on purchases to make them happy or it's a survival mechanism.

But it does depend on what you're saying with discretionary spending or where people are spending their money. Exactly. Sometimes I feel like we make it too simple, but it is that simple. In all reality, it's just where's the money going? But then fiscal policy could come in too, because remember, it's the money effect. That's so, so important. So that's what we're trying to assess right now is GDP was surprisingly up, surprisingly, but it was bolstered by retail spending.

consumer spending, the most recent GDP report, which was last week. you know, back to school happened. Summer was happening. True. People were probably just living it up in the sunshine a little bit. Things might slow down again. And isn't it historically, is it like September and October, that things slow down in the stock market? Yes. What a great comment. and look at you learning. It's my favorite one that happens. September is the worst month in the stock market.

Normally we would be bottom in October and it's happening now. Absolutely the worst month in the stock market. Maybe it's because everyone's stressed. Everyone's kids are going back to school. I got to remember how I juggled all this and I forgot. the holidays are around the corner. People are stressed out about that. So true. But everyone, if you decide to stop spending on things that you don't need, it could help move things along.

Market MakeHer (28:03.502)
It actually could. It really would. It absolutely would. Because that's whole purpose. No one shop. Find another hobby that doesn't cost anything for a few months so we can get this thing balanced back out. Pay attention to the unemployment picture. That's why the Fed has shifted to the unemployment picture. And hopefully this brings a puzzle together. Because now we saw that the Fed has really tackled inflation. PCE is at 2 .5%. The previous month was at

2 .6%. They're on the other side of their dual mandate, which is the unemployment picture. We want them to lower interest rates to prevent companies from having mass layoffs, to be honest. If we're going to stop spending and then they decide to start cutting costs, then no one has a job that's going to be coupled with a recession. So if they start lowering interest rates, well, then companies could start spending more. They'll spend would lead to hiring. Even if it's increasing in automation and other things like that, that is good for the economy.

That's what we want them to do, but we don't want the Fed to do that too fast. Slow is good. Going slow on the way down is good. So a slow descent. That soft landing is what we're looking for, We are looking for a soft landing. And that's why we say the Fed, have like a balancing act, right? They're trying to balance all of these things that they're made to do to make sure that we don't crash, have a hard landing, emergency landing, but that we're not just like kind of hanging out up in the air.

and things are progressing or growing. Exactly. So we get a employment picture once a month. Our next one is actually tomorrow. Do it again. Where we record the episode the day before the data comes out. Yes. And there is a lot of data to pay attention to. And that data is the employment picture, which has been looking like it's deteriorating as of late. Private payrolls increased less than anticipated.

So a slowdown in hiring. now you can see like what's associated with a recession. Like, okay, well now that's worrying about the health of the economy. It increased, but it was downwardly revised because the data is not perfect. They always go back and do revisions all the time. And we've had the weakest month in payrolls since January of 2021. We've got the lowest level of job openings since January of 2021.

Market MakeHer (30:31.086)
We are going to get an unemployment picture tomorrow. We're going to get CPI the following week. So we're going to get some inflation data. We're going to hit a Fed blackout period because they can't talk to us before they make their next interest rate decision, which definitely seems like a at least 25 basis cut. It's going to be interesting to see how the market perceives what they do because now it's that other layer like we talked about last episode. We had Daily, Mary Daily. She's the San Fran Fed president.

She said, as inflation falls, we've got a real rate of interest that's rising into a slower economy. That's a basic recipe for over tightening. Over tightening means they're trying to tighten monetary supply. do that by raising interest rates. So they push us too far. her comment is agreeing that we've been pushed too far and we need to cut the rates? OK. And then Bostock.

who is the Atlanta Fed president, said, must not maintain a restrictive policy stance for too long. That's it. He's like, all right, we're done. So there is lots of indication from the Fed that, we're done. the base bill. That's only going to be cut a quarter of a percent or maybe half of a percent, right? Right. But if we start the dissent because the market's forward looking,

companies will then say, OK, I know that I'm going to have more money. I know if I have debt, it's going to expire. And I can refinance it at a lower rate. I can afford to hire with my projections. That's going to start stimulating growth. OK. Because it's tied to the bond market. The bond market's going to look ahead. I was just going say that. Yeah, the bond bond market is already going down, which is a great lead into what we should talk about next week. Yeah.

We should really talk about what bonds and fixed income securities are, like how to kind of balance that out in our portfolios. Yeah, we're going to introduce actually a little bit of portfolio management finally. But we have to talk about the different fixed income products because there is a wide array of them. There are optimal times to do these things though.

Market MakeHer (32:46.794)
You know when the Fed is probably going to lower interest rates, which affects the stock market, you know, or the bond market. Therefore, it might be OK to lock in those higher rates because the yield curve is inverted. And then it's de -inverted a little bit yesterday. We're getting really close to the de -inversion. Which means we're going to feel that in our high yield savings accounts that everyone loves. That we are.

Those rates that we've been getting, those higher interest rates on our money, that's about to come down. It's time to look into locking it up in these fixed income securities if you want the higher rates to last. And if you want to know how, tune in to next week's episode. Ooh. That's right. Well, it sounds like the business cycle is something we should all be paying attention to in terms of how we spend money, invest, and even access the need for credit while living through the changes in the economy.

especially in terms of watching the signs of a recession. Yes. It's always good to revisit the business cycle because every cycle is different. It's not the same. It's like a mental cycle. That's right. Yes. And remember, the stock market is not the economy, but the business cycle has to do with the economy. But the stock market is very centralized around the consumer, which you should have learned from episode two.

If you've been following us. That's us. We're the consumer. That's right. But if you found this helpful, go ahead and do us a solid favor and leave us a review or give us a five star rating. It definitely helps the algorithm to spread our word, gets us on those charts. We appreciate you. Subscribe, follow us on our social channels. And we do have a couple areas where you could donate if you feel so inclined to help us keep our financial literacy for all cause going.

Yes, don't forget to comment on the new Spotify feature as well. Love responding to that and download our free ebook. That explains the stock market in so much more detail. And until next time, keep building knowledge and keep breaking those barriers.

Market MakeHer (34:52.174)
Remember, investing involves risk. There is always potential to lose money when investing in securities. Market Maker provides educational content and resources for informational purposes only. We are not registered financial advisors and do not provide personalized investment advice. Any information provided by Market Maker on our website or podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional financial advice. Market Maker is not liable for any investment decisions made based on our content.

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