Halfway home
Hello everyone! Welcome to the June 2025 edition of the boodle blog! If this is your first time here, we welcome you! If you are a returning member, thank you for placing your trust with us.
At boodle we believe that the person best qualified to manage your money is you!
There is so much news to talk with you about, so we’re just going to jump right in and offer you our perspective on the year in the market, so far and what we think lies ahead for you; the boodle investor!
What a year, 2025 is turning out to be! Let’s take a look at the June numbers on the indexes, and then we will tell you where we stand on a year to date basis. The bulls are running on Wall Street and we are happy to be running with them! For the month of June, the DOW added 4.23% and the S&P 500 beat it by a whisker with a 4.53% advance. The NASDAQ won the month with a 5.86% gain.
Year-to-date the DOW sits at 3.64% and the S&P 500 has gained 5.50%. The NASDAQ once again is just behind the S&P 500 with a 5.48% advance for the year.
These first 6 months feel like an entire year to us with so much drama, fear, and bombast occurring on a near daily basis. It’s as if there is some kind of action movie that is playing out before our very eyes. The Trump Tariffs are proving to be the rocket fuel that will propel our portfolios higher, which is the exact opposite conclusion that the “financial experts” had been warning us would happen with these tariffs. Folks, we are sitting at all-time highs in the market, and we believe that new highs are on the horizon. With 27 years of stock market knowledge under our belts, how accurate are we at understanding the moves in the stock market? Go back and take a look at the May 2025 boodle blog and re-read what we said about the gains that we expected to see in June- here is what we said- “ We believe that June might see smaller gains than we had in May”.
Don’t get us wrong; there is still plenty to keep boodle on its toes with 6 more months left to play out in the market and on the world stage.
We are seeing a different President Trump 2.0 than we had seen in Trump 1.0. This new version of Trump is literally taking on the world, and he seems to be bringing the world to its knees. The Israel- Iran war with its fragile truce is one example, while the tariff battles with Europe, Canada, and China (to name a few) is another example.
The Federal Reserve continues to hold firm on its interest rate stance. As we said previously in these blogs- we do anticipate one or more rate cuts before 2025 is over.The Fed has done a good job (in our opinion) in keeping inflation in check, but President Trump continues to pressure Fed Chair Powell for those rate cuts. Stay tuned.
The Trump “Big Beautiful Bill” is making its way through Congress, and we expect that there will be a completion on this bill around the nation's birthday (July 4th). There will be amendments to the bill, but we would be surprised if it gets voted down.
Unemployment held steady at 4.2% in May, however, the June numbers will be released soon and economists expect an uptick to 4.3% and the Fed is forecasting a 4.5% rate by the end of the year. Still, we at boodle do believe that there will be interest rate cuts this year.
Our view on the market at this mid-year point remains guardedly bullish. We believe that with the Trump tariffs and the BIg Beautiful Bill and other factors, we expect to see the market grinding higher and higher, meaning that boodle members' portfolios will continue to expand. We are maintaining our view that you should remain disciplined in your portfolio by choosing mostly passive mutual funds, with one or two sector funds and reading up on current market events, and finally adhering to a Dollar Cost Averaging strategy that works best for you. We at boodle thank you for placing your trust in us, and we look forward to helping you grow your knowledge as you work to grow your portfolio. Have a happy & safe 4th of July, we will see you back here in August.