Latest / Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen) / The Certainty of Uncertainty
Transcript
- 0:08Suze: October 12, 2025. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast,
- 0:13Suze: as well as everybody smart enough to listen. Today is
- 0:17Suze: Suze School, so get out those notebooks.
- 0:22Suze: Are you ready?
- 0:23Suze: Today Suze School is titled "The Certainty of Uncertainty."
- 0:31Suze: Because the stock market, the stock market doesn't hate anything
- 0:37Suze: more than uncertainty.
- 0:41Suze: If there is uncertainty in the air, that's when the
- 0:45Suze: markets start to go down. And why is that? I
- 0:50Suze: want you right now to think about your own life
- 0:54Suze: when you're really uncertain about something.
- 0:57Suze: You're either afraid or it's just you're just uncertain about
- 1:01Suze: what's gonna happen, you know, should you do this? Should
- 1:03Suze: you do that? You tend to do nothing or,
- 1:07Suze: let's say you're uncertain. Is it going to rain? Is
- 1:11Suze: it not? You stay in the house.
- 1:14Suze: You protect yourself when you are uncertain. So why does
- 1:19Suze: that affect the stock market? 'Cause you, whether you know
- 1:23Suze: it or not, you are the stock market. I know
- 1:28Suze: you think the stock market is made up of shares,
- 1:31Suze: shares of stock in companies, either individual shares or bundled
- 1:36Suze: as mutual funds, ETFs, whatever it may be.
- 1:41Suze: But what you have to understand is it is you, me, KT.
- 1:47Suze: It is people that buy and sell those shares just
- 1:53Suze: that simple. And when you get uncertain about anything or
- 1:58Suze: you see something that upsets you when you're like, Oh
- 2:01Suze: my God, here we go again. I'm uncertain of the outcome.
- 2:04Suze: I'm uncertain of how this is going to affect me.
- 2:07Suze: What do you do? You will tend to sell.
- 2:11Suze: Especially if the markets are ticking down, especially, listen to
- 2:15Suze: me closely, if you have incredible gains in some of
- 2:20Suze: your stocks.
- 2:22Suze: Incredible gains 100%, 200% gains in stocks that so many
- 2:29Suze: people want you to be afraid of because why? We're
- 2:33Suze: in an AI bubble. They want these stocks to go down.
- 2:36Suze: Why do I personally think they want these stocks to
- 2:39Suze: go down? Because they missed it. And who is they?
- 2:42Suze: Many of the institutional investors, many of the big traders,
- 2:46Suze: they missed it.
- 2:48Suze: So if they can get everything to start to go down,
- 2:51Suze: they get to do what? They get to go in
- 2:54Suze: and buy it again at a lot lower price.
- 2:59Suze: However,
- 3:01Suze: when you hear things like that, because I'm getting emails
- 3:06Suze: from all of you going, Suze, do you think we
- 3:08Suze: are in an AI bubble? I keep saying no, I don't.
- 3:12Suze: Do you think, Suze, we're going to have a stock
- 3:14Suze: market crash like we did back in 2007, 2008, 2009? No,
- 3:20Suze: I don't.
- 3:22Suze: The situations are so different today than they were back then,
- 3:28Suze: so different.
- 3:31Suze: Today many of these companies are creating the future of
- 3:36Suze: the unknown.
- 3:37Suze: The future that we don't even have an ability to
- 3:40Suze: comprehend what's going to happen but it's a coming and
- 3:45Suze: we all want to be a part of it but
- 3:48Suze: we're afraid to be a part of it because in
- 3:50Suze: our limited minds, in my opinion...
- 3:54Suze: You made so much money we can't possibly make more.
- 3:57Suze: It can't possibly go higher.
- 3:59Suze: You have to get a grip on the reality of
- 4:04Suze: the future, because as I've said to you before, the
- 4:07Suze: future isn't the future, the future is now. It's already happening,
- 4:13Suze: and I personally want you to be a part of it. However,
- 4:18Suze: there are powers that be that will offset the track
- 4:24Suze: of the markets by inserting uncertainty in many different ways,
- 4:30Suze: and there is so much uncertainty going on right now
- 4:33Suze: it's not even funny.
- 4:35Suze: The truth of the matter is Friday morning markets opened up.
- 4:40Suze: Everything was kind of good.
- 4:42Suze: No problems.
- 4:44Suze: Until President Trump came out and he made an announcement of, well,
- 4:50Suze: I guess there's not going to be a reason for
- 4:52Suze: me to have to go meet with the President of China.
- 4:55Suze: In fact, I think I'm going to put tariffs back
- 4:58Suze: on China. And why did he get mad at China?
- 5:02Suze: Because China decided that importers, people who imported it into
- 5:09Suze: the United States, needed to get a license from Beijing,
- 5:14Suze: that contained anything that had to do with real rare
- 5:19Suze: earth elements that were more than like 0.1% or more
- 5:24Suze: of the value of the whole thing.
- 5:27Suze: Which means that those companies like Nvidia that use rare
- 5:32Suze: earth materials to manufacture what they make.
- 5:37Suze: It's gonna cost them more.
- 5:40Suze: Or they're going to have to get a license to
- 5:42Suze: do so.
- 5:44Suze: And Trump retaliated. And as soon as that happened,
- 5:51Suze: bam, these markets started to go down and down. And
- 5:56Suze: once like a snowball, it starts to roll down the
- 5:59Suze: hill and it gets bigger and bigger. It gathers up
- 6:02Suze: all the other snow, the unexpecting snow that's so beautiful
- 6:06Suze: and so white, it just comes along for a ride.
- 6:10Suze: That's what the majority of you did out there, causing
- 6:15Suze: these markets to go down considerably. However,
- 6:21Suze: did they really go down that much overall? Well, that
- 6:26Suze: depends on what you were invested in.
- 6:31Suze: Now, I want you to put a pin in that
- 6:33Suze: for a second because the overall advice that all of
- 6:38Suze: you have been given is you need diversification, absolutely.
- 6:44Suze: And I've said this before, maybe you need 50% of
- 6:48Suze: your money in something like VOO, which is Vanguard, Standard
- 6:53Suze: and Poor's 500, or the SPY or VTI, the Vanguard
- 6:58Suze: Total Stock Market Index Fund, or whatever it is that
- 7:02Suze: you're invested in, and then if you want.
- 7:05Suze: Other types of investments in individual things such as the
- 7:11Suze: AI stocks, but that would give you a total balanced approach. OK,
- 7:18Suze: so let me give you an example now,
- 7:22Suze: of really what happened on Friday.
- 7:25Suze: The Dow Jones Industrial Average went down 878 points, but
- 7:32Suze: that was only 1.90%.
- 7:36Suze: Not that big of a deal.
- 7:39Suze: The Standard and Poor's went down 182 points or only 2.71%.
- 7:49Suze: And the Nasdaq, which contains a lot of our favorite stocks,
- 7:54Suze: went down 820 points, but again, only 3.56%. OK.
- 8:02Suze: Now what's important when you look at numbers, that you
- 8:07Suze: look at percentages more than you look at the actual
- 8:12Suze: dollar number that it went down.
- 8:15Suze: Or the numeric number that it went down because you
- 8:19Suze: could look at the screen on your TV and you
- 8:22Suze: could see oh my God, the Dow went down 878
- 8:24Suze: points and the Nasdaq went down 820 and the Standard
- 8:28Suze: and Poor's went down 182. It crashed. It didn't crash. 1.90%, 2.71%, 3.56%
- 8:40Suze: is not a crash, everybody.
- 8:44Suze: Do you understand that?
- 8:47Suze: Now let's just look at
- 8:51Suze: ETFs and really what did they do? Did they follow
- 8:56Suze: the Standard and Poor's 500 Index? And in fact they did.
- 9:01Suze: The index itself was down 2.71%, so your VOO finished
- 9:06Suze: on Friday down 2.69%. Spiders SPY finished down 2.70%.
- 9:16Suze: The VTI finished down 2.68%.
- 9:21Suze: And if you happen to have the SPYD, which is
- 9:24Suze: the dividend spiders, 1.80%, not a big deal.
- 9:32Suze: However, now we start to get more specialized and we
- 9:37Suze: look at SMH as well as QQQ. That's where our
- 9:41Suze: technology stocks, especially SMH Semiconductors, yeah, finished down 5.76%.
- 9:50Suze: And the QQQs finished down 3.47%. OK, now let's look
- 9:56Suze: at the decline of some of our absolute favorite stocks.
- 10:01Suze: Nvidia down about 4.5%, AMD down 8%, but after a
- 10:06Suze: tremendous run truthfully, Tesla down 5%, IONQ down 8.84%, Palantir
- 10:14Suze: down 5.40, Microsoft down 2.19%.
- 10:19Suze: They were down, but if you look at what they
- 10:23Suze: were down, they're down almost the same amount as SMH
- 10:29Suze: was down.
- 10:30Suze: And again those stocks, a lot of them got hit.
- 10:34Suze: Because of talk of tariffs, rare earth metals, things like that,
- 10:40Suze: that they all need.
- 10:43Suze: However, what was also interesting is that gold went to
- 10:48Suze: about 4,029.
- 10:51Suze: Bitcoin did not hold where I told you if you
- 10:56Suze: are on my Women and Money community app that I wanted
- 10:59Suze: to see if it would hold at 123 or so
- 11:02Suze: this last Friday. It did not. It closed at about 116,
- 11:06Suze: although it's never really closed, so I wouldn't be surprised
- 11:09Suze: if I saw it go down to 108, which is
- 11:13Suze: its support level.
- 11:15Suze: But not a big deal. IBIT, which is Bitcoin ETF,
- 11:19Suze: went down 3.70%. Oil, which I just haven't liked, and
- 11:24Suze: I've said that before, was about 58. What went up,
- 11:29Suze: happened to be the price of bonds, which means their
- 11:33Suze: interest rates absolutely went down. So a one year now
- 11:37Suze: is only at about 3.6%. The 10 year was at
- 11:41Suze: about 4%. So depending what continues to happen, we just
- 11:45Suze: might see mortgages down where we wanted them because it
- 11:50Suze: looks like it could be going down there.
- 11:53Suze: But none of this, none of this is everything crash. Now,
- 12:00Suze: could it continue to go down? Oh, you betcha it could.
- 12:05Suze: You have to understand that many of the people, big traders,
- 12:09Suze: all kinds of things that go on on Wall Street
- 12:12Suze: would like these markets to go down and down.
- 12:15Suze: So they could pick up more. I mean, there's all
- 12:19Suze: kinds of complicated ways of explaining how trading works and
- 12:23Suze: it doesn't work, but here is the real bottom line.
- 12:26Suze: Just like I said back many months ago, don't panic.
- 12:31Suze: You are not to panic.
- 12:33Suze: And you are really not to panic if it continues
- 12:36Suze: to go down even more. That is why you dollar
- 12:40Suze: cost average. That is why you take advantage of times
- 12:45Suze: like this, but you don't have to do it tomorrow.
- 12:49Suze: You could take it and you could put it in an
- 12:51Suze: order 10% below the market, 20% below the market, whatever
- 12:56Suze: it may be, and I've told you this time and
- 12:58Suze: time again.
- 12:59Suze: So if it dips more, so you pick it up.
- 13:03Suze: Maybe it goes down very quickly for a second and
- 13:06Suze: then bounces up, or you can just wait and see.
- 13:10Suze: For me, what am I personally doing? I'm not doing anything.
- 13:15Suze: Remember how a while ago I told you I thought
- 13:18Suze: that I had enough IONQ. I had enough Palantir, and
- 13:23Suze: even though I was tempted to buy more on Friday,
- 13:28Suze: seriously tempted.
- 13:30Suze: That would make my positions in those two stocks way
- 13:35Suze: too heavy for my portfolio. I have a considerable amount
- 13:40Suze: of money in those two stocks, and if I continued
- 13:44Suze: to add to it, it would not be wise, even
- 13:48Suze: though it was the hardest thing for me to do,
- 13:51Suze: not to add more shares. I like where I am positioned.
- 13:56Suze: I'm happy where everything is and I don't need to
- 14:01Suze: get greedy.
- 14:03Suze: I don't need to sell out of fear, and I
- 14:06Suze: don't need to buy out of greed. It's just that simple.
- 14:11Suze: So you have to look at your own portfolio, at
- 14:15Suze: your own situation, at your own timing.
- 14:19Suze: And you need to decide what is it that you
- 14:22Suze: want to do. Now, with that said,
- 14:25Suze: the tariff possibility,
- 14:28Suze: and all these AI companies really having significant exposure to
- 14:33Suze: China in both manufacturing and they're a large customer, by
- 14:37Suze: the way. So, all right, legitimate reason to figure out
- 14:42Suze: what's going to really happen here.
- 14:44Suze: But that's not the only thing that's going on.
- 14:49Suze: So on Friday, what else was going on that really
- 14:53Suze: in my opinion spooked the market? What spooked them was
- 14:58Suze: that we were still in,
- 15:01Suze: the uncertainty of what is going to happen with the
- 15:05Suze: federal government.
- 15:07Suze: And the federal government really does have a major effect
- 15:12Suze: on everybody. On Friday, it was its tenth day that
- 15:18Suze: it was still shut down.
- 15:21Suze: But what's really affecting people more in my opinion than
- 15:24Suze: even it being shut down now all of a sudden
- 15:27Suze: the news is out that layoffs of federal workers are
- 15:33Suze: actually happening, not only for the furlough workers that are
- 15:37Suze: they going to get back pay or are they not.
- 15:39Suze: But now actual layoffs are starting to be implemented and
- 15:45Suze: that affects everything all the way down the road. It
- 15:50Suze: really does, you know, sometimes we think, oh well, this
- 15:53Suze: doesn't really affect me.
- 15:55Suze: I don't work for the federal government. Everything today affects
- 16:00Suze: every single one of us, and when you see that
- 16:04Suze: they're still arguing, they can't come to a decision, who
- 16:08Suze: knows how long it will last.
- 16:10Suze: And you combine that now with tariffs again and all
- 16:14Suze: of a sudden the two most powerful political figures in
- 16:17Suze: the world not getting along,
- 16:20Suze: the President of China, the President of the United States.
- 16:25Suze: It affects you and what affects you affects the stock
- 16:30Suze: market because you are the stock market.
- 16:33Suze: And that's what's going on.
- 16:36Suze: So what can you do about it?
- 16:40Suze: As Iyanla Vanzant, remember her? She used to be on Oprah
- 16:42Suze: and she had that show Fix My Life. She is a
- 16:45Suze: very dear friend of mine, she would always say, Take
- 16:48Suze: a breath. Just take a breath, everybody. So can we
- 16:51Suze: just do that all together right now?
- 16:54Suze: Take a breath.
- 16:57Suze: And just know that you were not in the stock
- 17:02Suze: market for a day or a month or a year.
- 17:08Suze: Didn't we have an agreement that you were going to
- 17:10Suze: be investing for at least five years or longer?
- 17:15Suze: So if something goes down, let it go down.
- 17:19Suze: Will it come back up if it's good quality stocks,
- 17:23Suze: it is going to come back, and it might come
- 17:26Suze: back a lot faster than you have any idea. So
- 17:31Suze: do yourself a favor and just stop looking. If you
- 17:35Suze: don't have the money to dollar cost average more into
- 17:39Suze: these markets, you invested everything, good, just stop looking.
- 17:45Suze: Ask yourself the question, is what I have my money
- 17:49Suze: invested in.
- 17:51Suze: Is it diversified? Are you doing the strategy where maybe 50%
- 17:55Suze: of your money is in VOO or the Standard and Poor's
- 17:57Suze: 500 index somewhere and the rest in individual stocks that
- 18:02Suze: you really like?
- 18:05Suze: If that's true, or all of your money, for instance,
- 18:09Suze: is in voo,
- 18:11Suze: then just do that. If you're invested properly, you will
- 18:17Suze: be OK.
- 18:20Suze: So, the real problem is not is the stock market
- 18:25Suze: going up or down and what are you going to
- 18:27Suze: do and things like that.
- 18:30Suze: It's what are the people going to do who work
- 18:32Suze: for the federal government who have now just lost their
- 18:36Suze: jobs or people who haven't been told they've lost their
- 18:41Suze: jobs but they're on furlough and who knows if they're
- 18:44Suze: going to get back pay or not? What are they
- 18:47Suze: going to do? And the question becomes do they take
- 18:53Suze: money out of their TSP or their Roth IRAs? What
- 18:58Suze: do they do?
- 19:00Suze: And here's just something I want to say to everybody.
- 19:05Suze: You know, and I know when you have a 401k
- 19:08Suze: or a TSP or a 403B, you can take a
- 19:12Suze: loan from that retirement account.
- 19:16Suze: And therefore use it for whatever you want.
- 19:20Suze: And pay it back over a 5 year period of
- 19:24Suze: time in most cases. Please be very careful if you're
- 19:29Suze: on furlough right now and you don't know if you're
- 19:32Suze: going to get back pay or not.
- 19:35Suze: And especially if you think you're going to lose your job,
- 19:41Suze: do not take money via a loan from a TSP
- 19:46Suze: or any retirement plan like that, that you may happen
- 19:49Suze: to have, because if you lose your job.
- 19:54Suze: That money that you took out will be taxed to
- 19:57Suze: you as ordinary income.
- 20:00Suze: This year, in fact, if it is this year that
- 20:03Suze: you took the money out and you will get a 10%
- 20:06Suze: penalty on it if you are not at least 55
- 20:10Suze: years of age or older this year, I said 55.
- 20:14Suze: I did not mean to say 59 and a half.
- 20:18Suze: Because there is a rule that says if you are
- 20:21Suze: 55 or older in the year you've lost your job
- 20:25Suze: or leave service, any money that you take from a 401k,
- 20:30Suze: a 403B, a TSP, not an IRA, but those three
- 20:36Suze: employer sponsored plans, there is no 10% penalty. You are
- 20:43Suze: of age, but if you're under that age, you take
- 20:47Suze: a loan,
- 20:48Suze: now you no longer have a job. That money now
- 20:51Suze: will probably be due and payable within a month. It
- 20:54Suze: just depends on what they decide. And if you don't
- 20:57Suze: have it to pay, you're going to owe ordinary income
- 21:00Suze: tax on it and a 10% penalty. But Suze, I
- 21:06Suze: don't have any money. I have to do something. Listen
- 21:08Suze: to me.
- 21:09Suze: Money that is in your employer sponsored plan as well
- 21:13Suze: as an IRA, by the way, Roth or traditional in
- 21:18Suze: most cases is protected against bankruptcy.
- 21:23Suze: If you don't have any money, you cannot pay your bills.
- 21:27Suze: It's no fault of your own. You thought you had
- 21:30Suze: a solid job and all of a sudden.
- 21:34Suze: The government has done all of these shenanigans and now
- 21:37Suze: you don't have a job.
- 21:40Suze: You may have to claim bankruptcy and therefore you need
- 21:45Suze: to protect what you have in a retirement account.
- 21:50Suze: I rather you charge up your credit cards to the max.
- 21:54Suze: Do whatever you can, but do not, and I repeat,
- 21:59Suze: do not touch money that is in your retirement accounts. Now,
- 22:05Suze: there may be some of you federal employees that you
- 22:08Suze: know
- 22:09Suze: you are absolutely going to get back pay. Let's say
- 22:13Suze: you're an air traffic controller or whatever it is, and
- 22:16Suze: you're not getting pay right now, but you know that
- 22:20Suze: they are going to give you back pay because you're
- 22:22Suze: absolutely still working.
- 22:25Suze: What do you do? If you happen to have a
- 22:28Suze: Roth IRA, never forget that you can take out any
- 22:34Suze: contributions that you originally put in without taxes or penalties whatsoever,
- 22:40Suze: regardless of how long the account has been open or
- 22:43Suze: your age. But also don't forget,
- 22:48Suze: you can do what's called a Roth IRA roll over,
- 22:53Suze: and you can do this with a regular IRA as
- 22:56Suze: well where you withdraw money with the intention of putting
- 23:02Suze: it back within 60 days.
- 23:06Suze: So if... and you can only do this by the way,
- 23:09Suze: once every 12 months.
- 23:12Suze: Therefore, if you are in a situation, listen closely to
- 23:16Suze: me now, and you really need money and you know
- 23:23Suze: that as soon as this ends you're going to get
- 23:25Suze: this back pay, so then you'll have that money to
- 23:29Suze: put back in your Roth or your IRA within that
- 23:34Suze: 60 day period.
- 23:36Suze: It's something that you may need to take advantage of
- 23:40Suze: if there is just no money to pay your bills
- 23:43Suze: and you live paycheck to paycheck.
- 23:47Suze: But if you do not get that money back within
- 23:50Suze: those 60 days, listen to me again with your Roth IRA,
- 23:56Suze: you are only to take out that amount which you
- 24:00Suze: originally contributed.
- 24:03Suze: Because if something happens and you cannot put that money back... OK,
- 24:08Suze: it is still your money without taxes or penalties. If
- 24:14Suze: it is a traditional IRA.
- 24:17Suze: Any money you take out if you do not get
- 24:19Suze: it back within 60 days you are going to pay
- 24:24Suze: an ordinary income tax on that money plus a 10%
- 24:28Suze: penalty if you're not 59 and a half years of age or older.
- 24:32Suze: So be very, very careful, everybody. Bottom line, the certainty
- 24:39Suze: of uncertainty.
- 24:42Suze: And until the uncertainty goes away, you should expect these
- 24:47Suze: markets to be absolutely going up, going down, and all
- 24:52Suze: over the place, but trust me, the uncertainty will go away.
- 24:57Suze: Many of these stocks and our favorite stocks will return.
- 25:03Suze: You will be happy that you either kept them or
- 25:05Suze: dollar cost averaged into them.
- 25:08Suze: And again they could go 10% lower, 20% lower. They
- 25:12Suze: can go lower.
- 25:14Suze: But they could also go a lot higher over time.
- 25:19Suze: All right, so that brings us to the end of
- 25:23Suze: this Suze School: The Certainty of Uncertainty. Two things though
- 25:28Suze: I do want to talk to you about as well.
- 25:30Suze: The one year treasury right now, as I said, is
- 25:33Suze: down to about 3.6%. Alliant Credit Union for new money,
- 25:39Suze: their one year certificate is at 4.10.
- 25:44Suze: For amounts of $75,000 or more, it's at 4.15%, but
- 25:49Suze: that is for new money that you put in there. Again,
- 25:55Suze: go to myalliant.com and check it out. Also, I want
- 26:01Suze: you to support me by subscribing to my YouTube channel
- 26:07Suze: so that you can be notified when a new video
- 26:11Suze: goes up.
- 26:13Suze: So you go to youtube.com/ Suze Orman S U Z
- 26:18Suze: E O R M A N and subscribe. Got that?
- 26:23Suze: So until Thursday when Miss Travis joins me again, can
- 26:27Suze: you believe I'm even lonely for her today? I better
- 26:30Suze: go find out what she's doing. There's only one thing
- 26:32Suze: that I want you to remember when it comes to
- 26:34Suze: your money, and it is this: Be certain people.
- 26:39Suze: Be certain about what you do and don't let others'
- 26:44Suze: uncertainty get you off the track. Remember the certainty of uncertainty.
- 26:52Suze: So people first be certain about your money. Then you
- 26:56Suze: can invest your money wisely, and then in the end,
- 27:00Suze: you'll have money to buy things, hopefully things that you need.
- 27:05Suze: All right, until then, stay safe, secure, and healthy. Bye
- 27:10Suze: bye now.