We're excited to start the conversation!
Mark Whaley: Welcome to the first video on the Rigden Financial Youtube channel. My name is Mark Whaley, and today is February 22nd, 2022. Today I'll be asking Layth Matthews, who is the President and Lead Planner at Rigden Financial about investments, interest rates and other topics of interest for our audience. Layth, what is on your mind in regards to the current investment landscape?
Layth Matthews: Well, the two big things in the current landscape that are capturing everybody's interest are the situation in Ukraine, which has created a lot of turmoil and fear, and also the potential rise in interest rates. To some extent those two actually balance each other because central banks will be hesitant to raise interest rates in the face of that uncertainty of what is going to happen in that European environment. But overall, the rocky-ness of the performance in the stock market based on fear and uncertainty, historically has been a good time to invest. The scary times are when the opportunities emerge.
As far as interest rates are concerned, I do expect rates to be going up. so that's going to be a bit scary for people with variable rate mortgages. but right now, variable rate mortgages are six rate hikes below the fixed rates you would get on a five year fixed rate mortgage. And so I think the rates could go up quite a bit before you would be better off to take a fixed rate. Although you couldn't fault anybody for going fixed rate now. But I don't see it as being as big of a threat as it could be, depending on where you stand.
Last but not least, the technology sector is still an opportunity for investors. to quote Cathie Wood, who is a famous technology investor, she says, "We are not going back to the old ways of doing things." I think what she's referring to is that a lot of the technology companies have reached a more mainstream level of earnings and their earnings continue to grow at outpaced rates.
So it's not a bad time to invest and I wouldn't be too worried about rate hikes. There are going to be some, but they're probably not going to kill us. We'll see how that goes!
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