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Hey Future Funders family, happy Monday!

One week to go until we give someone $250 for taking our survey (you can take it here). Thanks again to everyone who has taken it so far, we are getting some really great feedback.

Ok, let’s get to it!

💬 Quote Of The Week

🥗 The Appetizers

News Headlines That Matter

📝 Job growth turns heads. 336,000 jobs were added in September which was almost double experts predictions of 170,000. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.8% and wages grew 4.2% (experts were predicting 4.3%). Job gains were particularly strong in the leisure and hospitality sector which added 96,000 jobs vs. their average gain of 61,000 over the past 12 months.

Our take: This data surprised a lot of people signaling strong job growth, and that the economy remains surprisingly resilient. Wage growth came down some though, which is the bigger focus for the Federal Reserve as they are trying to lower inflation (the actual number of jobs added will matter less to them). Watch next week’s release of the Consumer Price Index (coming 10/12) for the latest read on inflation (anything over +3.6% would be a negative surprise and almost certainly cause the Fed to raise interest rates again).

🚀 Beware of this IPO. IPOs are now back (we talked about this a few weeks ago) and Birkenstock (ticker: BIRK) will be the next big company to go public this week. They are seeking a valuation of at least $9 billion and are owned by L Catterton, a private equity firm.

Our take: While we are happy to see IPOs back (because it signals investors think the stock market has some stability to it), we would be cautious of this one. Footwear companies tend to have a very mixed long term track record as they tend to rise and fall with the latest trends.

🪧 Meta’s ad free subscription rollout. According to reports, Meta is experimenting in Europe with a $14/month ad-free version of Instagram.

Our take: So basically they want to charge you for not letting them use your data to sell to advertisers. Cool.

🍽️ The Main Course

Your Big Money Story

It’s Almost Too Quiet…

🚀 What’s happening: Investors are on pace to trade a record number of options (options are just bets on the future) this year of the VIX Volatility Index.

Huh?

So volatility is just another way of saying how quickly assets move up and down; the VIX volatility index measures this behavior for stocks and lets investors know how quickly the market is moving up or down (because of this Wall Street investors appropriately label it “the fear gauge” because when it’s high it can signal there is a lot of panic selling).

While not exact science, VIX values of greater than 30 are considered to signal heightened volatility from increased uncertainty, risk and investor fear. VIX values below 20 generally correspond to more stable, less stressful periods in the markets.

We are currently at about a 17 VIX reading (you can check it here) and the index has been sitting at an unusually low level for most of the year; but what’s interesting is that investors don’t expect the calm to last much longer.

Explain.

Wall Street has traded an average of 742,000 options tied to the VIX every day this year which is 40% higher than 2022 and already beats the full year record of 723,000 in 2017.

As we noted above, an option is just a fancy way of saying a bet on the future, and most of these investor bets signal that people think things won’t remain calm for much longer. We are not saying that the professionals always get it right (they don’t), and the S&P 500 is up over 10% this year after all; but recent activity would suggest the professionals see more storm clouds ahead.

👪 Closer to home: Whether we actively invest our money or only think about how the stock market is doing from time to time, the VIX index is a good temperature check to know about (and show the kids).

We honestly don’t know if Wall Street is right in forecasting a downturn in the market through all of the options buying but what is clear is that we are all living through a strange economic time making the future very hard to predict accurately for anyone.

What is most important in any of the investing you do is to not risk what you don’t have (keep enough cash saved for a rainy day!) and try to diversify your investments to not create too much risk in one bet.

Some further reading:

• Making the Most of High-Interest Rates: 3 Money-Savvy Steps

• How Do You Know When To Buy Stocks? These 5 Indicators Can Help

• Investing Like The Best: Safe vs. Aggressive Options

Dinner Discussion ❓

No peeking! Answer is below.

 Dining With The Information

Read The Information first…or them later

The Information’s journalists get the news that other newsrooms envy. That’s why their reporting on tech, media and finance has been followed by the New York Times, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and dozens of other outlets more than 400 times in the last year.

Get the news straight from the source.

🥘 The Side Dishes

Your Money And Your Kids

🏨 Hotel companies are trying to boost their bottom line by charging customers extra fees for early or late check out.

🎢 Disney, seeing some slower travel trends, just announced that they are going to kick off a 50% off sale shortly for families with kids 3 to 9 years old. Mark your calendars.

📲 Apple Pay is trying to use our psychology against us by making checkout even easier. The results are causing people to spend money that they normally would not.

🎅🏽 Holidays are around the corner and it’s time to take control of your spending now. Here’s how. 

📴 Our kids are seeing an average of 247 notifications each day on their phones according to a recent study.

☕ If you were wondering why coffee is getting crazy expensive lately, this article will tell you why.

💰 Need to save some money fast? Here are some quick tips.

📺 Look out, Netflix is planning to raise prices.

🍨 Dessert

This Week’s Deals And Reads

🏌️ Just The Tips provides advice for golfers obsessed with improving their game and staying up to date with news around the sport 2x a week. Subscribe here!

🎃 Need a halloween costume or just something for the family? Sam’s Club is having a flash 60% off sale on select items for a limited time.

👩‍🚀 The Assist is for all our awesome professional women readers who want to become the best versions of themselves at work and in life. Check it out for free here.

*our goal is to always keep this newsletter free. If you buy or subscribe to something through our newsletter we may earn a small commission, at no added charge to you, in order to help us keep the lights on

Dinner Discussion ❓

Answer: In March of 2020 the VIX had its all time highest close of 82.69. Before March 2020, all-time highest VIX close was 80.86 in November 2008.

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