Episode 64: Do Stock Market Bubbles Matter Anymore?
Segment 1:
HELLO Lower Alabama! Hello Gulf Coast! Welcome in. Welcome to Coasting in Retirement! That’s. Right. Thanks for joining us today, Josh Null here, with a very special returning guest host, John Luke Tyner, the Head of Fixed Income at Aptus Capital Advisors. John Luke, how are you doing? We are back in Coastal College’s recording studio, beautiful downtown Fairhope, ready to put together another great show, and a brand-new show, for those of you tuning in!
Listeners: John Luke and I are here to discuss financial topics relevant to those of you in or near retirement, living your best life along our part of the Gulf Coast. Here’s what we’ve got in store for you today: First segment – deep dive on our topic of the day. 2nd segment - at about 30 minutes past the hour - “Headlines of the Week”. Then at roughly 50 minutes past the hour, stick around for our 3rd segment, we call it” Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth”. So buckle up, we’ve got a lot to get to!
Quick background on me for those new to the show. Again, my name is Josh Null, I am a fee-based financial advisor, I hold my FINRA Series 65 securities license, and I am the owner of Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, that is a 100% locally owned, 100% independent investment management and financial planning firm with offices in Fairhope, Orange Beach, and Mobile! You can find more information on me and the team at Gulf Coast Financial Advisors by visiting our website gulfcoastfa.com, or feel free to give us a call at 251-327-2124. If you missed that contact info, get a pen and pad ready because we will repeat our contact info several times throughout the show!
Let’s get on with the show. John Luke, I’m not sure if you heard our last episode (https://gulfcoastfa.com/podcast/episode-63-party-like-its-1999), in which I asked the question, are investors partying like it’s 1999 all over again? To refresh your memory, in 1999 the Nasdaq composite index gained over 85%, with the major indexes performing strongly as well, with the S&P 500 gaining 19.5% and the Dow Jones up about 25%. These gains were primarily driven by the "dot-com bubble" and high investor demand for shares of companies that had anything to do with the internet.
Let’s quickly compare 1999 market performance with 2025 year to date. At of the end of August 2025, the S&P 500's Year-to-Date (YTD) return is approximately 10.61%. The Nasdaq Composite has a year-to-date (YTD) return of approximately 11.43% as of August 27, 2025 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) YTD return for 2025 is approximately 6.41. Those are all solid numbers but significantly below the 1999 gains.
Even though 2025 year to date gains are not as high as 1999, the argument that a bubble is here by the bear-market side is that AI has pushed tech stocks to overvaluation, particularly the Magnificent 7 (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla). The bull-market side would point to the fact that we seem to be experiencing a broad-based bull market run, with the “S&P 493”, the 493 companies in the S&P 500 excluding the "Magnificent 7" tech stocks, have a year-to-date (YTD) performance of approximately 5.54% as of September 2, 2025.
So, this leads me to the 2 questions I want to discuss with John Luke today. 1. Are we in a stock market bubble? And 2., if we are in a bubble, does it matter? I posed that statement on last week’s episode – even if we are in a bubble, I’m just not sure it matters anymore in the short run. I could hear the gasps through the radio. But if you look at all of the stock market “bubbles” since 2008, none of them are long lived. But with that said, as I told our listeners last week, don’t chisel that hot take in stone just yet, we needed to get an industry expert’s opinion first. So John Luke, what do you think?
John Luke, I also made the statement on last week’s episode that the overall stock market performance is more closely tied to money supply and monetary policy than most people realize. My argument is that as our federal government has ran federal budget deficits consistently over the past 6 decades, there is just way, way more money in our system now versus 1999. I even provided hard proof:
- Around January 1980, the M2 money supply was approximately $1.5 trillion.
- Around January 1999, the M2 money supply was approximately $4.4 trillion.
- Around July 2025, the M2 money supply was approximately $22.1 trillion.
What does more money mean? I argue that money is like water, and it wants to flow somewhere. I also argue that you can directly correlate the increase in money supply to the dramatic increase in the major stock market indexes over the past 50-60 years. I mean, look at this:
On December 31st, 1979, the Nasdaq Composite closed at 151.14. As of this recording, it’s over 21,500.
On December 31st, 1979, the S&P 500 index closed at 107.94. As of this recording, it’s nearly 6500
And, on December 31st, 1979, the Dow Jones closed at 838.74. As of this recording, it’s well over 45,000
John Luke, what do you think about this?
Listeners, if you’ve liked what you’ve heard and want to set up a follow up conversation with the team at Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, it’s easy. You can call us at 251-327-2124 or find us on our website gulfcoastfa.com. One our site, click on the blue button in the upper right-hand corner to set up a meeting on my calendar. There are flexible meeting choices for your convenience – it can be as simple as a 15-minute introductory phone call, a 30-minute zoom, or my preference, an in-person meeting at any of our 3 office locations: Downtwon Fairhope, Orange Beach just down the road from the Wharf, or in Mobile off Dauphin St and I-65. Reach out to us - we would love to meet you!
Alright folks, coming up next - There’s always a lot going on in the world! Particularly the world of finance, investments and money. Every week we scour the internet for financial articles relevant to those of you in or near retirement, then give you our honest opinion about these headlines. So join us after the break to hear me discuss this week’s relevant headlines in our “Headlines of the Week” segment. Stay tuned!
Segment 2 - News of the Week:
“Welcome back to Coasting in Retirement, your host Josh Null here, alongside guest co-host John Luke Tyner of Aptus Capital Advisors. As we discussed before the break, every week we scour the world wide web for financial articles that pertain to those of you in or near retirement. Our job, or at least we tell ourselves it is, is to help you all understand how these headlines impact you, especially when it comes to your money! Note – if you want to read our referenced articles yourself, we also include the links in our show transcript, which you can find on our website gulfcoastfa.com under the podcast tab. Now without further adieu, here’s the Headlines of the Week!
1. Alright, after all that heavy lifting in the first segment, I thought I would give you a layup to start our headline section. I picked a recent article that you wrote, it’s found on Aptus Capital Advisor’s blog page, simply titled “Opportunity in Municipal Bonds?”. We spent the majority of our show opening discussing equities, but I think it’s important to discuss muni-bonds because as you state in your article, “historically, municipal bonds have shown better after-tax returns for high tax bracket investors.” If you don’t mind, briefly describe municipal bonds, what’s been going on with their recent performance, and why this matters to investors, particularly high-income investors:
https://aptuscapitaladvisors.com/opportunity-in-municipal-bonds/
2. Before I introduce our next article, a couple questions for you John Luke. And listeners, we did not rehearse these questions before the show, I’m not 100% sure how John Luke’s going to answer. As head of Fixed Income for Aptus Capital Advisors, your day in and day out job is dealing with bonds, correct? You have a deep understanding of the bond market. Now, I know you don’t deal with the insurance side of my business as much, but are you at least familiar with Fixed Index Annuities (FIAs for short)? Great. So when I tell you that many producers in my line of work will tell clients that FIAs are a good “bond-alternative”, what say you? And if I told you that many producers broadly claim that FIAs are not just an alternative to bonds, but simply a better choice, what’s your reaction? Good. So now the table is set for our next articles, it's from Forbes and it’s titled “Three Reasons Fixed Index Annuities Are Better Than Bonds In Your Retirement Portfolio”. This article claims that FIAs are better because they have higher earning potential, full principal protection, and my favorite, lower costs, including the claim that FIAs offer “no-fee” options, which is such as artful BS twist on how our industry works that it made me chuckle. What’s your reaction?
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesfinancecouncil/2024/05/28/three-reasons-fixed-index-annuities-are-better-than-bonds-in-your-retirement-portfolio/
3. For our third article, let’s pivot to trusted source Morningstar. They have a recent article titled “What We’ve Learned From 150 Years of Stock Market Crashes”. The article states that it took the US stock market 18 months to recover from its most recent bear market—the downturn in December 2021 – but the previous downturn in March 2020 when Covid popped on the scene only took investors 4 months to re-coup their losses. This article also has a fun graph showing the value of $1 invested in the stock market in 1870, and how that $1 would now be worth over $32k. Our author claims that is history tells us about navigating volatile markets, it’s that they’re worth navigating. Do you agree?
https://www.morningstar.com/economy/what-weve-learned-150-years-stock-market-crashes
4. Last article for the day, it’s something we’ve discussed on this show, but I thought it would be good to refresh the listeners’ memory. From Investopedia, “Beginner’s Guide to Hedging: Definition and Example of Hedges in Finance”. This article details the basics of using derivatives to protect downside risk on an investor’s portfolio. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds on this and were short on time, but could you give a high level explanation of how Aptus uses hedges when managing investments and why you all think it’s a good strategy?
https://www.investopedia.com/trading/hedging-beginners-guide/
Listeners, if you’ve liked what you’ve heard and want to discuss your own personal retirement dreams and goals, then us a call at 251-327-2124, or find us through our website gulfcoastfa.com. One our site, click on the blue button in the upper right-hand corner to set up a meeting on my calendar. We have several meeting choices for your convenience – it can be as simple as a 15-minute introductory phone call, all the way to an in-person meeting at any of our 3 office locations: Downtown Fairhope, Orange Beach, or Mobile, near the intersection of Dauphin St and I-65. Reach out to us - we would love to meet you!
Alright folks, coming up next: Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth. What have been some of my predictions? Have I been right? Was I ever wrong? How wrong? What do I think is going to affect investors in the near future, or maybe the distant future? We talk about all of these things and poke a little fun at my big mouth. Stay tuned!
Segment 3 – Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth:
Welcome back! Your host Josh Null here, all by my lonesome today in studio. So, I am opinionated, I have strong opinions at times, I would say a radio show host that isn’t probably wouldn’t be very interesting to listen to. And I am paid in my profession to offer professional guidance and opinions to my clients, otherwise what use am I? Just replace me with AI. I like making predictions, and while I usually proved right, there are times I swing and I miss. Want to hear me eat a little crow? Then let’s get at with Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth.
The modern mutual fund was created in 1924, with the first U.S. based exchange traded fund, or ETF for short, not arriving until nearly 70 years later in 1993. As of April 2025, the combined assets of mutual funds in the U.S. stood at $27.97 trillion. U.S. ETF assets reaching approximately $11.8 trillion in July 2025. In 2024, ETFs saw record-breaking inflows, surpassing $1 trillion in new assets for the first time. By contrast, mutual funds experienced $388 billion in outflows during 2024. This trend is continuing. For the week ending August 27, 2025, ETFs had an estimated net inflow of $29.35 billion, while mutual funds saw estimated outflows of $14.41 billion. John Luke, can you help listeners understand the basic differences between ETFs and mutual funds, why Aptus uses ETFs instead of mutual funds, and then I’d like to get a prediction out you – will ETFs accelerate their recent dominance of mutual funds? Are mutual funds obsolete?
Well, listeners, I hope you enjoyed a little peek into how we form our opinions and make predictions. We invite you one last time, if you would like to have a no-pressure, no-obligation conversation about your investing goals and retirement dreams, you can call us at 251-327-2124, or find us through our website gulfcoastfa.com. One our site, click on the blue button in the upper right-hand corner to set up a meeting on my calendar. We have several meeting choices for your convenience – it can be as simple as a 15-minute introductory phone call, all the way to an in-person meeting at any of our 3 office locations. You can find GCFA offices in downtown Fairhope, or Orange Beach off Canal Road, or in Mobile off Dauphin St and I-65. Reach out to us - we would love to meet you!
That’s our show for this week! I want to give a huge thank you to my guest co-host, John Luke Tyner, thank you to our show sponsor, Providence Partners and Jay Stubbs, thank you to our awesome radio station, FM Talk 106.5 out of Mobile, many thanks to the provider of our show music, local band Sloth Racer, huge thank to the show producer, my son Payton Null, and as always my sincere appreciation for all of your out there that have been listening and joining us on this journey. We would love to be a part of your journey as well! Until we talk again, have a wonderful and productive week. This has been Coasting in Retirement with Josh Null!
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