FPI April 2026 Economic Update

https://youtu.be/h1qjdKSP2Hs

Apr 9, 2026

Yeah! Hello everyone. Blake Smith at Financial Partners here bringing you your April 2026 economic update. It was exactly 1 month ago that we did one of these videos and the conflict that Iran had just broken out at that point. And as we discussed in that video, we had several weeks of a lot of volatility. As I'm sitting here on Wednesday, first week of April, we're seeing a big uplift in the markets due to a potential ceasefire that was signed by all sides last night. We'll see if that holds.

This is the 2-week pause on a lot of the demands on both sides of this conflict. So, to be determined. Again, markets have been very volatile, but we have seen an upbeat the last couple of days. With all of that being said, a lot of economists have been, you know, changing their forecasts for the year based on this new news, based on this conflict. So, what I wanted to do is walk through five pillars, if you will, of the economy that we look at year in and year out. A 30,000-ft view. And I'll kind of give you a rating on where we see these five pillars at.

The first one is monetary policy, controlled by the Federal Reserve. Where are interest

rates going? After one of the fastest interest rate hikes we have ever seen in recent years, interest rates have been trending down. At least short-term rates have. Longer-term rates, such as first-time homebuyer rates, 30-year mortgages is a good example, are still staying stubbornly high. That's due to the demand of the bondholders. With uncertainty around inflation, those bondholders are demanding a higher interest payout. So, I would consider monetary policy a neutral rating. It's not good, it's not bad. Interest rates are not historically high. You know, they've been much higher in the past. However, they are high based on recent years. We had artificially low interest rates for a long time.

And with couple that with the higher asset prices we're seeing. Real estate again is a great example. Real estate values are quite a bit higher than they were pre-pandemic levels. It's making it very hard for long-term loans to be justified at this point.

The second pillar of the economy would be tax policy. We got the passage of the one big beautiful bill last year that helps us individual taxpayers maintain these historically low tax rates that we have. It also gives some predictability and consistency to the corporate tax rate, which remains at 21% and theoretically these companies that keep more of their own money can do a lot of reinvestment back into their companies, expand, and we as investors in the publicly traded markets, you know, could potentially be beneficiaries of that. So, I would give that a positive rating around tax policy.

The third pillar is regulatory policy. This current administration is in the deregulation phase for many companies. Theoretically, companies operating with less red tape, less bureaucracy has more freedom and flexibility to blaze their own trail forward. So, that can be seen as a positive note.

The fourth pillar is government spending or fiscal policy. I would definitely give that a downbeat at the moment. We are at 39 trillion in debt and counting. We're running massive deficits year in and year out. Government spending is a concern I think for everyone in some capacity or another and I don't see a short-term fix for that in in the near future anyway. So, the larger the government gets, the smaller the private sector gets and that can make economic growth rather sluggish over time. So, I would consider that's a negative rating.

The fifth and final pillar that we talk about is trade policy and I would have to give that

a negative rating as well. There's still a lot of uncertainty around tariffs, at least the recent tariffs that we've been accustomed to talking about in the last year or so. The Supreme Court did rule earlier this year that the president does not have unilateral authority to dictate tariffs to the world as the president attempted to do last year. However, there's other tax law that he can use you know to keep some of these tariffs on countries to leverage them in different ways. So that's kind of to be determined. But we've seen a lot of rotation out of US assets due to that uncertainty.

So if you add all that up, you know, monetary policy is neutral, tax policy is positive, regulatory policy is positive, fiscal policy would be negative, and trade policy would be negative. So we have a bit of a tie in all of that. So ultimately what drives the markets at the end of the day is earnings. Are these companies remaining profitable? And currently so far earnings have been decent for the year. And so to be determined.

I would say there's some mixed signals going on with the economy for sure. We'll reinforce of course our bucket planning process now, soon, and later money. Make sure those things are

adequate so when unforeseen events arise, there's less of a you know a concern or a knee-jerk reaction to make spontaneous changes to financial plans. And also when volatility hits, there's often times, you know, tax strategies that we can implement that make more sense in in volatile or down markets than in up markets. So we're always trying to, you know, work, find new ways to strategize for our clients within their financial plans.

But that's just an overall 30,000-ft update of the economy itself. By all means give our office a call if you have any questions or concerns and we look forward to talking to you next month. Thank you. >> Woo! Woo!

1-641-684-0368 Intelligent Choices – Exceptional Service Learn more about the current economy and the impacts on the markets. Financial Partners, Inc. is an Iowa-based independent boutique financial advisory firm in business since 2000 and operated by Blake Smith, CFP®, AIF®, President and Bob Kramer, ChFC®, AIF®, RICP® Founder & Vice President. Discover how our unique process, The Intelligent Advantage, can make a positive, profound impact on your life. Sources: www.efficientadvisors.com, www.cantorassetmanagement.com, www.ftportfolios.com, www.dorseywright.nasdaq.com, www.advisorperspectives.com, www.morningstar.com, www.conference-board.org, https://howardcm.com/, https://waysandmeans.house.gov, www.wsj.com.