Robert Brokamp

I'm Robert Brokamp.

Fool on, everybody.

How JetX can rescue their retirement and some stock market optimism amidst high valuations.

That and more on this Saturday Personal Finance edition of Motley Fool Money.

I'm Robert Brokamp, and this week I speak with Kerry Hannon, co-author of a new book that lays out a retirement roadmap for members of Generation X, the oldest of whom turned 60 this year.

But first, let's take a look back at last week in money.

One comes from Fidelity's Urien Timmer, who sees today's market similar to that of early 1999.

In other words, the later innings of a bull market, but perhaps another year or so of solid gains.

He points out that the current bull market is being driven by actual earnings.

The expected growth rate for third quarter earnings started out at 7% year over year, but has jumped to 13%.

Yes, valuations for the market weighted U.S.

stock market are lofty, but the P.E.

for the median stock is not unreasonable.

The higher P for the cap-weighted indexes are, of course, due to the fact that the market is dominated by the MAG-7, which are not cheap and make up almost 40% of the S&P 500.

But Timmer believes that investors can find a good hedge against this concentration risk in cheaper international stocks.

For another rosy review, we turn to Ryan Dietrich of the Carson Group, who recently pointed out that the S&P 500 was down more than 15% by April of this year, but then rebounded and will likely end the year with double-digit gains.

If that happens, 2025 will join 1982, 2009, and 2020 as the only other years since 1950 when this has happened.

How did the S&P 500 perform in the calendar years after those previous three instances?

It posted double-digit gains each time with the median return being 17.3%.

For our next item, we turn to a provision that took effect last year and allows unused money in a 529 college savings account to be transferred to a Roth IRA for the beneficiary.