In this episode of The One of a Kind Financial Show Daily, Certified Financial Planner Mike Milligan blends sports, market data, historical reflection, and technology commentary to illustrate his philosophy of personalized, human‑centered financial planning. He opens by recounting Texas’ dramatic 20‑point fourth‑quarter comeback over Ohio State, using it as a metaphor for how investors and retirees can recover from financial setbacks. Milligan then dives into a detailed volume analysis of the week’s market action (SPY, QQQ, IWM, VIX), showing that institutional investors were buying the pullback in the S&P 500 and small‑cap Russell 2000 while avoiding the Nasdaq, framing this as a “rotation tape” rather than a fear‑driven sell‑off. He shifts to a 25‑year reflection on the September 14, 2001, anniversary of 9/11, emphasizing that national crises pause economic activity and that financial plans must be resilient to such disruptions, just as sports returned with new meaning after the attacks. The segment then tackles the rapid pace of AI development, questioning whether tech CEOs are prioritizing speed over human value, and argues that the one‑of‑a‑kind financial plan—slow, written, and tailored to a single household—offers a competitive moat against generic AI‑generated advice. Milligan concludes with a call to action to engage his “One of a Kind” plan, a reminder to honor personal moments over market speed, and the standard disclaimer that the content is educational, not investment advice.
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It's the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily. I'm Mike Milligan. Today's Monday, September 14th, 2026. The weekend was a blur, folks. NFL Week 1 almost in the books. Texas beat Ohio State in a comeback nobody saw coming on Saturday evening, and a stock market that finally broke a 3-day losing streak on Friday. If you're a financial professional, a do-it-yourself investor, or someone looking to build a one-of-a-kind financial plan, this, this episode is for you. I'm going to go over the weekly volume story and look back at where the country was 25 years ago today. And a question about AI that every person needs to sit with before you have a client meeting or make a financial decision. Educate, coach, plan is my mission, and never miss a moment is my motto.
Be one of a kind with Mike's Plan.
As I said in the open, the weekend was a blur. NFL Week 1 is nearly done. Just one Monday night game left. Denver travels to Kansas City tonight, the Broncos and the Chiefs. This is the first Monday Night Football game of the season, an AFC West grudge match. Denver took the division from Kansas City last year. Kansas City wants it back. And Saturday, one of the great comebacks in college football history. Texas going into the match, the game was Ranked number 4, Ohio State number 1. They trailed by 20 points in the 4th quarter. Arch Manning led 21 unanswered points. The final score, Texas 24, Ohio State 23. This morning, the Longhorns are the AP number 1 team in the country. Comebacks matter. They matter in football. They matter in the markets. They matter in retirement plans. They matter in life. When someone tells you they are down 20 in the fourth quarter of their financial life, your job is not to tell them the game's over. Your job is to show them what a comeback plan looks like on paper and help them realize they can live a one of a kind life. Last week we ended, we ended a four session. Work week, Labor Day Monday, we were all out. Tuesday through Friday, we traded. 3 straight days, Tuesday through Thursday, were down. And then Friday, September 11th, the streak broke and the tape came back. Here is what every advisor, do-it-yourself investor, clients should be able to talk about this morning. Volume tells you who was in the pool, not just whether the water was moving. SPY, the S&P 500 exchange-traded fund. The weekly volume from September 8th through the 11th totaled 165,811,000+ shares. The 20-day average pace across 4 sessions, uh, would have called for roughly 145 million shares. That actual pace, 114% of average, that's above trend meaningfully. Institutional participation was present all week, even on the down days. The QQQ, which is the NASDAQ 100 ETF, the 20-day average moving pace was 91.9%. That's below trend. The NASDAQ did not attract fresh institutional dollars last week. When we saw participation, it was in the S&P and in small caps, not tech. Speaking of small caps, IWM, the Russell 2000 ETF, the weekly volume totaled 89,872,000 plus. That, that is 134.4% of the 20-day moving average, above trend by more than a third. Real institutional participation in small caps, and it was heaviest on Thursday and Friday, the 2 biggest volume days of the week. The Russell is up almost 20% year to date, and last week the tape said institutions are still Repositioning around the Russell 2000. Were they taking gains? Were they pushing money back into it? We're going to see coming up in the rest of the fourth, as we end the third quarter, go into the fourth quarter. When your clients ask, or when you're personally asking, should I be worried about a 3-day losing streak? The answer is not yes, and it's not no. The answer is, let me show you what the volume said. Let me show you how that impacts your financial plan, because the volume told you that institutions were buying the pullback in the S&P and in small caps, and they were skipping the NASDAQ. That is not a fear tape, folks. That's a rotation tape. One last thing on the markets and volume last week. VIX, the volatility index, started Tuesday at 15.72, peaked Thursday at 17.84. And closed Friday at 15.84. That's a round trip, folks. Almost a rounding error if you look at the total percentage. But fear came in Thursday and it left by Friday.
Be one of a kind with Mike's Plan.
25 years ago today was Friday, September 14th, the Friday after 9/11. A country was still trying to make sense President Bush had to proclaim the day the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance. Church and memorial services across the country, a service at the National Cathedral, congregations all over the world. Sports had stopped. Major League Baseball postponed every game throughout the upcoming weekend. There was 15 games canceled just on the day of the attacks, and everything Wednesday through Sunday was gone too. Baseball did not return until Monday, September 17th. College football canceled every single game that Saturday. The Big 12, the SEC had wavered on it on Wednesday but reversed course on Thursday. There'd be no games on Saturday, September 15th, 2001. The NFL had already canceled all Week 2 games entirely. Football did not come back until September 23rd. A country was not ready to watch grown men play games while thousands of families were still trying. to find loved ones in piles of rubble in Lower Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in the field in Shanksville. And when the games did come back, think about this. They came back different. The national anthem meant something new. The moment of silence became liturgy. Sports had a job it had not had before: help us keep going. There was even a tradition that began After that, that's still true today. When, like in the 7th inning of a baseball game, America the Beautiful was sang. See, your clients' plans need to contemplate the moments the country is going to stop because the country will stop again. It stopped for a period of time during COVID It's going to happen again in the future. It always does. And when it does, your client's plan should not depend on the country not stopping. That is what a one-of-a-kind plan understands.
Be one of a kind. With Mike's Plan.
Over the weekend, something happened in the AI world that got me thinking. And rather than tell you exactly what, I want to give you the question I sat with all weekend. The question is this: when 3 big tech CEOs, AI CEOs, say it's time for AI to slow down, the question I start thinking is, is AI moving so fast that these companies are losing the opportunity to monetize? Because I'm not sure they ever cared about people when they were building these engines. Let me say that again slower. The companies leading the AI race are shipping features faster than they can figure out how to make money from them. Every quarter they release something new. Every quarter the previous release feels obsolete. And every quarter the humans on the other end, the users, the small businesses, the writers, the researchers, the teachers, your clients, They get more confused, more dependent, and more replaceable. See, the real story is not technology. The real story is the priority. Anthropic, Google, even Elon Musk, and many of the others, Microsoft. These companies had a chance early on to build a product that put the human user first. They chose scale first. They chose land grab first. They chose beating each other first, and the human on the other end became the resource that made the whole thing work. And here's where this hits your practice. Your clients are asking about AI. Your prospects are asking about AI. Your competitors are using AI, and a lot of them are using AI the same way these companies are using— are helping their users with fast, transactional, extractive research. The one-of-a-kind financial plan is the opposite of that. It is slow. It is written. It is human. It's a philosophy document. It is built for one household, not to scale to a million. It puts the person before the product. That is not just a marketing line. That is the actual competitive moat against a wave of AI-powered financial content that will pretend to know your client, but will never actually will. If you are an advisor and you're wondering what to say when a client asks about AI, tell them this. Tell them the plan we wrote is not something a machine can generate because a machine cannot know the dates that only your family remembers. A machine cannot know why you promised your father you would take care of your brother. A machine cannot know that— well, what it felt like to bury your spouse and start over at 54. Only a human planner sitting across the table with a pen and a written plan can hold that. And the day that stops being true, we all have a bigger problem in the market. What's the real story here, folks? The real story is that speed is not the same as service. And the firms who understand the difference are the ones who will still have clients in 10 years.
Be one of a kind with Mike's Plan.
So guys, the weekend was a blur. The market pulled back 3 days and then broke the streak on Friday. Volume told us institutions are buying the pullback in the S&P and small caps and skipping the S&P or skipping the NASDAQ. 25 years ago today, the country was on its knees and AI is moving faster than the humans building it can figure out how to serve it and monetize it. Your one-of-a-kind advantage as a financial professional or as a client looking is to slow down when the world is speeding up. You can write a plan that everyone else is running a prompt for. You can honor the moments that matter to a specific family when everyone else is chasing scale. We're not chasing returns as much as we're building the one-of-a-kind financial plan. If you want to build one of those plans, text the word ideas to the number 600-700. In the bottom, just so we're here tonight, come back. Come back. If you're on Team Longhorns in that comeback victory, comment, comment Chiefs if you're on Team Chiefs for tonight. Estoy aprendiendo. I am learning. I'm Mike Milligan, Certified Financial Planner. Educate, coach, plan. Never miss a moment. This program is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. I'm a Certified Financial Planning Professional. All market data referenced is from publicly available sources of the trading day noted. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The One of a Kind Financial Plan is a registered trademark of Mike Milligan, LLC. Consult your own licensed financial professional before making financial decisions based on any information discussed on this program.
Be one of a kind with Mike's plan. In a face shot growth, take a stand. Visibility strategy, take the lead. Transformation's yours, fulfill the need. Mike's got the way to help you. You rise and stay. Leadership impact you'll find in your one-of-a-kind mind. Be one of a kind. Take the flight. Mike's the guide, you'll shine bright.
