Buy The Rumor

As-salamu alaykum, I hope you are doing well. I hope these final days of Ramadan are days in which you were able to grow closer to your creator, inshallah. Today we're going to talk about recent market happenings and why buying the rumor may be a good idea for some assets. So without further ado, let's get started. Not financial advice, be sure to do your own due diligence before making any investing decisions. And do not forget that the Ramadan offer is still ongoing, so you get 35% off of membership if you use the code ramadan2024 at checkout before the end of Ramadan, which is tomorrow at midnight. So be sure to do that if you'd like to join our PIF membership, and I hope that you do. Now, the June rate cut is now basically a toss-up between, you know, having a 25 basis point cut and not having a cut. So the market is basically split, and this week we'll have some additional clues as to what is going to happen when the data for CPI comes out on Wednesday, inshallah, and PPI comes out the day after that. We'll also have a bunch of Fed officials making commentary throughout the week, so there's likely to be some volatility in the markets in response to that. However, we do have a belt and suspenders now supporting the markets. So on one hand you have the prospects of interest rate cuts, on the other you have a very healthy economy. So last Friday we had the jobs report come out with 303,000 jobs added. Put that into context, the expected number was 200,000 jobs. So this economy continues to prove that it's quite resilient, and if anything this is going to make the Fed in less of a hurry to cut rates, although it does have the pressure of the interest payments that the government is paying while rates are high. So you can see how the Fed's job is not an easy one at all. Now this is perhaps the belt and suspenders that is, is perhaps the reason why U.S. household equity ownership is at a 24-year high. So more and more people are opting to buy stocks to save their purchasing power. Now in addition to the equity market being as healthy as, or the economy showing signs of resilience, and there being some tailwinds in the back of the market, I think part of the reason for this, the attractiveness of equities is perhaps people are less and less attracted to cash as they see inflation and basically the daily prices that they experience, especially at the grocery store. As they see that inflation rising all the time, people are less and less inclined to keep their savings in cash, and equity has always been a popular option for people who are saving. Now that being said, I think it's noteworthy that 24 years ago when equity ownership or interest in equity ownership was as high as it is right now, we had the dot-com bubble. So something that we should always keep, should always keep in the back of our mind, have a healthy healthy dose of skepticism. And that's why for the selections that we make in our portfolios and PIF, we're very cognizant of the evaluations for the different stocks that we have in our portfolios, as well as crypto, although valuing crypto is much more tricky. So in terms of fear and greed, we are still in greed territory. We've come off of our highs in extreme greed. That being said, I still think that there's, you know, as far as the bull market goes, we're still, I would say maybe in the fourth inning out of nine total. So we're neither at the altcoin nor bitcoin dominant part of the cycle, although altcoins have made a pretty substantial comeback as of late. And the bitcoin halving is only nine days away. Now this is maybe cause for many to buy the rumor here. I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea. I think we'll probably have a run-up leading up to the bitcoin halving. What happens after that, perhaps there is a solid news event in the market that causes us to go lower. But I do think whatever pullback we have will be short-lived because there's a lot more room to run in this cycle. And the reason why I say that is if you look at the two to three year holders, they're still at 16%. So two to three year holders, a lot of people refer to these holders as basically smart money. So they end up, you know, accumulating when entering bear markets and selling towards the peaks of bull markets. And so these are holders that have held on to their bitcoin for two to three years. And in the last peak, in the last cycle, you saw the percentage of two to three year holders dropped to around 3%. So the smart money was selling to the FOMO investors. But currently we're at 16%. So I think there's still some ways to go for this bull run. In addition, if you look at the RVZ score, we're still healthy. We're still at around two and a half, three, whereas the sort of readings where you start to get nervous, definitely should consider taking profits are closer to the six, seven mark. That's that red, that red bar across the screen. And in other news, Tesla, one of our, well, our biggest equity position has announced that Elon Musk announced that on August 8th, they will be revealing additional details about the Robotaxi. This was one of the reasons why I was extremely bullish on Tesla. No one really knew when we would get additional detail about the Robotaxi program. This is something that's extremely bullish for Tesla because it, it's a status as a company that is not a car company. The margins in a Robotaxi are much, much higher than what you would get if you're just selling cars. So basically, and the Robotaxi will become, I think, you know, there's going to be a lot of, a lot of implications for this. So I think as a result of the Robotaxi, less people will opt to own a car. If it's, if the system works well enough, people will just use Robotaxis to get around. Insurance rates will, because less people own cars, less people will have car insurance. And therefore insurance rates will probably go up because there's less people to split the risks amongst for car insurance companies. So that industry is going to be disrupted. And perhaps we see a shrinking of the number of parking lots and parking spaces in any city as more and more people opt for these Robotaxis. Now, this is not something that's going to happen, you know, in the next 12 months or 24 months. It will happen gradually. But this is how I think the Robotaxis may impact the world in a really big way. And Tesla is really the leader here. There's not many other companies that can even compete. And the reason I say this is because no one has the type of data that Tesla has. So if you look at the number of miles driven for full self-driving, and Tesla has now reached around 1 billion miles driven. No one's going to catch up to this. This is real world miles. This is not simulated miles like NVIDIA has, or, you know, some other companies have. Waymo, I think they're still like hard coding directions for their self-driving cars. So really Tesla is in a league of its own. Elon Musk has mentioned that they do plan on licensing out the technology to other companies. This is going to be a very, very high margin, additional source of revenue for the company. And I do think that Tesla stock will probably run and be supported by the prospects of what's going to be unveiled in August, from now until August. So this is another asset where I think perhaps buying the rumor makes a lot of sense. And even if you're not into the swing trade type plays, even for just a long-term hold, this is very exciting. Additionally, I will say that for Tesla, the most exciting part of business right now are the humanoid robots. So if they prove that the Tesla full self-driving is, they've actually reached level five autonomy, the car drives itself. Then imagine when you take that technology and you enable a robot with it, what you can do in terms of manual tasks, manual labor, all the different industries that open up to you. It's one of those, I think, obvious investments that come very rarely in one's life. I mean, you'll be lucky if you get two or three Teslas in your lifetime. So yeah, needless to say, I'm bullish on this stock. Don't forget Zakat al-Fitr. If you haven't given Zakat al-Fitr yet, don't forget the Ramadan offer to become a PIF member. Inshallah will pay off for you. Well, our goal is always for it to pay off for members, many times what they pay. And without further ado, let's take some questions. Walaikum Yunus, thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. Would you be doing live stream during Eid? Probably not, Rashad. Take Eid for just being with your family. I may check in, but probably not. Walaikum Salam, Elon should quit FSD and focus on Doge. Yes, indeed. Alhamdulillah, Doge has been doing very well for us. Is it halal to invest in a DEX token? I think so. It's one of those things where you can understand arguments on either side. Obviously with a DEX, you're going to have tokens that are not necessarily share compliant being traded on there. But at the same time, the DEX is just a platform. It's providing a service. So if you say a DEX is uncomfortable, then by extension, you could say any blockchain is uncomfortable because it's a platform on which transactions which are not halal could take place. For example, money laundering or something like that. So I can see the argument on both sides. Could XLM reach $1 this bull run? I really don't know. I'm not too familiar. May you check my comment on Casper? You've been asking about Casper for a while. I need to do that. It's been a while since you've been asking. Inshallah, I will. If we invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum alone due to their status in the crypto market, what will be the allocation? I'm not invested in Ethereum. I'm not a fan of it. I have Solana instead. To see my portfolio become a PIF member, now 35% off. Use Coderm about 2024 at checkout. Should I buy Doge now? Well, I typically don't share sort of buy below, sell above prices on live disks for PIF members. But I can tell you that Doge right now, I think Doge is 20 cents. Yeah, 20 cents. So it's below our buy price, which was recently updated. So right now it's below our buy below price. Is Jupyter coin haram? I stayed away from Jupyter coin, even though I think it's probably one of the best DEXs on Solana because of the futures product that they have. So futures, crypto futures, I find them to be uncomfortable from a halal perspective. So I stayed away. Is YouTube monetization hard? I don't think so if you do it right. So you can go onto Google, your Google Ads account basically, and determine what type of ads are allowed, Google is allowed to show on your videos. And when you do that, you can take off any categories that you think might be questionable. And also keep in mind that even if you don't monetize your YouTube videos, then your preference is not taken into account. And YouTube reserves the right to put whatever ads it wants on your videos. So no, I'd rather my preferences be taken into account. Hassan, inshallah, I'll let you know if I'm in Istanbul. I was in Mecca for our last few days, I made dua for you. Oh, that's so nice, man. I really appreciate that. That's really nice. May Allah bless you and give you a barakah in your health and well as well. Thank you so much. I made my day. Is meme coin trading halal or haram? I actually sent out an email about this not too long ago. If you're not on our newsletter, then add yourself to it. practicalislamicfinance.com is where you can add yourself. So as it relates to meme coins, so meme coins by definition are just coins that are based on or themed after a certain meme, a certain internet meme. So there's nothing inherently haram in that. In terms of utility, people say that they don't have any utility, but I don't really think that's true for all meme coins, even if they were created as a joke, because you can still send them to someone as a means of payment. So if you know, someone was in Egypt, and I wanted to pay them for services rendered, I can send them bonk, for example, I can send them, you know, dog with hat. And it's a perfectly easy way. And with low fees, it's a way that you can pay someone. And so at minimum, they have that utility. Now, there are some meme coins where I would say meme coins could be considered harm would be if if they are clear, if they're like, if they're a scam, all right, if they are, if you anticipate that this is going to leave at the end of the day, it's when it's all played out, it's going to leave the people who are holding it in a bad situation, they're going to regret having ever bought it. If you can anticipate that if you think this is the type of project that's eventually going to be, you know, rugged, and the people who played the game are going to regret it, then this is something that's uncomfortable to invest in, of course, you should stay away from it. Now, things you should watch out for are things that are not proof of work, right? So basically, all meme coins, except for Dogecoin, because these there's no cost to issuing them. And there's a high likelihood that, you know, the founders are just trying to enrich themselves, projects that have anonymous founders, that's a red flag, projects that make it hard to sell. There's high fees to selling, they try to trap you in projects that are only listed on very shady exchanges. So this is not a coincidence, there's probably a reason why they're only listed on these, you know, offshore unregulated exchanges. But when you see price movements, where there's, you know, big spikes on very little liquidity, this may be, you know, a few players, a few whales trying to manipulate price, you should stay away from that. So a lot of volume and little liquidity, that's probably a sign of manipulation. So there are telltale signs that can tell you that a certain project is, you know, actually just a scam. But if you're asking me about the concept of meme tokens, and basically, a token that's issued, you know, based on a certain meme theme that has caught people's attention, that I don't think that's inherently something that is haram from a Sharia perspective. Eid Mubarak to everyone. And I'm really happy and appreciative and thankful for the blessing of having you as an audience and enabling me to do what I love to do, which is, you know, follow the markets and invest. So thank you all. Leave a like if you enjoy these lives. And until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. Asalaamu Alaikum and peace be upon you all.