As-salamu alaykum everyone, I hope you are doing well. Today is Monday, August 26, and Bitcoin is at 63.6. S&P and Nasdaq are down slightly today. We're going to talk about some of the seasonal issues that are perhaps impacting the markets, as well as what we can expect in terms of data for this week. And I'm going to tell you about a crypto that has caught my eye recently because of recent headlines and my take on it, because I really found it to be an interesting project that I will be looking into more deeply. So without further ado, let's get started. Not financial advice, do leave a like. Really appreciate everyone who leaves likes consistently. Thank you very much. Let's get this live as usual to a hundred likes. Really appreciate that. Get more halal alpha by becoming a PIF member if you're not a member already. For elite members, we're going to be talking about how to take profits and how to protect our profits using various means on Friday, Inshallah, in our Friday session. The elite membership is the one that gets you the course material that we're constantly adding to. Check that out if you aren't a member already. All right, so upcoming economic events or data this week. Wednesday we have Nvidia's earnings, probably the most anticipated earnings in earnings season. It will tell us a lot about the AI play. A lot of ancillary AI businesses will be impacted by this earnings. This will be closely watched and it will tell us also about, in a less direct way, the broader economy. Friday, August 30th, we'll have July's core personal consumption measure. So it'll tell us basically how much consumers are spending, at least in the month of July. And then we have a Michigan consumer sentiment index, which a lot of investors like to look at to gauge how consumers are feeling about the economy and gives us insight into their propensity to spend in the future. All right, so good and bad news for you. Over the last decade, the S&P 500 has generated a median return of 1.1% during the final week of August, which is the week that we're in. That being said, September on average has been the worst month for stocks. So as a month, this has been the worst month. And now let's look at the numbers behind this stat. So if you look at the S&P 500 monthly performance, you can see that August and September are basically the toughest months. And if you look at whether it's the, if you look 30 years back, 20 years back, 10 years back, or five years back, it's either been September or August that has held the title of worst month of the year. And consistently, November has held the title of best month of the year. We may be halfway done through the toughest time of the year. But the last quarter, at least statistically, does promise some pretty good returns. So we're halfway through the hard part. And the hedge funds, understandably, have been raising their allocations to gold. We're now at a four-year high for their allocations. And I think this is bullish somewhat for Bitcoin as its primary use case, I think, is a store of value. Not everyone looks at it like that. Certainly it's been behaving like a risk asset as of late. Not as of late, but since its inception, it's been a risk asset. But it's been deemed less and less risky with time. It's still not at the point that gold is in terms of the propensity for investors, sophisticated investors, to buy it when uncertainty is high or turbulence is expected for other risk assets. But I think it will get there. And certainly as a reserve asset, if one looks at the Sharpe ratio or the return versus the volatility, it has gold beat. And eventually, the market is a weighing machine. And Bitcoin will, I think, receive the reserved recognition by asset allocators that it deserves. All right. Additionally, and aside from the statistical toughness of the spot that we're in seasonally, it's no wonder that hedge funds have increased their allocation to gold, considering the government debt is now at its highest level when measured to a GDP. It actually exceeded the max that was experienced right after World War II. And so this is pretty, I think, telling with regards to monetary supply moving forward, specifically that monetary supply is going to expand dramatically because, you know, interest is accumulating. This interest needs to be paid. More debt needs to be issued. So longer term, you really don't want to be in cash. You want to be in cash generating assets and reserve assets like gold and Bitcoin. So let's talk about individual stocks enough with the macro. Snowflake is a company that I've covered before, and this is basically a company that allows other companies or provides technology to allow other companies to store their data in the cloud and access it in an easy way and manipulate that data and gain insights from that data in an easy and streamlined way. It has been growing actually decently since its IPO. The problem with Snowflake is that it IPO'd at a really frothy time in the market. And so even though it posted really good numbers, I think, because the valuation was just too high after it IPO'd, it has been on a downward trend or returns for this stock haven't been good. And that's why it doesn't really matter. It's not enough to be a good company. You have to be a good company at a good valuation in order to be a good investment. That's lesson number one from Snowflake. Lesson number two here is very interesting. So if you look at the revenue for this company, it's $3.2 billion per year. This is as of July 30th. And yet earnings are negative $1 billion. And if we look at free cash flow, it's at $815 million. Cash from operations, $890 million. So just a heads up, free cash flow, different from cash from operations because it takes into account capital expenditures. So investments that the company makes. So free cash flow is $815 million. And yet earnings are negative $1.1 billion. So what the heck is going on here? If you look at their recent earnings report and you analyze it, the stock-based compensation was $1.4 billion. So the company is really diluting shareholders, but also it seems like it's overpaying its staff, or at least as it relates to its revenue. This is an insane number. The company is generating $3 billion. It's paying $1.4 billion annualized in stock-based compensation. This is not responsible management, I don't think. Or something in the business needs to change. But I just thought that was interesting. Wanted to share it. All right. We are seeing troubling signs globally. And I always tell myself, I'm not going to get political. I'm not going to get political. And then I end up being political. So you may have heard Telegram CEO got arrested in France. And many people are saying that this is because Telegram is not falling in line like other social media platforms or communication platforms in that it's not really restricting the people that certain governments want to be restricted. It's allowing people that have been blacklisted on other social media platforms to communicate freely, operate freely on their own platform. And the company is arguing, hey, we're not responsible for what our users do. We provide the platform. We're not responsible for abuse of the platform. Kind of like the Fed that issues dollars is not responsible for those dollars being used irresponsibly. So I think there's a crackdown really on free speech that's happening. Actually, let me rephrase that. I think what's happening right now is that people are becoming aware of the censorship that has been hidden for many years that has controlled these social media companies. And so you see bias in the algorithm in terms of what content gets promoted, bias in terms of the users that get restricted, bias in the messages that are promoted. And social media platforms that don't fall in line, they risk being targeted by powerful governments globally. This led me to the crypto or the layer one blockchain that Telegram's founder and CEO, who was recently arrested, actually founded him and his brother, who was a genius in his own right. And looking at the stats for this blockchain, it's actually quite impressive. So if you look at block time, it's five seconds versus 12 seconds for Ethereum. Solana is one second, but time to finality, which is a lot more important than block time, is under one second compared to 6.4 seconds for Solana. And they've built it in a way, so it has sharding, the TAN network has sharding, which Solana does not. So it has more flexibility and simple transaction performance is comparable to Solana. Complex transaction performance is better because it has more flexibility. And they also have access to nearly a billion users use Telegram. Onboarding users seems to be potentially very streamlined. So this is something that I'm very interested in. I think the biggest risk for TAN network is the adverse regulatory action that could be done against it. So yeah, I'm going to continue looking at this. And perhaps TAN itself is not the subject of a PIF investment, but perhaps projects on the TAN network are worthy of investment, perhaps smaller cap projects, because TAN itself is now impressively in the top 10 cryptos in terms of the TAN token, the top 10 cryptos in terms of market cap. It has seen a pullback as of late after the CEO of Telegram got arrested, but this may turn out to be an opportunity depending on how that shapes out. I have no trust in the French Judas. I'm not betting that it turns out well, but who knows? And, but I do ultimately think that it will probably continue even if the CEO remains jailed. So this is something that I'd like to learn more about. Definitely if we have PIF community members that know more about it, that would like to share their insights, be sure to do that in our discord so that we can all benefit. But it's something that I'm definitely looking into. I will have my team looking into as well. And we'll probably have some more to say about it, certainly for our PIF community, which if you are not part of it, do become a PIF member for more Halal Alpha, link to do so is in the description. And now we'll go to questions. Walaikum Salam to everyone. Thank you all for coming. Amir says, if we do get a recession, what are we looking for fall in the market, 10 to 20%? Who knows? My prediction though, is that if we do get a recession, it will be mild. I don't, I anticipate the market to do well in the coming 12 to 24 months, actually. I think we're going to have a lot of great opportunities in the market for the foreseeable future. So if we're in the right assets, I think we'll do very well. Chocolate Wallace says, been laid off from a tech job for about a month now. And the market is insane. Seeing a lot of openings in fintechs, doubt about Halalness. Is there a resource out there that can clarify? Interesting. So I would check out our blog, practicalislamicfinance.com. We talk about different products and finance, something to maybe helpful. Happy and appreciate that you will speak about Tan. I would like to hear from you about Tron as well. Much appreciate. It's my pleasure. Is USDT Halal because USDT reserve earn money from interest? I think it's fine if you're just using it as a medium of exchange. I wouldn't necessarily hold savings in USDT just because I'm not really, there are some questions about the backing of USDT and how actually legitimate it is. So if you're just using it to make a trade, I think it's fine. Thoughts on SUI? Yeah, I went over SUI in a previous live, check that out. Will the much anticipated rate cut in September not offset the usual rectember? I think that second half of September may be tougher than the first half, but obviously a lot depends on some of the data points that we get between now and then. So we'll keep you updated. But just because there's a statistic, sorry, there's a statistical habit for the markets to struggle in September, doesn't necessarily mean that this is going to happen. Yeah, I would, let's remain nimble and quick on our feet and our reactions to what we learn about the economy, Fed's intention and so on. Chocolate says, okay, we'll check the blog. Great. That's nice to see you. Thank you all for coming. Leave a like if you haven't already, become a member. Until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. Salaam Alaikum and peace be upon you all.