The Practical Islamic Finance Podcast
The Practical Islamic Finance Podcast
Good News for Lithium
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Good News for Lithium
In this episode we will cover:
- Introduction and Bitcoin Price Update
- Debate Impact on Bitcoin Price
- Kamala Harris’s Crypto Stance
- Inflation Report: CPI and Core CPI
- Market Reaction to Inflation Numbers
- Federal Reserve Rate Cut Probabilities
- Debate Recap: Kamala Harris vs. Trump
- U.S. Debt Crisis and Economic Concerns
- Lithium Market and Future Outlook
- Lithium Stock Performance
- Bitcoin Mining: Profitability and Trends
- Investment Strategy: Secular Trends and Bitcoin Mining
- Risks and Opportunities in Bitcoin Mining
- Bitcoin Miners: Trade vs. Long-term Investment
- Chart Analysis: Miner Revenue and Survival
- Bitcoin Mining Risks and Considerations
- Q&A Segment: Crypto Market, Tesla, and Bitcoin as a Hedge
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salam@practicalislamicfinance.com
ABOUT OUR PODCAST
Our podcast is about helping people ethically build wealth. We cover a broad range of topics including stock and crypto investing, product reviews, and general financial well-being.
DISCLAIMER
Anything you hear in this video is an opinion. It is not personalized financial advice. Make sure you do your due diligence before making any investment decisions.
As-salamu alaykum, everyone. I hope you're doing well. Today is Wednesday, September 11th. Bitcoin, as you can see, is just below 56,000. We did get a negative reaction in the price of Bitcoin after the debate performance that was, I guess, bullish for Kamala Harris's chances of winning. We'll talk about that in a second. And Kamala has a very ambiguous position on crypto, if not outright hostile. And whereas Trump's position on Bitcoin, at least what he has expressed, has been quite favorable. So we saw a pullback in Bitcoin's price, but also we got the inflation numbers today. And it was a, I'm not going to say negative, but a mixed bag. So for CPI, we got a 0.2 increase month over month. But core CPI, we got a 0.3 increase, so month over month. Now, if we look at the year over year, what this means year over year, we can see that CPI year over year is at 2.5%, which is down from 2.9% last month. So we are making progress towards the 2% target that the Fed has. That being said, as I mentioned, core CPI, if you look at the change versus last month, we were at 3.2%, we're still at 3.2%. Now, for those who are wondering, core CPI simply takes out the volatile energy and food prices from the calculation. And so if we zoom out a bit and look at our overall performance here, battling inflation, you look at core CPI, which is in the orange color, kind of leveled off in terms of its downward movement, whereas CPI continues to downward. So mixed bag here, I think the market was pretty clear in its reaction to the numbers. So whereas yesterday, if you tuned in, you'll remember I mentioned the probabilities were around 70-30, 70% for a 25 base point cut, 30% for a 50 base point cut. Today, they're actually more like 85-15 here, 83-17. So 83% chance of a 25 base point cut, which I think is going to happen, 17% chance for a 50 base point cut. I actually think this is probably good for markets. I think a 50 base point cut to start things off would have signaled somewhat of a panic state for the Fed with regards to its outlook on the economy. 25 base points tells investors, hey, we're not panicked, but also we think that inflation is under control enough that we can start easing. So overall, I think that the inflation report wasn't too bad. Going back to the debate, Harris seems to have gained some ground in relation to her chances of winning the election versus Trump. The debate yesterday was, as I mentioned, it was kind of devoid of any real content, anything that we didn't know before. Harris was asked, could you say that you're against abortion in month seven, eight, nine? And she couldn't say that. She instead said, oh, well, that actually doesn't happen, which I think is pretty ridiculous not to be able to say, hey, I'm against aborting a baby in month seven or eight or nine. Trump, on the other hand, was his usual self, just plainly making up stuff that he knows his audience, his base is going to eat up, like his story about Abdul. He spoke with some person named Abdul. Who knows who Abdul is? He said the leader of the Taliban. The leader of the Taliban is Hebatullah Akhundzada. I don't know who Abdul is. But so some poor Afghan guy named Abdul was threatened with his house being blown up, at least if you want to take Trump's word for it. But yeah, his base really liked that, I'm sure, and believed it if it wasn't just a completely fabricated story. So slim pickings the American voter here. You have a completely empty vessel in Kamala Harris that just performed what she was trained to do. And Trump, who will say anything and apparently is unable to distinguish between, in his mind, he's unable to distinguish between things that actually happened and things that haven't happened. But I would say, Trump is emotionally honest, but he is factually dishonest. Harris, on the other hand, as I mentioned, just an empty vessel, you can program her to do anything. She just completely without any content. She's basically a humanoid robot before humanoid robots. So yeah, no talk about the debt crisis in the United States. The fact that we're adding a trillion dollars in debt every 100 days. No talk about the fact that the interest payments on debt are now more than a trillion dollars. No talk about balancing the budget. No real plans about how are we going to rein in spending and avoid bankruptcy for this country. Just trying to score internet points. Are cats being eaten? Are dogs being eaten in Ohio or not? Insulting the intelligence of viewers. Needless to say, it was not encouraging. But that's with regards to macro. But what we can focus on are our individual positions and where we're investing our money and the decisions that we can make with our money. Now, towards that end, I mentioned last week with regards to lithium and the state of equities in that field, and I mentioned that I thought why I was bullish, why I thought that the lithium market would rebound and the fact that demand for lithium is expected to increase. And yet the prices of lithium as they are right now does not support even current production, let alone increasing production, and therefore something had to give. The price of lithium has to recover in order to meet the demands of the market. And so we're getting sort of traces of this playing out only one week after. So today we got a news story out of China wherein the lithium market was shaken by cattle's production costs and lithium stocks, including perhaps the largest Albert Marley stock, surged today in reaction. So the global lithium market experienced significant shake-up today as reports surfaced that contemporary Amperix technology, the world's largest electric vehicle battery manufacturer, is considering suspending some of its lithium production. As I mentioned, the prices of lithium today do not support production, let alone expansion, which is needed if you have a three, four, five-year outlook. This news comes amid an oversupply in the lithium market that has driven prices down by approximately 60% over the past year. The potential production cut by cattle, which controls about 40% of the EV battery market, has sent ripples through the industry, causing lithium mining stocks to soar. Decision to cut supply likely responds to oversupply. This decision is likely a response to oversupply in the lithium market. By reducing production, cattle could potentially help balance supply and demand, stabilizing or even increasing lithium prices. The news has been received positively by investors who see it as a sign that major players are taking steps to address the oversupply issue. And if I were pressed on predicting the price of lithium, I do think that lithium prices will recover to the tune of 20%, if not more, by the end of the year. And I think that will impact the prices of lithium stocks in a big way, in a leveraged way, lithium mining stocks in a leveraged way. So they'll react even more positively than the reaction in the price of lithium itself. So checking in on some of these stocks, so Albert Marley, you can see that it's up 8.5% today. Piedmont up 5%. So we're seeing, you know, play out further justification for what I mentioned last week regarding my outlook on lithium stocks and specifically what we're holding in our portfolio. So inshallah that continues. Now let's talk about another exposure that we have in our PIF portfolio. So Bitcoin mining was significantly less profitable in August. This is not a surprise. We were sub 60,000 for Bitcoin. And, you know, we may have an even tougher month in September. September could be another difficult month for miners, which means what? And this is something I always say, when you're looking to invest, you look at the things that you think are part of a secular trend, but are doing poorly now. So you want to look at the things that aren't doing well now, but you think are part of a robust secular trend and therefore are poised to recover. And so Bitcoin mining, I think, will benefit from Bitcoin's price. This is over the medium turn. So, you know, three to six months, I think Bitcoin's price is going to do extremely well. And Bitcoin miners will do well, will follow suit in a leveraged way. And that's why we have exposure to some miners in our portfolios. But beyond that, I think the artificial intelligence, high performance computing opportunity for these Bitcoin miners, for the ones that take advantage of them, is quite intriguing. So let's look here. So Bitcoin miner mining was much less profitable in August and July as the average Bitcoin price fell over 4%. Miners average daily revenue per exahash fell 11.8% for the months previous. As a result, September is shaping up to be another difficult month as BTC remains below$60,000 and the network hash rate continues to climb. So Bitcoin mining is a really difficult business to be in. So, you know, when we have a really hot summer, electricity costs go up and the production costs for Bitcoin mining go up. But also if we have a less hot summer and electricity costs are under control, then what happens is the hash rate, because the uptime for other miners is higher, so the hash rate climbs and the difficulty of mining climbs. So no news is good news for Bitcoin miners, it seems. It's a very tough business, very slim margins. But when Bitcoin goes up 30, 40, 50% in a month, these public miners tend to do extremely well and sometimes go up 100%, 100% plus in the following month. That's at least what the data suggests. And that's really what we're banking on in our investment. And ultimately, for the most part, Bitcoin miners are a trade. They're not a long term investment because the business stinks so much. I mean, it's very slim margin. There are easy ways to make money in this world. There are hard ways to make money in this world. And mining Bitcoin profitably is a hard way to make money in this world for the majority of the time, for 80, 90% of the time. There's 10% where it pays off and that's where the trade comes in. And then once your trade plays out, at least for me, I'm out. I'm getting out. But for the miners that have longer term vision, that have plans for AI and high performance computing, I think there's an arbitrage here. And I think that they are really massively undervalued. And with these miners, I think now would be the time to go in. Not financial advice, of course, but you go in when the stock is distressed, not when the stock is doing well and FOMO. When FOMO and euphoria kick in, that's when you get out. But you want to go in when there's pessimism, people are losing hope. That's when you get the best deals. You don't want to be selling at that point. You want to be a buyer. So this is just a chart that is illustrating what the article was talking about. You can see here, the miner revenue per tera hash is at a one year low. And so right now, the Bitcoin mining is at a is basically a game of survival. We haven't seen levels this low in a very long time. So while Bitcoin miners continue to increase their tera hash steadily, while they continue to become more efficient, the revenue that they're getting per tera hash is falling. And so it's really a game of survival until the price of Bitcoin can recover. And this is why this is a very risky investment. Don't invest money you can't afford to lose. And make sure you understand what you're investing in before you invest. Make sure you have a very good idea about the company, its management, its finances, how much cash it has, how much debt it has, what's the efficiency of its mining operations, how it compares to others, where its mining facilities are, what's the average electricity costs for them. All of these things are important to take into account. And if you don't, then just hold Bitcoin. If you don't want to take into account all of that stuff, just hold Bitcoin and get exposure to the asset that way. No need to lever yourself up. If you'd like to see our trades and follow our portfolios, become a PIF member. If you'd like to learn investing, become an elite member. Questions very quickly. Nice to see you, Chocolate. What do you think about Blum? Perhaps I'll look at it some other time. Yeah, Abdul is the Muslim archetype that some Islamophobes use. Yeah, I mean, because he's playing to his base and he doesn't respect their intelligence. So he just says, Oh, yeah, I talked with Abdul. And yeah, I showed him and showed him a picture of his house. And he was confused. Like, oh, yeah. I'm sure that happened. Assalamualaikum. Do you think crypto markets will be impacted significantly if Camilla wins? Yeah, I don't think it will be good for the markets for sure. So let's hope that doesn't happen. Assalamualaikum. If Camilla wins, does that send a negative signal for Tesla as well? It's not good. It's not good for Tesla. It's not good for crypto in the near term. But ultimately, Camilla is going to be just like Biden. By the way, it was kind of ridiculous to hear talking about, oh, yeah, once I'm once I'm president, I'm going to do this and this and this is going to improve. And, you know, we're going to tackle inflation and all that. It's like, you're currently the vice president. You're part of the current administration. What are you talking about? Like you, inflation happened when you were in power. So I mean, if you're going to do something, why wait till after the election? Do it now. Salam, Rashad says Salam. After watching the debate, would you approach the market differently? No, because Rashad, our policy is the following. We control the things that we can control. And we don't worry about the things that we keep an eye on them. It's good to know, especially with the short term movements, you know, timing buys and sells. But for the long term, the performance of our positions, they basically don't care about who is in power. They'll do well. The timing may be different, may take, you know, certain macro conditions may bring forward or delay certain movements in certain stocks. But eventually, our thesis will play out inshallah. For example, take Tesla. It's possible that if Kamala wins, some adverse action with regards to, I don't know, regulation on self driving cars negatively impacts Tesla, but eventually self driving cars will be a reality. And Tesla is the leader in that space. And it will reap the rewards from that. And so we try to control what we can control. And what we can control is the actual assets that we put our money in, the macro will do its thing. And eventually, over the longer term, the market is a weighing machine, and will assign the correct values to the assets that we hold. So our approach is to focus on the fundamentals of the positions that we hold and the fundamentals are solid inshallah. Did the CPI affect BTC? If so, why when it's supposed to be a hedge against inflation? Yeah, so the idea of Bitcoin as a hedge is to come, right? So we think Bitcoin will act as a hedge when it matures as an asset. But right now, I think we're still in the maturing phases. Adoption is still relatively low if you compare it with if you look at it as a percentage of humanity who have exposure to Bitcoin, that percentage is low. And so the Bitcoin asset is still maturing. We're seeing this right before our eyes as the volatility of Bitcoin decreases with time. Eventually, I think it will act as a hedge. But for now, it's acting as a risk asset that's correlated with the NASDAQ and other indexes. So that's why we're seeing Bitcoin follow these risk assets as it is, like I said, as it matures. And you may be saying, oh, well, you know, Bitcoin is at $60,000, close to$60,000. Isn't it mature enough? Well, I think that we still have a long way to go, actually. I think we're still early. Michael Saylor was on CNBC a couple of days ago saying that he thought Bitcoin would reach $13 million. per token in the next 20, 30 years. So I think we're still early. There's still maturation to happen. A lot of people haven't had exposure to Bitcoin yet. And I think they will. And when that happens, when the idea of Bitcoin becomes more commonly accepted, and the history of Bitcoin as an asset becomes, you know, longer and more trusted, then it will start acting as digital gold. Chocolate says there was a report I read about the EV market not doing well. Well, due to oversupply and overestimating the demand, I've been hearing these reports for a long time, but the actual numbers suggest that there is a recovery in the EV market. And I think with the fall in interest rates, I think this will affect companies like Tesla in a really positive way, inshallah. So I think we're sitting pretty with the positions that we have for the medium term, inshallah. Now we'll keep a close eye on everything for you. Do leave a like if you enjoyed this live, hit the notification bell, become a PIF member if you aren't already, and join our family. Until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. As-salamu alaykum and peace be upon you all.