
The Practical Islamic Finance Podcast
The Practical Islamic Finance Podcast
🌟 A Good Start ▶️
► If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a good review!
► More from PIF: https://linktr.ee/practicalislamicfinance
🌟 A Good Start ▶️
In this episode, we will cover:
- Intro
- First Day of the Trump Administration: Market Recap
- Crypto Updates: Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Solana
- Iris Energy’s $1B Funding and Strategy
- Stargate Project: AI Investment Surge
- Tesla & EV Tax Incentive Changes
- California’s Emissions Standards Reversal
- AI Stock Picks: Tempest AI
- Final Thoughts & Investment Strategies
CONTACT US
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.
Assalamu alaikum everyone. I hope you are doing well. The first trading day under the new Trump administration has concluded and it was a good start. The Dow ended up five hundred points higher, up one point two five percent. The Nasdaq up half a percentage point. The S&P close to one percentage point in the green. The Russell was close to two percentage points in the green. Everything small cap was doing very, very good today. I should say almost everything small cap. So congrats to those who invested in the winners. The ten-year yield on treasuries was down today, which is good. And the VIX subsided a bit, five percent down today. Tesla was basically flat, although it was there. Pretty rocky ride for Tesla stockholders. Started off really in the red, but quickly recovered and actually ended the day pretty much flat. Bitdeer was up close to four percent. Iris Energy was down ten percent. We'll talk about Iris Energy and why it was down. So don't worry about that. Moving to crypto, Bitcoin is at one hundred and five thousand. So very quick turnaround there. We didn't see the sixty, seventy thousand that people were talking about. I did mention that it was a, you know, less than likely probability. But, you know, who knows what happens? And sure enough, we're at one hundred and five thousand on Bitcoin. Dogecoin is at thirty seven cents. We'll talk about that a bit more. We got some developments there. And Solana is at two fifty. After a wild weekend, we're in Solana reach close to three hundred. On the heels of the Trump coin mania and after all the other garbage coins that came out. And people having to, all of these were on the Solana network. So people had to buy Solana in order to buy these garbage coins. And so that helped the price of Solana a lot. Looking at the IRS energy and why it was down today. So they announced a one billion dollar at the market facility. Basically, they can sell shares up to one billion dollars to raise one billion dollars to support general corporate purposes, including. And I really dislike this. So announcement of one billion at the market facility, that should be bold, big. You know, huge letters. This is what investors care about. Instead, they're just, you know, regular font. Whereas, oh, expanding capacity to fifty seven X a hash by second half of twenty twenty five. That's in bold as if that was nearly as important as the one billion. at the market facility announcement. Initiating direct-to-chip liquid cooling system, advancing construction at Sweetwater, and progressing a multi-gigawatt data center development pipeline. Now, let me sort of try my best to decipher what's happening here. Going to . doesn't require, the previous target was fifty exahash by the first half of twenty twenty five. Going to fifty seven exahash does not require raising money. OK, they could raise they could expand to fifty seven X a hash using the cash flow that they generate from their business. They're one of the most efficient miners and with one of the lowest costs for mining Bitcoin, especially now after they got the electricity costs down. So what's happening here is that they're it seems like they are planning on making some substantial investments in their infrastructure to include increasing the land access and power access to that land. Likely in anticipation of some deal with a hyperscaler or some business in the AI and high performance computing fields, which is much more profitable. If you look at the net number is much more profitable than Bitcoin mining. So I think that this is actually what is happening here, that they have plans beyond Bitcoin mining. that they plan on investing in aggressively because the fifty seven exit hash, they don't really need to go to the market to get there. So really it's about the high performance computing AI play. And that's really why I kept the position that I had in Iris Energy. I took a lot of profits as PIF members know, but we've kept a position in this company precisely for this reason. And one of the things that they mentioned, which I think I'm not gonna read through all of this for you guys, but one of the things that they mentioned that I think was quite telling indicative of perhaps what may be the motivation behind this move, is that the company received multiple proposals valuing assets in its development portfolio at many times its cost, underscoring the potential value in developing greenfield sites internally. So what this means is that they're spending X amount of dollars and then the value they're receiving is multiple X that costs. So why not spend more? That's in a nutshell, I think the strategic vision for the company is that, hey, right now the market is valuing what we're building, that multiple X, what it's costing us. So let's be aggressive and build as much as we can because we're basically adding value to our company. And this is a company that has a substantial value insider ownership. So I think there's alignment of interest there. Now, to piggyback off of what I just said regarding AI and high performance computing, this announcement came just a few minutes ago. And that is the Stargate project that was announced by this new administration. And it involves open AI. So the Stargate project is a new company which intends to invest five hundred billion over the next four years, building new AI infrastructure for open AI in the United States. We will begin deploying one hundred billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States, but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies. Now, if we scroll down a bit, we can see that, let me find it, where they mention The build-out is currently underway, starting in Texas. And you know who has a pretty big presence in Texas? IOS Energy. And we are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as we finalize definitive agreements. So maybe this is pure speculation on my part. I have no insider information, but maybe you know, Iris Energy gets a piece of that a hundred billion that they're going to deploy immediately. And, you know, perhaps in order to fully capitalize on the opportunity that it sees, it needs to, you know, raise some money, in which case this should be really good for shareholders. Now, moving on to Dogecoin. So the summary of my input there is that I don't think that this is necessarily something that shareholders need to be concerned about or unhappy about. This could be great for shareholders when it's all said and done. Oftentimes with investment, there's near-term pain for long-term gain, and this may be the case for Iris Energy. And if you look at historically, you know, this company, other Bitcoin miners, Bitdeer, for example, also did the one billion ATM. Initially, upon the announcement, the stock suffered, but then the rebound was pretty quick and therefore, you know, investing at times of the ATM would have been a very ATM announcements at the market, that is. security offerings. So investing at those times when they're announced would have been a pretty good strategy in the last, you know, twenty four months, wherein, you know, if you invested at that time, at the time of the announcement. The stock typically did very well, you know, compared to the low after the announcement. So going to Doge, as I've been saying, you know, why not create a Doge ETF? The Doge ETF makes a ton of sense. Well, just then, a Doge ETF filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. So we'll see how this shapes up. I think this is very bullish for the token. I think there'll be many other Doge ETFs. And I think there'll be some robust interest from retail investors to buy the Dogecoin ETF. Speaking of Doge, Must Doge Agency launches official website. And initially when it did launch, the Department of Government Efficiency had the actual Dogecoin logo on it when it launched earlier today. Now it's been changed to this, but still there is a dog. So it's not the official Dogecoin dog, but you know. they've stuck with the dog theme nonetheless um which is great marketing for the the bitcoin of meme coins if you will now trump signed a number of executive orders on his first day and the national bitcoin reserve was not one of them does not say that you know it will not come the probabilities for the national bitcoin reserve are still You know, more likely than not, according to Kalshi, at least, fifty nine percent. We'll see how that goes. I remain optimistic. I do think that it's more likely than not that something happens with regards to the National Bitcoin Reserve. You know, perhaps it's not established, but the decision to establish it, I think, will be taken, you know, at least in the first hundred days of Trump's administration. We shall see if that comes to fruition. Now, what's next for EVs? So Trump has one of the executive orders. This relates to Tesla, which is a big position of ours. One of Trump's executive orders was to eliminate what he calls the electric vehicle mandate. Now, this does not include the seventy five hundred dollar incentive. But it kind of hints that perhaps this is coming, the elimination of the seventy five hundred dollar incentive for people who buy electric vehicles. I think for your first purchase, it's applicable. But it does eliminate other incentives. So. One of the things that. Trump's order entitled Unleashing American Energy revokes a non-binding goal set by Biden that EVs make up half of new cars sold by twenty thirty. The order also seeks to terminate a federal exemption that allows California to phase out the sale of gas powered cars by I think after the fires and the response of the state in California to those fires and its complete ineptitude, the ability of California to govern itself should be revoked. That state has been so badly mismanaged, to be honest. It's the most beautiful state in the country, and yet it's probably the worst managed state in the country. So when I see a California decision being reversed, I'm like, that's probably for the better. Federal waiver is important not only to California, but also to more than a dozen other states that follow its nation-leading standards on vehicle emissions. By the way, AP hates Trump, as does most mass media. So the article, I read the article, was kind of biased, but nevertheless, the The important thing is that the seventy five hundred dollar incentive on EVs may be taken away shortly. Now, I actually think that this will be bullish for Tesla. Elon Musk has mentioned that he doesn't mind it at all. And he also thinks it probably will be bullish for Tesla because basically the only way other companies were able to sell their EVs, one of the main incentives for buyers was this. federal tax incentive. But now with that incentive gone, those EVs are far less competitive. The only EV that is competitive with other options is Tesla. And so Tesla will just gain a more dominant position among EV companies, I think, if this incentive is revoked. So with that being said, a good start, as I said, to this new administration and the markets are liking it. Animal spirits are creeping in. I think investors are generally optimistic. Obviously, things can turn on a dime. That's why we always keep our tap dancing shoes on. And with that, let's take a couple of questions. uh oh uh race says sam rakan what do you think about trump's target announcement I think it's only bullish for companies in ai and oh yeah by the way I should tell you guys um so nancy pelosi took up a position in an AI company that I was looking at, but unfortunately the financials, I was looking at it over the weekend. Unfortunately, the financials of this company, uh, did not pass my, my, uh, criteria, um, or else I would have invested, but, um, it's a ticker symbol T E M. So Tempest AI, um, Should be able to pull up that stock for you guys. Tempest AI. So that was up thirty five percent just today. So, yeah, I think all AI stocks are going to be doing a lot better now that the Stargain announcement was made. So. And like I said, I think it may bode very well for AI infrastructure, stocks, you know, iOS energy being one of them. Should we increase our position in IS Energy considering the news or do you still consider it a risky play? It is a risky play. I don't think the two necessarily are mutually exclusive. It is a risky play. I would say that, you know, check our buy below, sell above prices. By the way, you should be noticing an improvement in performance on our platform, PIF, if you're interested. So there's a lot of improvements that are happening behind the scenes. So check that out. And our watch list is current for IOS Energy. So check out the buy below, sell above prices that we have on it. If you're not a PIF member yet, become a premium member. Link to do so is in the description. If you'd like access to our course, become an elite member. And like the life if you enjoy these lives. Until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. As-salamu alaykum and peace be upon you all.