As-salamu alaykum everyone. I have a very nice image to show you. We got a green day today. Everything is up. What's going on? Is this a reversal? Have we finally bottomed out and now onto recovery? Well, I'll talk about that question in this live, and we will talk about some of the metrics that we can use to try and gauge where we are in the economic cycle, whether we are approaching a recession or not. Before I get started, make sure to leave a like if you enjoy these lives and you appreciate the information in them. That would be much appreciated. and Jamal Mubarak to everyone. Today is Friday, March fourteenth. Something that caught my eye is a note about gold and how it has reached its basically an all time high and the fact that this should be followed by Bitcoin. And I wanted to test out that theory and see, is this correct? Is there a strong correlation between gold and Bitcoin so that If gold is reaching its all time high, we can reasonably expect Bitcoin to do the same soon. Well, if you look at Bitcoin and the price of Bitcoin, this is in percentage terms over the last five years. If you look at the price of Bitcoin, and you look at the price of gold obviously the price of bitcoin has gone up a lot more but if you look at the correlation that's the oscillating blue line at the bottom here if you look at this correlation basically a correlation of zero means there is no correlation at all they're just completely random a correlation of one means that they move in the same direction exactly in lockstep. That's the strongest correlation you can have. A correlation of negative one means that they move in opposite directions exactly in lockstep. What you can see here is that really there is no correlation. Sometimes it's very positive, sometimes it's very negative. But to say very convincingly that a move in one is going to be followed by a move in the other, I don't think the data bears that out. In fact, I think You could argue that Bitcoin is a risk-on asset and has remained a risk-on asset, even though it is advertised as digital gold. But it has remained and acted as a risk-on asset for a very long time. And gold has remained a risk-off asset for a very long time. So with that being said, do I think that Bitcoin will... So the... The summarized version of my take on that thesis, that gold hit an all-time high, therefore Bitcoin should follow, my summary reaction to that is that actually the two aren't related at all. And you can see the correlation is basically close to zero. So I would not necessarily agree with that. That being said, considering that they're not related at all, almost, One can say that just because gold reached an all time high, it doesn't mean that Bitcoin, you can't really conclude anything about what Bitcoin is going to do. So to try and figure out what Bitcoin is going to do, it's much more useful to look at something like the MVRVZ score, which I like to look at a lot on this channel, to look at stock to flow or income to flow as well. But looking at the price of gold, the movement of gold, very poor way to predict the movement of Bitcoin. Now, with that being said, let's take note of what the indices did today. So the VIX was down eleven percent. So it does seem like there's some movement on the government shutdown here in the United States. I don't think it's a done deal yet, but there is some movement. I think they have by midnight tonight to finalize everything. So I think it would be good if we can avoid a government shutdown. There's also news that perhaps some more business savvy minds are getting their voices in front of the president, including Elon Musk. So Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla have actually lobbied Trump. And this came out today. This is breaking news. Lobbied Trump. or at least his trade rep as of now on tariffs. And I'm sure if companies are lobbying the trade rep, I don't think it's far-fetched to think that maybe Elon Musk has a few words with the president about the tariffs and their impact, not just on imports, to the United States, but their impact on U.S. exporters and how much they're going to suffer because of retaliatory tariffs. So hopefully, you know, cooler heads prevail here and we can walk back some of the very tough rhetoric that the administration has been spearing as of late. Now, looking at some positive indicators, we can see MicroStrategy is up thirteen percent today. It has taken a beating as of late. It's still less than three hundred, nowhere near its highs, but it recovered some ground today. Tesla is up close to four percent. Bitdeer is up close to six percent. And Bitcoin is at eighty four thousand now. Dogecoin is at seventeen cents and Solana is up big. Solana is up to one hundred and thirty three dollars, up eight percent, still far removed from its highs that were north of two fifty, actually very close to three hundred. It's still less than half of its high, but nevertheless moving in the right direction. The big news that's going to come out of next week will be the March. Nineteenth meeting of the Fed. And in it, I do expect Jerome Powell to strike a very. Softer, much softer tone compared to previous meetings. And I do think that especially if the market capitulates between now and then or continues its downward trend, not even capitulate, but continues its downward trend, I think. Top of mind for the Fed chairman will be whether the wealth effect, the feeling that people have that they're a lot less wealthy is going to cause them to consume a lot less and cause the economy to slow as a result. So that's going to be top of mind for him. He'll probably want to reassure. Let's hope at least he'll probably want to reassure Investors that, hey, you know, if stuff hits the fan, we still have some tools at our disposal, namely cutting interest rates. And especially in light of the fact that we're nowhere near zero, we're still at four twenty five to four fifty basis points and. The inflation numbers that we got as of late have been encouraging, so we have some some wiggle room there. Now, the other thing top of mind for investors, other than the erratic behavior of this new administration, other than inflation, is the matter of recession. So I wanted to show you guys this chart. And this is basically looking at the difference between the ten-year treasury bond, which is considered zero risk, corporate bonds and at different rates of risk and so whenever the difference between the corporate yield the corporate bond yield and the treasury yield peaks this is usually an indication that Corporations are not in good shape. Obviously, they are a lot riskier and therefore their yields are, their investors are demanding a lot higher yields in order to lend them money. And this has typically been a good indication that we are approaching a recession. So if you look at The credit spreads that I just described, the difference between the corporate bonds and the treasury bonds, that peaked. We obviously had that in two thousand eight where it peaked. And we had that in two thousand two. All of these instances were followed by severe slowdowns in the economy. Now, if you look at something like where we are right now, so for example, if you look, if we went to the great financial crisis, the yield spread between this is the rating of the bond, BAA corporate and treasury bonds, that was six percent. If you look at where it is right now, it's actually near historical lows. It's at one point six two percent. So we still don't have a flashing red know recession warning that is coming from the credit spreads we don't have that as of yet and typically credit spreads credit spreads are actually a leading indicator uh with regards to recessions so even though I reported earlier uh this week that there were certain banks goldman sachs jp morgan that were all upping their recession probabilities even though that happened If you look at the, it's still less than likely that we get that recession. Even according to those banks, I think Goldman had it around a twenty five to thirty percent. JP Morgan had forty percent probability. If you look at the credit spreads, they're telling us that the that the probability is actually lower. And in fact, if you look at the implied probability of a U.S. recession, you look at what the credit markets are are pricing in if you look at high yield credit that's at nine percent high grade credit that's at twelve percent so that this is what they're pricing in the probability of recession is the s p is pricing in around thirty three percent and then if you look at something like the russell which is small cap stocks, that's pricing in something around fifty two percent. But I would argue that what is most important here are the credit spreads. Those are the most reliable, typically leading indicators for a recession. So with that being said, I think that. There is reason to be optimistic here with regards to. The. the positive move that we got in the market today, which was basically on the heels of headlines and not economic data. The economic data that is coming in is good. We got lower inflation, jobless claims haven't really gone up that much, although they are creeping up higher. If you look at corporate profitability, it's still healthy, which signals that perhaps their massive layoffs are not imminent. The economic picture looks decent. And the inflation picture looks decent. And if you look at other market indices, like the European indices and the Chinese markets, they're all doing well this year. It's only the US market that isn't doing well. And so the reason for this in my assessment is the headlines that are coming out of the White House. That's primarily the reason for that. So if cooler heads can prevail there and we walk back a lot of the a lot of the threats and the destructive, I think, policies that have been proposed, if we walk some of those back, I think we do have a lot of room to move up here. But it's very hard to predict in light of the erratic behavior from the White House. But so we'll see. I think fundamentally, there's reason to be optimistic. But if you look at, you know, who's who's driving the economy right now, who's driving the headlines in the country right now, you can't really be certain about any move. With that being said, we will continue to nibble away at these opportunities as they become available. And if you'd like to see what we're investing in, move for move and join our Halal Conscious Investing community and make sure to take advantage of the Ramadan discount that we have. The details and link to become a member are in the description of this live. With that being said, let's take some questions very quickly. Amir, if Trump does end up firing Powell, would that be good or bad for the market and interest rates? I certainly think it would not be. The headline that Powell is getting fired, it appears that the president may be able to do, would definitely unsettle markets in the near term. Longer term, it would sort of indicate that whoever comes in Powell's place will be very keen to cut interest rates since I'm assuming the reason why Powell gets fired is if he doesn't cut rates fast enough. It's certainly bad for the United States, I will tell you. Everything that's happening right now, it's pretty sad to see. I saw Mahmoud Khalil. Basically, it's like we're living in a dictatorship. He gets pulled from his house in the middle of the night without being charged with a crime. And so it's certainly sad to see what's happening here. I feel like the freedoms and the rule of law is being eroded in the United States. And I do think that there's a lot of reason why the president should not be able to influence the Fed policy. I don't think there should be a Fed anyway, but in light of, you know, the system that we have, it's very important that the Fed be able to make an independent decision. If the president ends up being able to fire the Fed chair, then that's going to really make the job of the Fed And focusing on the dual mandate much harder because instead of focusing on their dual mandate, their mandate becomes appeasing whoever's in power at the time, which is not a healthy situation. Assalamu alaikum. Started my investment journey one year ago, but it's very difficult to find good halal investment options in Germany. I see a handful of ETFs in my broker. Is S&P halal? Well, I wouldn't say all of S&P companies are halal. That's why we have our service brother. You should check it out. We do create our own portfolios and invest in only the things that we deem to be comfortable to invest in from a halal perspective. Salaam, Rashad. Nice to see you. Love the title, if it's real. I mean, there's reason for optimism for a reversal. Let me put it that way. Dr. Abbas, assalamu alaikum, brother. Regarding the sell-above prices, do you completely exit the position? I've actually changed the name of the sell-above prices exactly for that reason. It's now called Take Profits. So that should answer your question. That's the price at which I would start taking profits. I typically don't exit entirely in one false group unless I feel uncomfortable with the position. DA Salam, how can I renew my subscription earlier to take advantage of Ramadan discount? So I have to say that the discount is not necessarily intended for new, for recurring members, because I mean, the discount is intended to encourage new members who haven't really tried the service to try it out. But if you're renewing, then And hopefully you've gotten enough benefit that it kind of justifies itself. But for some people, they can't afford it, in which case I understand totally. The way to use the discount code would be to cancel your account and then re-sign up using the discount code. So that's what I'll say about that. Salam, brothers. Bittir seems to screen as not halal. Any more thoughts? Well, we don't use the Iofi method for screening, which looks at debt. We look at interest income and interest expense. And because interest is ultimately what is haram. It's not debt that is haram. It's interest that is haram. So... I don't think it makes sense for a company that maybe has less debt, but has a larger interest rate attached to that debt and is therefore paying more interest to be deemed comfortable to invest in. And a company that perhaps has more debt, but has a almost a zero percent interest rate on that debt to be deemed uncomfortable to invest in. So that suggests, I think, that our approach is the right one, not the one that looks at debt and makes decisions based on that. Yeah, guys, do leave a like. Appreciate the shout out, Rashad. Definitely leave a like on the live. If you enjoyed it, become a PIF member. Make sure to enjoy your weekend. And until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. Assalamualaikum and peace be upon you all.