Assalamu alaikum everyone. I hope you are doing well. I'm back in the office and we had a pretty decent day today in the market. The VIX, which is what you're seeing on the screen, that's the volatility index. down more than seventeen percent, which is good, means that investors this means that volatility is down and by extension hopefully means that investors are feeling a bit less nervous about the uncertainty that the Trump administration artificially created Then introduced into the market and then walked back without having achieved anything except for instability and perhaps made a lot of money for option traders or lost a lot of money for option traders that were on the wrong side of the trade. If you look at the tenure, this is very important. The tenure is actually down today, two point five percent. This was, you know, the tenure and the thirty year were really what caused the Trump administration to cave. The yields were going up, which means bonds were getting cheaper. People were selling. A appreciation in bonds is actually very welcome by the market. the dollar has somewhat stabilized and down point one one percent today. But we can see that, you know, it's still it's still taken a pretty strong beating since the start of the year and we're now down below a hundred now this can be good for risk assets but it often would like a lot of things with in economics they often have you know two different sides to them the good thing about the dollar becoming cheaper is that It opens the door for other currencies to start printing more of their currency because they aren't afraid of their currency depreciating too much versus the dollar. It also makes us goods, us assets cheaper for foreign investors. And so that's good. Although a. Lack of confidence in the dollar will cause the yields to rise because people don't want to buy us debt. If the principal, by the time it is repaid, it's going to be worth a lot less than it is right now. So there's, there's different sides to the dollar weakening in the near term. I would say it's not bad for the markets. Now, if we look at the indices today, the Russell was up more than one percent. The Dow Jones was up point seven, eight percent. The S&P was up point seven, nine percent. Nasdaq was up a bit more than half a percentage point. So not anything to write home about, but at least it wasn't the bloodbath. And I really think the markets, at least in the near term, day to day, it's going to be basically a coin toss, whether they're green or red. It definitely will depend on, you know, what is the latest idea that Trump has. That's going to be a big thing. But at the same time, if it proves that kind of like the, the, Boy Who Cried Wolf, if it proves that every time Trump makes a big splash, he ends up walking back whatever he said, then maybe markets start ignoring the headlines or at least not assigning as much of a weight to them if the administration proves to be a lot of bark and very little bite. And I really think the United States lost a lot in the latest move by the administration. The administration would obviously disagree with that, but for the longest time, there was silent, unspoken leverage that the United States had over many of its trading partners. The trading partners understood, which is that the United States is a very essential trading partner to have, and And therefore, we want to make sure that we're on the good side of the United States. But now that the United States has, without any provocation, this administration has acted very erratically and threatened the livelihoods of many international companies, again, for no good reason, unprovoked. and many international partners and traditional allies have been basically treated as if they were enemies and the alliance never existed in the first place. A lot of these countries, even though in the short term they may try to appease the United States, but I know for certain that there are people in those countries, in those governments that are thinking longer term and thinking, This partner, the United States, is not reliable. They could leave us at any moment here. And therefore, let's try and forge stronger ties with some other countries that perhaps we've been neglecting or avoiding forging ties with out of fear of what the United States could do. Take, for example, Europe and China. Now there's some serious talks there to strengthen the ties between the European continent and China, because both the Europeans and the Chinese understand that the United States is not reliable. after what has transpired in recent weeks. And therefore, even though they may not like each other that much, they have to deal with each other and have a plan B. in place in case you know trump wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides to do something wacky and he will uh in the next few years that you can be certain of now let's look at the uh individual positions here tesla was almost dead flat. Bitdeer down one percentage point, IOS Energy up two percentage points, something like Enphase up five percent. But Enphase is a company that really has never recovered since its heydays back in twenty twenty one. when it was trading for, actually, it reached the point where it was trading above three hundred. Now it's trading at fifty dollars. It's a good company, but competition from the Chinese have really ate away at its profits and its growth and then had the whole supply where they had a glut in inventory that they had to work through for many quarters. And I still think it's a great company, great management, great technology. I have sort of the corner of my eye on it, but it is remarkable how long it has been since its recovery. That being said, I do think it probably... um will go higher from here it's like I said it's a solid company very well managed it's a good product a very high uh net promoter score and so yeah um it's a company that we'll be keeping an eye out on for sure uh bitcoin close to eighty five thousand solana's at one thirty doge's Right below. Sixteen cents. Ethereum. Is at sixteen hundred. So. Panelao is remembering. Twenty twenty one. I read this article. From this. Investment commenter. He was talking about. Ethereum. And he said. You know. Ethereum was on a roll. At that time. And. I think it was in the four thousands and he was like, it's, you know, basically a done deal before Ethereum is, you know, five thousand. It's going to happen next week or two. It's upon Allah and the market really will humble you. And yeah, five years later and it hasn't reached five thousand. In fact, it's below two thousand. So you can never be too sure of yourself when you're investing. All right, so let's talk about this topic of today, which is gold. Here's a... a look, a map of the winners and losers today in the market. VIX, as we saw, was down today, which is good, but still up year to date. Now, as the VIX or fear index grows higher, now people start to gravitate towards the risk off assets. If you look at the federal debt held by the public, it reached record levels basically we haven't seen since World War Two. In the United States, and when you project that out, it looks like from twenty twenty five to twenty thirty five, the debt held by the public will rise from one hundred percent of GDP to one hundred and close to one hundred and twenty percent, an amount greater than at any point in the country's history. So this is bad. This doesn't bode too well for the dollar longer term, certainly doesn't make it an appropriate saving asset. And this is why larger pools of money like central banks are ditching the dollar and buying gold instead. So if you look at the last twenty months, basically, the central banks of the world have been net buyers of gold. And the buying volumes, you can see that in the light blue, the selling volumes you can see in purple. And so it's not even close. buying versus selling. Central banks are stacking gold in a big way. And this is one of the reasons why, if you look at the last twelve months, gold has outperformed Bitcoin. And this is very unusual. This is very atypical. If you look at the history of returns on investment, go back one year, as I said, gold has outperformed, thirty five percent versus thirty one percent for Bitcoin. Now, that being said, they're pretty close, even though gold is higher, pretty close. If you go back two years, however, Bitcoin had a return on investment of one hundred eighty eight percent versus sixty one percent for gold. One hundred ten percent. If you go back three years versus sixty nine percent in a four year time span, the gold has outperformed eighty four percent versus thirty six percent. But five year time. time span, we go back to Bitcoin outperforming and by a very wide margin. So, eleven hundred percent for Bitcoin is the return on investment versus eighty four percent for gold. So definitely. And then if you go down this list, you can see the numbers for Bitcoin way higher than gold. Not even close. um and so looking at this one would wonder well why is gold outperforming in the last year typically bitcoin outperforms well I'll tell you why it's a very simple rule that um I have observed in the market and you can hold on to it as a good rule of thumb I think when in times of crisis gold is going to outperform. But then after the crisis, what happens is the money printer goes burr, as they say, and then Bitcoin leads. So time of crisis, gold is going to lead and then Dealing with the crisis, the aftermath of the crisis, that's when Bitcoin takes charge. And I think that that's what's going to play out this time around, too. Goldman Sachs sees the year end gold forecast at thirty seven hundred. Keep in mind, they're at thirty two hundred right now. So a good appreciation still, certainly better than what we've been experiencing in the S&P year to date, at least. but I don't think this is near what we may experience with Bitcoin. Bitcoin may double, I think by the end of the year, probably more than that. This is a very useful chart. So this shows a Bitcoin in the dark orange and then gold and well, gold. And so you can see that there is a lag here between, the line of gold and the line of Bitcoin. So typically gold goes first and then Bitcoin will follow. Oftentimes that lag may be substantial. So for example, between two thousand eighteen and two thousand and twenty, you see gold going up from By the way, these are different scales. So the scale for gold is on the right. The scale for Bitcoin is on the left. And so we went from below fifteen hundred for gold to above two thousand in that time period, whereas Bitcoin was basically flat. But then you see Bitcoin all of a sudden between twenty twenty, twenty twenty one going from below twenty thousand to above sixty thousand where it peaked for that cycle. And so sometimes the lag is long, but it comes and when it comes, it's pretty violent. And so I do think that this will hold. There will be a lag. Obviously, we already saw gold get started here. But I really think the asset, if we're looking at where the puck is going to be, the asset to be in is Bitcoin right now. And so, you know, I've been buying a lot of Bitcoin derivatives as of late, but I am tempted to just buy Bitcoin directly and I probably will. because I really think that its prices are pretty attractive at these levels. And then if you look at, if I were just to, obviously using Bitcoin scale, extrapolate the chart here and say Bitcoin, the orange line catches up with the gold line as it has, Bitcoin would be at a hundred and ten thousand. And so, you know, I don't know when this is going to happen, but I do think that it's going to happen within the next few months. And like I said, I think the return of Bitcoin by year end, you can remind me of this, by year end, Bitcoin will have returned more than gold. That's at least my projection where we are right now, because if you look at what's going on right now, obviously we saw the dollar becoming cheaper. Obviously, rates have to come down, which doesn't bode well for the strength of the dollar. And there's a lot more debt that needs to be issued. Doge, I'm talking about the department led by Elon Musk. They're saying they saved the hundred and fifty billion. I'm assuming the first one hundred and fifty billion saved is going to be harder to find than the next one hundred and fifty billion and so on and so forth. I mean, you start with the lowest hanging fruit and then the fruit get higher and higher and tougher, the tougher to pick. And so you're going to have diminishing returns per unit of effort in that department in terms of saving. So one hundred and fifty billion is not impressive at all when you take it into when you take into consideration how much the deficit is, which is right now at two trillion. And when you add to that the fact that it's expected or at least actually a year to date, if you look at twenty twenty five versus twenty twenty four, we've actually already spent or are on track to spending one hundred and fifty billion more than we spent last year. So the deficit is basically unchanged with the savings. And so this all bodes not well for the dollar. So it's very it's very. Obvious that investors are going to want to move towards something that is that can't be manipulated, an asset that can't be manipulated, that has a fixed supply, semi-fixed supply, and that can't be forged, it's not subject to the whims of a group of self-interested people, that is not the dollar. That is either gold, if you're looking for the physical form of a safe haven asset, or Bitcoin, if you're looking for the digital form of that. And so this seems like an obvious play here. As I said, I think in the time of crisis, which is where we have been, gold shines bright and then the aftermath of that and when the printer starts kicking off the money printer that is that's when bitcoin really takes the lead so I really do think that bitcoin is going to it's going to have its days months under the sun uh very soon here so Do with that what you may. Obviously, this is not financial advice. I hope it is useful, food for thought at least. Salamat, Brother Hamid. Lithium, it's very hard to predict, but it does seem like with the tension with China, China being the biggest producer of lithium, perhaps we will get a An appreciation in its price. Salaam alaikum, Rania. Nice to see you. Thank you, Rashad. Very nice to see you as well. Yeah, yeah. Salaamat. Debating buying gold instead of Bitcoin primarily because gold is mentioned in the Quran, so you know it will have long-term value. Problem is gold value all the time. Yeah, I like that thinking and I like both parts of that thinking. So I think gold will always be around as an asset that's relatively stable and preserves the purchasing power of investors. You're purchasing power, basically. But I also don't like buying the thing that's hot right now. Right now, the thing that's hot is gold. That's for sure. And you don't make much money when you're buying hot things because you've typically missed the move. I think what you want to do is look at where the puck is going to. And I think that if you look at charts like the one I have on screen, I think the puck is going to Bitcoin. And so... Taking advantage of the relatively modest dip that we got in Bitcoin. I mean, we're still at eighty five thousand, but taking advantage of this dip nonetheless, I think will will prove to be a smart idea. What should we invest in for Roth IRA? Well, if you'd like a consultation, take advantage of the link that I have in the description, brother. My humble observation, the market is quick to negative news, almost looking for a reason to pull back while showing much less enthusiasm for upward movement. So this is a good time to buy because, and my humble assessment, again, not financial advice, but when people are down on their luck and they aren't really that optimistic about the future, that's when you'll find the best opportunities. Nice to see you, Rania. Assalamu alaikum, Ines. It's my pleasure, Yahya. It's my pleasure. Thank you all for tuning in. Leave a like if you enjoyed this live and join our community if you haven't already. Until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. Assalamu alaikum and peace be upon you all.