Assalamu alaikum, folks. I hope you are doing well. Today is Monday, April twenty first and was a tough day in the market. It seems the only thing that was up was the VIX index, which is not something that you want to see up. And we were off fifteen percent. That being said, if you look at where we are on the VIX, we're at thirty three. Are we peaked at around sixty? So we're well off the highs. Still, we are elevated levels. That's to be sure. And the direction today was not positive. If you look at the indices, they were all down. Everything is down. Even the US dollar is down. So dollar is down another one percent. We're now at ninety eight. We haven't been here in a long time. Russell is down two percent. Dow Jones is down two and a half. S&P two and a half. NASDAQ two and a half. Everything else is in red except for silver, gold, oil. by small amounts, but still up nonetheless. And Bitcoin. Oh, and Dogecoin as well. So really hard assets are what did well, and I suspect they will continue to do well as uncertainty continues to engulf the market. So what I want to talk to you guys today is about some tools for the road, some things to take with you. While we are on this journey. Hi, Onigate. Nice to see you. No, you didn't miss the initial few minutes. And, oh, by the way, you can always watch on YouTube from the start. This is what we look like today. It looks like, I don't know, maybe the Chinese flag. No pun intended. But it was pretty red today. The administration really can't do anything, right? The vice president went and saw the Pope, and seven hours later, the Pope died. So this is familiar with J.D. Vance. Suspect cause of death may have been suicide. So I laid out the bull case for markets as I see it on our X profile. My bull case for the market is that inflation falls and we're actually seeing that in the true inflation number. However, obviously, we have the speed bump coming up, which are the tariffs. But if major global tariffs are significantly reduced, we start hearing deals being done. The Fed has an opportunity to cut rates in the second quarter, quantitative tightening. ends fully in q-two global liquidity expands sharply heading into year end and a broad asset bull market begins in q-two peaks in q-four twenty twenty-five as inflation pressures gradually return now if you look at the liquidity picture globally you can see that china liquidity japan liquidity eu liquidity it's all going upwards what is left is the United States. And if you look at the probability for United States rate cut, they are the highest I've seen them for the June meeting. Right now, pricing in close to an eighty percent chance that we get a rate cut in June. So that's good. feeds into the bull case that I relayed. However, this is not the only scenario here, and it's very unclear where things are going. I don't think anyone knows. If tariff deals are not reached quickly, This is going to cause, as I mentioned, inflation. That being said, some are saying the inflation is just a one-time shot. It will go up by the percentage of the tariffs. But I do think that there may be second, third, fourth order impacts from these tariffs that may sustain inflation and cause it to spiral, actually. In that case, the Fed would be forced to keep rates where they are and even consider raising rates, depending on how acute the inflation problem is. We'll have slower growth, obviously, because there's sand in the cogs, basically, of the global economy in the form of tariffs. The US will struggle to refinance its debt because as inflation increases, people don't want to hold debt of a currency that is inflating that is losing purchasing power in a big way so they'll have to be compensated with higher and higher rates obviously foreign holders aren't going to be that happy with the united states and the way they were treated The Fed will have to step in and buy government bonds in order to continue to fund the government. And that would cause more liquidity to enter the market. Inflation could spiral even further. The dollar may lose its World Reserve status, although that takes a while to happen. But we could be solidly on that path. And then this will lead to even higher borrowing costs for the government, which means more austerity. More debt servicing payments, larger payments need to be made by the government. A greater percentage of the overall income of the country goes to these debt service payments and the country starts to become poorer and poorer and the debt spiral intensifies. This is the bear case scenario. And if you look at the odds of a U.S. recession in twenty twenty five, they're at fifty seven percent, which is very high. I mean, we started the year off less than twenty percent. Now we're at fifty seven percent. So not really good. Doesn't really speak well to the policies that this administration has put in place and the ideas that the administration has had since they've gotten in power. It's done, I think, a terrible job. by any metric. Now, here are some tools for the road that I think it's important to remember during these times. I don't know if it's going to go one way or the other. I laid out for you two scenarios, and they kind of seem both probable, although I would favor the bullish scenario a bit more than the bearish scenario. That being said, for this period of time, what I would absolutely do as an investor, make sure that you don't have any outstanding debt, right? Especially if it's interest-bearing, you shouldn't have that in the first place. But you need to pay off any outstanding debt. Make sure that your balance sheet is a strong one, your personal balance sheet I'm talking about. Obviously, you want to be cautious with smaller, more vulnerable companies. So smaller companies, they have less depth in their balance sheets. They have less ability to deal with price hikes, tariffs, slowdowns in the economy. The bigger companies are the ones that eat the smaller companies in these times of recession. and stagflation and really only the best in each industry end up surviving. So you may see a lot of consolidation with smaller companies basically going out of business. So it's very important for you during this period of time to focus on your highest conviction picks. So you know how on our PIF watch list, we have a column for upside potential, a column for conviction level. I would prioritize the names at the top of the conviction level column. When you sort by that column, the names at the top, that's what I would prioritize. And this is my personal opinion. Now is not the time to go all in. It's a good time to nibble. There are a lot of great deals out there. So it's a good time to nibble. But there could be more pain ahead. And so I wouldn't necessarily be backing up the truck on any one name at this point. But at the same time, I wouldn't stop buying either. I would stick to the plan because these things can reverse very quickly. The president can come out with a tweet that changes investor sentiment in a hurry and all of a sudden the prices available today aren't available anymore. And don't panic sell. There's a lot of people that are pushing a doom and gloom narrative. The world is coming to an end. The end of history is upon us. I don't really think that one should subscribe to these extra gloomy views of the current situation. I think it's never as good, never as bad as sometimes thought. it may seem, and therefore I don't think panic is warranted. I would not be panic selling anything. And I do think that eventually we're going to get to a better place than we ever were. And that, you know, this is not the end of history. And things will recover. It may be a bumpy road. We may have to exercise a lot of patience along the way. But I think sticking to your plan, making sure you're prioritizing highest conviction names first will put you in a better position later on than if this whole volatility episode didn't happen in the first place. So with that being said, let's go to questions very quickly. Renegade, assalamualaikum. I'm glad you were able to join us, Renegade. Assalamualaikum. I only have access to mutual funds in my retirement account. I want exposure to gold. How can I examine these gold mutual funds to check if they're halal? Just make sure that the ETF is holding physical gold. So your shares in the ETF represent ownership interest in physical gold. That's the biggest thing. You don't want to invest in an ETF that is holding derivatives of gold. financial instruments that follow the price of gold. You want actual gold in vaults being held by the ETF or some other third-party service the ETF is using. But the shares of the ETF represent ownership in that physical gold. That's the most important thing. Can you please talk about Nvidia? I think Nvidia is a fantastic company. I would have invested in it, but it has, I think, too much association with SRE, and I don't want to get involved. But it's a fantastic company, and I actually think its valuation is quite reasonable at today's prices. If there's a recession, in your opinion, how long will it last? I don't think it will last more than, I mean, typically these things sort themselves out in four to six months. So I don't think it will last more than that. Why did the market sell off so hard? I think obviously the comments about Powell last week. By the way, I should say this because I've seen a lot of YouTubers and they're kind of piling on. Powell and I think one of the reasons is they don't want to appear you know criticizing the current administration because there are a lot of fans of the current administration but I don't really think like that I think Powell is doing a as good a job as you can expect from someone in his position. He's dealing with something that no one saw coming. And before this, before Liberation Day, things were moving in the right direction. We had a strong economy, we had inflation that was falling, and we had employment That was very high, actually, record levels of employment. So I think Powell has done a fantastic job. And regardless of anything, whether you think he has done a good job or not, if he is replaced for political reasons, that's going to be so bad for the markets. Because then the markets will no longer have faith in the independence of the Fed. And that's very bad. And if he is moved for political reasons, he's fired somehow removed from his position. Then the person that is assigned his place will no longer have a dual mandate. They will have a single mandate. And that is to follow instructions from the administration, which is not a healthy position that we want to be in. Uh, PRC. He has dropped from forty to under fifteen with drugs getting approval. Okay, this is commentary on specific stock. With all of us having lost in our investments, Macs have been losing a big chunk of their value in billions of dollars. Why are their CEOs and economic investors coming out and saying something? Oh, well, I'm assuming you said, why aren't there CEOs coming out? Well, I think that, you know, kind of like the YouTubers, they don't want to appear, you know, anti-administration. And so I think a lot of CEOs have gone the route of trying to appease the administration as much as possible instead of confronting it. uh tech is still overbought says michael anthony I think it depends on the company I actually think as I mentioned nvidia is a good deal here you still think the fundamentals are not going to be disrupted by the current government video getting it by non-explanations It's very tough to, I mean, the longer this goes, the longer these tariffs go, the more destruction they cause. And the harder it's going to be to revert tariffs. the damage that's been done. And so it's very tough. I seldom remember a period of time in the markets where things had this low visibility. There's... I mean, basically anything could happen. And therefore, it's very important to be very nimble on your feet and just remember these tools for the road. Make sure you pay off your outstanding debt. Have a cash cushion. Be cautious with smaller. You know, you shouldn't be chasing necessarily upside potential at this point. You should be chasing solid investments that are going to weather the storm and Focus on your highest conviction investments. Now is not the time, I don't think, to go all in. As always, it's not financial advice. Do what you want. But this is how I'm thinking about it. And don't panic sell. Those are things that I remind myself and I remind you of. And nice to see you, Mohamed Saad. And it is my pleasure. I appreciate it. your appreciation for my efforts. And do leave a like. Kind of been lagging, slacking on the likes as of late. So I really appreciate if you did leave a like. If you haven't become a PIF member yet, now is the time to learn investing and join our halal conscious community as we set ourselves up for financial success, inshallah. Till next time, make sure to take care of yourself. Assalamualaikum and peace be upon you all.