Salaam alaikum, everyone. I hope you are doing well. Today is Tuesday, October twenty second, and Bitcoin is at just below sixty seven thousand. We are still waiting for the Israeli strike on Iran, which is causing some nervousness in the market and what happens after that. I do think that the most probable outcome is a limited in scale violent event. But hopefully that doesn't develop into something that is more akin to a full-on war. There's no guarantees what the outcome will be, but as I mentioned, I do think that the higher probability is in favor of a limited confrontation. Looking at the market today, Dow is pretty much flat, Nasdaq is flat, S&P is flat. The Russell It is down close to half a percentage point. The dollar index is flat. The VIX is up two point six one percent. Let's even call that flat as well. Tesla is down one percentage point. It is now at two sixteen. Now, if you do believe the. the betting markets and what they're assigning for in terms of probability for each candidate to win now have close to almost a sixty five percent chance of a Trump victory in November. I think that would be a catalyst for Tesla. Certainly, Elon has come out very in favor of Trump and a win for Trump may bring positive results. regulatory actions that help Tesla, or it may at least avert some adverse retaliatory actions against Tesla that would be made by Harris in the event of her winning and in the event of a Harris administration. NVIDIA is down a bit. Lithium, we did get a bit of a A bit of a bounce back there. So we have the lit ETF up one point three three percent. The Bitcoin miners are all down or the majority of them are down in response to Bitcoin pulling back a bit. PLL is up more than six percent. That's the company that I was telling you guys yesterday was very close to a price where I would consider picking up. Some shares, Enphase is up again, or I should say Enphase is up as well. Point three, two percent. Oklo is down. It took a retrace after having a monster week last week, up more than one hundred percent. And. TSM is down close to two percent. Looking at gold, it is up one percent. Silver is up three percent. Bitcoin, as we mentioned, just below sixty seven thousand doge, under fourteen cents and sold at one sixty six. All right. So in this live, what I'd like to cover is first, as it relates to. The Goldman Sachs report that came out that said we anticipate a decade of basically three percent average annual returns for the S&P. I think they're very wrong about that. And the reason why they are wrong is because the playbook to get out of the debt that the U.S. finds itself in, it's no secret the U.S. is in a very heavy debt burden at this point, especially when you compare it to GDP, to put it into context. Historically, we haven't been at these levels unless we were basically at war. And what's perhaps even more concerning is the fact that the direction seems to be upwards for that debt burden, even as it relates to GDP. So it will outpace GDP. And so the only way for the US to get out of this debt is to make the dollar worth less and therefore it's and that's sort of one way to reduce its debt burden in terms of purchasing power if you were going to translate that debt burden into purchasing power if you want to reduce that that burden you simply inflate the currency and so The smart money is not staying in cash. It's not staying in fiat. It's going to be everywhere but cash. Even... instruments like treasury bonds and bills are not going to be attractive because the inflation rate is going to be so high, which means that the money is going to be flowing towards risk assets like stocks and like other scarce assets. We'll listen to Paul Tudor Jones, who is a famous hedge fund investor. Has a very strong track record. We'll see what he has to say about this, which is virtually identical to what I've been telling you guys for a very long time. And I'll give you my reaction to it. So let's listen in. By the way, if you haven't left a like yet, do leave a like. Salaam to everyone. Salaam, Hamid. Salaam, Bagah. Salaam, Abdullah. It's nice to see you guys. So let us listen in. Investment Corporation. Of course, he is also the founder of the Robin Hood Foundation, which is hosting its annual investor conference in partnership with JP Morgan right here. That's going to begin tomorrow. And we're thrilled to have you on the program. So good to see you. We got to talk about a lot of things because we are now fourteen days away from the election. And I think everyone is trying to make sense of this market and where things are headed and where things are going. And maybe depending on who you think is going to win the presidency, how that's going to impact this. So where are we? Well, for me and in the hedge fund world, this is kind of the macro Super Bowl coming up on November fifth. And I think this one, you know, some elections are not that binary. This one is binary. not so much because of which candidate wins, but it's binary in the sense that what is the market's response going to be to either candidate if they win? And so we can either continue down the path we've been on, which I'm going to kind of frame here in a second, or we may have that point of recognition where all of a sudden the markets have different ideas than what the candidates have been espousing. So before you lay out where you think that piece of this, let me just ask you this. So Sandrock and Miller said that he's convinced by market indicators right now that Trump will win. And I'm curious if you agree with that thesis. Part of it is that he's looking at and the betting markets. Part of it is he's looking at the shares of DGT. Part of it is looking at Bitcoin. Yeah, certainly the markets are saying he's going to win. I think they're heavily skewed by Republicans, so I don't know if I necessarily believe the betting markets, but I don't have any great insights. I really don't. I just would be more skeptical of them than I would normally. It's the same way, look, in football betting, right? You can get a huge home bias where the line doesn't reflect reality. So, yeah, I know what they're saying and I respect them. But what about other investors? This is true. I do think that the betting markets may not a hundred percent reflect reality. The chances for each candidate, there may be some skewness there. That being said, I do think of all the sources that you can look at, perhaps the betting markets are the most reliable, considering that there's money behind them. Dan Loeb recently came out with a report to his investors saying that he's positioning or repositioning his portfolio around the thesis that former President Trump will become the president. And I have also, if I'm being honest, primarily because I see the polling numbers have clearly moved in this direction. You say also, meaning you have. And honestly, a Trump win would be a pretty big catalyst for Bitcoin. By the way, I think that there is a there is a there is a. There's a chance, a big chance that Bitcoin doesn't break out from its all time highs until after the election. But I do think that a Trump win in the elections will cause it to break through its all time highs in a relatively short period of time. You repositioned as if when President Trump wins. Yes. I've moved in that direction for sure. And what does that mean? It just means more inflation trades, which I'd love to get to. But I think it's really important that we frame where we are right now. And where we are is an incredible moment in U.S. history. And what I really want to talk about is the debt. By incredible, he means terrifying, by the way. trajectory that we're on. So we've gone in the space of twenty five short years from debt to GDP at the federal level from about forty percent to almost one hundred percent, sixty percent in twenty five years. And if you look at what our trajectory, what CBO projects our trajectory to be, as well as What we see is, and we're going to project further than the CBO. So I'm going to show you a chart. This is debt to GDP. So CBO says that we go from ninety eight to one twenty two, I think one twenty four. That's very conservative over the next ten years. If you extrapolate that thirty years, you get to two hundred percent debt to GDP. And so. that's that's something obviously something that that can't go by the way I think we'll reach two hundred percent that the gdp way way sooner than thirty years go on forever won't and the question is After this election, will there be some point of recognition, particularly with all the tax cuts that are being promised by both sides and the spending plans? I mean, they're handing out tax cuts like they're Mardi Gras beads, right? We're doing tax cuts on everything from tips to toucans. So it's crazy what's being promised. After the election, I think... the fact that you've got seven to eight percent budget deficits as far as the eye can see, the question is, will the markets allow either candidate? I think under Trump, the deficit goes up by five hundred billion per year. Under Harris's plan, it goes up by an additional six hundred billion plan per year. I have a feeling all those are just pipe dreams. I think the chances of any of those being enacted are- You mean that the tax cuts that they're putting on the table during the campaign- Those have zero chance of being enacted. I think the markets will, the debt markets for sure, the treasury market won't tolerate it. So- Why do you think that the treasury market continues to tolerate it now? Well, you know, it's so funny because... And yet, so here he's mentioning that he thinks the tax cuts that are being promised will not be passed. I think he's probably right to a large extent. They won't be passed because, you know, we can't afford it. In fact, regardless of who wins, if you look at the long-term trend here, it's going to be towards... the US government becoming more and more aggressive with its tax collection policy, which is not great. That being said, I do think the markets will be optimistic about tax cuts and their impact on the economy. post a Trump election win, and that may reflect itself in the markets for Q four of this year. Financial crises percolate for years, but they blow up in weeks. That's kind of the history of them, right? And so for me, this election becomes one of those seminal points where all of a sudden, hmm, let me really think whether this proposition that the US government is making me is something that I actually want to participate in. And I want to try to frame in layman's terms. Let's assume that I'm making a hundred thousand bucks a year. You've lent me, because we're such great friends, seven hundred thousand dollars. This analogy is very important to understand the extent of the debt problem in the United States. So it's worth listening to. What you've lent me. And I come to you and say, okay, Andrew, I'm going to pay all that back to you in thirty years. But between now and when I ultimately pay you back, I want to borrow forty thousand dollars every year for the next thirty years. And at the end of thirty years, I'm going to pay the whole thing back. Would you lend me that money? Unlikely. You son of a bitch. I thought you were my friend. Well, this is the problem that we have. OK, so that's actually the proposition that the U.S. government makes to every bondholder today. That's the exact same proposition. So think about this. We owe thirty five trillion. Our tax take is five trillion. So we owe seven times what our tax take will be this year. Our revenues will be this year and our debt. By the way, I mean, when you owe thirty five and you're getting five every, you know, your tax take is five as the US government and you owe thirty five. I mean, yes, one course of action would be to get more aggressive about your tax take and making sure you get every penny that you're owed and maybe increasing the amount that you're owed. raising taxes, that is. The other approach is this isn't... We have to find a completely fundamentally different approach to paying off this debt because we're not going to do it with taxes at all. So, I mean... What does it even matter if you collect, you know, four trillion versus five trillion if your entire debt burden is thirty five trillion and growing at at least two trillion a year? Deficit is two trillion and is two trillion right now as far as the eye can see. That is literally the proposition. That someone that the U.S. government is making to someone who buys a thirty year bond. I'm not disagree with you. The question is, life is relative. So some people would say. So this is the proposition that's being made to people who may be interested, investors who may be interested in the U.S. thirty year bond. So, you know, as per his analogy, someone who earns a hundred thousand is indebted with seven hundred thousand and is likely to add forty thousand every year for the next thirty years and is promising okay I'll pay back all my debt at the end of this uh thirty years I don't think many people are going to be interested in that and that means money is going to flow not into bonds as it has historically it's going to flow into everything else but bonds and and that means the prices of everything else in terms of us dollars is going to go up so I think goldman sachs is very wrong about their three percent average annualized return for the s p over the next ten years sorry that's just not going to happen sure you can either buy bonds from the us or you could buy bonds from some other country that has an even worse situation or you can not buy bonds at all. Exactly. People are just not going to buy bonds. So whatever asset allocations bonds used to command is just going to go primarily into equities. So anyway, I was watching this Vince McMahon documentary and in it, and I love wrestling, particularly when Stone Cold and Rock and all of them. So in it, there's a term that I never heard of called KFAB. And in wrestling parlance, that represents the unspoken, unwritten, tacit agreement between the wrestlers and the fans about the illusion that's going on in the ring, the suspension of disbelief that what's going on in the ring is actually, we know it's scripted and we know it's a performance, but they ask us to think it's genuine and real. And that's what you think this is? Yeah, we're in an economic K-fab right now. And it's not just the United States. We're in the UK and France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Japan being the biggest of all. It's this economic K-fab. And the question is, is after this election, Will we have a Minsky moment here in the United States and U.S. debt markets? Will we have a Minsky moment where all of a sudden there's a point of recognition that what's going to happen or what they're talking about is actually fiscally impossible, financially impossible? So are you betting on a Minsky moment? I am clearly not going to own any fixed income, and I'm going to be short the back end of fixed income because Yeah, so that's basically what I've been saying. Cash is trash over the long term. And I don't think Paul Tudor Jones is in the minority here in terms of not being invested in bonds, certainly over the long run, and looking at basically inflation protectors. one of those inflation protectors being Bitcoin. And that's why we Bitcoin, as they say. So, I mean, the price of Bitcoin is going to explode. The price of scarce assets is going to explode. The prices of risk assets are going to explode. Productive assets that generate dynamic cash flow is going to explode. So I really think now, perhaps more than any other time in history, It's absolutely essential to understand how to invest your money because keeping it in cash is just not an option that's going to turn out well for anyone. And we're already seeing this in terms of the percentage of people that hold stocks and that's increasing all the time. And it will continue to increase as fiat debases with time. All right, so the stock that I wanted to look at today in a deeper way is a stock that I used to hold and actually made some money on it called Upwork. And we're going to start here with a bit of context. So Upwork is a site wherein you can basically... Hire talent if you're looking for talent to do tasks for you. If you're looking for an administrative assistant or if you're looking for a designer or a website builder or something like that, you can go to Upwork and you can see profiles of talent there. You can hire someone and Upwork will take a cut from everything that you pay the talent. And their cut is ten percent, I believe, from everything that the talent earns. And they also charge the people who hire, they charge them a contract initiation fee. So when their contract starts, they have to pay an initiation fee. So this is basically the general business model for Upwork. And we are seeing a shift in a lot of these tasks that used to be outsourced to talent like what you find on Upwork. There is a race now between AI assistance, between AI companies in order to do increasingly complex tasks. And today even we saw Amazon backed Anthropic debut AI agents that can do complex tasks racing with open AI's Microsoft and Google. And XAI, we saw today they actually launched their API. So you can now integrate XAI into whatever application you're building. So this is going to, I think, reduce the need for a lot of the tasks that were previously done by humans and that Upwork used to charge a fee in order to provide a marketplace for. So reading here the key points, Anthropic, the Amazon-backed AI startup founded by former OpenAI research executives, announced artificial intelligence agents that can use a computer to complete complex tasks like a human would. AI agents are built for productivity and to complete multi-step complex tasks on a user's behalf. They're typically designed for specific business functions and can be customized on large AI models. So this is eating into the need for something like Upwork. And I think investors are looking ahead and seeing that this is, in fact, the case. Year-to-date, Upwork is down thirty percent. The question now is, is this justified? decrease in the price of Upwork. By the way, Upwork at one point, it was close to sixty dollars. And this was during the pandemic when people were working from home more. And I think people rightly expected services like Upwork and remote work to explode in terms of their popularity. And This reflected itself in Upwork's stock, but it seems like it completed the circle going from, you know, ten up to sixty and then back to ten again. So. So at current, the question we want to answer is, is it a bargain at current? How is the business doing? At current, it has a market cap of one point three three billion P.E. ratio of nineteen, which is not unreasonable at all. That's actually lower than the average P.E. ratio for S&P companies, which is at current north of twenty five, which is relatively expensive. But you're going to see that, I think. You're going to see the averages shift over time, as I mentioned, because there's going to be multiples expansion driven by people's desire not to be in cash or fixed cash instruments. So revenue in their last quarter was close to two hundred million. Net income was twenty two million. So that's a profit margin of close to ten percent. Nothing to write home about, really. And their cash and short term investments, five hundred million. So I don't think they're going to have a cash issue anytime soon. Their cash from operations is positive, close to forty million. They did generate some cash from investing. Net change in cash was one hundred and fifty million. But you can consider that a one off. What you really need to focus on is the free cash flow, which was close to thirty million. Now, if we are looking at the valuation for Upwork. The PEG ratio here is point five. So this is a very attractive PEG. So when you take the PE and compare it with the expected growth rate, it's point five. And I've mentioned before, anything less than one is a good valuation. Point five is excellent. All else, you know, being okay. So is this a bargain at this price? Price to sales is less than two. That's very attractive. The reason profit margin, as we mentioned, was at ten percent. Return on equity at twenty two percent in the trailing twelve months, that's that's not bad and. Does have more cash than it has debt, as per the most recent quarter, which is also good. So everything about the business seems relatively healthy and it's the valuation seems very reasonable the issue with Upwork so as I mentioned there's secular headwinds that the business has to deal with and I'm not saying it can't deal with But management really needs to be addressing this issue like its hair is on fire, like its life depends on it. Because AI is going to be reducing the number of jobs that need to be outsourced to humans. And their entire business model is based on jobs that can be outsourced to humans. So... The big red flag, and I'll cut with the suspense and just go directly to it. The big red flag in their most recent investor presentation is that the total amount of business that is done on their platform actually fell two point seven percent year over year. So this may be the canary in the coal mine, so to speak, telling us that there may be some there may be an adverse trend that is that is starting to happen here. Now, there are other positives that they like to refer to. So their take rate or basically what they're taking from the revenue that is being generated on their platform has increased. But that just means that they're becoming more expensive to the user. And there is a point at which they can't increase their take rate without decreasing revenue. the amount of customers interested in their service. And so I think they're pushing against this limit at current. Their free cash flow is fine. It's not something that I'm necessarily worried about right now. They had some positives in their second quarter highlights. So AI-related work went up sixty-seven percent. People offering AI related work, the demand for that went up sixty seven percent. So go figure. I mean, that's that's to be expected. Net income of twenty two million, as we mentioned. By the way, when you look at basically the bottom line, twenty two million in terms of net income, that's great. It's the highest ever. But keep in mind, this is a company that's valued above a billion dollars. So. Yeah, unless we can really bank on a very high growth rate, then the net income where it is right now doesn't really cut it. It did some share repurchases, which is good. And they say strong free cash flow generation. I wouldn't necessarily refer to it as strong, but it's decent. So you can sense this in their investor presentation. They are certainly aware of AI and what it means for the future of work. And I think they have it on their mind that they need to really adjust their business model to accommodate this new world. And if you look at their revenue, for example, is up. But again, this is because of the take rate going up. So they're charging more. They're taking more of every transaction. That's why revenue is up. It's not because more money was transacted on their platform. And that's really a necessary component for me to see before investing in a company like this. And so here they mentioned the take rate achieved an all-time high, which is another way of saying they are now the most expensive they've ever been. I mean, they previously didn't charge a contract initiation fee. Now they do. So that's one way to push up revenue is just to increase prices without increasing necessarily the number of users or the... or the ticket price or the number of transactions that are happening. But if you just raise the average price per transaction, you'll increase revenue. And that seems to be what has happened here. And in fact, if you look at active clients between Q one and Q two, we went down. So we went from eight seventy two to eight sixty eight. So that's not really great. So to summarize here, I think that if you took a snapshot of this company in its current state, looking at its financials, looking at its business generally, I think it's healthy. It's fine. But the question is, the big question is, how do they adapt to AI services making human work a lot of the human work that they offer on their marketplace less needed. How do they adapt to that? I haven't seen a clear vision by the company that's compelling enough put forth to let me think that this is a company that I need to be putting money in at this point. So that's my take on Upwork. I hope you found that useful. Obviously, I will keep you guys updated if my view changes. Let's take some questions. By the way, leave a like if you haven't already and join our community of Halal Conscious Investors. If you aren't a PIF member yet, link to do that is in the description. Thanks, Hamid, for encouraging people to leave a like. Appreciate that. Do I think today is a good day to buy Tesla? Well, you'll have to wait and see to see if you get a notification from me, Abdullah. Actually, I'll just let you know. Yeah, I do think today is a good day to buy Tesla. And, you know, in case you have to do something, I'll just let you know. I do think today is a good day. Dr. Baas says, can the hoarding of BTC by ETF large companies and countries allow them to control and manipulate its prices up and down? Yeah, it can allow them. And in fact, there is some manipulation going by ETFs. But this manipulation happens in sort of the day-to-day perhaps week-to-week prices of the asset, but the longer-term price and its trajectory can't really be manipulated in the same way that it can be in the near term. And so if the thesis holds for Bitcoin, and I believe it does, then the asset will do just fine and its trajectory is upwards. Hmm. I'm not sure I understand the question. Ali says, is taking soul haram? I've answered that previously. I'd rather not go into it right now. Sorry, Ali. Do you yourself still managing PIF ten years from now? God willing, of course. Yeah, I do think, inshallah, I will be. Salam, brother. Do you think the emergence of BRICS could bring down the hegemony of the dollar on the medium or long term? If so, could a focus on the U.S. market be detrimental on U.S. in the long run? So, yes, I do think that international opportunities are becoming more and more attractive. I do think still the United States has the most dynamic economy, most innovative economy, some of the best markets. companies in the world and it also has a pretty reliable regulatory regime that one can use when investing and rely on when investing so when you get the so even you know the best international companies will list on the nyse or the nasdaq and that's for good reason because it gives investors confidence so There's still a lot of meat left on the bone for a lot of U.S. listed companies, but I'm not against looking internationally and inshallah we will. Rashad says, how can we solve the issues that brought up in the video you showed us? Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. So I do think that we need to reduce the size of a government in a big way. I think that we need to spend less than what we take in over an extended period of time. That being said, it's very hard to implement something like that and remain popular. So typically, if you're going to implement something like that, you'll be voted out of office. So it's tough. I think the fundamental problem that the West faces is their acceptance of interest-bearing debt. This is the fundamental problem. And it's why Islam has prohibited interest-bearing debt. If you use interest bearing debt, eventually you'll go bankrupt. It starts out. It starts out. you know, relatively safe and responsible, but over enough of a time period ends up spiraling out of control and drives every country that uses it into bankruptcy. That's what we're seeing in the United States, which by the way, has a much better balance sheet, much better financial prospects than most other countries in the world. So I keep talking about, you know, US debt and how it's ballooning. Most countries, including China, have a worse problem on their hands because they too use interest-bearing debt, but they just have less dynamic economies than the U.S. does. So it's a tough spot to be in. I think the... the opportunity here is for Islam to make a very big contribution to the global economy and to economic systems and the way they operate. And so I think if we move towards an economic system that is based on prohibition of interest-bearing debt, it will be best for all of humanity. And I think that the way that the Prophet, peace be upon him, introduced the prohibition of interest-bearing debt is the way that the world should get rid of interest-bearing debt, which is to say, everyone who lent out principal, you have your principal back, but there's no more interest. So everyone who lent out money, your money will return to you, but there's no more collecting of interest. And that's the step that needs to be done. And then a prohibition of future use of interest paying debt. I think that can happen, inshallah. And I'm optimistic. As-salamu alaykum. I appreciate your work on Bitcoin. Great content. Well, thank you so much. Wa alaykum as-salam. And I appreciate you coming. And I don't mean to always sound sentimental, but honestly, these lives wouldn't be fun at all if it wasn't for the people who come. And I hope I'll never take that for granted. So really, thank you for coming. I appreciate it. Rashad says, what should we do as investors? We should own assets that we think will outpace inflation in terms of their value. And those assets are the most productive assets and the most scarce assets. The assets that are providing the most usefulness and the assets that have the most reliable scarcity to them. And so an obvious example of an asset that has a reliable scarcity to it, at least has stood the test of over a decade in time, would be Bitcoin. Wa alaikum salam wa rahmatullah. Euphorix, nice to see you. Guys, if you aren't a PIF member yet, do become a PIF member. It supports these live streams and a bunch of other features that we provide members. Do get this live to a hundred likes if you can. That would be great. Until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. Assalamu alaikum and peace be upon you all.