2451 FBF: Jawad Mian – Global Macro & Middle East investments, Stray Reflections

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Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slang Bent on Investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self-made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer, and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show, episode 646. 646. This is your host, Jason Hartman. Thank you so much for joining me today. I literally just returned from Salt Lake City where yesterday we had our Jason Hartman JHU Live. Not a real university, real life. And guess what? It won't cost you $200,000 either, and you don't have to get any financing for my university. It's kind of a play on the whole university theme, which is highly overpriced, and I'd say mostly overrated for most people, but not all. You know, you get a real degree in a real science, something that has real value in the economy, then hey, that's worth it. But A lot of these things are just, just a waste of paper. You know, maybe I shouldn't be that pessimistic about liberal arts degrees, but whatever. Anyway, I won't go into that. So our guest today will be Jawad Mia, returning. Yes, he is returning. He was on just over 200 episodes ago, way back, I believe, at episode number— I want to say 413 or something like that. Now we're at episode 646, and I'm glad to have him back. He's a super interesting guy. He runs a newsletter called Stray Reflections, and he's also working with another one of our guests who's been on a couple of times, John Mauldin, who's written at least one book out there. I think he wrote Code Red, wasn't that? I read that one last— well, about a year and a half ago, I think, when it came out. I think that was John Mauldin. Forgive me for not getting the name of his book right. Possibly, maybe I'm right. I think I am. But anyway, yeah, Jawad's got some really interesting outlooks on the economy. He came and met with our Venture Alliance Science Group, and he spoke to us for about 2 hours, and he was just fascinating. I, I think everybody in the group felt the same way when we were in Dubai. That was just a few weeks ago. Jawad was fascinating. I mean, he really had some, some interesting takes on the Middle East and, and what is going on there and the macro global economy. I really like studying and thinking about macro trends. There are many people out there who that call themselves economists and, and, and so forth, and they're constantly talking about these little micro things. The people in the stock market that talk about technical analysis or charting, the, the so-called chartist— chart and -ists at the end— chartist. Uh, can't say that quite right, I don't think. But anyway, they're out there and they're always looking at what's going on day to day and minute to minute. And I just think, uh, economics and, and stock market analysis and housing market analysis. It really loses tons of credibility when you try to predict these micro things. I am very much a macro economist when I look at things. I guess I got that back from my reading— well, maybe my macroeconomics class in college, but also back from my interest in my first, my first futurist many years ago, who I, by the way, mentioned and Not many people knew who I was talking about yesterday at— in Salt Lake City at JHU Live, and that is John Nesbitt. And he wrote the book Megatrends, which was a big-time bestseller way back in the day. Then he wrote a book called Megatrends 2000. And I used to subscribe to his newsletter in the '90s, and I thought it was very interesting. And John Nesbitt had a lot of interesting perspectives, and, and maybe that's how I came to love futurist and, and predicting the future and thinking about big macro trends in the economy and in technology and in the housing market and the big macro trends for real estate investors. Because I think you can be pretty accurate when you're looking at big macro trends. When you're trying to look at these little micro trends like, oh, what's the market in Memphis or San Diego or Indianapolis or Miami or LA gonna do next month? You're, you're just smoking crack. I don't think you can predict that kind of stuff on these micro trends. It's, it's, it's impossible to do. You know, what's the Dow and the S&P gonna do tomorrow? Give me a break. Good luck with that one. But big macro trends, they have a lot of credibility. You can really look and see and forecast and think about what this big thing in society, like the self-driving car, which he's so fond of talking about. I hope I'm not boring you with that that discussion, by the way. I hope I'm not overstating its importance. Certainly there are a zillion other major technologies we can talk about that are quite interesting too. And maybe that's what we'll do. Maybe I'll sort of mute my talk about the self-driving car and the autonomous vehicle for a little while because possibly have overplayed that discussion. So I admit I may have overplayed that one. So I still think it's gonna have a huge impact though, folks. I think, You ain't seen nothing yet, and you as real estate investors better be thinking about that in big, big ways. Okay, before we get back to Jawad, who's back on the show for the second time— well, we'll get to that— a couple announcements. Number one, check out hartmaneducation.com, hartmaneducation.com, and get yourself a copy of our Meet the Masters home study course. Audio and video versions, nicely presented at hartmaneducation.com. That's a great deal. No travel involved. You can watch repeatedly. Some good materials there. I suggest— this is my suggestion, maybe it ties in with the way I like to learn stuff too— I'm quite a fan of audiobooks. I discovered those many years ago at age 17 when I discovered Zig Ziglar and Dennis Waitley, who who changed my life in so many ways, and then later discovered Earl Nightingale and Jim Rohn. The spoken word is so, so much more powerful. There's so much more emotion than the written word. And that's maybe why I like Voxer so much. And it doesn't have to be Voxer, that just happens to be the medium of the day. But I do like the medium of voice. I like the medium of talking for so many reasons. And when you go to hartmaneducation.com you have the audio and the video versions.

Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason Hartman has handpicked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

So let me just share with you the way I like to learn new information. Many times, but not always, I first get the audiobook of something. I'll listen to the audio, and if it interests me and I want to drill down, then I will get the printed book. Now, maybe the printed book is a digitally printed book, so I'll, I'll sort of hedge that one. It might be the actual printed book, but I'm trying to be more digital, so it might be the Kindle book, right? And then I'll drill down and I'll really get into it because I want to visually see what they were talking about. And with the Meet the Masters home study course available at HartmanEducation.com, if you listen to the audio first— and the audio is portable, works in the car, works while you're walking the dog, works while you're at the gym working out, etc., etc.— it's portable. Then you can go back and you say, hey, you know, that speaker or Jason or whomever they were talking about something that I, I just want to see it visually. So you go back and you look at the video, and you can go right to that part and find it pretty easily there. And then you can get your visual reference as well and add another modality to your learning, the visual modality. So that's what we've tried to do there. HartmanEducation.com. Check that out, get yourself a copy. I think you'll really enjoy it when you get access to that course and enjoy that. And also Thank you all so much. For those of you who are newly expressing interest in the Venture Alliance Mastermind Group, a high-level mastermind group for real estate investors and people who want to discuss great business ideas too. We've got our next trip coming up. That will either be the last weekend of April or the first weekend of May, and it's going to be in a fascinating place. Not confirmed yet. No, Coco, I'm not going to spill the beans yet. A couple of our Venture Alliance members already know what I'm thinking though. One of them, Gary Pinkerton, who was there, he came out to JHU in Salt Lake City. Thanks Gary for traveling almost all the way across the country to come see us and bringing a couple of your clients and friends to that event. That was great to see you there and it was so great meeting so many new people at JHU Live. We'll have another event here in the near future, but nothing planned yet except Venture Alliance. So check out venturealliancemastermind.com, venturealliancemastermind.com, for more information there. And without further ado, let's get to Jawad Mia and see what's happening on the macro global economic and geopolitical front. All right, here we go. It's my pleasure to welcome a previous guest back to the show.

He was a fascinating guest before, and I think he will be again. It's Jawad Mia. He's an expert on Dubai, Qatar, and Middle East investments. He's the editor of SRAE Reflections monthly investment newsletter. He was one of our speakers in Dubai at our Venture Alliance Mastermind meeting, and it's great to have him back. Jawad, welcome.

How are you?

I'm good, Jason. Good to be back. How are you doing?

Good. Yeah.

Thank you for joining us again. Well, there are so many things going on in the investment market. Many people are saying, is there another shoe that's about to drop with the global economy, or are we in a recovery? We've seen oil prices just tumble. It's amazing. I don't know if anyone could see that coming the way it has. Take it wherever you want. Start wherever you like. What is your view of what's going on out there?

So there are lots of things happening on the macro front, uh, and we've discussed them in our newsletter. The biggest concern people have right now is that the Chinese economy is facing a hard landing and they're trying to devalue their currency to solve that problem. At the same time, you've got oil crashing and the related effects with bankruptcies and loan defaults in the shared energy space in the US. And adding to that is the worry that Fed is hiking at exactly the wrong time when risks globally are escalating. The way we look at it, um, the market narrative is extremely pessimistic right now. The way we analyze the China situation, we don't really see evidence of a hard landing, and the sort of coverage that we're seeing of the capital outflow situation doesn't make sense to us. The math just doesn't add up. So we actually think, um, looking at Chinese economy in Q4 Q4 stabilized. Q1 looks to be an improvement as well, and the outflows should lessen going forward. You know, a lot of this has got to do with the dollar bull market because as the dollar rallies, the reserves have come down naturally as an exchange rate effect. At the same time, you're seeing some Chinese companies paying back US dollar debt, which is actually quite healthy, not risky. And obviously, uh, there's speculation that Chinese will forcefully devalue to protect exports. And again, that's mistaken because even with their currency at an all-time high, their global share of exports, their market share of global exports, keeps rising. So I think people are overly bearish about Chinese prospects, and we look to— we beg to differ. Similarly, you know, oil is weak, but this is a supply-driven decline, not really a demand -driven decline. People are so used to thinking that higher oil prices mean growth is strong. So when you see a 70% decline, they automatically assume we're entering a recession, when that's just not true. And I think the market has consistently overestimated the default rate, and I think this will again prove to be the case. Usually when oil prices fall 50-60% in a year, faster growth follows in the next year. So we actually think 2016 growth will be quite decent, and it will surprise a lot of the pessimistic predictions at this point in time. So, you know, it's difficult to be overly bearish despite the way markets are acting right now.

I mean, I know you said at the beginning a lot of investors and the economists think that the Fed is tightening at the wrong time given what's going on out there. Do you agree with that? I mean, they've got to tighten it sometime. We can't be in this zero to negative interest rate environment for forever. It's been a long time. And not just the Fed, other central banks too.

No, I agree. So we've actually been proponents of the Fed rate hike. I think what they've done is a good thing. Monetary policy, frankly, has been exhausted. They've done all they could. But, you know, for the last 5 years, you know, when everybody talks about unprecedented monetary policy, it's remarkable how no one talks about how we've also had unprecedented fiscal tightening. So for the last 5 years, you pretty much just had extreme monetary policy acting as an offset to extremely tight fiscal policy. Going forward, that will no longer be the case because interest rates will remain low. Fed can normalize because household balance sheets are clean, are much better. Banks are much stronger. And interest rates are pretty low. And at the same time, 2016 is going to be, you know, seeing— we're going to be seeing the strongest fiscal stimulus since the financial crisis. So, you know, growth has been low because of these two forces acting in opposite directions. It won't be the same going forward. So I think the Fed needs to get out of the way and begin a normalization cycle. It makes no sense for interest rates to be where they are at this point in time. Jason's also recovering.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with the interest rate thing. It's just too much. I mean, so overall then, your view is pretty optimistic, right?

Yes. So the way we look at this is the dollar bull market, which began effectively in 2011, but really accelerated in 2014, is effectively distorting the macro picture. What I mean by that is because it affects data such as inflation, trade, people look at the nominal stuff and they assume that things are very bad. As an example, retail sales grew at 2%, which is the weakest since '09. But then they fail to account for the fact this has got to do with the nominal decline in gasoline prices, which is actually positive. So if you look at the real growth in consumer, consumer spending, it's actually over 3%. So that's not actually that bad. If you look at financial markets, you know, you could blame it on China, you could blame it on oil, you could blame it on anything you want. But frankly, whenever we've had a rate hiking cycle begin, you've seen financial markets panic and fret. To adjust to that new environment because markets have been so used to excessive liquidity in the past. They need to now rely and depend on growth, and the dollar is sort of distorting that growth perspective going forward. When you have the Fed hiking, two things happen. The forward P/E multiple compresses and the yield curve flattens. We are seeing the exact same thing right now. The forward P/E multiple has gone from 17 to 15. Typically, stocks correct 10%. We've gone down 15%, which is frankly fair given the delayed tightening we're seeing. The curve flattening, you know, is also in line with what past norms suggest. So we actually think this is nothing more than financial markets adjusting to a new rate hiking cycle. And as the dollar base effects and the energy base effects filter through, you're going to see earnings rise, manufacturing recover. Inflation normalize, and the year will look very different in 6 to 12 months from where it does today. And asset prices will go on to reflect that overall.

Then do you think the stock markets are going to be okay, or are they going to have a crash? It sounds like you think they're going to be okay.

No, as— yeah, so we think stocks will probably have a positive year despite being down 10% globally. We think we can actually finish the year positive.

Yeah, interesting. Jawad, I want to ask you about sort of 3— I want to make sure we cover sort of 3 major categories in addition to what we've discussed already. And maybe you can take your pick out of these. I want to hear about the real estate market in Dubai, what's going on there. I mean, that's been one of these sort of famous real estate markets when you look at the global picture. And also, all of the, all of the stimulus that has happened over the last several years, all of the money creation, do you think that's going to turn into into an inflationary cycle ultimately. It's been very tame. And obviously when you have such low oil prices, that helps keep it tame. And then the other thing is something that I don't know if you even cover in Straight Reflections or not. That is this tremendous move that we are in the thick of now in terms of robotics and automation. It seems like there's a sort of a If you were looking at a graph, it would be a hockey stick with what's going on with technology right now and the, the self-driving car, all of these things that could displace a lot of people. I've been reading articles about by 2020, just 4 short years away, millions and millions of people will be displaced by this technology and that technology. This has always happened throughout history, of course, but I don't know. Is it different this time? These technologies are so much more powerful than they've ever been. We're not talking about the steam engine here. But I don't know, it's hard to predict this stuff. So those are kind of 3 areas I'd like to make sure we cover in this talk.

Sure. So to begin with Dubai, you know, we've seen literally from a macro perspective a perfect storm over the last 18 months. Oil is down 70%. The main tourism spots are the main visitors for tourism, you know, Europeans, British, Asia particularly, we're seeing their currencies go down considerably. So, you know, you should see naturally oil prices going down and— sorry, real estate prices going down. And we've seen real estate prices correct about 30-35%, and this is depending on which areas naturally. But on average, you could say real estate prices have fallen 35% over the last 18 months. You know, considering stock markets are down more than that, you know, it seems quite reasonable. You know, but as a resident here, as someone who's born and raised here, I can tell you it doesn't really feel like a perfect crisis when you go out on the streets. I mean, restaurants are so busy, malls are so busy. If you go downtown where the tallest building in the world is, Burj Khalifa, on a weekday you'll see so much tourists So it's sort of fascinating for me to see such a macro storm, but when you look at stuff on the ground, visitors are still growing and tourism is still booming. So it's interesting. And at the same time, from a real estate market, another interesting thing for investors is that even though real estate prices have fallen 30-35%, rents have only gone down like 10-15%. So it's, you know, so you've actually seen quite a significant improvement in yield, which makes it an interesting opportunity for buyers.

I'm so glad you mentioned that because that's the exact cycle that happens pretty much worldwide. It certainly happens that way in the US. Prices go up very quickly sometimes and the rents lag, and so investors become priced out of the market when they look at the rent-to-value ratios. And ideally, we try to get, for US markets, good US markets that make sense, not the high-flying cyclical markets, but the, the good linear solid markets, we try to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 1% per month in terms of rent-to-value ratio. And the same thing happens in reverse. When the market goes down, the prices can fall faster than the rents. The rents are far more stable, and that's why cash flow is is pretty reliable because, you know, rents are set up on 1-year leases. They have a much more imperfect market. I don't know how you keep sales comps and that kind of data in the UAE, but in the US it's pretty good. And that's one of the nice things for real estate investors here is there's good data around the world. It's far more fragmented. At least that's what I've noticed. But yeah, that's a great point. I'm really glad you mentioned that. So the yields are actually improving from a rent-to-value ratio perspective versus prices. So prices down 34%, rents down— or 35%, you said— and rents down, what you said, 10 to 15%, I believe?

Yeah, around 10 to 15%. Again, it depends on the area, but, you know, the areas where you'd want to buy naturally would be where there's the most demand and, you know, the values will recover quickly. Over there, you're seeing very little significant pullback in rental prices. So it's interesting. For me, I think, again, you want to buy when things are weak and sentiment is poor. And I can't imagine a worse storm in terms of financially speaking and macro politically speaking than what we're seeing right now in Dubai. But this is the time to buy. The time to be contrarian.

Well, yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so we'll wrap up on the real estate market here in a moment, but can you give us an example of a property that an investor might be attracted to in Dubai? You know, like, how much does it cost? What does it rent for? And what is it? Is it a single-family home? Is it a condo?

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have specifics for you. I can tell you the locations which are interesting, and I think the downtown area is interesting where you have the Dubai Mall and you've got the Burj Khalifa. You know, that area is going to see some more buildings come up, but the, the stronger developers have some pretty solid properties and you should see them retain value. If you're looking at a 1-bedroom, for example, I would imagine it would go for something around, let's say, $600,000 to $700,000 right now, uh, in a depressed, uh, sale, for example. Okay.

And before, before you answer, I'm just, I just want to take a guess if I may. So $600,000 to $700,000 for a one-bedroom, and that's, that's going to be a condo, right?

Yes.

Okay.

So that'll be a one-bedroom condo and it'll be brand new or newer, probably. Oh, everything's newer in Dubai.

It'll be like 12 years old. 10 years old, 8 years old, in that range.

And so I'm going to guess that that property will rent for maybe $3,500 to $4,000 per month. Yeah, I mean, we're doing the US conversion obviously too. So what will that rent for?

Do you have an idea?

That would nowadays probably rent for at least $35,000, $40,000 a year. Yeah. So around that area.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Interesting.

It's amazing how these ratios really just hold up worldwide. You can be in Paris, you can be in Dubai, you can be in New York, London, and the ratios are pretty reliable. You can just kind of tell, which is really interesting. Well, anything else you'd like us to know about the real estate market there?

No, I think that pretty much covers it. I just think, I mean, again, this is for sure, you know, I mean, again, my family's been here for a very long time, so we've seen different real estate cycles and we've seen, you know, the different war cycles. Like every decade you've got some sort of unrest politically within the region. And historically that's just been a time where you want to accumulate assets, right? So frankly, you know, it makes sense. You know, there's nothing more to add. Like you just come down here and look at the different, Options, frankly, I think— and you know, the other interesting point I'll make is unlike what you'll see in the developed world where you'll have to rely on monthly payments from the borrower or from the rent or the lease from the lessee, here you usually get paid in lump sum or in 2 checks or in like 4 checks. So there's even less risk, I should say, in terms of securing payment in many ways. That's how it— that's just the culture, I guess, and the demand where the borrower has less power than the renter, and the renter can demand payment in a quicker fashion.

You mean the owner, the investor, right?

Has more power.

The owner, sorry, yeah.

Right, yeah. Interesting.

Okay. Yeah.

Very interesting point. Very interesting.

Well, good stuff.

Do you want to take the money creation issue next as we start to wrap up here? And just, you know, I mean, a lot of money has been created out of thin air all around the world. I mean, Japan is even talking about more stimulus now. It's amazing. I mean, Milton Friedman and Hayek, they must be rolling over in their graves, you know, this money creation. Even Keynes might be. It might even surprise him.

Yeah, I mean, it's been an extreme time for monetary policy globally. I think a lot of people have, you know, a lot of people have frankly really misunderstood the purpose of QE. And they've tried to see the effects of QE in inflation and in growth. And because they don't see it in both, they think QE has failed. Frankly, you know, and we wrote about this in a very lengthy issue in December, frankly QE's goal was not any of this. QE's goal was to one, rescue the banks, provide a backstop. Banks are much healthier. And at the same time, help consumers delever. And consumers have deleveraged to a large extent. Consumption is running at 3%. Keep in mind savings rates at 5%. That's extremely healthy. Lastly, the QE's function was to, you know, silently monetize the debt. What I mean by that is, as in Japan, for example, the more government debt the central bank owns, effectively that debt has disappeared because any interest payments that are made are going to go back to the government. As profits. And at the same time, you're going to see the debt-to-GDP ratio, if you have to adjust it for the central bank ownership of government bonds. If you do this globally, for example, if you look at the ownership that the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the Fed own of government securities, and you adjust that with the total debt, you're actually going to see, despite global debt levels rising or total debt levels rising, the debt-to-GDP ratio has actually gone down because central banks are accumulating all that debt. And effectively, once they do that, it's a write-off because the principal will continue to be refinanced. We don't think the balance sheet size will ever be reduced. It'll be— it'll remain constant. So that was the goal. So effectively, they've allowed another re-leveraging of the economy, which means, uh, contrary to what most people think, that debt levels are too high. Debt levels can rise further and governments can sustain higher deficits for longer. So I think this is an important thing to recognize that most people don't really understand and it'll take time for people to figure out. The other thing I'd say is, to your point, technology is having a massive shift.

One more question before you go into technology. So, so just one quick question there on what you said about the debt levels. Do you see an inflationary future?

No, I don't. And that was my point, because I think, one, if you look at the history of inflation, it's mostly been a result of war or a massive shock where commodities are just ripped higher. We don't see wars— actually, we can't forecast war. But at the same time, we don't— we think we're in a commodity secular bear market. Which basically means, you know, think about this, 2011, before 2011, before the crisis, you had headline inflation higher than core inflation for many years. Now, for the next many, many years, you're going to see headline inflation below core inflation. What was a tax to growth will become a stimulus to growth. So with commodities deflating, it's very difficult to imagine inflation running higher. So we don't see commodity inflation rising. At the same time, you know, consumer and service inflation will be around 2-3%, not higher, because of structural factors too, right? Because we've got aging demographics, you've got the technology transformation that's happening globally. So while we don't think we're fated for a deflationary outcome, we also don't think we're fated for an inflationary outcome. So most likely you're going to see low growth. Low inflation, but people are gonna confuse this because even though the numbers suggest 2% growth and 2% inflation, there's lots of change happening in the economy, and you mentioned robotics as an example, but Silicon Valley, you know, itself, we're in an environment where there's low GDP but there's high change. So if you just look at the numbers, you feel, yuck, we're in a secular stagnation, Frankly, I believe we're in a secular innovation cycle, and the future looks brighter than what people currently perceive.

That's a great way to put it, but what about technology and unemployment?

Is that a problem?

I would again refer to history, and they've always been concerned around these massive economic shifts. You know, again, when technology was sort of displacing the agricultural sector, there were similar worries, right? And you pointed to it. There were similar worries that we're gonna have so many people jobless, it's going to create riots and we're going to fall into a crisis. But naturally, you know, the economy is not static. It evolves and adapts and people evolve and adapt and things turn out to be okay. You know, as an example, just look at oil. In 2002, if somebody would have told you that oil is going to be at $100 when it was sitting at $25 at that time, you would have thought that we're going to be in a depression. Instead, the world economy was fine because consumer behaviors adapt, learning changes, and technologies adapt. Similarly, I think going forward, given the demographic shifts, in a way we're reaching an environment where working age population is declining. So maybe, if you look at Japan for example, maybe less jobs created is not such a bad thing. Let's say you get more technological transfers where robotics have become more important because frankly you're really running out of a labor force. You know, so, but having said that, I don't think it's gonna be, it's difficult to predict, difficult to forecast, but I think just like everything evolves, it'll evolve in fits and starts, but I don't see a major crisis because of the technological transfers. The key to watch is not employment, it's just to watch the disruption and that's been so key. The way Airbnb, Uber have disrupted different industries, you know, Google, Apple, all these different companies are innovating at such a large scale where the future is going to look very different from the present. And I don't think it's gonna be all that bad.

Right, yeah, that's fascinating.

You know, I always say it's an amazing time to be alive, and it seems like we are at a point where technology is technology is just— it is on the verge of just massively amazing us even more than it already has. The sharing economy, just everything. It's so incredible. It really is. Jawad, please give out your website and tell the listeners where they can find out more.

So Stray Reflections is basically an investment newsletter. We have partnered with Maldon Economics, so they can actually just go to Maldon Economics website and look for us over there. And, um, that's about it.

We've had John on the show, John Maldon, a couple times.

Yeah, yeah, wonderful guy.

Absolutely.

So, so they go to maldoneconomics.com to find your newsletter?

Yeah, fantastic.

Yeah, so they can just go to that website and they'll get more information about what we do, what we write. We've had a good year, um, last year our portfolio is up 12%. And what we focus on is basically coming up with major investment themes and giving out, you know, trade ideas. And hopefully, working together, we can, you know, sort of navigate and help people understand where the world is going.

Excellent, excellent.

Well, it's been great having you on the show again.

I look forward to seeing you in Dubai. Of course, I will meet you in Dubai before this show airs, but—

so that'll be kind of interesting.

And we look forward to having you talk to our Venture Alliance group there, and thank you for doing that. Thanks for joining us, Jawad.

Absolute pleasure, Jason. Take care.

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If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month just like a banker, Jason's Creating Wealth Encyclopedia series is for you. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, all rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email media@hartmanmedia.com. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of HartmanMedia.com exclusively.