Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
All right, thank you all for joining this webinar this evening. We appreciate you being on let me start with the top nine reasons why people should not time the market now, obviously this is a man made issue this particular time. Sometimes it's other issues, like when the pandemic occurred, that's a natural issue that occurred. So, you know, there's things that we can look at from the past, but missing the best days of the market is going to have a huge erroneous kind of thing happen to your to your portfolio. And that's not well said, but that's you. You get what I'm saying there. I'll give you an example. From 1928 to 2020 if you were invested in all of the days of the market, that's almost, you know, 90 something years, and you started with just $1,000 in the s and p5 100, you would have ended the year 2020 with $211,000 plus, if you would have missed just the five best days and the five worst days, you would end up with 198,000 so a little bit shy of the person that just stayed in if you would have missed the 10 best days and the 10 worst days, you would have ended up with 171,000 and then if you would have just missed the five best days, you would have been at 113,000 and if you would have missed the 10 best days, you would be at 74,000 so obviously you don't want to miss the best days. Nobody can predict the future. That's number two, even professional fund managers like what we have on today, are not able to, you know, time the market figure out what the bottom is, etc. And then number three is behavioral biases. Emotional investing will lead to bad timing, fear during downturns, greed during rallies. We see it all. These psychological traps will result in buying high and selling low. Number four would be timing requires two perfect decisions. You have to time it right when you're selling, and then you have to time it right when you're buying. There's long term trends, and they beat the short term move. So over time, markets trend upward despite the volatility and chaos that you might see during some parts of the trading month, day or year. So investors, who stay invested will tend to capture the long term growth, just like I mentioned at the at the start, number six is compounding. Will work best with time. So, you know, compounding is one of those things that will allow your portfolio to grow at an unbelievable rate over time. It's not going to work in a year or two years or three years. It takes time, and so interrupting that process slows your wealth building number seven markets. Market bottoms are invisible, and you'll see this not only in the stock market, but also the real estate market. By the time you realize that the market has hit the bottom, it's already usually rebounded, and then at that point it rebounds sharply, and you don't know when to get in, and you're thinking it's going to drop again, and you end up never getting in. Number eight is tax implications. Frequent in and out trading will trigger short term capital gains, and you don't want to have the tax consequences on top of selling at the wrong time and buying at the wrong time. And then number nine is just stressful and distracting. So you know, constantly watching the market and trying to make moves will cause unnecessary stress, and it distracts from your broader financial goals. So those are my top nine list of why you should not market time. Now, as I mentioned earlier, we are recording this call. We'll put it on our website. At some point, we would like for you to start asking questions, and I'll moderate that, and have our two guests here today, who work at Saturna capital and who manage our funds. I'll have them speak in just a minute. But you know, volatility will feel like turbulence on an airplane or any kind of, you know, uncomfortable situation that you're feeling, and that's why we have a large number of people that have joined us on this call today, because we don't know what to make of this. Right, as individual investors, we don't know what to make of this. So we need people to tell us about historical trends, what might be happening, what might happen in the future. And then additionally, we have people that have been investing for a long time, and you'll see them putting more money to work at this time. But then you'll see people that are just getting into the workforce, just starting to put money in, and they might be a little bit stressed out during this time. Time. So you're going to have people in all kinds of different places, emotionally, um, recent historical similarities are what we try to find in the market. And one that we found recently, obviously, it was just a few years ago, was in 2018 and 2019 but it was more limited. It was a minor trade war with China primarily, but also with some goods from Mexico and Canada and from Europe as well. So you know, our speakers can talk a little bit about that as well, and you can ask questions about that too. So what does it mean for mutual fund investors who have professionally managed accounts, right? Compared to somebody that's thinking about buying and selling on their own, you're in a good place if you have a professional money manager. And this is one of the reasons why you invest with us, is for people like Monem and Dan Kim. So I'll start off with just introducing Dan very quickly. Here. He works at Saturna capital, which, as you know, is the advisory manager to the Amana mutual funds. The Amana mutual funds started way back in 1986 so you know, many years of investing, research and portfolio management. So he's going to speak second, where we're going to start with Monem Salam, who is a director of search engine capital, Executive Vice President and portfolio manager of the Amana Income Fund, which was our first fund, started 1986 and he's also the manager of the developing world Fund, which started in 2009 we do have four funds, as most of you know, I'll turn it over to Monem. He has a presentation, and Dan will take it from there afterwards. All yours Monem.

Monem Salam:  
So I wanted to, first of all thank everybody for joining. I know this is a very volatile time in the market, a lot of you know, maybe for some of you, gut wrenching those type of things. So we wanted to kind of have a webinar, kind of really explaining exactly what's going on, right? I mean, it's really difficult to do, especially or trying to explain something in the middle of it, happening when anything can change. You know, tomorrow might be different than yesterday, maybe different than next week. But so this is going to be a very general one from that perspective, because we really don't know exactly what the greater, longer term ramifications are going to be specifically for the market. But with there are some guide posts that we can use and those are the ones that we're going to try to get into. What this seminar is not going to do is going to be able to predict the future. So even in your question or answer, you're going to ask the question, I'll just give you the answer right now, we don't know, however, you know, as always mentioned, there are ways for us to be able to maybe look at the past and maybe drop some similarities as to what could happen, what could not happen, and then go from there. So we'll start there and get into the presentation I wanted to again, you know, just kind of give a start off with just a brief background. And in that one, let's talk a little about what tariffs really are. Right? As you know, we have a global economy, and think goods are being made in one country, and, you know, and sometimes actually even multiple countries. Parts of certain items are made in multiple countries on the world. They're shipped to a certain location, they're assembled and then shipped to their eventual location where they're sold on those type of things. What? What tariffs basically do, are they, they tax on, on the goods that are being sold that are not made in a certain country, right? So, really good example of that, I was living in Malaysia, you know, back in the in the teens of the 2000s and they had an import duty on cars, and that import duty was 300% and so you can imagine, like, if you bought a local car that was assembled locally, or bought, you know, made locally, it would cost under, let's say, Give an example, 50,000 Ringgit. But if you bought in, it's the similar car, like a sedan or something like that, but for Toyota or GM or something like that, those would cost, automatically, 150,000 and so that's that, that tax is what is actually a lot of countries do when they're when, when they're wanting to either restrict a certain product from coming in When they want, they want to have a homegrown product made, you know, in their in their own country, and that's kind of very similar to what the US, or the Trump administration of history and has been trying to do. So what is it that they did? They basically came out and after, you know, couple of, you know, earlier on, when. Were there. There's been volatility throughout the year because of this. This the what the Trump administration has done is really forecast that they are going to be raising tariffs, right? So they did it on China, then they did it on Mexico and Canada, then they delayed it for a month, and then they implemented again. So all of these things are happening. But then Trump asked for an Independence Day. That was last Wednesday, and what he announced was basically across the board on any any country, there's going to be a 10% tariff, okay? And then heights can be higher for countries like China or EU others that have some type of the he came up with the formula, it's doesn't make any sense. So there's a really no point in getting into how we, how we actually, how they came up with it. But the formula has to do with the GDP of the country, and also the trade deficit that they have with the United States. So what that equals to China being at 54% the EU is going to be at 20. And there are some countries that there are, you know, much higher than that in some countries that are, that are at the 10% level. But the baseline for all of these things was going to be 10% okay, so, so that's really, what is, What? What? How does it impact, as, as I mentioned to you earlier, you know, if you high prices on every good that's not manufactured in the US. And, as you know, because of global supply chains and how the global economy has been moving over the past, you know, very close to even 100 years now, or close to at least 70 years, it's basically very, very interconnected. A part like, for example, is, you know, a small part of a part might be made in one country, it gets shipped to another country, where it's assembled into one part, then it goes into the whole and all of these things are basically done to be able to save money. The positive side of not having any tariffs is that goods are cheaper, right? You can make something in a cheaper country, ship it over to the United States, and then you can buy it for a lot cheaper than you could if it was made in the US, because just labor is more expensive, land is more expensive, all of those different types of things. So when you when, when the trips, the tariffs were, were announced last week, you know? And this is, again, this is something looking at it from a from a perspective of just historically, what they've done and what's possibly could happen the future. You know, apparel, things you wear, might increase by about 17% not everything that's that you buy in the grocery store that's organic, for example, vegetables and those things are actually produced or grown in the US. And so because of that reason, you know, prices of even your regular avocados, for example, they're grown in Mexico, might go up in price because there's that tariff that's being implemented. And then the last one that I wanted to mention, and this is affecting a lot, basically, from the Canada and Mexico perspective, is a 25% tariff on automobiles, right? And so if you have a lot of your parts that are made are some of them in the US, some of them in Canada, Mexico, and then shipped over. Cost average might go well, go up about $3,000 per car. But if it's majority made in another country, like Canada, Mexico, it might even go further than that. It might be up to $6,000 per cup per car. That's actually happening. So it really depends. Right now, it's, it's a little bit of an unknown as to what exactly is going to happen, because we really don't know exactly what the Trump administration is going to do the you know, when we look at in the past, when we look at, you know, historically, what, what's happened with tariffs, How different, different governments and or central banks have reacted, there is some kind of a pass we can look at, and I'll get into that in the next slide. But really what happens is monetary policy is used the central bank, in this particular case, the Federal Reserve could adjust interest rates to mitigate some of the harm that could be caused by tariffs. What do I mean by that? The first thing they can do is do me in order to stimulate them. Obviously, if, if costs of goods are going up, right, that means inflation is going to be higher, people can afford things. And so what the Fed might do is they might reduce interest rates to be able to stimulate the economy, right? And this was a Minneapolis Fed paper that came out right around the time that in 2018 When, when, when, when the Fed had implemented, I mean, the one the government had implemented tariffs. And they basically said that, yes, you can use monetary policy to be able to influence behavior. And so as as interest rates become cheaper, which, right now they are higher, as you get cheaper, maybe there's more investments, maybe there's more people can, you know, the houses, housing might become more affordable because interest rates are lower. So all of these things they can do to be able to stimulate the economy. The second thing is rate you know, the rate hikes, which is on the on the flip side of that right, and the the dual mandate of the Federal Reserve. Is not only to stabilize prices but also to reduce unemployment, right? So the stabilized prices part has to do with if, if tariffs are being implemented and they're going to be raising costs for the average consumer, then how do they control that? Right now, there's two things here. Number one is you have maybe a one time cost rise, right? That could happen if, when tariffs happen. So if tariffs go up by 10% you know, all prices go up by 10% and then you're done, because there's no other price sector, they're going to take place. But, or the or it could be sustained over a period of time, because there's a trade war happens, or something else that begins to happen. And so we really don't know, right? So the Fed doesn't know exactly what it's going to be so they it can basically raise interest rates to be able to control prices from getting out of hand, you know, going up. And in 2018 When? When? When the steel tariffs did come in effect. That is what the Fed did. It did actually raise interest rates. And that's why you got a market reaction in 2018 although it's been a long time, people might have forgotten the markets were down in 2018 because that right. However, that being said, and this is something that the Minneapolis Federal Reserve paper actually argued, was that the rate changes that you do, whether it be in cuts so that you stimulate the economy or hikes to be able to control evasion, they don't fully offset the effects that you're going to have. We're going to feel on the tariff side of it, and so that's kind of the negative side, but on the other side of that, long term considerations, right? What happens is that if, if, if rates go up, things become more expensive, people stop spending money, GDP is going to go down, right? The tariffs begin to reduce GDP, and then the monetary policy alone isn't enough to be able to change any of that. So a lot of people ask, sometimes, you know, as the markets have been down now, hey, is this, is this a COVID moment? Is it a is it a 2008 moment where, you know, the great financial crisis, something along those lines, right? So I wanted to start off and really mention one two things. Number one is in 2008 when we had the when you had the financial crisis, that was a systemic breakdown in the financial system that we had, right? And so this is not one of those cases. I mean, tariffs are some things that are used by other countries. And so it's not, it's not you can akin to that, because we're not having the collapse of the entire, you know, financial world as we know it. So I don't think it's akin to that. However, you know, somebody might argue that, you know, in doing when COVID happened, there was an immediate stop to pretty much all types of commerce that were there from a global supply chain that were right? Because everything shut down. Maybe things weren't being made, things weren't being shipped, things weren't being processed in the in the in the in the in the ports, those type of things. So that was a complete shutdown. I wouldn't say we're there, however, right? I like I use the analogy during COVID, if, maybe, if I spoke to some of you on the phone or in another seminar webinar that I done, I basically said, you know, we're driving down the road at a 50 miles an hour, and what COVID did, basically, was put a barrier right in front of you and bam, basically, you hit the brakes and you hit the wall, and everything came to a standstill. Great. That is not what's happening here. What's happening here is basically, I'd like to give it an analogy of a drawbridge, right? You're going over a drawbridge at 50 miles an hour, right? And the and somebody decides they're going to raise the drawbridge because of whatever reason, right? And as you raise the drawbridge, obviously it's going to, it's going to it's going to slow the car down, because you have a different angle that you're going to be taking. And so what these tariffs are doing is they're basically acting as a drawbridge on the on the on the vehicle, which is the global economy, right? It's becoming a lot more tougher to be able to predict that. So that's really what we're looking at. If you wanted to make analogy, I would give you that analogy to be able to kind of think about, and be able to use um, other than that, right? In 2002 George Bush actually did implement a tariff. It was a steel tariffs that he implemented and but I think it was close to about a year later they rescinded it. But, you know, within that short, short period of time, there was a significant market, a significant market drop that that you had. And so that was something that to kind of look at and say, like, hey. So in the past, when tariffs have gone up, what? What has really happened to the market? Same thing in 2018 right? There was market volatility when Trump did announce his tariffs, Fed was already raising rates at the time. There was production increases, the modestly in the US, because the tariffs were announced and they couldn't do anything, you know from the shipping them from abroad would have been more expensive. However, prices did rise. Because, again, you know, not everything that's manufactured here is going to be something that's going to be something that's good so, and then obviously, the one that's we're having right now, which is the trunk traps, 2020, Five right. Markets have dropped. The long term GGP unknown, right, exactly what's going to happen. And part of this unknown is, you know, interestingly enough, one of the largest donors for Trump is one of the he was the one who started Home Depot, and he basically said, Look, if, if you're going to raise rates there. There's a one time adjustment that can happen, and we should be good with that. But what's really causing market panicking is the unknown, right? Is the tariffs going to be 10% is it going to be lower? Is going to be higher? Is there going to be bilateral negotiations? Are all of these things going to happen, and nobody really knows exactly what's going to be there, and so, right? All these, you know, investment banks and stuff that are coming out with these forecasts are basing it on these unknowns, right? And that's what's causing the volatility in the market. And why is there a recession? Fear? It's because it's going to slow. It's going to if our prices go up, people are going to stop spending money, and that's going to affect GDP. And affect GDP, and it could slow it slow things down. That's why the recession is something that's talked about more and more, right? Why? But one thing to keep in mind is you don't want to wait for a recession to be able to see if the market goes down. The market is a predictor by about six to nine months of what's going to happen in the future. And because we don't know what's going to happen the future, the markets are basically reacting to what's happening, right? We talked a little bit about sector specific, right? If you think about it from your own expenditures perspective, right? We talked a little bit of the about the automobiles, but let's talk about it from, from, from retail, for example. So any, any industry that's reliant on imports, right? Things that are made abroad and are shipped to the US, right? Are going to be something that's going to be more effective. So companies like Nike, for example, Lululemon, which are both in the in the in the retail space, the garments are made elsewhere, right? If you ever look in your in whatever you're wearing, if you look at made in Vietnam, or made in China, made in Bangladesh, sometimes even and so all of these things, because they're being imported into the US, prices are going to rise. It's going to be more expensive for you to be able to buy, and that's going to be able to cause a little bit of turmoil. Now, there's two things that companies can do right. Number one, what they can do is they can actually raise prices themselves. So 10% increase of tariffs, I'm going to raise my prices by 10% right? Other companies, because they have a healthier balance sheet, they might be able to absorb some of those, those tariffs, right, and not pass those prices onto the consumer right now, if you're looking at it from a perspective of Nike, or you can look at any two companies, and I'm just making this up right now, but let's supposing you have company A, company B, right? Company B says, Look, I can't afford to. I have debt on my balance sheet. I can't afford to, you know, you cut my costs or raise my cost to be able to pass on the consumer so they're going to pass everything on. Versus Company B, that's going to be like, you know, we have a healthy balance sheet. We don't have any debt, we have good margins. We're going to absorb some of this, and we're going to only pass on to the consumer 5% of an upper of an increase, right? So which company is going to survive? Obviously, you're going to gravitate more towards the company that only rates prices by 5% rather than 10% and 10% and this gets into a little bit later, we're going to be talking about the idea of where do you want to see the investments taking place are going to be in these areas where companies are have good balance sheets, they have low debt, and they're able to, maybe not all of it, but absorb some of the costs, to the to the tariffs, and pass some of them out. But obviously, by absorbing some of the cost themselves, that company, a is going to be lowering the margins, and then from there, lowering their profits. And that's why, again, the markets are, are, are adjusting to, to, to those type of things as well, right? So right again, going back to the inflation, right? It causes people to spend less because prices are higher, right? And especially when you're looking at Lower, lower cost items, vegetables, you know, those type of things, those are going to get affected very, very heavily in this environment. So, as I mentioned earlier, businesses sometimes are able to adjust, right? You have the diversification of supply chain, right? If you look at the surveys that have been done that basically said in when the first China tariffs were implemented, a few years back, what companies began to do, they said, Okay, that's fine. We're, you know, it might be cheaper for us to be able to go to Vietnam and manufacture things there and then ship them for there, because Vietnam at that point had lower tariffs, or no terrace and China had was, was being implemented with chairs, right? So businesses can adjust to whatever the whatever the situation is, by being able to adjust their supply chain or diversify it a little bit more, right? They can even adjust to hiring and investments. They can, they can, they can, they can increase it one. Location, or decrease in the location, the problem becomes is that there's uncertainty. Businesses don't know what to do, right? So, for example, if you're a manufacturer, and they're looking at basically saying, No, you know now, if there's a 25% chair for Mexico, right? Do I want to move my factories from Mexico to the US to be able to compensate for that right. Those are long term billions of dollars worth of investments that people have to make decisions on. And if they don't know whether or not, today is 25% and tomorrow they're going to be negotiated and it might go down even further, you can't make any decision. You'll just say, let's wait and see. We'll see exactly what happens. We'll let things play out, and then we'll make our decision. That's going to affect hiring, because you might reduce, reduce your hiring. Obviously, that's going to affect investments, all of those different types of things that are going on, right? The worst case scenario, right? And that is something that that, again, nobody really knows exactly what's going on, because we're right in the middle of it, right? If there's a global retaliation, China's already come on said, you know, hey, us, you raised our tariffs by 34% we're going to raise our tariffs on you by 30% and now Trump has come and said, Well, if you keep that, I'm going to raise it by 50% tomorrow. That's called a trade war, right? And that's not good for anybody. That's going to cause a lot of pain, and it's going to be a lot of, a lot of damage that's done. Luckily, what's happened is that 50 countries have already been knocking on the door of the Trump administration saying, Hey, can we negotiate a better rate than the one that you're wanting to implement upon us? Right? And that's something that you can negotiate out. And you can say, Well, okay, you might, you know, you were slated for 50% now you're going to be down to 15 or 10% or 15% that makes a little bit more adjustable, digestible than anything that's happened. And if you get a cold war, I mean, if you get a trade war, right, that is something that is going to be cause a global slowdown, that's going to be, already be, people are talking about that as of right now as well. Right now, all that being said, and now I'm going to probably turn it over to Dan to talk about this, right? All, all I've really said is a lot of the negative, because there, there is a lot of uncertainty that's out there, and generally speaking, in the world order that we have today, what it's all about global supply chains and goods moving back and forth, either through shipping or other things. There has been that disruption, right? And there has been, as I mentioned, the job raw bridge has begun to rise. And so it's a natural consequence for the global economy to be able to slow down, how much it slowed down, how companies or countries react to it. Those are all the unknowns that are out there, and so that's what's going to cause the between now and that's supposing the next few months, what's going to cause the markets to either go up a lot or go down a lot. But this volatility is not something that we need to react to right now, because not all is going to be negative. There are going to be positive. They're going to come out of it. And it's really, really important for us to be able to stay invested and really think about what it is you want to adjust, because there might be some adjustments you want to make. But generally speaking, if you're 20 years old, 2530 you're just beginning to invest now. You have 2030, years in the future, right? I would still say in the don't count the global economy out there, there are still opportunities are going to be out there. New opportunities are going to be created, new companies that are going to be benefiting, new countries that might actually benefit from these things as well. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dan, and then I'll move your slides for you. Just let me know when you want to do that.

Dan Kim:  
That's great. Thank you. Monem. Yeah. So obviously, tons of moving parts. I can totally sympathize with everyone that's going through this. You know, in moments like these, I found it helpful to just take a step back and try to organize your thoughts into a few core observations and really try to distill what are the key questions we're trying to figure out as investors. From a market standpoint, I think we're either at or pretty close to maximum uncertainty. I mean, we really have a situation where there's just an open ended range of outcomes, and when this happens, you're just going to have stocks that almost completely detach from their investment fundamentals, which I know can be alarming. So my advice would be just be aware that this happens, and it's not necessarily a reason to be panicking right now. And Monem kind of touched on this before, but, you know, another key question that that we need to figure out is, what's happening with global growth? Obviously, we're entering into a period of stagnation, but is that stagnation also going to be combined with sustained inflation? So that's kind of the worst of both. Worlds. And so I think you shouldn't look at inflation just in terms of all or nothing. I do believe that there's going to be a short term component with, of course, a ratchet higher initially, but then that's probably going to lead to a slower overall growth from a global perspective on a sustained basis, and again, if we have a continued escalation that just continues for years and years, obviously that is very negative, but for the time being, it does look, at least from a bond markets reaction perspective, that we're going to see some pretty negative impact to economic growth, but that's also going to somewhat offset itself with slower sustained growth, which means lower interest rates. The third issue here is, in terms of the tariffs themselves, it's also not a monolithic entity. The way that I try to package tariffs is there are two broad categories, in my opinion, the first would be more transactional in nature, and the second is structural. And again, we kind of touched on this, but the transactional tariffs, generally speaking, I believe, are the so called reciprocal tariffs. And obviously the administration has put on some pretty aggressive anchor points to start the negotiations, but the overall purpose, or at least one of the core purposes, of this is to try to get better trade terms for the US, maybe in countries that just are Going to structurally have a deficit, maybe the administration aggressively convinces them to buy more aerospace, for instance. But I think you know, the purpose of that is to benefit the US economy. The second is really much more sustainable and negative. And these are, you know, for example, things like 25% on steel, aluminum and auto imports, where the US really wants to re establish and re industrialize production capacity within the US over the next 10 years, perhaps geopolitical tensions do arise and accelerate And so in that type of environment, it does seem like the administration wants to have more of that geopolitical leverage. And the only way to do that, really, is to bring some of that production, as well as minerals, back to the US. And then lastly, there's this concept of this Trump put versus call. And I don't need to get too into the weeds there, but the first administration, the President was notoriously very interested in seeing how the stock markets did as an indicator of his job performance. And so, of course, everyone expected that same playbook to work this this term. But then they also got excited about this, this call option, where not only is downside going to be protected, because if stock markets go down too much, then perhaps the you know, the President would jump in to save the day. But also, people started getting excited about, you know, these pro growth policies, you know, tax cuts, you know, energy renaissance, and so, you know, we kind of entered the year with, with, you know, positives on the protection as well as upside front. And then that kind of spectacularly ended when the markets realized that that there was no trumpet, or if there was one, that the strike price was much lower than people were hoping for, and then this, this call option, these growth policies at some point, will, will, will come into play. But we're kind of upfronted with, with a lot of the sort of medicine and the negatives in terms of tariffs and trade wars before that happens. So, you know, we kind of had this reversal of these two positives that the market was expecting. So it does make rational sense why the markets have reacted in the ways that they have Next slide. So kind of bringing it all together. I think Monem touched on this quite well, but as an investor, where you want to be positioning yourself is over the next 10, five to 10 years. I think one of the most visible or predictable outcomes out of all this craziness is that, yes, we are going to see at least incrementally higher tariffs, and that's going to have a negative impact in terms of global growth. And so in that environment, the question is, who takes the brunt of these tariff hikes? Is it the supplier? Is it the importer, or is it the consumer? And it's almost become a political question at this point, where I'm sure people in Trump. Cabinet are going to say, of course, China is going to take 95% of all these tariff increases. They're just going to take it. And other people might say it's going to be the consumer. I don't think it's political at all, actually. And I think the way that you can position your portfolios are, you want to have companies that have pricing power, because ultimately, if you have pricing power, you're going to have more demand for your goods on a relative basis than supply. So you know, if there are tariffs, you're going to be much more, you know, easily able to pass on those tariffs, or at least the majority, onto either the supplier or the importer and the consumer. So as long as you're structuring your portfolio with companies, obviously with good balance sheets, but also that have this pricing power, I think that's going to be the single most relevant investment thematic that you're going to want to be on the right side of over the next few years. And next slide. So as an investor, what's, what should you be doing? What's the actionable game plan in all this? Well, first of all, again, I don't think it's time to panic, but in life, and my parents used to tell me this, but there are things that that you can control, and then there are others that you can't, you know, and so it's, it's the same, same outlay in the markets right now. There's nothing we can do to control what direction geo geopolitics takes place. You know, we can't speculate. I have no idea where the tariffs are going over the next couple quarters even, but there are absolutely things that we do have control over. For instance, can we manage risk better? You know, can we diversify, rebalance? One thing I'm doing right now for my clients is tax loss harvesting. You know, it's as it's very painful what we're going through right now, but through this pain, the sort of side effects, there are positives, where you can take advantage of some of these losses and crystallize and harvest those, those capital losses that can act as tax shields later on in the year. So we're taking this pain. You might as well take on the benefits during this process instead of just kind of sitting on your portfolios. So you know, these are aspects that that we can absolutely control. So I would encourage everyone to call up their advisors, and really just to give as much disclosure to us as possible, tell us about your tax situation, what you're expecting in terms of capital gains. And so really, it should be a collaborative effort to take advantage and to protect ourselves in these types of situations. That's all I had.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
Alright. Thank you to both Dan and to Monem for the presentation. And we do have a good number of questions as well. And Monem and Dan, you can answer it. Whoever wants to answer this, a retired person is saying, I have all my money in, all of my investment money in Amana Income and Growth Fund. You know, is there something that I should be doing differently? Should I have already sold it before? So if you can kind of address this question, looking at this person's question, but also, you know, there's a lot of people like that, right? They're in the stage that the retired. They may or may not be using money, but now they're feeling the anxiety of it. Dan mentioned, you know, you don't want to take unnecessary you don't want to make unnecessary changes right now, but what does it mean for somebody in this particular situation?

Monem Salam:  
So I'll start then. You know, I think what Dan mentioned really important was what's called Risk Management, right? Which is really, then that is something you can control, which is really looking at the portfolio and saying, Look, you know when, when markets are going up, it's very easy to say that you can take on risk when markets come down. Is when you really, really figure out exactly, could you really take that risk, or could you not? And that's why it's really, really important for all of us. Us, and to look, look at our look at diversification strategies. We have, you know, multiple funds in the amount of funds for a reason. We have, we have growth. We have, you know, large value, large shop growth. We have developing world. And we have a Sukuk fund as well. And so what you might need to think about is, not from a, you know, all or none. Do I move from one fund to another, or those type of things. What you might think about is maybe dialing down your risk tolerance, right? Because you've begun to realize that you can't take the risk right now, this is the time you can do that. So it's not a it's not a tomorrow thing, right? It might be a thing that you do over maybe next couple of weeks or a couple of months. Or you think about what the market's going to be doing. Are you able to stomach the risk, or not? And then dial down. What I mean by that is, you know, if you look at the order of our funds are our most conservative is our Sukuk fund, the participation fund, then you go to amount Income Fund, then to growth fund in the developing world. And so if you have overweight one versus another, if you want to be more risky, you can go up the ladder. And if you want to go more conservative, you can go down the ladder for from the risk perspective.

Dan Kim:  
Yeah, I think that's a great strategy. And the only thing I would add is, again, it kind of depends on your situation, right? Like if you for some reason you need this capital over the next 12 to 24, months, you should much more highly consider moving that to either cash or something that's cash equivalent. The Scope front Fund is a very nice way to generate some income, but that should not be invested, in my opinion, directly into equities. So that would be my recommendation. If you do have the ability and have some tactical losses in terms of capital losses that you can realize, especially if you're expecting some sort of capital gain expectation is here you could potentially use that to offset and then potentially redeploy into a basket of securities. Maybe it's, it's a, you know, managed account from one of your advisors, but, but those are some decisions that that you can make. And again, I'm not recommending getting out of your core positions, but if some of these stocks have generally this similar investment characteristic and correlation, you absolutely can take advantage of that capital loss and still participate in the markets. So a range of options depending on your situation, but definitely things that that you should at least be thinking about and considering with, uh, with your advisor right now.

Monem Salam:  
Yeah,I want to add just to that, Dan, you might make a really good point about tax loss harvesting. And I just want to add one point thing so tax loss harder doesn't mean you go from being invested to not being invested. It basically means you're going to be you invested in one thing. You're taking a little loss and buying something very similar, so that if there is the market again, you're going to be able to participate as well. So it's not, you know, it's not a zero sum game, it's not zero or 100% you're just re shifting your portfolio to be able to take advantage of the loss, but really distributing it back to something that's very similar. That's number one. Number two is, we have a fund selector on our website that you can actually go to, and you can look at the allocation that's made based on a set of question that you ask your you answer that we ask you, and you answer based on and it'll give you your risk tolerance. And based on that risk tolerance, it'll give you a optimum portfolio that you that you should be invested in. So I would highly recommend everybody taking a look at that.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
So we are getting questions that are on both sides, right, can I use this as an opportunity? Should I sell everything and, you know, put the money in bank accounts and so forth. So we'll get to some of those questions. One of the things that we mentioned was the Sukuk fund. It's named the participation fund, the Amana participation fund, that's something that you can look into on our website, Amana funds.com, or, as I have put into the group there, my email address, if you want to talk further about any of these different options. So some of the questions here, I'll just get to them, and you all can answer them. I have a monthly purchase program into the amount of funds. What should I do with that? And so I guess the question is implying, should I stop investing on a monthly basis, or every two weeks, as I've been doing for the last few years, and hold on for a while? Or should I continue that, or do more of it?

Monem Salam:  
Oh, that's an easy one for me, if you if you have the bandwidth to be able to do more, you know, I think, I think that's definitely the way, the way it approaches, you know, if I wouldn't definitely stop, the reason why we started in the first place is, if you, you know, it's called dollar cost averaging, and so that $100 that you're putting in a month, if the market goes down, down by 20% Guess what? You got? 20% sale on the. Stocks that you owned and you know, in the longer run, that's, that's, that's going to work out really, really well for you. Remember, you're going to see the portfolio, and it's going to look to you as you're just buying  one fund, right? But in the background, myself, Dan, other Portfolio Manager, analysts, we are doing the research, the necessary research, on the companies themselves and on the overall portfolio to make sure that we're going to be able to with withstand not 100% but as much as possible, any shocks that are coming through and that's really, really important to keep in mind. So the companies with the good balance sheets that we talked about, the companies that can withstand pricing pressures, those are the companies that we want to be in. And for the most part, we are in. If there are some adjustments, we'll then we will we need to make. We'll make them. But from your perspective, as an investor in the funds, right? Be know that that we're doing our homework, and I think if you are able to increase your dollar cost averaging.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
Is there an opportunity now to buy the dip for middle aged, long term investors? So you can see there's, you know, people questioning whether they should sell everything, and then whether they should buy more.

Dan Kim:  
Anyone to go, yeah, yeah. So again, it kind of depends on your, you know, unique circumstances, but everything else held equal. And again, if you have the ability to deploy this capital over a sort of medium to long term, absolutely. I mean, I am myself. I mean, it does. It feels painful right now. It doesn't feel comfortable, but, but generally, that that's, you know, not the worst time to be deploying capital. So if that's been your strategy, if you've held back potentially, but you have the ability to deploy that capital, I think, just from a long term perspective, that's what I would be recommending right now.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
Okay, thank you. So there's a question here. I'm going to retire in five years? What should my portfolio be? It's in a 401(k), so I'll just answer that, because money Morty addressed it. You know, you should look at our Amana fund selector on our website, and it'll give you insight into what your risk tolerance and your timeline is. So what that portfolio should look like? And I have, again, I've shared my email address, so if you want us to help you with that, we can as well. There's a really good question here that we'll have to you know, think about a little bit. There were large capital gains in some of the funds last year, which are currently looming, IRS dues, right? So can funds take capital losses, or are they restricted to end to do that end of October, you mentioned individual tax planning. How about for the funds themselves?

Monem Salam:  
That's a really good question. Very, very, very thought provoking, one so very similar to an individual funds actually can do tax loss harvesting as well. So we could sell things now and then in hopes that if something goes up, we sell later, we can offset the capital losses with the gains. So that is also the case. The funds, you know, Alhamdulillah, have done so well that we don't have very many losses in the funds themselves. And so the only thing you could hope for is that if we sell it, it would be maybe, you know, X percentage less capital gains than you would have paid if the market was higher. But we do have mitigation strategies to be able to what we're trying to implement within our funds. If you have a take a look at our perspective, and you find not to get into here, but take a look at the prospectus, and we do have a program called reflow that we use to be able to mitigate some of our capital gains as well, and so we are taking as many measures as we can to do that.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
There's a question. I mean, it's a pretty specific question about tariffs themselves. Maybe you can answer it, or you can opine, right? It's not a guarantee that we can get this answer correct. When will we start to see prices increase?

Monem Salam  
Okay, since Jen is not saying, I'll jump in, it's really hard to predict. So one of the things that would we do is we know certain things that have happened, right? If you look at companies, they have had inventory build up in anticipation of the tariffs, right? So I'll give you a very good example of that, and this is, this is more anecdotal, not something that the company actually came on said, but Nintendo, right on Independence Day last week actually announced the new switch, right? But prior to their announcement of the new ship and the new switch, if you look at traffic flow from Japan into the US, from a certain area, you'll notice that there was a pickup in about 500,000 units were shipped between Japan and the US. So people are speculating. That was Nintendo actually pre ordering or pre shipping these the switches prior to the prices going up. So a lot of that has been done, right? And so some maybe it might take a couple of months before that inventory draw draws down to be able to for that to happen. Or the other way to look at it is the company might say, I have this. I bought it a cheaper they've already announced the tax, the tariffs. Let me just raise my prices now for 10% I'll just, I'll just capture that in my margins. So there's many, many different ways that companies can react to know exactly when that that's going to happen. It'll be in phases. But I don't think any, any us as an investment professionals can say that, maybe as managers and and, you know, C suites of the companies they can then you want to add anything?

Dan Kim:  
Yeah, that was good answer. The only thing I would add is, you know, it also depends on what, what product you're talking about, and it, it kind of comes back down to pricing power again, right? So, if you have a product that is very easily replaceable with a different product from perhaps a different country, maybe it's a beverage or apparel or any type of item that perhaps you can just as easily get from, from a different country or region. You probably won't see, you know, a one for one price increase to the consumer. If you have something that is, you know, extremely strong in terms of pricing power, maybe it's a GPU or a semiconductor chip that that's the latest, sort of cutting edge model, then you're probably, you're probably going to see that impact right away. So it really kind of depends on the dynamics of pricing power, as well as, obviously, the tax and tariff regime that it's coming from. I want to

Monem Salam:  
give one example, if you remember, if you ever think about oil prices and gas prices, right when oil prices go up and down based on what OPEC is doing. For example, you'll notice that when prices go up on oil, your gas price at the station goes up automatically. When prices come down, it's slowly going to come down, right? And I think you can say very, something very similar on the tariff side as well, is that there are going to be items like as Dan mentioned, they're going to be auto automatically raising out and others that are going to slowly take their time to do that, depending on what the inventory levels and and the replaceability of that product was,

Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
and time will tell. And you know each company is going to be different, because if you look at the news, Apple is talking about moving more of their production into their Indian plant and exporting more from there because of the lower tariff from there. So, you know, companies will try to figure it out, because they still want to sell those units. They need to sell those units. They don't want to have a crash of their of their stock even further to what it has been now and then. Also, states are also looking at the same thing. So California, where I live, the governor is working out deals with individual countries and saying, Hey, don't tariff us, because, you know, you're going to rely on these particular products, and it's just going to create more of a ripple effect throughout the world. So let's work together, since we're the fifth largest economy in the world, and I know Illinois is doing something similar. So we don't know where the world that's going to go. There's a question here that I think we do need to answer, which is someone saying, you know, they are maybe panicking a little bit and saying, Should I pull my money and put it into a certificate of deposit and bring it back later? Right? And so what the markets down, what, 13% or so, something like that, in the last few days? So when it stabilizes, quote, unquote, right? This is the time timing, the market scenario. And then the question that goes along with it. This is not in a IRA account, because you wouldn't put it into a CD, necessarily. It's outside of that. What is the tax implication? So how do we answer that one? Because it's a real question that many people are considering. And so how do we, how do we answer that for folks?

Monem Salam:  
I think, from my perspective, look, it's all a matter of time horizon, right? I mean, if you're thinking that this money was you're going to be using for Hajj this year, right? Number one, it shouldn't have been in the stock market in the first place, but it's in stories in there now, right? Yes, you would want to be able to take out and take it out and use it for the Hajj purpose that you want made, which is in a couple of months. But if you're a long term, long term, and what I mean by long term is, you know, you do have 2030, years until you until you retire. Then, you know, look at this opera as a buying opportunity, right? And you know, what happens next week? What happens next month? We don't know, right? And I don't want to be Pollyanna about it. I mean, there are some tough times ahead, but I want you to think about it from the 2008 perspective. If 2008 was not a one time, one time event, it actually took about a year and a half before the market stabilized. There was a lot of, you know, banks going under, markets going up and down, all of these. There was a turmoil for about a year and a half, but we got through it. And the biggest mistake you would have made in 2008 was if you sold from a portfolio, because most likely, you wouldn't have been able to get back in. So in the same thing over here, I don't want to tell you that everything's going to be okay tomorrow, you know, I don't know, right? But what I would tell you is, is that we are going to go through some pain, but the pain has some opportunity. And the second thing is, is that don't ever count the global economy out. And what I mean by that is eventually, companies, countries are going to figure out ways to be able to make money, and they may be able to make money maybe even better than they were before. And all of that really means is that we need to be invested over the longer term, rather than trying to time. What would be the right time to get in around

Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
and is there a potential that this could all be reversed, and what would that mean for the market?

Monem Salam:  
That's called a V shape recovery, but, but, but I think again, that that's then. That's part of the reason why the markets are doing what they're doing. The uncertainty is what they what he can't figure out. As I mentioned to you in my example of companies that are looking to spend billions of dollars on plants. Where are they going to build it? That uncertainty is what's causing the driving force behind the markets being down. And that's something that if he came out tomorrow, sorry, guys, you know, I was just kidding. I'm not going to do any of the chairs at all, then we're pretty much back to where we were maybe four or five months ago. When, when, when there's nothing in place. I don't think that's going to happen, but there are going to be, probably settled negotiations between bilateral negotiation between countries. And I was mentioning it to Dan, and in another meeting we had, and said, I'd hate to be that trade representative that has to deal with 50 countries and phone calls at the same time to be able to come there, everybody's banging on the US doors and saying we want to negotiate and so it will happen. It just takes some time, and use this time as an opportunity to buy more.

Dan Kim:  
I would, I would just add, it's tough to predict, you know, even if we're going to go into a recession because of all this, or not, but I do want to at least end my thoughts by just telling you, if you participate in companies that that have this this pricing power, their secular growers and they Have this compounding capability, it doesn't really matter if you go into a recession or not, because during recessions, these same companies are going to be aggressively either disrupting or pushing out their competition or consolidating them. If we don't go into a recession and we go back into expansionary mode, these are the same companies that are going to be aggressively reinvesting into their respective moats, and which is just going to put them in a stronger and stronger competitive, competitive positioning over the full market cycle. So you're going to end up with a compounder that outperforms the market and its sector in a downturn as well as the upturn. So as long as you can hold on to these types of names over the medium to long terms, I mean that that's really how you should be looking at your portfolio, and, you know, taking some peace of mind, especially during these moments of super, you know, elevated and volatility that that can, you know, induce emotions out of everyone, so.

Monem Salam:  
Dan, I know this is a leading question, but would you say that's what we're doing in our funds?

Dan Kim: 
I mean, that kind of hits home to exactly how we're positioning ourselves. We're not trying to predict, you know, next quarter. And I kind of compare this to an analogy where you don't want to be picking up dollar bills in front of a steamroller, right? Because you're probably going to be just fine. You know that steamroller is going at a very slow speed, and you can continue to pick up these dollar bills. And maybe that, that's, that's, that's your, you know, strategy, but, but you know, what if? What if something crazy happens? You know, what if your foot gets caught in something or you have a panic attack? I mean, you know these, these very low probability events that that can have a significant sort of sustained negative impact on your portfolio. We just don't want to even speculate. And, you know, position ourselves to have any exposure to those types of names, which is why, you know, we don't have to swing for the fences up the risk ladder and still be able to generate above market returns over the full market cycle. So, so why bother? And I think it's especially helpful, and it becomes more. Visible during moments like this.

Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
You know, one of we're at our time here. So we'll end with one more question, but the final question, the mag seven. So that's, you know, Amazon, Google, you know, Facebook, Meta, etcetera. Those kinds of companies, the mag seven, took a significant hit, which, in theory, they could absorb any cost of tariffs because they're so large and, you know, they're well capitalized, etcetera. There was an, also an exemption on semiconductors from tariffs. Generally, halal funds have been technology concentrated. Why do you think this is the case, and how do you think about the headwinds and tailwinds for the tech industry?

Dan Kim:  
Yeah, I could, I could take that one. You know, I think I hate generalizing with the mag seven. I think there are definite differences and different investment themes embedded within those seven names. I personally do find the semiconductor infrastructure construct to be in sort of a, you know, five to 10 year structural upturn. Obviously there's, there's pockets within there that are stronger than others, but, but I mean that that's pretty much well reflected in why the Trump administration specifically singled out, you know, areas like semiconductors. I mean that that's a massive trade deficit in the in the perspective of the US and so it just, I mean, you know, actions speak louder than words. This is exactly what I'm talking about. And so you know, whether it's semiconductors or, you know, AI infrastructure that that's being deployed over the cloud, these, these are likely going to be areas, and of course, they're going to get impacted too, if we go into a global recession, absolutely, they're, they're going to get hit. But on a relative basis, do they have more of that, that secular, structural growth to withstand recessionary or contractionary environment? And the answer is, you know, yes, I believe so. But again, as I pointed out earlier, it doesn't really matter during these moments of, you know, elevated extreme volatility, these fundamentals tend to almost completely detach from the actual fundamentals that are taking place and their stock prices. And so, you know this, this is, this is why it's important to have a level head, but also be confident that the investments that have been deployed are in companies that that will able, that will be able to weather, perhaps moderate to severe recession in one piece, obviously not unscathed, but you know that that gives you that visibility, that that You need, so you don't need to be constantly worrying, oh no, if I mispredicted this, the turnout of this trade tariff war, and we actually go into a moderate recession, then I need to start recalibrating everything. And so that's where you can get into a lot of trouble as an investor. That's where you probably. Should be making adjustments, because your portfolio is probably vulnerable. So, you know, we'll, we'll let the hyper, sort of short to medium term strategies do get out over that type of landscape in terms of an investment, you know, layout and approach. But, but for us, I mean, we do have that longer term visibility and confidence to not be able or not have to worry about the shorter term implications. So in short, yes, I think tech, generally speaking, has that secular growth. You know, I think growth is going to become more scarce as tariffs go higher and global GDP become stagnated, and especially if demand declines over time and inflation goes down, that also plays decently well into the narrative as well

Owaiz Dadabhoy:  
Anything to add Monem on that particular? Well we thank you both Monem and Dan, and what we will likely do is have another one of these sessions in the future, just depending on how this all plays out, and maybe the next call will be, hey, the tariffs. You know, many of them have ended, and what should we do from here? That could be a potential, and we're hoping that that might happen sooner rather than later, so. 
There's also the Halal Money Matters podcast that gives you a lot of insight on many different subjects. You know, all financial and I think Monem, we have something like 39 or 40 of those episodes now, so I would ask you to check that as well. Thank you again. We'll catch you next time. Send me an email if you'd like to have one of our team members connect with you and talk further. Thank you very much, everybody.

Narrator:
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