بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
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🏦 The 2008 playbook, with one twist
A lot of people are asking whether today rhymes with 2008. Some parallels are real, but the differences matter more.
The macro setup looks familiar. Oil above $100 echoes the run-up to mid-2008, when crude topped $147. Inflation sat near 4% heading into that crisis, not far above today's 3.3%.
The financial plumbing is where it breaks down. In 2008, leverage sat directly on bank balance sheets through subprime mortgages. Post-Dodd-Frank rules have largely walled off that specific vulnerability.
But the leverage hasn't disappeared. It has migrated. Private credit funds, sitting outside the regulatory perimeter, are heavily exposed to software lending at the exact moment AI is disrupting that industry's economics. Then there are the AI neoclouds — companies like CoreWeave, Nebius, and Oracle that rent out GPU capacity to AI firms. They're highly leveraged themselves and have signed enormous long-term capacity contracts with customers like OpenAI, whose ability to fund those commitments over the full contract life is itself an open question.
So a problem in one layer doesn't stay contained. It hits the neoclouds, then the private credit funds, and ultimately the banks that lent to those funds. That transmission path, from an asset shock through opaque non-bank credit into the banking system, is the part of 2008 that remains a risk. Albeit a tail-risk.
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🔍 PIF's TAKE
Reading history isn't about predicting what comes next. It's about running simulations so you panic less when surprises hit. The point is to prepare in advance. In conditions this volatile, your balance sheet and the balance sheets of what you own both need to be bulletproof. Avoid leverage. When everyone is levered up and things turn sideways, being the unlevered player is the ultimate edge. Halal investing gives us a built-in advantage. Our criteria already screen out the highly leveraged businesses that tend to break first when cycles turn. |
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⛏ Agnico is printing money. The stock yawned.
Agnico Eagle delivered a record-setting first quarter of 2026, reported on April 30. Revenue reached $4.1 billion and net income more than doubled year-over-year to $1.7 billion, driven by a realized gold price of $4,861 per ounce, up 68% from a year earlier. Adjusted EPS came in at $3.41 and adjusted EBITDA hit $3.0 billion, both record highs. Free cash flow was a healthy $732 million, even after the company paid roughly $900 million of an estimated $1.8 billion 2026 tax bill, which included a $1.3 billion catch-up payment from 2025.
The balance sheet grew stronger. Net cash climbed to $2.9 billion against just $197 million of long-term debt. The strength of the position prompted Fitch to upgrade Agnico to A- with a stable outlook.
Operationally, production of 825,109 ounces tracked plan, with total cash costs of $1,093 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of $1,483 per ounce, supporting record operating margins. Growth investment continued across five key projects, which together underpin a 20–30% production growth target over the next decade.
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🔍 PIF's TAKE
Gold is going through a pullback after a historic run, pressured by the prospect of "higher for longer" interest rates that weighs on non-yielding assets like Gold. That said, the long-term thesis for gold remains intact, supported by the relentless growth in global debt and continued accumulation by central banks.
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Where we see AEM heading from here, along with our updated price target, lives in our watchlist. |
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Why we skip semiconductor ETFs❓
A member from our private discord recently asked whether we are comfortable holding semiconductor ETFs like SOXX and SMH. On the surface the pitch is clean. One ticker, the whole chip industry, front-row seat to the AI build-out. The concern lives one layer deeper, in what these funds actually hold.
Both ETFs are extremely top-heavy, and the names sitting at the top are the ones we are least comfortable owning. Nvidia, Broadcom, and Intel together dominate the funds. Two of those names, Nvidia and Intel, have deep and expanding operations in Israel, with thousands of employees, multiple R&D centers, and major ongoing expansions. The third, Broadcom, fails our debt screen on its own terms. Its interest expense as a share of revenue sits well above our 2.5% threshold, and that is a structural feature of how the company is financed, not a one-off.
The ETF wrapper does not solve any of this. It just bundles three names we would not buy individually and charges us a fee to hold them.
For us, that is enough to keep SOXX, SMH, and the broader cap-weighted semiconductor ETF space outside the portfolio.
This Aged Well 🎯
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That call was free. The position sizing, the entry levels, and the trim alerts as ELVR ran were not. Members got them in real time, and the result is one of the largest gains in the portfolio this year. If you want to be on the inside for the next one, join PIF here. |
Stay grounded in your principles, patient in your positioning.
With barakah,
Team @ PIF
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⚠️ Not financial advice. Practical Islamic Finance shares research and opinions for educational purposes only. Always conduct your own due diligence and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.