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Rich Habits Podcast
Trump's Ban on Single Family Homes, Nvidia's CES Announcements, & Google's Rise to #2
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- [00:01]
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- [00:17]
Robert Croak
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Robert Croak
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Robert Croak
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Blinds.com Customer
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- [00:37]
Robert Croak
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- [00:39]
Austin Hankwitz
Visit blinds.com now for up to 45 off with minimum purchase plus a free professional measure. Rules and restrictions apply. Public.com presents the rich Habits Radar a new Friday episode of the Rich Habits podcast where every Friday morning we're coming at you with the biggest headlines impacting you and your money. My name is Austin Hankwitz. I'm joined by my co host Robert Croak in the three things sitting at the top of our Rich Habits radar this week include Trump banning institutions from buying single family homes, Nvidia's most anticipated announcements at CES and JPMorgan Chase taking over the Apple credit card. Also, be sure to stick around to learn more about Google's recent rise to becoming the second most valuable company in the world, overtaking Apple. Wow. Losing the Goldman Sachs partnership and now losing to Google as the most of Apple's having a week Robert Apple is having a week, so let's get into that later. But Robert, kick us off with our first story.
- [01:39]
Robert Croak
Yes, Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration is moving to ban Wall street firms from buying up all the single family homes in an effort to reduce prices and create more affordability. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was immediately taking steps to implement the ban, which includes calling on Congress to pass the law.
- [02:00]
Austin Hankwitz
Wall street institutions like Blackstone, American Homes for Rent and Progress Res have bought over. Here we go. Ready? Drumroll. Half a million single family homes since the financial crisis of 2008. That feels illegal, Robert. That's insane to me. Now these Wall street landlords dispute that their investments have caused housing specific inflation because apparently in a January research note that Blackstone wrote themselves, they said no institutional home purchases has declined 90% since 2022 and the supply shortage is the reason for house. But notice how they only cited that 2022 statistic they forgot to go back to when they started in 2008.
- [02:45]
Robert Croak
Yeah, wink, wink. Blackstone, thanks for that survey provided by themselves, but the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported last week that national home sale prices had risen by just 1.7% year over year, the lowest rise in prices in more than 13 years. We always talk about capital appreciation when thinking about getting into the home buying situation, and this is a prime number to keep an eye out for. That's less than half the rate by which they were climbing when Trump came back into office last January and a fraction of their peak of nearly 20% in 2021 and 2022.
- [03:23]
Austin Hankwitz
All right, Robert, you're the real estate guy. So for everyone listening right now, what does this news mean for them and their money?
- [03:30]
Robert Croak
Well, in my opinion, this levels the playing field for the everyday buyer and there's going to be less competition. This should continue to create more affordability over time as well. And from an investor perspective, it's probably not a good idea to be owning shares in these American Homes for Rent or Blackstone until this uncertainty unfolds in the markets, which could take quite some time because it's not going to be immediate.
- [03:56]
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- [03:58]
Austin Hankwitz
Cute.
- [03:59]
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- [04:24]
Austin Hankwitz
Experian.
- [04:26]
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- [04:55]
Austin Hankwitz
Makes a lot of sense. And when I saw this headline, the first thing I thought about was not the institutions buying existing neighborhoods, but institutions building neighborhoods from scratch to be rented. Right? Because we've seen a lot of, yeah, the headlines have been, yeah, Blackstone bought my neighborhood. And now, like, how crazy is that? But more specifically now it's these institutions coming in, building neighborhoods, 40, 50, 100, 200 single family homes in these neighborhoods. Building them from scratch to be rented. Not to be sold, to be rented. It's called build for rent. So we'll have to wait and see if this impacts that Build for rent. I know fundrise is doing build for rent. I know a ton of other people are as well. So keep an eye out for that in the developments there. Next story here, we gotta give a shout out to Nvidia because they made some major announcements this week at ces. The first major announcement was Alpameo. This is their family of open source reasoning models specifically designed to guide autonomous vehicles through through difficult driving situations. The model works by breaking down unexpected driving situations into a much smaller set of problems before finding the safest path forward. Robert, let's rapid fire here through some of our favorites. I just gave a shout out to Alpameo. Why don't you walk us through two more here.
- [06:14]
Robert Croak
Yes. Also Nvidia has announced new AI models for training, robotics and physical machines, Cosmos and Isaac. And in partnership with with Boston Dynamics, Caterpillar, LG Electronics and others. I think this is huge news. We're keeping an eye on all of these companies for the future as well. And finally, and most importantly, Nvidia announced their Ruben GPU which is said to offer five times more AI training compute power than Blackwell. The chips every tech company couldn't get enough of in 2024 and 2025. So Austin, walk us through, what does this mean for you and your money?
- [06:52]
Austin Hankwitz
Well, let's break it down one by one. Alpameo is a reasoning model for autonomous driving and it's pretty obvious that that's where the future of driving is headed. But it's also interesting to see that according to Alpameo, Nvidia is betting on radar and lidar with Mercedes Benz. Meanwhile, Elon Musk over with Tesla is betting on camera technology specifically for their full self driving. It's also really encouraging to see Nvidia partner with these massive companies. You mentioned Boston Dynamics, Caterpillar, lg, Electron. Right. Cool partnerships going over there as it relates to physical AI. That's obviously a future of work play as well. Something we're very excited about. We are investors in humanoid robotics companies. And finally, who is not excited about Reuben Blackwell and Rubin together, according to Jensen Huang are supposed to do half a trillion dollars of revenue between 2025 existing sales and 2026. Absolutely unbelievable.
- [07:50]
Robert Croak
Yeah, I definitely remain bullish on NV Media obviously for the long term. But also don't sleep on Hyundai, they own 80% of Boston Dynamics. And Boston Dynamics is a leader in this field of AI and humanoid robotics. So keep an eye on that as well. And our third point today, JP Morgan Chase takes over the Apple credit card. The company has reached a deal to take over the Apple credit card program from Goldman Sachs. Marking the final chapter of Goldman's failed experiment in consumer lending. So the biggest bank in the country is the new issuer of Apple's credit card, one of the largest co branded programs with some $20 billion in balances.
- [08:32]
Austin Hankwitz
Can we just take a moment of silence for the $20 billion of credit card balances out that. What in the. Why, what are y' all doing? Pay off your Apple cards. Dang it. I got an Apple card. I pay it off every week, every month. I take that back every month I'm out my credit card balance. All right, so let's talk about this. Globan Sachs, they're offloading $20 billion of this outstanding card balance at a more than a one billion dollar discount. Now this is really interest co branded partnerships like this balances are actually being sold at a premium up to 8%, sometimes 10% for the strongest programs. Think American Express and Delta. Discounts are very rare and are only reserved for the most challenging cases which really should just open your eyes as to how cooked Goldman Sachs might be in this deal. I mean I can only imagine how much of that 20 billion is never going to get paid back to them.
- [09:24]
Robert Croak
Yes, this discount in the deal reflects a high exposure to subprime borrowers and what has been a higher than industry average delinquency rate, creating the potential for significant losses on the outstanding balances. JP Morgan said it expects to put aside 2.2 billion in provisions for credit losses against these Apple cards. 2.2 billion. So Austin, break it down for our listeners. What does this mean for you and your money?
- [09:52]
Austin Hankwitz
Well, there's not too much to break down. It's pretty simple, right? JPMorgan Chase now gets a loyal base of Apple customers who at any point they can go and pitch more financial products to. Oh, you want a car loan, you want a business loan. Oh, we noticed that you got an Apple, you know, laptop for your business. We do business loans. You want a business loan through us. Right. They've got all these sort of ways to monetize against this consumer base. And now Apple gets a partner with a massive consumer franchise to help them sell more gadgets to their billions of customers. So it's a win win for these two companies. It's a lose for anyone in high interest debt. So forget about the high interest debt. You don't need to go swipe your Apple credit card or go into debt to go buy a new Apple device. That's thousands of dollars with a new iPhone or whatever you need to do. Don't do any of that stuff. But if you do have an Apple credit card like I do and you use it for your everyday purchases, for the 3% cash back here, 2% cash back there, just make sure you're paying it off every month. That's all we ask.
- [10:47]
Robert Croak
Yes, one Use your credit wisely. Just because they give it to you doesn't mean you should use it up and keep running up these credit cards.
- [10:56]
Austin Hankwitz
All right, Robert, let's now jump to our next segment of the show. Give it a shout out to ETF central.com a really cool website if you want to go learn more about ETFs, thematic ETFs, fund flows, performance, all the fun things as it relates to investing in ETFs. But they've got a cool segment on their website called the Biggest Movers and Shakers and we like to review it every week. We like to come here and say, all right, what segments, what things, themes, what's going on in the markets now that are really winning this week and which ones are really losing? So to give a quick top three best performing ETF segments for you here, according to ETF Central, the third best performing segment in the ETF sectors this week include biotech, up 7 1/2 percent. The second best performing is space and Deep sea, up about 10%. And the best performing sector of ETFs this week according to ETF Central is alternative energy, up 10 and a half percent.
- [11:54]
Robert Croak
Those don't shock me at all. And I love the alternative energy one. We've been talking about the importance of investing and diversifying into these energy sectors as well. So let's go with the top three worst performers of the week. US utilities are number three, down 2%. Cannabis and psychedelics are down 3.5%. And energy is the worst performer this week, right? At around 6%.
- [12:18]
Austin Hankwitz
Isn't that interesting though, to observe how energy specifically as a segment is down down nearly 6%, but alternative energy is up 11%. Right? 10 and a half, 11% here. So when I think alternative energy, I think companies like Bloom Energy and, you know, things like that, where if I think normal energy, I think like Chevron and some of these like big oil companies. That's my observation, that's my take. But Robert, what do you think here?
- [12:43]
Robert Croak
Yeah, I am so happy you pointed that out because it drives me nuts. When we saw the headlines of Venezuela and then all the fake gurus out there telling everybody, go buy all these oil stocks. Go buy all these oil stocks. They're going to skyrocket because they don't understand the markets and the headlines and how they reflect against the market. So I was not shocked at this at all, because when the news of Venezuela happened, all the oil stocks literally surged for one day and then went right back down. And this is fool's gold for people that are trying to chase these headlines and follow what these fake gurus tell them to do. So I am not shocked by this at all.
- [13:21]
Austin Hankwitz
Again, shout out to ETF central.com. all right, Robert, let's wrap up the episode with our favorite call outs from the week. Y' all could think about this as like a little show and tell. I've got a couple things I thought were cool. Robert's got a couple things he thought were cool. And so we're gonna bring it to the class here and give y' all our hot takes. So the first thing that I thought was pretty cool was Trump blocked dividends or share buybacks for defense companies. So earlier this week, Trump block vowed to block defense contractors from paying dividends to their shareholders or buying back their stock until those same defense contractors speed up their weapons production. The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, is to now identify defense contractors that are underperforming on their contracts, engage those firms, which then give them the chance to submit a remediation plan for review. But to me, this headline is more important than just, oh, y' all can't, you know, buy back your stock or pay dividends. This tells me that something might be happening behind the scenes, right? This tells me that Trump right now is getting really, really focused on weapons and having a stockpile of them for who knows in 26 and 27. He's really saying, you guys can't pay yourselves or buy back stock. We want weapons or else. Right? So that's. That's interesting. Second thing here, which I thought was actually pretty cool, Alphabet, which is, of course Google, is now worth more than Apple for the first time since 2019. So Alphabet is now the world's second most valuable company, worth more than Apple, sitting at $3.9 trillion in market cap. This is after Alphabet's stock price climbed 64% in the last 12 months. Hope y' all been listening. We've been. Big buyers, largely driven by Gemini, quickly closing the gap on OpenAI's chat GPT. And here's a quote from a Wall street bank, specifically Jefferies. They said with resilient core businesses improving cloud fundamentals and a strengthening by product cycle, we see Alphabet stock well positioned to carry its gains forward in 2026. Robert I'm owning it for a lifetime. I'm not taking profits, I'm rocking and rolling. Now the last call out I've got to share here is US private sector employment increasing by 41,000 in the month of December. So this 41,000 employee increase in private employment, keyword here, private employment is actually a big bounce back from a 29,000 payroll drop that took place in November which was event revised higher from a 32,000 payroll drop. Now pay, specifically how much money these people are making rose by four and a half percent this year. That's cool. I like it when my, my pay outperforms inflation. And for those of you that hopped to different jobs, your pay actually increased by six and a half percent. Now here's the big call out. Robert Small establishments defined as those companies with less than 500 employees added 43,000 payrolls compared to large establishments defined by those with more than 500 employees added only 2,000 payrolls. So a lot of the people getting jobs right now, if you're someone looking for a job, are coming from the companies with less than 500 employees. Small business owners are driving this economy full stop. And as we reflect upon where the payrolls shrank in people who lost their jobs, 29,000 people were laid off from professional and business services companies, 12,000 from information technology companies and 5,000 from manufacturing companies.
- [16:51]
Robert Croak
I love your radar points today and I want to call out something that I read the other day based on your line saying seems like the administration is getting ready for something big. I saw a stat on X that said pizza deliveries were up 800% within one mile of the Pentagon. And when that has happened in the past, something big happened in the United States. Whether it's war or something else, big is going on. So I love that call out and I'm going to keep an eye on these pizza stats and see how long this goes and see how relative it is to something big happening.
- [17:27]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, 100%. So there's actually you probably what you saw was the account Pentagon Pizza Report. It's got about half a million followers on X. And what they do is they show you hour by hour, you know, what the pizza delivery looks like with the Pentagon and how close it is and you know, sort of the correlation between everyone's ordering Papa John's at 2am what's happening? Oh, we're invading Venezuela at that time. Right. So it's really interesting to track that stuff. But again, that account's called the Pentagon Pizza Report.
- [17:55]
Robert Croak
Well, there you go. Just another way to get ahead of the news cycles and figure out what's going on in the world so we can help you better prepare of what to do with your money. So I'm going to go into my three call outs today. I'm excited about these and awesome. And I think you crushed yours. Number one for me is the national association of Realtors predicts a potential 14% jump in US home sales volume for 2026. So after a rough year in 2025 and with the Trump announcement ridding Wall street from buying up single family homes, this is a bright spot for potential home buyers and sellers in 2026. Along with the expected further rate cuts, experts also believe we will see mortgage rates dropping, drop below 6% this year as well, which will also make more affordability for people looking to buy these homes. So whether you're buying or selling, I think 2026 is going to be a great year in real estate. So buckle up and get ready. Number two for me today is something that I've been keeping an eye on. Austin and I have been owners of this stock for a long time. But bank of America upgraded Coinbase stock from neutral to buy this week, citing the company's leadership in tokenization and the benefits of its layer 2 network base as the main reasons, placing a price target of $340 per share. And Goldman Sachs also upgraded it to a buy. I'm a long term bull on Coinbase and this is solid news. Moving into 2026 for the crypto platform. And number three, today for me that is so important is the Supreme Court tariff rulings happening as we speak. So keep an eye on this as the Supreme Court is expected to rule on this. Regarding Trump's power and the legality to impose these tariffs, this ruling could cause volatility in the markets and impact many major companies that are seeking over $150 billion in refunds. That's billions with a B. Thus far, it is stated that Trump's new tariffs have collected over $200 billion in revenue. We'll be keeping a close eye on this today and into next week.
- [20:00]
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- [20:13]
Robert Croak
No.
- [20:13]
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- [20:31]
Austin Hankwitz
Want to jump back to the Coinbase call out? I think it's really interesting. I think Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, got a lot of flack recently on X.com because he made a post on his account talking about how you can now buy and sell stock on Coinbase. It's like their next thing is they want to buy and sell stocks on their platform. Kind of like a Robin Hood or a public and Brian was like, omg, how cool. I could buy Coinbase stock on Coinbase. How fun is that? But everyone roasted him because according to his 10B51 plan, which is like the systematic buying and selling kind of like you announced. Oh, yep, six months from now I'm buying stock or six months from now I'm selling stock. Since Coinbase became a publicly traded company, Brian Armstrong has never bought stock in his company. Not once. 88 sells, 88 times he sold his stock since they became publicly traded, but not once did Brian Armstrong go and buy his stock. I saw that my jaw was on the floor. I thought that was an incredibly interesting call out.
- [21:29]
Robert Croak
Yeah, we don't know if that means anything good or bad, but I love the fact that you caught that and I'm gonna definitely keep an eye, everybody.
- [21:36]
Austin Hankwitz
Thank you so much for joining us in this week's episode of the Rich Habits Radar. We hope you enjoy these Friday episodes. We are back with them now every single week. Moving forward, we appreciate your patience as we were taking some time off during the holiday season, but we're back here in 2026. So as always, let us know in the comments section here on Spotify what you like, what you don't like. Any feedback? Any comments? Any ideas on how to make these episodes better and more valuable for you? As a weekly listener, we are open to all your ideas because we very, very much appreciate the community we have built here with the Rich Habits Podcast.
- [22:10]
Robert Croak
And as always, share the episodes with a friend. If you found value, give us those five star reviews and check out the free trial to the Rich Habits Network. We do a lot of cool stuff in there and you can join it for free. Kick the tires, spend seven days, join a private live stream with us and really see what it's all about. But thank you all for joining, and we'll see you next week.
- [22:31]
Austin Hankwitz
Thanks, everyone. And we'll see you on Monday. Sam.