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Happy Thursday,
Welcome to the first Rich Habits Newsletter of June 2025!
Thanks to the +867 new subscribers that have joined us over the past week. This is a completely free newsletter — in which we try to give you the most important takeaways from the past week + breakdown our most recent podcast episodes.
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A quick breakdown — in case you don’t have the time.
⭐ President Trump and Elon Musk clashing is not good for the market.
⭐ We broke down how you can hedge against market volatility in 2025.
⭐ Buyers are in charge of the housing market.
⭐ The Magnificent Seven stocks are still in the driver’s seat.
⭐ Oscar Health unexpectedly joined the Fortune 500.
Market Overview
As of market open on 6/5/2025
Chart of the Week
President Trump and Elon Musk clashing is not good for the market.
Talk about an awkward situation. Just last week, President Trump hosted Elon Musk for a press conference celebrating his work with DOGE. Elon is officially finished with being a government employee (which is great for us Tesla holders).
But now… Trump and Musk have hit a major turning point. Musk absolutely hates the government spending within the “Big Beautiful Bill” and he feels betrayed by Trump. It can’t be overstated how big of a deal this could be for politics in the United States. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world, and his “political career” could actually outlive Trump if he chose to continue being involved in the future (directly or indirectly).
If you want a counterargument to Musk — here’s a quick thread from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent supporting the bill.
We’re not going to act like we’ve read every sentence of this bill, and we definitely aren’t pushing a political opinion either way. As investors — what we care about is stability and clarity. There’s currently NO stability or clarity about the relationship between the most powerful person in the world and the richest person in the world…
Let’s hope they can figure this out. The market doesn’t want this to be a long-term riff.
Consider checking out a huge offer for 5 free hotel nights on one of our favorite travel rewards credit cards. This is the best offer we’ve seen this year for this card.
In Case You Missed It…
In this week’s Monday-morning episode of the Rich Habits Podcast (linked here) — Austin and Robert discussed three powerful strategies to hedge against volatility in 2025, joined by special guest Stephen Sikes, COO of Public.
Here’s what they talked about:
What’s Driving 2025 Volatility — With market turmoil fueled by events like the Trump Tariff tantrum, Moody’s U.S. debt downgrade, and rising inflation — the VIX has spiked, markets have swung wildly, and yields remain elevated. Stephen Sikes opened the episode by sharing how retail and sophisticated investors alike are managing the turbulence — and what Public is building to help them navigate it (including their new “Generated Assets” product).
Precious Metals as a Hedge — Gold is up +59.5% and Silver +37.9% since 2024, with Platinum also performing well. Robert and Austin noted holding 10–15% of your portfolio in metals like these — either physically or via ETFs (GLD or the brand-new IAUI for Gold, SLV for Silver, PLTM for Platinum). With massive new U.S. deficits on the horizon, real rates may stay under pressure — giving metals (and Bitcoin) strong tailwinds.
Hedged ETFs: QQQH and SPYH — These NEOS Funds use options to hedge against downside risk, while still capturing most upside gains. During the February–April downturn, QQQH outperformed QQQ by nearly +8% and has tracked the rebound closely. SPYH acts similarly for the S&P 500. While you sacrifice some yield vs. pure income ETFs, the added downside protection is a worthwhile tradeoff for hedging.
Investment-Grade Corporate Bonds — Through Public’s Bond Account, investors can now earn upwards of +7% annualized returns through corporate bonds. Bonds like these are essentially loans to companies that pay interest over time. While they carry more risk than U.S. Treasuries, they’re a great tool to park cash for solid returns in a volatile market.
Volatility in 2025 isn’t going away anytime soon — but now you’ve got three actionable ways to hedge against it. Diversify with metals, protect with hedged ETFs, and earn stable income from high-grade corporate bonds.
Click here to listen to the full episode! It’s a must-listen for anyone trying to navigate this rollercoaster of a market.
Here’s a link to the Q&A episode that was posted this morning.
We answered questions from: Jackson, Rida, Alex, Emil, Jake, Amanda, and David
You can submit questions for these episodes by asking them inside of the Rich Habits Network, replying to this email, or sending us a DM on Instagram.
The Rich Habits Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple, iHeart, YouTube, and wherever else you get your content!
Robert’s Callout
Buyers are in charge of the housing market.
The U.S. housing market has swung sharply in favor of buyers, with nearly 500,000 more home sellers than buyers — the largest gap since Redfin began tracking in 2013.
High home prices and elevated mortgage rates are keeping many potential buyers, especially first-timers, sidelined. Headlines of economic uncertainty in 2025, including layoffs and tariffs, is further suppressing demand. While sellers are beginning to move past the "mortgage rate lock-in" mindset — affordability remains a major barrier, with median home prices up +33% from pre-pandemic levels.
As many of you know — I’ve been diving right into real estate throughout 2025 and I plan on continuing to do the same thing indefinitely! The headlines are talking about horrible conditions and warning of a housing crash… but we’ve already seen so many pullbacks throughout the country. It’s a BUYERS’ MARKET and I’m happy to be participating!
Everyone wants to wait for the “perfect time” to get into real estate — but right now is plenty great to me!
If you don’t want to jump into property ownership yourself, the NEOS IYRI ETF is an excellent option. You should also check out Fundrise linked here!
Austin’s Callout
The Magnificent Seven stocks are still in the driver’s seat.
Now that Q1 earnings season has passed — it’s time for a bit of reflection. You might not remember, but most analysts were worried that Big Tech would have a less-than-stellar series of reports over the past month. That couldn’t have been further from the truth.
The Mag 7 stepped up in a BIG way — flashing nearly +27% EPS growth vs +9.4% for the other 493 companies in the S&P 500.
Since hitting a low on April 7th, the S&P 500 has gained roughly +$7.5 trillion in market cap. About 54% of that growth — around $4 trillion — comes from the Mag 7 stocks alone. Their performance has driven approximately 9.1 percentage points of the S&P 500’s +16.8% return during this stretch. Tesla (TSLA) and Nvidia (NVDA) have soared +53.6% and +42.6%, respectively — reminding everyone that they’re here for the long-haul.
If there are companies that you love, respect, and want to hold for the long-term — DCA into them. Don’t freak out about headlines and don’t have a short-term mentality. I want to hold incredible, cash-flowing companies for many years to come — and Big Tech stocks absolutely fall into that category.
Wall Street is expecting about half as much EPS growth for the Big Tech during Q2 earnings season. Let’s see if they can shake off tariffs and deliver!
The Rich Habits Radar
👉 NEOS launched IAUI — the NEOS Gold High Income ETF.
👉 Worst ADP employment report in 2 years — created just +37k jobs in May.
👉 Hims acquired Zava for a strong push into the European market.
👉 Crowdstrike earnings highlight ARR but show expenses still very high.
👉 Oscar Health unexpectedly joined the Fortune 500.
👉 Meta announced plans to fully automate ads with AI by end of 2026.
👉 Amazon announced a $10B Data Center & A.I. Campus investment.
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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or a recommendation for any investment. The content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.