Apple's (Potentially) New CEO, Amazon's $50B Investment, & December Rate Cuts

0:00In America, half of every dollar spent on brand medicines goes to entities who don't make them. While middlemen like PBMs and 340B hospitals drive up costs, Biopharma is investing$500 billion in new infrastructure and manufacturing here at home and helping patients buy medicines directly at lower prices. Tell Washington to end middlemen markups and put American patients first. Visit phrma.org slash middlemen. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door. Expertly cleaned and folded. so you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you.

0:40Like tea time you. Mmm. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. So did you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great. 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, and the three things sitting at the top of our Rich Habits radar this week include the recent flip-flop we've seen from the Federal Reserve in their December rate cut expectations, Amazon's major announcement to invest$50 billion into data centers, and finally, U.S.

1:31home prices slowing to the weakest performance they've experienced since 2023. And be sure to stick around because we have an exciting update for our multi-asset SPV investors from back in October. More on that later. Now, Robert, before we dig into the first story, yesterday was Thanksgiving. How exciting. I hope y 'all had a blast. We're actually filming this on Tuesday, November 25th. So in two days from now, it'll be Thanksgiving for us. But regardless, we're big fans of Thanksgiving. All the turkey, all the cranberry, all the stuffing, all the sweet potato casserole with the marshmallows on top.

2:06That's the best. But now today's Black Friday, which means Robert, we are running a 50 % off Black Friday promotion for the Rich Habits Network if you sign up for an annual plan. Now normally the Rich Habits Network is$77 a month, but if you sign up annually, you get an automatic 20 % discount to$740 a year. But now because of this Black Friday sale, you can sign up for the Rich Habits Network, subscribe to an annual plan, and only pay$4.62. That's 12 whole months of weekly live streams, investment opportunities, countless hours of video coursework, back and forth commentary inside of the school community that we host this in.

2:45I mean, it's a blast in there. So$4.62, I mean, that is$38 a month. If you don't make$38 from something we say in there per month, I will be astonished. That's why I'm laughing because I'm thinking about if all of you out there that have not joined the network yet are not tired of hearing us talk about all these cool investments like xai and aptronic and all these cool companies now's your chance 50 off get into the network black friday sale and be part of all this cool stuff we're doing so if you want to join us over there at the rich habits network scroll down to the description of this episode if it's in youtube or if in spotify or wherever you're listening to this Click on the link to join the Rich Habits Network.

3:26You'll be prompted to join monthly, but you don't want to do that. You want that 50 % discount, so you're going to join annually, and that's when you will receive that 50 % discount. So be sure to do that. We'll see you in there. Can't wait to have you. Now, Robert, let's dig into our first story. Yes, our first headline is the flip-flop of the Federal Reserve December rate cut expectations. And to make sure we're all on the same page, The Federal Reserve is a committee in charge of setting short-term interest rates on T-bills. So the higher these interest rates become, the higher the interest rate you pay on your debt, like auto loans, credit cards, personal loans, etc.

4:04Now, Robert, as you and I'm sure everyone else listening right now remembers, the Fed raised interest rates at the fastest pace in 40 years, starting back in March of 2022, because of the rampant inflation we experienced during the pandemic, given all the money printing. Now, that rake hiking cycle is over, and we are currently in a rate cutting cycle. Now, the stock market loves it when the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, which is why we've seen that steady grind higher since the summertime. However, the Fed recently surprised everyone late October when Jerome Powell said that, yeah, a December rate cut might not happen anymore.

4:41The markets, as I'm sure everyone has seen, sold off pretty heavily. And I'm sure everyone has seen since that late October time frame, the markets have experienced a lot of volatility. Now, so far this week, as we record this on Tuesday, November 25th, we have seen a little bit of green as the Federal Reserve is now signaling for a December rate cut. And Polymarket is putting the odds at an 85 % chance. And two consecutive cuts brought rates down to a range between 3.75 % and 4 % last month to guard against the risks of a softening job market, even as inflation has run closer to 3 % than the Fed's 2 % goal.

5:21A third cut in December would be consistent with the plan that Powell laid out in August, move rates closer to neutral, a level that neither stimulates or restrains economic activity. Tariff-related inflation risks have lessened, while on the flip side, labor market weakness has become a greater concern. So, Austin, what does this mean for you and everyone listening's money? Yeah, so this means don't fight the Fed. It's been a phrase we've been hearing from prudent investors for decades now. If the Fed is raising rates like they did in 2022, be on defense. We saw the stock market fall 28%, 30%, 35%, depending on the index you were looking at in 2022.

6:01That big bear market, I'd argue, was caused by the Federal Reserve raising rates at the fastest pace in 40 years. On the flip side, if the Fed is cutting interest rates like they began to do last year, be on offense. Risk on assets thrive in that looser monetary environment, which is exactly what the Federal Reserve is signaling for over the coming months and quarters. So don't let the week-to-week, month-to-month volatility derail your wealth-building plans. As long as the Fed is cutting interest rates, I'm bullish, and that's where we're headed. So net buyer of assets over here, Robert. I agree 100%.

6:37As we always say to everyone following along and listening, when in doubt, zoom out. And this really illustrates that perfectly. All right, Robert, let's now jump to our next story, which is Amazon investing$50 billion building these new data centers. So Amazon said it's going to invest$50 billion to expand AI and high-performance computing capabilities for its cloud businesses. Here we go, ready? U.S. government customers. Just the U.S. government customers. That's pretty interesting to me. Now with the investment, government customers specifically across AWS will gain access to a broad set of AI tools as well as hardware from AWS and NVIDIA.

7:17Amazon said this access will help customers build their own AI systems, more easily handle large amounts of data, and increase their efficiency, as if we haven't heard about government efficiency enough so far in 2025. Our investment in purpose-built government AI and cloud infrastructure will fundamentally transform how federal agencies leverage supercomputing. We're giving agencies expanded access to advanced AI capabilities that will enable them to accelerate critical missions from cybersecurity to drug discovery. Amazon has been rapidly investing into their cloud computing infrastructure. CEO Andy Jassy said during their earnings call last month that Amazon added 3.8 gigawatts of data center capacity over the last 12 months alone.

8:01He also said the company will have spent$125 billion this year on capital expenditures, aka infrastructure, and guided to an even higher number for 2026. So Austin, what does this mean for you and your money? So for our listeners here, it's super important to understand the picks and shovels type investing strategy. Robert and I have been talking about this for years now, right? So like during the gold rush that took place back in the 1800s, yes, there were people that got rich by mining gold with a pick and a shovel and finding and discovering, but it was more of like a gamble, right? It was anyone's luck to go and get rich mining gold.

8:39But the people who absolutely made money during the gold rush were the people selling the miners, the picks, the shovels, and the hopes and dreams, right, of actually being able to find and discover this gold. So for everyone listening, it's like, okay, how do I apply that now of this sort of picks and shovels investing strategy to what I'm learning here about Amazon? Well, Amazon is spending$125 billion this year on capital expenditures, right? So that$125 billion is leaving Amazon's income statement as an expense, but entering another company's income statement as revenue. So it's never been more important to be investing into the companies who will benefit most from the data center build out.

9:18I just saw a stat from B of A Global Research, Bank of America, and they said that we'll be spending$900 billion a year on data centers by 2028. So think Vertiv Holdings, Eaton Corporation, Modine Manufacturing, Arista Networks, Constellation Energy, and all of the names that we've been talking about for several quarters, if not years now, about being the biggest beneficiaries, right? This money is leaving Amazon's income statement and it's entering another company's income statement as revenue. What companies will get that as revenue? Therefore, what shareholders will benefit from more profits in the future?

9:54Yeah, I really like this call out because we're always talking about picks and shovels, plays and all that. But we're also fighting the headlines right now because everyone is talking about this big AI bubble. Yet the largest companies, banks and hedge funds around the world are all investing in AI infrastructure. So for me, I'm still bullish. I don't believe we're anywhere near a bubble. Yes, there will be companies that will be bubble-ish within the sector. But overall, I think we are still strong moving forward, especially for U.S. manufacturing in the data center space. So let's get into our last point today, and that is U.S.

10:29home prices continue to slow. The S &P cotality Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, that was definitely a mouthful, which measures home prices across the country, rose 1.3 % in the 12 months through September, compared with a revised 1.4 % rise in August. This represents the weakest annual price growth since early 2023, when the market was absorbing the initial shock of the Federal Reserve aggressive rate cutting cycle. Broad-based weakness points to falling demand as mortgage rates remain near that 6.5 % range as of late September. And as of today, Tuesday, November 25th, a 30-year mortgage rate national average according to Bankrate is 6.33%.

11:1333%. So not much better, actually, since late September. Now, all of the 20 major cities that were surveyed in this index posted price declines before seasonal adjustments. Tampa, San Diego, and Seattle posted the largest declines. With mortgage rates just stubbornly elevated and affordability now at what seems to be multi-decade lows, the market appears to be settling into a new equilibrium of very little price growth or in some regions just an outright decline. I saw that more than half the homes sold in 2025 through October had at least one price cut. That share is generally higher than the past couple of years and about twice what it was when home prices soared during the COVID-19 pandemic.

11:59Setting a price too high can make the sales process really drag on and listings that sold after a price reduction typically spent about five times as many days on the market as the average for homes priced right from the start. So be careful out there. Make sure you price accordingly. That's actually crazy to think about, right? Listings that sold after a price reduction typically spent five times as many days on the market as the average for homes that were priced correctly from the start. So if you are selling your home right now, and you want to get out and you're not stubborn, right? You're like, listen, I'm ready to go.

12:36Price your home accordingly. And some of the advice we read online was you should price it on about homes that have sold in the last two, three, four months in your region, right in your neighborhood specifically, versus maybe something from 12, 18, 24 months ago. Austin, I think that's a great call out because I feel like too many real estate agents and brokers, they go back too far in the comps. And I really love that point. And I hope everyone pays attention to just really, because markets change so quickly, and I think that three, four-month window is perfect. Now, homes that were priced correctly from day one sell more quickly and get nearly 100 % of their asking price.

13:14After three months, sellers usually trim the price by 5%, 6%, 7%, and then after a year, they normally trim the price by double digits, think 10%, 12%, 15%. Now, when sellers can't stomach a big price cut like that, they tend to delist their home off the market, then relist it back later. But studies show that if you do that, you often face even deeper price cuts later on. So Robert, what does this mean for you and your money, specifically everyone listening right now that's like, wait a second, I thought real estate is cool. Why are you telling me real estate's not cool? Well, we still think real estate is cool, but it is definitely tough out there right now.

13:52It is increasingly becoming more of a buyer's market. As interest rates remain higher for longer, people simply can't afford the homes they want, even though the markets are so soft and you can practically name your own price. And what makes this worse is the inventory that would have been added to the markets offering us an asset class-wide discount is stuck because who wants to sell their house with a 2.5 % interest rate on the mortgage just to go buy a new one at 7.5 % interest. Despite deals everywhere, it's increasingly harder to act on them because even with mortgage rates at 7%, the numbers don't shake out unless you're putting down some crazy 25 or 50 % down payment or something like that.

14:35It's just tougher out there and it's really hard to make the numbers work. So make sure you understand what you're getting yourself into on all accounts. Yeah. A couple of just places where my head goes. The first one is if you're selling your home right now and you have an interest rate on your mortgage in the twos, threes or even a 4 % range, you could likely list it for higher than normal comps would put it at, assuming that you can do an assumable mortgage. So look into that. I know there's realtors that specifically help sellers navigate that, but assumable mortgages are really interesting right now.

15:09And then the other thing that's also super interesting is I want to say I saw some headlines recently about like a portable mortgage, right? So like I could take my two and a half percent interest rate that I have on this home, after I sell it, I can then take that same interest rate and go buy another home at that same interest rate. That would be awesome. If everyone can then just lock in those interest rates for a specific period of time and take that borrowed money and move it around and do other stuff with it, I feel like a lot of these people who bought their homes, let's call it in the 2010s and early 2020s when interest rates were much more reasonable, now they're looking around saying, I don't want to take on debt at 6%, 7%, 8 % interest.

15:48I can't afford that? Why would I sell my home? I'll just stick here for longer. So there's a lot of inventory I feel like that is not moving because people don't want to sell their homes and get rid of these interest rates. So if we can unlock that inventory by allowing people to take those interest rates with them and maybe go buy something else, that could be a really, really interesting way to reinvigorate the housing market back in America. It would definitely do that if these portable mortgages get approved. I don't know that they will. But wow, can you imagine the millions of people that can just pick up and go get another house and keep that same rate?

16:20That would be incredible for the housing market. No kidding. Now, Robert, what we like to do before we talk about our specific Rich Habits Radar call-outs, I've got three, you've got three, is more recently, we've been giving a shout out to ETF Central. So on ETF Central, you can go discover a ton of new ETFs that could fit into your well-diversified portfolio. We definitely have discovered some awesome ETFs on this website. Again, that's ETFcentral.com. And what we've been doing recently is we've been talking about the biggest movers and shakers, Robert, as it relates to ETF Central's sort of best performance and worst performance so far this week.

16:57Now, what I've got on screen, if you're watching on video on YouTube or Spotify, go check out the video here. We got the best performers and the worst performers according to ETF Central. I talk about the best, Robert talks about the worst, and then we give you guys one general takeaway. So Robert, kicking us off with the third best performer for the week is niche commodities up 6 % over the last five days. Next is biotech and genomics up nearly 7 % over the last five days. And finally, the best performing sector of ETFs, according to ETFcentral.com, over the last week here is life sciences up over 8 % in the last five trading days.

17:36And the third worst performing sector this week is emerging markets awakening down 6.2%, cryptocurrency down 7.1%, and next generation internet down 7.7%. So my takeaway here is cryptocurrency at number two being the worst performing sector is no shocker. The markets are all over the place right now. There's so much fear and geopolitical unrest. Nobody really knows what's going on. I'm still bullish on crypto. I think we have a long run to go, but it is definitely no shock that this comes in at number two this week. Yeah, I think for me, what's really interesting to reflect upon is, well, two of one, cryptocurrency being the only sector, ETF central sector here, call out, that is in the red year to date.

18:23Right. So you mentioned next gen internet and emerging markets. Those are both double digit green year to date, but crypto is the only one that's down big this week and down big year to date. but more specifically best performing one at life sciences i think that's so interesting because as we kind of reflect upon this and i'm not an expert at life sciences but i would imagine the rise of artificial intelligence the different types of you know genomic sequencing we can use a lot of different technologies to study different you know medications and surgery there's a lot of things i feel like going on right now in that in that sector and if i knew more about it robert i I feel like I'd be more like all in.

19:01But looking at the year-to-date performance at over 55 % and it being the best performance this week, despite the volatility we've had over the last five trading days, like maybe I need to learn more about some life sciences. I think we definitely both need to do some deeper dives into life sciences and where the picks and shovels are here for 2026. But that's a great call out. All right, Robert, I'll let you kick off our rapid fire, but give everyone a quick rundown as to what we're doing first. Yeah, I love this part of the show because it's really just kind of Austin and I's top three headlines from the dome.

19:32What are we excited about? What are we seeing and what has drawn our interest this week? So my first rapid fire today is gold prices are being sticky. And as of November 25th, we are still seeing gold prices rise above forty one hundred dollars an ounce. I think this is great news for gold. We've seen some ups and downs and a few pullbacks recently as everyone feared for where the economy was going. We've also seen that with silver, but I'm still bullish for gold and I believe it has a long way to go. Although I'm a little more bullish on silver because of the use case, and I believe silver will outperform gold over the next two years.

20:09So we'll see how that plays out. Point number two for me is home prices sink in the Florida market right where I'm sitting today. And as the weather cools and heading into late fall, so does the U.S. housing market. But here's the key. Florida is leading the nation in metro areas experiencing the steepest home price declines. A recent report from real estate analytics firm Quotality revealed that of the 10 coolest markets in the U.S. among the 100 largest metro areas, seven were in Florida. Cape Coral was number two at 6.9%, and the second was Naples, Florida at 6.7%, followed by Pune Gorda, Sebring, Florida, Northport, Florida, and Brownsville, Florida, which rounded out the top 10 with a 4.6 % decline.

21:00I think this is pretty crazy. I'm seeing the opportunities here, but again, like we discussed earlier in the episode, you have to make sure that the numbers make sense because it is a buyer's market, And you can see by these declines, Florida is a great place. And I think with everything happening in New York and people migrating from California, it is going to be a really good time to buy if you can make sense of how to finance the properties. And my third rapid fire today is Klarna is launching a stable coin on Tempo in an effort to challenge the old networks. Klarna, as we all know, is a provider that is a buy now, pay later service, launching its own stable coin on a layer one network called Tempo, according to the press release today.

21:45And this token will be called Klarna USD when it debuts next year, alongside of the main net for the network being developed by payment giants like Stripe and Paradigm. With Klarna's scale and Tempo's infrastructure, we can challenge old networks and make payments faster and cheaper for anyone, they said in the statement. And so they believe that this is very bullish and will put crypto in a final stage where it is finally fast, low cost and secure and built for scale. I think this is great news because it's just more integration and more adoption from the big players in the payment game and in the tokenization game.

22:23So I think this is great news for all of us crypto holders and the future of crypto and adoption. You know, Robert, that Florida housing market pullback is not surprising. I know everyone was moving to Florida during the pandemic, and I don't know if they're still there or not. I had a lot of friends go to Tampa. Now they're in different places. Maybe it's Austin or Nashville or wherever else here. So interesting to see, to your point, that the top 10 places in Florida all experienced that 4.6 % decline. Geez Louise. All right, now my turn to show and tell my top three headlines that I thought were interesting and I just want to share with the class here.

22:57So the first one is Apple CEO, Tim Cook, could be resigning soon. But take that word soon with a grain of salt. There's no real reports that Tim Cook is actually going to resign, but a lot of speculation has begun to take place and I think that's pretty interesting. So let's all remember here, Tim Cook is 65 years old for crying out loud, let the guy go retire if he wants to. And some people have been speculating on who could replace him. Those names include John Ternus, the hardware executive who helped build the iPad, the Mac, the AirPods, and the iPhone over the last 24 years at Apple, as well as Craig Federighi, I hope I'm saying that right, one of the best known executives at Apple.

23:38He's currently the head of software engineering over there. It's anyone's guess as to what's going to actually happen. But Polymarket is currently giving this a 50-50 chance of happening in 2026. So stay tuned. Maybe Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, is replaced in the next 12 months. Speaking of CEOs, Jeff Bezos became the co-CEO of Project Prometheus last week. So this company is focusing on AI that will help in engineering and manufacturing in a number of different fields, including computers and aerospace and automobiles. Very vague because, to be honest with you, not a lot of people know what's going on with this company.

24:14I think it's interesting, though, and here's why. They came out the gates announcing a$6.5 billion worth of funding, partly from Jeff Bezos himself. But this amount of funding made it one of the most well-financed early-stage startups in the world ever. This is the first time Jeff Bezos has taken a formal operational role in a company since stepping down from Amazon in 2021. So Project Prometheus is definitely something to keep an eye on in the future. Now, the last little call out here, speaking of funding and exciting and stuff like that, Elon Musk's XAI is set to close a$15 billion funding round at a$230 billion pre-money valuation, which means if you participated in the multi-asset SPV that we created here for our Rich Habits podcast audience, we had i think it was what robert well over a million dollars was invested from you guys into this spv and xai was part of that you'd already be up like 35 on that investment which is pretty sick so now the question is what are they using all the money for according to a source close to the company they're saying that xai plans to use a large portion of that money to buy gpus responsible for powering their llms which like duh that's what everyone's doing now remember x the like social media platform that Elon owns is owned by XAI after XAI was a buyer of that company at a$33 billion stock transaction.

25:44And I think that took place last year, which is why Grok is like so well integrated into X right now. And additionally, XAI introduced Grokipedia, an AI powered competitor to Wikipedia. No idea how that's going. But regardless, it's exciting to see that people who participated in that multi asset SPV are seeing a little bit of a markup on their investment. So keep an eye on XAI in the future. $230 billion, Robert. What a wild valuation. It is crazy, but what a great episode because when I think about gold prices hovering around all-time highs, all of these cool investments we've been doing lately, it just really reminds me that if you look hard and you work hard and you put in the effort, there is always ways to make really good returns and good money, even in tumultuous volatile markets.

26:32So that is why this episode to me is really cool just to see all of the different headlines and opportunities and things that caught our eye this week in the news. Robert, couldn't agree more. What an awesome episode of the Rich Habits Radar. These Friday episodes become more and more exciting, talking about the ETF sectors, talking about the radar points, talking about the different headlines impacting our money on a weekly basis. I love these episodes. I genuinely enjoy them a whole lot. I love reporting on the news and give my hot take here and there. Just appreciate everyone coming back every single Friday.