Winter Storm Stocks, SpaceX IPO, & Retail Investors Getting Smarter

0:00Public.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, and 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 some quick updates on Trump's housing bans for institutional investors, a new timeline on a potential SpaceX IPO, and a I told you so moment on the Russell 2000. We're also going to be joined today by David Jakansky, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Quantity Funds.

0:40He has helped create hundreds of ETFs across both institutional and retail markets. We're excited to get his take on the ETF landscape, specifically the difference between hedge fund-like ETFs and retail candy. Yeah, the retail candy thing is pretty funny. But yes, he is very, very smart. And we're excited to hear from him as it relates to these hedge fund like strategies and ETFs and things. So stay tuned on that one. And also be sure to stay tuned and stick around because later we're going to be talking about the Sphears new location in Washington, D.C. And as I look at Sphears stock, I say, dang it, I should have bought more of it.

1:16So, Robert, let's kick us off with our first story here. Yes. President Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday aimed at stopping large institutional investors from buying up all the single family homes, a movie says will help make more homes available to the everyday family. So today we're updating you on that. The order directs federal agencies to limit government support like mortgage guarantees for institutional home purchasers and to scrutinize investor acquisitions of single family homes. These large investors often pay cash and can outbid us normal buyers, which tends to push prices higher.

1:53Another headline worth mentioning is the government buying around$200 billion worth of mortgage bonds to lower mortgage interest rates. Remember, mortgage rates are not tied to Jerome Powell's efforts, but instead follow the 10-year yield. Lower rates mean lower payments, which can make homes slightly more affordable in the near future. Yeah, actually, I did some math, Robert. And since Trump was inaugurated last year, the 30-year mortgage rate has fallen from 7.1 % down to about 5.75%, which means on a$400 ,000 mortgage, which is kind of what it's going to cost to buy something right now in America, that's a monthly difference of about$350, right?

2:32So you're saving about$4 ,000 a year right now in interest, which I think is always good. Trump's team has also discussed allowing people to use money from their 401k retirement accounts to help pay for a down payment on a home without facing early withdrawal penalties. All right, you lost me there on that one, Trump. The idea, though, is to help people who can afford a monthly mortgage payment, but struggle to save enough cash up front. So Robert, what does this mean for you and your money? Specifically, I think it's cool to hear about the let's get institutions like Blackstone away from buying single family homes and let's do what we can to bring down those mortgage rates.

3:09But I want to hear your take here on the 401k retirement cash out for a down payment. That's a big no for me. But on the surface, all of these headlines make a meaningful difference in making housing more affordable for the median everyday family that's just trying to buy a home. Less competition, lower interest rates, and possible access to additional further funding for down payments. However, Trump lost me on the last one about the 401k. We never want to see anyone do that. Don't borrow from your future. And while all this sounds like a quick fix on accessing down payment funds, Tapping into or cashing out your 401k early is something we've always been against here at the Rich Habits Podcast.

3:52You shouldn't borrow from your future self, but instead make a plan to save for the down payment the old fashioned way. Yeah, I think I think it's cool that we're doing some stuff to help people buy homes, but that is not what we're doing. We're not going to be telling people to cash out on their 401ks to go. That doesn't make sense. But something that is also kind of like, that doesn't make sense, but is all the headlines this week is the SpaceX summer IPO. We've got a little bit of a timeline now. So Elon Musk is obsessed with this idea of putting data centers in space and to achieve the mission of SpaceX putting these data centers in place.

4:27They got an IPO, a SpaceX IPO, which is something that we've been talking about for several weeks now. I think it was like early to mid-December when the rumblings of that started happening, would provide the company with tens of billions of dollars in cash, cash that they would need to make their idea of, again, these data centers in space some sort of a reality. Yeah, I think with all these headlines, there's a lot of people out there shaking their heads with this dystopian future. Is it real? What's going on? And some people are saying Elon views a SpaceX IPO as a way for XAI to catch up to some of its competitors as well.

5:02Two of XAI's competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic are eyeing their own IPOs this year. And Musk is probably eager for SpaceX to hit the public markets first. So SpaceX is expected to select the banks they'll end up using to lead the stock offering soon. And according to Polymarket, which is a great way to figure out what people are betting on, Morgan Stanley is the front runner at the moment. People say Elon wants the company to be publicly traded by July. And if SpaceX succeeds with putting data centers in space, it's going to be obvious that XAI will be their first customer. So be on the lookout for an IPO from SpaceX before July.

5:43That's exciting. How incredibly exciting it is, Austin, for everyone who's inside the Rich Habits Network, because we offered a SpaceX investment at$220 billion and another one at$800 billion. And if the rumors are true, the IPO could be in the trillions of dollars at launch. And according to Polymarket, there's an 80 % chance that SpaceX market cap will close the first day of trading above$1 trillion, which is a staggering number. But I think it's absolutely possible if everyone believes in this space exploration and data centers in space. So it's a great reminder for everyone to think about joining the Rich Habits Network, where you're able to invest alongside us in some of the biggest deals of the year.

6:27It's a lot going on. Crazy space exploration. What does this mean for you and your money? Yeah, I think it means that space exploration and the space economy and all that stuff just got validated and it's here to stay. And it's a lot more interesting now to investors. We've been talking about names like ASD Space Mobile and Rocket Lab for several months. We are up a ton on those both names over the course of 2025 and continue to believe that companies like this will benefit. Because when you see a name like SpaceX, who has just been at the forefront of all space things and satellite and Starlink and all that stuff for decades now.

7:05And you see them IPO-ing at a trillion, two trillion, whatever valuation. It's like, wait a second, if they can do that and they can make billions of dollars in profits, why can't these other space companies do the same? So I think space exploration and the space economy as a whole remain a very exciting secular growth trend as we head into the rest of 2026 and beyond. Love, love, love it. So let's talk about our next point today, and that is small cap stocks, specifically the Russell 2000, are outperforming their large cap peers quite well year to date, the largest outperformance since 1996. The Russell 2000 has beat the S &P 500 for the last 14 trading sessions.

7:45And we're not saying we told you so, but we told you so. And I know we talked about the Rich Habits Network earlier, but Robert, if you are part of the Rich Habits Network, you remember me pounding the table on small cap stocks, specifically the Russell 2000, back in October and November. Since then, the high beta names that were sexy in 2025 that everyone was so excited about, like Robinhood and Palantir, have both fallen 30 % and 20 % respectively from their all-time highs since that beginning-ish, middle-ish of October. During that same period of time, the Russell 2000 is up 9.5%. So you look at that, you're like, okay, one's down 30.

8:24I could have been up nine. That's a 40 % difference in a portfolio's total return by kind of moving around and having active management with your portfolio. And when you pair the Fed cutting interest rates and doing some off-brand quantitative easing, cooling inflation, and the Trump administration running things hot, you get small cap outperformance. This is also the first year in several where small caps, aka the Russell 2000, are expected to grow earnings even more than mid or large cap stocks moving ahead in 2026. So Robert, what does this mean for you and your money? Well, what it means in my opinion is active management with your portfolio is always important.

9:06You hear Austin and I talking about it all the time. You don't want to just have this set it and forget it strategy because things move quickly. And the Russell 2000 is not a long-term solution, but instead us taking advantage of a key rotation and reallocation of capital coming in the markets right now. And we're excited we've been ahead of it and believe it will continue to take place over the coming months and quarters. Yeah, I think that needs an emphasis, right? The Russell 2000 and small cap stocks in general are exactly that. They're small, right? These are not your blue chip S &P 500 profitable companies.

9:40These are companies strapped with debt. These are companies who are trying to adopt AI as fast as they can so they can even just survive, right? So it's like just because this reallocation is happening away from large cap to small cap, because these small caps have been beaten down so much over the last, let's call it two, three, four years, right? It's sort of a perfect storm now for the Russell 2000 to move ahead. We've been pounding the table on it. We think that we'll continue to move ahead in 2026, as we shared in last Friday's episode, our 2026 market predictions. And if we can supplement some of these long-term S &P 500 gains with a little bit of small cap action along the way, we will do it with smiles on our faces.

10:21So Robert, before we jump to our quick interview with David, let's give a quick shout out to ETF Central, which is a really interesting platform that we encourage all of our listeners to check out. ETF Central does a wonderful job of helping you better understand the flows, the total performance, the composition of everything as it relates to ETFs that might be inside of your own portfolio. So Robert, let's break down the best performing thematic ETFs and the worst performing thematic ETFs for the week. Starting in third place for the best performing is alternative energy up about five and a half percent.

10:56Metal excluding gold is up nine and a half percent. And the best performing ETF theme for this week is niche commodity up 16 and a half percent. Very interesting. That doesn't surprise me at all. Let's get with the worst performers. In third place is next generation internet down around five and a half percent. In number two, cannabis and psychedelics down around 5.75 percent. And the worst performer of the week is cloud computing down almost 7 percent. You know, Robert, we've been talking about how a lot of people now are moving and shaking away from SaaS, software as a service, right? Cloud computing, right?

11:37These types of names. Because essentially what we've seen in the rise of AI is you can use AI to build the applications they're selling you in. And at the end of the day, not only now are these SaaS and cloud computing companies and internet names, which is, you know, next generation internet was another loser this week. Not only are these names now competing against others, right? So Asana versus a Monday.com, but they're also competing against the tech bro who's just going to build a quick AI app for his startup and doesn't want to go pay Asana$4 ,000 a month for 19 seats, right, or whatever the cost is.

12:11And so, like, it's interesting to see how quickly AI is eating software. Yeah, and I agree with you because something I think we do really well here for our audience, both on the podcast and in the Rich Habits Network, is making sure they're not surprised by anything. And it really brings me back to an old quote by Wayne Gretzky talking about why he was so good at hockey. He skates to where the puck is going, not where the puck is. And I think that's important investing for people to understand as things move along, what is going to affect the markets and those secular parts of the market that we're investing in?

12:44So I think you did a great job. And ETF Central, because of this tool, allows people to really see where the trends are at week by week and day by day in the ETF markets to really know what they're doing and where they stand with their investment. 100 % agree. Now, speaking of ETFs, Robert, before we jump into our normal headline call-outs where I bring a couple headlines, Robert brings a couple headlines, we're actually going to do a quick interview. We're joined today by David Jakansky, the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Quantify Funds. You guys are going to love this conversation because David has spent more than 20 years in the ETF industry, including being one of the earliest partners at Tidal Financial Group, where he helped create hundreds of ETFs across both institutional and retail markets.

13:32He's also managed a$1.8 billion ETF model portfolio suite used by more than 6 ,000 financial advisors, giving him a rare insight into how these products actually perform at scale. And over that time, David has developed a clear conviction. The ETF market has split into two extremes, products built to fit neatly into advisor models and what he calls retail candy strategies that look compelling on the surface, but often leave investors disappointed over time. At Quantify, his mission is to bridge the gap by building institutional quality hedge fund like strategies that everyday investors can actually own through full market cycles.

14:15He also believes something important is changing. Retail investors, especially within the financial creator community like us, are becoming far more sophisticated, willing to dig into complexity and capable of evaluating advanced strategies. That shift creates room to use the ETF wrapper the way it was truly intended with thoughtful leverage, built in rebalancing, real risk management and tax efficiency, not financial gimmicks. And that's exactly what David and his team are building at Quantify Funds. Cannot wait to dig into these institutional quality hedge fund-like strategies. So, David, welcome to the podcast.

14:53Let's jump into it. Thanks so much. Excited to be here. I'll jump right in with my first question. You've said that the industry is split between advisor-friendly simplicity and retail candy. I love that line. What did you mean by that? And why do you think retail investors have been underserved by both sides? Yeah, I think the advisor community and the retail community are actually looking for, for the most part, two different product solutions. Advisors are looking for products that either can fill a big portion of their portfolio and hug a benchmark or are small allocations that fit around the benchmark.

15:28Whereas retail communities are looking for something totally different, either true trading tools or full product solution portfolios. And so I think it's really hard for issuers to issue products that fit for both. I think there's a couple that have done a very good job at that. You end up getting firms that are just focused on the retail space and others that are just focused on the advisory space, albeit obviously minus a few select firms that do a good job at both. And I do think that the winners in the retail space, unfortunately, have been in this quote unquote retail candy space where it looks good.

16:00It looks shiny. It has 100 % distribution yield. And then they wake up the next day and they just feel sick. Unfortunately, that is the reality for a lot of people. And, you know, we're not going to name names over here or anything, but we'll certainly talk about that here in a bit. But a big part of your thesis around what you're building is that retail investors are getting smarter, especially with the rise of the financial creator community. Right. The Rich Habits podcast is a great example of that. What are you seeing today that tells you the retail knowledge curve is genuinely shifting? And what do you think that they're most interested in learning at the moment?

16:33Yeah, I think there's so much collaboration from individual investors and also financial creators. And there's so much sharing of knowledge in the advisor space. When you have something that you think it's interesting, you might call one or two friends, but you're not going to blast it off to the world. Like that's your theoretical alpha. You're going to hide it behind closed doors and hope that it takes a while for other people to see it. Whereas in the financial community space and the individual investor space, they want to bounce ideas. There's this high mentality of like, let's learn together.

17:02You even see like groups of financial creators come together and like, oh, well, these are the two creators that specialized in options. These guys are really good at stock analysis and they're all collaborating and learning from each other. And it allows the adoption curve of knowledge to grow at such a quick space. And I think we've seen that here in the derivative income space over the last 18 months. You know, if you asked the average financial creator two years ago about derivative income, they'd be like, yeah, I kind of understand what cover calls all are. Now they're talking about the volatility surface and SKUs and this and that.

17:34And it feels like the financial creator space has gone through a PhD in derivative incomes in the last two years. And I'm very excited to see that. No, I certainly am as well. And to your point, I completely agree. We go back in time a couple of years and everyone, the only ETFs that were sexy, especially when we think about COVID, was like the Cathie Woods, these thematic ETFs. Like, oh, yeah, I understand that an ETF has a theme to it. That makes a lot of sense. And then we sort of saw the rise of the income focused investor during, let's call it 2022, when the stock market was down and people were still looking as to ways to find real return in their portfolios.

18:11And so you started seeing these covered call ETFs and dividend, you know, distribution stuff, ETFs. And now to your point, I would argue, you know, the retail investor has sort of become more sophisticated with this stuff. And now they're saying, wait, what else exists out there? What are the hedge funds using? What are the Wall Street firms doing? What strategies can I take that they're implementing in real time and then find an ETF equivalent and add that to my own portfolio. But it's cost of an arm of leg to figure that out, right? I think especially in the derivative income space, you know, you see an ETF come out with 120 % yield, but like you can only distribute what you generate in total return.

18:46Yes, you can have the total return of asset class, total return from diversification and rebalancing total return from harvesting some volatility on the underlying investments, but that's it. Regardless of what your distribution rate is, like you can't make more than that, you know, then you just distribute what you distribute. There's a rule in the ETF industry that you need to distribute 90 % of what you generate. But a lot of these firms have gone way beyond just that. And then it ends up looking a lot like a bond profile where you have none of the upside and you have just the downside. So you go to Yahoo Finance and it just looks like a staircase down.

19:18And then there's other funds that, you know, were like, realize that people are just looking at Yahoo Finance and they look, well, even if we're not doing cover calls and we just add a little bit of leverage, you know, when that asset class does really well and people look back at the Yahoo Finance chart, irregardless of our Sharpe ratio being terrible, we're going to look really good at Yahoo Finance over the last three months. So like we're going to get flows on that. And so, yes, retail has gotten a PhD in derivative income space, but it has cost them a lot along the way. I want you to double click on that, David, because it's it's really important.

19:46What are you all doing differently than this staircase down and retail candy? What are what is Quantify Funds doing so differently here? Yeah, first and foremost, we're not promising that we can overpay and generate these insane massive yields. And how we get a little bit of an outsized yield versus just a traditional cover call ETF is through structurally diversified leverage. Leverage is the third rail in a lot of conversations. But there's this growing category of the asset management space called portable alpha or return stacking. And it started in the 90s. The idea is you stack two things that have somewhat uncorrelated return streams on top of each other.

20:24And that takes the onus off of the allocator from doing those difficult rebalances. You can get a 2x return in a 2x ETF, but you have to trim on the way up and buy on the way down. And that's just really hard emotionally for people to do. We embed those difficult rebalances within the ETF. So BTGD has been out for about 15 months. It's a 200 % exposure ETF to both Bitcoin and gold, 100 % Bitcoin, 100 % gold. We've had a less than one-to-one downside to Bitcoin and a more than one-to-one upside, you might say, well, is that magic? No, it's not magic. It's just taking two asset classes that have good diversification benefits and doing the unemotional rebalancing, which allows you to have more volatility than the baseline on the upside and less volatility than the baseline on the downside.

21:07So let's talk about leverage a little more. You talked about it in the beginning, and I want to click back on that because that word really scares people. And one of the things we hang our hat on here at the Rich Habits podcast is really breaking down these difficult subjects and items to get the everyday person that's maybe new to investing or just getting their feet wet. Maybe they're a mid-range investor and getting them to be able to understand all these terms and what it means. And historically leveraged ETFs came with daily use warnings and required constant rebalancing. How does forced rebalancing inside the ETF change the dynamic for longer term investors?

21:44Yeah, I think there's a lot lot of people online who are like, yeah, just YOLO, TQQQ, right? And honestly, that's worked because we've had this like asymmetric upside return over the last 15 year period. And in some cases, we've actually outperformed that 2X or 3X product, but it's not magic. Return stacking just takes that rebalancing. It still has to be done, but instead of the allocated doing it, we do it in the ETF and we do it on drift on the two legs of the portfolio. When there's a float between the two, a two to 5 % drift, we will do that rebalancing. That's the same rebalancing that the individual was required to do to get their 2x or 3x exposure over time as the allocator to the ETF.

22:21And now we just do it within the ETF. And so this allows individuals and advisors to get a little bit of portfolio level margin, which, you know, let's face it, retail doesn't have to deal with margin calls and advisors can't get the same cost of margin across their entire client book, whether using futures or options, we could get margin. That's just like basically at the cost of T-bill rates, which you can't really compete with outside of the ETF wrapper, not all leverage strategies are created the same, right? Like when you have a single stock leverage strategy and you're getting that in the form of a swap, one day your cost of financing might be 7%.

22:55And guess what? The stock moves a lot tomorrow. It's 20%, right? That's the, that's the views in the construction of the product and how it'll perform, especially in the face of volatility. But that's why you have to, I think, choose a asset management firm that you think is actually trying to create real institutional quality products and not just retail candy. And that's what we're focused on, on products that, yes, we do focus on leverage products, but we're focused on cost-effective, deep financing, diversified leverage, where a lot of that difficult trading rebalancing can be embedded in the ETF.

23:26So that can be additive to your portfolio. The best strategists in the world, hedge funds, endowments, they find their optimal portfolio in the efficient frontier and they add a little bit of leverage, right? That is the ideal way to create a portfolio. That's not what most of the leverage ETFs allow you to do, but that's what this concept of return sacking does allow you to do. That is so fascinating because, yeah, to your point, and just what Robert was talking about, when you hear leverage, you think of, what did you mention, TQQQ? Is that pro shares, ultra pro, QQQ, triple leverage, this crazy stuff, which, yeah, if you time it correctly, leverage, of course, is cool and fun.

24:02But what I hear from this conversation that I think is really powerful is you're essentially taking strategies that hedge funds have been using for decades where to your example of an ETF here that you guys are really proud of is BTGD, which is a lot of E's there, right? But Bitcoin, BT, and then gold, GD, right? So BTGD is that ETF, but essentially what you've done is you've essentially said, cool, we're going to own Bitcoin and we're going to own gold. And we're going to sprinkle a little bit of leverage inside of the strategy here to ensure that when there's volatility, we're taking advantage of that upside and taking advantage of the downside moves as well, where we're rebalancing this stuff actively and everything's kind of going on that way.