The AI boom is reshaping markets and creating once-in-a-generation opportunities for investors—but only for those who can navigate its challenges. In this interview, Andrew Brill speaks with Ram Ahluwalia, co-founder and CEO of Lumida Wealth, about the winners and losers of the AI revolution, from market leaders like Nvidia to supply chain opportunities. Beyond AI, Ram offers insights into macroeconomic trends, the Fed’s actions, and nuclear energy as part of the evolving investment landscape. This timely conversation reveals how to position yourself for success in a transformative era where innovation meets shifting global dynamics.
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Ram Ahluwalia 0:00
With the rise of AI, we’re going to see a dramatic feast or famine impact for companies. The companies that can pivot and refactor the business model and adapt to AI are going to thrive and take significant market share from the competition, and the ones that don’t will lose.
Andrew Brill 0:19
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I’m your host. Andrew brill, I want to personally thank you for your viewership. We at wealthion are grateful for you trusting us for your financial and economic information. We thought this interview with Ram alawalia on AI and macro was very insightful and deserves another watch. Please enjoy. Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving and a very happy holiday season.
Andrew Brill 0:50
I’d like to welcome Ram alwalia to wealthion. RAM is a veteran investor adept at finding the trends before they become trends. He’s the CEO of Lumina wealth from Welcome to wealthion. Tell us a little bit about yourself before we get started. First
Ram Ahluwalia 1:04
off, thanks for having me. I’ve loved investing since I was very young. I started in management consulting, helping to fix other businesses. And I said, I want to be an operator myself. I joined Merrill Lynch was there 12 years. And I said, Well, after the crisis, I want to build my own investment business. Started investing in esoteric asset classes that required an analytics like securitizations, the ones that blew up the 2008 crisis, bought those, went the big long and then I built and sold the data analytics business. After that exit, I looked around and said, there’s a better way to do investing, you know. And here we are at Lumina. So we provide private wealth, modern investing for founders, primarily. So
Andrew Brill 1:50
I want to focus on the market a little bit and talk about AI, because I know that you tweet a bunch about AI, and is AI something that you’re in right now? Is that you’re looking for that growth. Yeah,
Ram Ahluwalia 2:02
look our growth stock portfolio is in Nvidia, meta, Google and app. All of them are index the AI theme. We believe that the way to invest in AI is through the pixels layer. That’s Nvidia. They are the leader. Year to date, that thesis has played out. We want to avoid the people spending money on Nvidia like Microsoft, which is up 9% year to date. It’s logging. It’s now just below the 200 day moving average. We also in meta and Google, because we think that there are going to be winners in the AI race, because they got distribution. They have billions of users. They have the technology chops. They are behind the ball in open AI, but they can close the gap. This is the search engine wars all over again. And we also invested in core weave. Core weave is the like AWS for GPU compute, AWS from video chips. In fact, they’re backed by Nvidia and Blackstone and magnetar, and they are the cloud provider that powers open AI. So Microsoft and open AI spend billions of dollars on core I like that. I like that idea. They’re the beneficiary of all the spend and the race amongst these big tech firms to be number one in AI, you know that race is a real race. It’s a race for existential survival, right? If Google doesn’t win the race, the risk is they might lose search. If Microsoft doesn’t win the race, they might lose the revenue that they get from the Microsoft Office product line. And do you really need Microsoft Windows in the age of AI, it’s not clear. So they’re all spending a lot of money to win the race for AI, and the beneficiaries are the picks and shovels, infrastructure players. So
Andrew Brill 3:49
when it comes to AI, you you name the big names. But are there? Are there other avenues, people that look Nvidia makes the chip. There’s a person that makes the rack. This person makes the cooling system. Then there’s a person that’s a cool power, all of this stuff. You look at that whole avenue of investments and say, Look, you know what? There’s a chain here that we can we can actually make money on.
Ram Ahluwalia 4:13
It’s a great it’s a great question. So we do exactly that. It’s called following the supply chain. Follow the money who’s spending on what, right? So we invested in utilities. We actually sold our utility stocks yesterday. They went parabolic. So we were an investor in vistra energy. Utilities as an ETF, by the way, are up 30% plus year to date. Out running the s, p, substantially, a stock like VST in a year is up like 100% right? So we invest in natural gas. So these utilities, which are powering the data centers, which are powering the hyperscalers, right? The utilities, in turn, need energy. Wind and renewables are not enough, right? The wind might stop blowing. The sun doesn’t always shine. Nuclear energy is not here yet. We. Have some nuclear bets, though, and we also have investments in natural gas, liquid natural gas. So we picked up recently, navigator ticker NVGs. They provide and they own the largest liquid natural gas export terminal. And the world needs liquid natural gas. Europe needs liquid natural gas. It can’t rely on Russia for energy. And liquid natural gas is a clean or at the very least, it’s the least dirty source of energy. Data centers not gonna run on oil. So liquid natural gas is a good beneficiary of this whole theme as well. But you’re right. There’s a lot, there’s a lot of other ways to explore this. You know, energy transition and infrastructure plays. What we found, though, is in like the semiconductor category, we found that NVIDIA is the best way to play it because they capture the bulk of economics. So yes, they have Nvidia has its own supply chain, like Taiwan Semiconductor and ASML. Those are amazing businesses, and they’re world class businesses. You know, if they ever get cheap, then you might want to consider taking a look at them. The problem is, they, they’ve, they’ve, they’re at the highest decile evaluation as well. Nvidia was actually cheaper, excuse me, on a price earnings divided by growth basis than all these other companies, what we call the PEG ratio, one of Peter Lynch’s favorite metrics, right? Nvidia’s PEG ratio is a closer to point three. If you take the multiple for Nvidia and divided by the expected earnings growth, you’re not paying much for future growth. Now, obviously Nvidia is like 135 now, you know, we bought it most recently was 105 we’ve been buying at lower prices. So, you know, we look for high quality assets that go on sale, then we go buy those assets. We make sure we do the research in advance. And when the Mr. Market offers an opportunity, it’s what, you know, Warren Buffett and his mentor Ben Graham has said, you know, Mr. Mark is saying, out your door, quoting your prices. Sometimes they’re high, sometimes they’re low. You can ignore the prices. You don’t have to make a decision. You can choose which balls you swing at. They give you low price. Go buy it gives you a high price. You can sell. So that’s the approach we’re taking here in semis. Memory infrastructure is very interesting thesis in in semiconductors, I would say that because you need not just the GPUs, but you need high bandwidth memory coupled with a GPU. So that category should do well now, like SK Hynix, is a leader in a hardware based memory and then you have info providers like ca lack that are the leader in also equipment testing, both for memory and also GPU. So as these chips get smaller and smaller, right? You go from six nanometer to three nanometer, two nanometer, you need more testing equipment. So I think those are all good ideas. Obviously you want to be deliberate about when you invest. You make your money on the buy.
Andrew Brill 8:03
So you think Nvidia has room to run? I’d say so many people saying, oh, it’s overpriced. It’s overpriced. You think it has room to run? Yes, because and their Blackwell chip is about to ship in, I guess, this fourth
Ram Ahluwalia 8:15
quarter. Yeah, the demand is strong. Like the next few quarters, Nvidia is going to hit their significant revenue and earnings growth. That’ll happen. The question is, in about 2025 it’s more around 2026 and you can reassess with incoming data. But you know, if you take a step back look, Saudi Arabia wants to build 60 data centers. They need permission from the US Department of Commerce to get Nvidia chips. They’re going to have something it might not be the block rule series. Might be a modified version that like what China can buy, but the demand for GPUs is insatiable. The issue isn’t the demand. The issue is, do you have enough utilities and space to plug in these data centers. These are massive energy sinks. Think about Microsoft is inking a deal with Constellation Energy, which owns Three Mile Island right to power a data center. Think about the energy output of Three Mile Island of a full blown nuclear reactor, a large nuclear reactor facility. So that’s the issue. The issue is not the demand. This is strategic. It’s strategic not just the mag seven companies which have loads of free cash flowing, can spend and have an imperative to spend. Is strategic for countries, right? I mean, you’re going to have aI defense, AI cybersecurity, offense and defense you’re going to have modern warfare will transform. You know, you’re going to see more drone warfare powered by AI and autonomous systems. So you know, you’re going to see the defense budget. You know, 25% of the energy produced in Virginia. It goes to data center, goes to data center, and you have significant infrastructure supporting the federal government in Virginia. Of course,
Andrew Brill 10:11
are you concerned about your financial future or think your investments could be doing better? I’m Andrew brill, one of the hosts here on wealthium, and I’ve been there not sure my money was in the right places. It’s why I’ve gotten help from a financial advisor. Maybe it’s time you think more about your financial future or get a second opinion about your investments. We’ve made that process easy. Simply go to wealthion.com/free to speak with one of wealthions, registered investment advisors for a free, no obligation, portfolio review, again, That’s wealthion.com/free I’m now less anxious and confident I can achieve the financial goals I’ve set for me and my family. So RAM, you’re sitting with your family and your friends and your and they ask you, how am I protecting myself today, and where am I sticking my money for a long term growth Well,
Ram Ahluwalia 11:02
you know, that’s a great question, because with the rise of AI, we’re going to see a dramatic feast or famine impact for companies. The companies that can pivot and refactor the business model and adapt to AI are going to thrive and take significant market share from the competition, and the ones that don’t will lose. So yet to make a prediction about which business models, which management can pivot and survive, I am probably investing in a startup that intends to disrupt Salesforce. Salesforce is trying to get into AI, and they showed me an experience that doesn’t require Salesforce. We don’t use Salesforce anymore in our at our business, like, do you really need Salesforce? Do you really need Microsoft Office? If you can give a dictation to your AI agent, who can then create a word process document for you instantly? So there’s a lot of feast, famine. So when you talk about themes that you know are going to happen no matter what, let’s start there. We know land, it’ll be fine. Land is AI proof and income should go up. Productivity rate should go up. So the demand for land will do well, what kind of land, Travel and Leisure people are gonna have more free time? So if you can invest against that thing, I think that theme will do well. Another thing will be aging. On longevity, people living longer than ever. We’ve got these, I guess, miracle drugs called GOP ones. They help you lose weight, they address dementia, they they seem to do a lot of things that is going to create more demand for Aging and Longevity. I won’t see that going away. I don’t think AI is going to disrupt that either. Healthcare as a sector of the US economy has continued to expand as a share of GDP, decade after decade after decade. It’s the only category, by the way, and the beneficiaries of that, they vote, so that’s not going to change. So I think that’s a good category. What else I think financial services are highly regulated banks. You’re going to see transformation from Ai, but more as an enablement play. You’re going to see more compliance as a service via AI. You’re going to see AI agents interacting with customers rather than call center agents. So they’ll be a beneficiary overall. They should have lower costs. They should have better lending decisions. And banks are highly regulated. You cannot. You need a banking license from the FDIC to take deposits. So they have a moat that’s protected by regulation. I think they’ll do fine. Insurance companies, they can do fine too. Same reason your moat highly regulated. AI can be a beneficiary to that. Now you got to find the winners and losers in each category. The ones that can adapt will do better. So I think you got to go, you know, category by category, and take a look at, you know, a category one would avoid, a software, especially Software as a Service, and that category has been in the dumps. Look at the ETF, wcld. It’s in a bear market. Look at stocks like snowflake. When public 2021, it’s down dramatically. 50, 60% something like this. And those companies, these SaaS companies, were initially pitched to the public as these are capital like businesses with high margin. Well, guess what? Now they gotta spend a lot of money, billion dollar plus, on GPUs to Nvidia and that whole supply chain. So they’re not capital efficient. Their margins are lower. And you have these startups creating SaaS killers. They’re building better AI versions. Do you really need Microsoft Windows? Microsoft Office? Do you really need Excel spreadsheets in the future? AIS can develop that with some instructions, right? I see a startup doing investment banking analyst work via, you know, as a service. So we see a lot of change ahead, but monopoly businesses that you know, require license. Seen or a link to these secular trends, should still do well. Utility should still do well, right? I think they’re expensive now, but that’s in the short term. Industrials, you know, you’ve got chips act, you’ve got inflation Reduction Act, you still have a lot of spending funded by the government. And so industrial stocks, although I think they’re overbought right now, where we stand they should do well over the next 10 years. You got to build out the data centers, right? So there’s still more work to be done there.
Andrew Brill 15:26
We got to do our homework. And again, if I find findings the stocks that you’re talking about,
Ram Ahluwalia 15:31
it’s it’s a stock pickers market, that’s for sure. It’s a stock pickers market. You can’t just get the theme right, right? If you pick semiconductors, that’s a good theme. But you, if you own Nvidia, you’re doing well. Most semiconductors have been lagging. Mag seven stock pictures, market Tesla’s been lagging. So, yeah, I think this is going to, it’s going to be an incredible time for active management and investors in the next 10 years. So,
Andrew Brill 16:01
you know, talking So Microsoft is going the nuclear route. Do you see a nuclear play at some point? There’s a lot of talk about uranium mini reactors powering things. Do you see in it may not be tomorrow, it may not be, you know, in a few months, but eventually we’re going to have
Ram Ahluwalia 16:20
to turn to that. Yes, yes, it’s inevitable. It’s happening two years ago. Is unthinkable now it’s inevitable and popular, and Congress is starting to focus on it. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is starting to focus on it. You know, the United States forgot how to build nuclear reactors. We have something like 80 plus nuclear reactors in United States, by the way, haven’t built them in decades, but we have a bunch of them, and United States we oughta build them. South Africa know how to build them. China is building up many nuclear reactors, so China has plenty of energy, and so we have the GPU. China has the energy we need the energy China needs a GPU. So our race is on the energy side. Their race is on de linking their dependency on Taiwan and Nvidia, and they’re trying to, you know, get around export controls. So, yeah, nuclear will make a comeback. Building a plan takes over a decade. Though it takes. You got permitting concerns. You got, not in my backyard, concerns you have technology. Know how concerns. I think it’s a great it’s a great thesis to bet on. It’s a very difficult thesis to bet on. By the way, the vast majority of nuclear companies are unprofitable. I see people investing in stocks like SMR, which stands for small modular reactor. The Small Modular actor is actually a really good idea. We’re going to you can see small modular reactors, not Big Three Mile Island reactors that are right next to the data center, but some of these companies, like small modular reactor, last I checked, like the CEO sold all his shares like the insiders are sold out. It’s just trading like a beam stack. So you have to carefully pick and choose your spots in the nuclear category, and many of nuclear names are unprofitable. They don’t make money. And then the nuclear miners, they can be upside down, because they make forward commitments to sell uranium at a future price. But if they cannot deliver and mine enough, which many miners experience that issue, then they’re technically short uranium. So you thought you’re buying a uranium miner. So you get long uranium exposure indirectly. And it turns out the miners actually short because they made a commitment to deliver in the future they cannot meet. So they have to go buy from the spot market, right? So uranium is a is a difficult category to invest in. I do think they’re good opportunities there.
Andrew Brill 18:47
So I was on your website, and I was everything, everyone’s kind of still kind of bullish about the market. But what about the economy? You know, people confuse the market with the economy, and they’re they’re just not the same. What is your take on the economy right now, 100%
Ram Ahluwalia 19:02
Look, we’ve been consistent in the view that this is an economy that is robust, strong, and it’s just normalizing. We’ve had that view. You know, for the last two years, we didn’t think rate cuts were necessary. You just had a non farm payrolls report come out that was 250,000 jobs, 100,000 over expectations. So this is a robust economy. You know, you’ve got corporate earnings at record levels. You know, last quarter’s corporate year over year, earnings growth was 16, 12% 16% depending on the category, versus expectations, around 8% that’s one. Two is you have record employment and growth in employment. What’s confused the people is the denominator, the unemployment rate went up because of an influx of immigration, which actually helps expand GDP. You get more labor and helps quell wage, wage inflation, uh. So you’re seeing bank credit growth expand. It’s very hard to see any signs of a weakness in the economy. I think people have been distracted by an increase in credit card delinquencies. What they’re missing is that household wealth is at a record high. If you measure the net equity the consumer has, which consists of their house, their equities, their investments and savings, unless all the liabilities, the debt to income ratio for consumers is is more than fine. So yeah, we believe the economy is fine. In fact, we think next year, maybe at this time, the discussion will be, should the Fed do adjustment hikes, because they’re adding fuel to an economy that is already growing without the need for rate cuts. So
Andrew Brill 20:49
you stole one of my questions, because we’re talking about the Fed cutting unnecessarily according to your calculations, what does this rate cut do? Obviously, you know, it’s inflationary, and if it wasn’t necessary, and the employment is where it is, obviously the employment figures came in much higher than expected. Probably will get adjusted at some point, but and then the unemployment figure came in lower. So you know, what does this rate cut do to us? Now,
Ram Ahluwalia 21:23
there are two effects. So one effect, which you correctly pointed out, is the inflationary impulse. So in the two weeks following the rate cut, you saw a spike in oil prices, a spike in natural gas prices, spike in energy related companies like Shell and others. That’s one so you seem like a commodity rally. You’ve seen cyclicals rally. The second thing is, we expect that value stocks will outperform, because value stocks, on average, tend to have greater debt loads and they can refinance with lower rates. The irony, though, here’s the new wrinkle, we’re seeing the 10 year move now to 4% up from, say, three and a half percent, where it was before the Fed cut rates and most corporates fund off the mid to the long end of the curve. And so the long end the tenure is now at 4% plus, we believe reflecting two things, higher nominal growth expectations and higher inflation expectations to compensate investors for owning dollars are gonna be worth less in the future, so that actually increases the financing costs of those companies. So we’re trying to analyze that now. Our view first was, hey, look, and I still think, by the way, value is the right tilt to have, for a variety of reasons, tilt to quality value, but the increase in the long end of the curve could benefit mag four type names that don’t need to rely on debt financing to grow. So
Andrew Brill 22:59
I want to go back to this rate cut for a second, because there’s all there’s talk about, you know, 1% by the end of the year. Did the Fed paint themselves into a corner? Do you fully expect them to pull back in the November meeting, which is just after the election, and say, You know what? Okay, no, let’s the numbers. Because they said, you know, Chairman Powell just gave me, I need more debt. I need more debt. I need to look at the numbers. And now the numbers are coming in, not much different from where they were, you know, each quarter. But yet they’re saying, I don’t know, we’re going to start an easing cycle. Have they painted themselves into a corner? No, they’ll
Ram Ahluwalia 23:33
walk it back. You know, there’s a state of Fed officials speaking today and tomorrow, like over a half a dozen speeches, and so they’ll walk it back. You’ve already seen in the CME fed futures contracts that the probability of 50 bips cut next month is close to zero, so I still think you’ll probably get 25 bips in cuts. So but it’s quite ironic how in the last FOMC meeting, the minutes are coming out tomorrow, by the way, but in the last FOMC meeting, there’s only one dissenting voice, and that was a non consensus view, and that person has been proven to be correct. But it wasn’t just the Fed that got it wrong. You know, asset managers got it wrong. You know, the they’re hungry for liquidity, hungry for rate cuts. I mean, I remember in June, as we all do, that it was like a deafening volume pushing for the Fed to cut rates that they’re behind the ball, when the reality is the economic data shows that the economies is fine, and now you’re hearing the world word Goldilocks. The Wall Street Journal had an article last week right had the term Goldilocks. Apollo’s chief economist, who was bearish last year, by the way, now he’s bullish on the economy, he used the word Goldilocks. I think you’re gonna hear the word Goldilocks quite often in the quarter and months ahead.
Andrew Brill 24:58
What are they referring to when they. When they use that term, Goldilocks,
Ram Ahluwalia 25:02
not too hot, not too cold, right in the middle, right? And meaning inflation to be earnings growth is there, and you have a volume of growth that’s sustainable. Most of what’s confused people is that there has been a stair stepping down in the trend rate of growth. That’s true. We came off like a nominal 6% year over year growth rate. But now we’re closer to like a 4% growth rate, which is what you had in 2019 2019 was fine. It was more than a fine year. So then you see, then the Visa card spend data up about 4% year over year. That’s a good number. The consumer is fine. Businesses are also spending. Small businesses should gain confidence with these rate cuts as well. But yeah, Goldilocks is that the economy is not running too hot that you need to hike rates, and it’s not running too slow. They need to lower rates.
Andrew Brill 26:01
That’s right, right where we want. It is like, look, you know what? We’re not we’re not going crazy, we’re not going down. We’re just, you know, steady shit.
Ram Ahluwalia 26:08
Arguably, we were right where we wanted to be before the rate cuts, right? So now we’re adding some gas and fuel to the fire, and over the last year and a half, we’ve really developed this Boomer economy where you’ve got retirees living off of T bills, and they’re spending you know, if you go to your local restaurant, the restaurants are packed. Restaurant stocks are quite expensive, and you can usually spot like a grandma or grandpa around the table and they’re probably paying the bill. So now, with rate cuts and treasuries paying less, that means less income for boomers, alright, so that means for retirees especially, and that means you’re going to see a shift in spending behavior and risk taking behavior, and so you’re starting to see dividend paying stocks that are going up. So grandma grandpa now being forced to rotate from treasuries into equity markets, which have a lot more risk, where you’re at the top decile evaluations now. And you know, I don’t know if that’s the right move, because the economy, you know, adjusts to the prevailing set of circumstances. So when you suddenly change one variable, then the economy needs to go through this adjustment process again. So
Andrew Brill 27:28
what does this do to the housing market? Because they figure, okay, let’s see if we can get prices to come down a little bit. But when mortgage prices come down, housing prices go up, and they’re at an all time high as it is. And you know, I don’t see housing prices coming down. Maybe if mortgage rates go back up, housing prices will come down. But even with high mortgage rates in the sevens, housing prices kept running and becoming tougher and tougher to buy a home, and there’s not a lot of movement I would expect
Ram Ahluwalia 27:59
overall that mortgage rates do come down because inflation, you know, is still on the mend. I would say, though, we have to watch this carefully. You know, it’s the other side of the story is that that the demand for housing increases as rates get lower, and therefore shelter costs go up. So this is, this is, that’s the most important question, actually, like, Where does housing go from here? Overall? I think housing’s on the mend. I think mortgage rates will will come back down. But the Fed has to reassure the market that the battle for inflation has been won, right? That’s what it that’s what the housing story turns on. But the housing market has had almost two years now to settle at this higher level of mortgage rates. That’s good. The longer it has time to settle, then the less disruption, the less negative impact there is from a 4050, bif increase in the mortgage rate we were there not too long ago. I want
Andrew Brill 29:12
to ask you about it, and getting back to dividend stocks and stuff, I want to ask you about an interesting tweet that you had about capital gains worse versus income. Whereas, you know, capital gains, obviously, is when you buy and sell stocks at profit and dividends, is is viewed as income. Now, when I was much, much younger, someone told me, Look, you know, buy five good paying dividend stocks and just reinvest the dividends. I did that even put a little bit more money in here and there, and the dividend just kept building and building turned into a fairly nice chunk of change. Obviously, I’ve been paying taxes on that money. Am I thinking incorrectly? Should I have been doing that differently? Not necessarily
Ram Ahluwalia 29:55
like Walmart’s done well, they pay dividends or plenty of high quality. In paying stocks. As you pointed out, the dividend payments are taxed at ordinary income, which can be punitive. So it’s a consideration. However, sometimes dividend stocks can do well. My view is that this is a period of time where I think dividend stocks can do better quality. Stocks that have the earnings power to continue to pay out and potentially even grow their dividend and can refinance their debt. So but it’s a good question. I would prefer stocks that just did buybacks and then you can manufacture your own dividend by selling your shares, because it’s more tax efficient. And this year, it’s expected that we’ll see a trillion dollars in stock buybacks. So that’s up from about 700 $750 billion last year, by the way. So that’s a significant, significant amount of buyback access taking place in the market, but we’ll see. I think it’s over. Optimizing around these things is can be a mistake. It’s good to have a portfolio with the dividend producing stocks and growth stocks and value stocks. You know, you really need a like a professional to help you think through this and how to balance the portfolio correctly, right.
Andrew Brill 31:24
But balance is the key. It’s you want to have a little bit of everything in there. Would you throw bonds into that, into that portfolio as well, well? So
Ram Ahluwalia 31:32
what kind which bonds, I would put mortgage bonds in that I think agency mortgage bonds are, once again, mispriced. I would own agency mortgage bonds because an agency mortgage bond is implicitly backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. However, they offer a yield that is substantially higher than the comparable treasury to the tune of 250 basis points, which is a nothing so agency mortgage bonds, I think a really interesting idea. That’s one treasuries, I’m not a big fan of you can give away two and a half points of a 4% coupon on a 10 year in inflation. I also see that private credit strategies can dramatically outperform treasury yields. You can get 10% to 18% depending on the nature of the strategy in private credit, for example, through funds that provide senior secure lending to middle market companies that have free cash from earnings but can’t get a loan from a bank. So senior secured means you’re first to get paid in line, right? So you’re on the top of what’s called the capital stack. There’s also strategies where you have asset backed financing, you’re making a loan and you’ve got collateral. So I like the strategies. Why would I own treasury, if I can invest in that now, the answer would be liquidity. So those strategies don’t give you liquidity.
Andrew Brill 33:06
So I want to ask about that value stocks versus growth stock. How do you differentiate between the two? Sure,
Ram Ahluwalia 33:14
it’s an excellent question. So when I think about growth stocks, I think of stocks that, on average, are 50% plus in terms versus their median PE ratio for that category. Okay, so if you’re a high multiple stock, simply put your growth stock. If you’re a low multiple stock, your value stocks, very simple, clean distinction to make. You know, growth stocks tend to have higher earnings per share growth than value stocks and investors pay for that earnest per share growth in the form of a higher multiple. Where
Andrew Brill 33:45
can we where can we find you? I know that we can find you at your company, but where on Twitter can we find you? Where can we find some of your research?
Ram Ahluwalia 33:53
Thank you. I have a newsletter. It’s called limited ledger, l, u, M, I, D, A n, as in Mary Lumina, if you Google that, we have a weekly newsletter. We publish every Sunday. We talk about our views, talk about different ideas. That’s one on Twitter. My handle is at Ram alawala. I know that’s a mouthful to R, A, M, a, H, l, u, w, a, l, I, a. We also have a podcast called Lumina, non consensus investing. And I interview people that I’ve worked alongside, George Soros and Stanley Drucker Miller. That was last week, interviewed someone that worked at Harvard management company that was in the morning Stanley equity derivatives desk. Now he’s doing some interesting things. We interview, you know, people in my network that I learn from and train ideas with. It’s all about who’s your peer group, and how do you get into a diagletic to try to uncover what you think is the best possible truth in the world at that moment in time? So that’s how you can find us. Lumina.com we have a news it’s like a Drudge Report for investors. Can sell a lot of news at lumita wealth.com Is where we kind of have our flagship homepage. Thank you. What
Andrew Brill 35:04
is? What is Lumina stand for, from
Ram Ahluwalia 35:06
the light, from the light providing clarity. I made that up, though it’s not actually Greek or Latin word, but we thought about it. I said, if it meant something, it would mean from the light, right? So, you know the I studied some of the Romance languages back in the day. So loom means lumen light, right? So de means from so from light. Anyway, okay, it’s working, so we’ll get there.
Andrew Brill 35:32
Rob, thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it, and I hope to have you back again soon.
Ram Ahluwalia 35:37
You bet. Thank you for having me always a pleasure. Thank you be well. Cheers.
Andrew Brill 35:41
Thanks so much for watching our discussion here on wealthion with Ram alawalia. It was a pleasure having him, and hopefully you got some good insights. If you need more insights and help being financially resilient, please head over to wealthion.com/free for a free, no obligation, financial review. And of course, if you could like and subscribe to the channel, we greatly appreciate it, and don’t forget to turn on notifications. So you know when we post new videos to the channel, and please do the social media thing with us all, the links are in the description below. And if you like this content and looking for more ways to achieve long term wealth, watch this video next. Thanks again for watching until next time, stay informed, be empowered and may your investments flourish.
