u/snasir786

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every investing discussion revolves around the winners.

People constantly talk about buying Apple early, holding Amazon through all the ups and downs, or getting into Nvidia before AI took off.

But almost nobody talks about the thousands of companies that looked just as promising and either underperformed, went bankrupt, or slowly faded away.

That’s known as survivorship bias in investing.

When all you hear about are the success stories, it’s easy to believe that finding the next 100x stock is much more common than it actually is.

The reality is that for every Apple or Nvidia, there are countless companies that never made it. We just don’t remember them because they disappeared from the conversation.

This is why I think it’s important to study both the winners and the losers. Ask questions like:
Why did this company become one of the biggest businesses in the world?
Why did another company with similar excitement fail?
What assumptions were wrong?
Were there warning signs investors ignored?

Looking at both sides gives you a much more realistic understanding of risk, probabilities, and what successful investing actually looks like.

The goal isn’t to eliminate risk, that’s impossible. It’s to make decisions based on the full picture instead of only the stories that survived.

Most new investors suffer from survivorship bias. Make sure you don’t fall for it inshaAllah.

One of the easiest traps to fall into as an investor is believing a great story.

A company has an exciting CEO, a huge vision, a massive total addressable market, and everyone is talking about it.

That’s narrative bias.

The story becomes so compelling that people stop asking the important questions:
Is the company actually profitable?
Is it generating healthy cash flow?
Do the unit economics even make sense?

We’ve seen this happen over and over. Strong narratives can attract billions of dollars long before the business proves it can generate sustainable profits.

The problem is that stories can spread much faster than fundamentals improve.
Eventually, the excitement fades, and investors start focusing on earnings, cash flow, and the balance sheet. That’s when reality catches up.

Always remember, a compelling story can explain why a company might succeed, but your investment decision should still be grounded in financial fundamentals, not just the narrative.

One of the biggest investing mistakes is assuming that whatever happened recently will keep happening.

This is called recency bias.

For example:

- A stock has been soaring for the last year, so people assume it will continue to outperform.

- Another stock has been struggling, so people assume it’s a bad investment forever.

Neither assumption is necessarily true.

Markets move in cycles. Sectors, companies, and even entire asset classes go through periods of outperformance and underperformance. Chasing what’s been hot lately or avoiding what’s been cold often leads to buying high and selling low.

What to do instead?
Zoom out. Make investment decisions based on long-term fundamentals, not just what happened over the last few months.

Most people trade 90,000+ hours of life for “retirement one day.”

But here’s the reality:

By the time freedom arrives, energy is often gone.

The best retirement isn’t about money.

It’s about the life you didn’t need to escape from in the first place.

The people who age well didn’t chase maximum income.

They built:

steady investing habits
decent health
low debt
and content hearts

Because real success is not “stopping work.”

It’s never being trapped by it.

One investing mistake I’ve made (and I think most beginners make at some point) is assuming that if everyone is buying a stock, it must be a good investment.

That’s called herd behavior.

You’ve probably seen it happen. A stock is up 50%, everyone’s posting about it, YouTube is full of videos, Reddit is buzzing, and suddenly it feels like you’re missing out.

So you buy.

The problem is that when something becomes popular, a lot of the easy money has already been made. You’re often taking on more risk while getting less potential upside.

This doesn’t mean popular stocks are always bad investments. It just means popularity shouldn’t be the reason you buy.

I’ve learned it’s much better to have a plan and make decisions based on your own research rather than following the crowd.

Have you ever bought a stock because everyone else seemed to be buying it? How did it turn out?

We’re building an ETF analyzer tool and would love feedback from ETF investors.

When you’re researching or comparing ETFs, what information do you wish was easier to find or understand?

Some ideas I’m considering:
• Expense ratio comparison
• Holdings overlap between ETFs
• Sector and country exposure breakdowns
• Dividend yield and dividend growth history
• Risk metrics (volatility, drawdown, Sharpe ratio)
• Performance vs benchmark
• Fund size, liquidity, and spreads
• Tax efficiency metrics

What features, visualizations, or insights would actually help you make investment decisions faster or with more confidence?

The goal is to build a tool for regular people without finance background.

I’d love to hear what’s missing from existing ETF screeners and analysis tools.

The Roth IRA contribution limit for 2026 is $7,500.

That’s about $20 a day.

If someone consistently invests $20 a day into a diversified halal ETF (Shariah-compliant equity fund) for 30 years:
They contribute around $219,000 of their own money.

At historical average equity returns, it can grow to roughly $1.2 million.

And in a Roth IRA, qualified withdrawals are tax-free.

Meaning: no tax on the growth, no tax on the withdrawal.

For Muslims, this becomes especially powerful when paired with Shariah-compliant ETFs like broad Islamic equity funds (screened for interest, leverage, and non-halal business activity).

This structure already exists in the tax code, it’s just underused.

Not because it’s complicated, but because most people are never shown how to use it early.

Now you know.

Assalamu-Alaikum, For anyone in investing or trying to build wealth the halal way, we put together a simple 7-day Rizq course.

It’s very light, about 15–20 minutes a day, completely free, no signup, no email, no ads.

What we found is that most people don’t struggle with knowing what to do financially… they struggle with behavior, consistency, and mindset under uncertainty.

That’s why the reflection activities are the most important part. They force you to slow down and actually connect the concepts to your own financial habits and decisions. Without that, it’s just content. With it, it becomes change inshaAllah.

If you try it, don’t rush it. The value is in pausing and writing honestly during the reflections.

Link: https://irizq.com/rizq-course.php

JazakumAllahu khyrn,

P. S. - There is menu on the top left for easy navigation. There is also percentage completion on the top right. So, you know how much you completed.

One of the biggest mistakes investors make is thinking a few wins mean they’ve figured out the market.

You pick a couple of winning stocks, your portfolio goes up, and suddenly you start taking bigger bets, doing less research, and assuming you’ll keep getting it right.

That’s overconfidence bias.

The reality? Sometimes skill plays a role, but luck and timing matter too. A single bad investment can wipe out months of gains if you’re taking on too much risk.

The investors who last the longest usually aren’t the most confident, they’re the most disciplined. They follow a process, manage risk, and understand that not every outcome is under their control.

My two cents: Stay humble, stick to your strategy, and remember that markets involve both skill and randomness.

Assalamu alaikum Warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu!

We’re adding ETFs to our halal stock checker tool and wanted to get feedback from this community.

Right now, we’re planning to include:

- breakdown of number of holdings that are halal / not halal / questionable
- full list of all holdings with their weightings
- performance comparison vs S&P 500

From your perspective, what else would actually help you decide whether an ETF is worth investing in or not?

For example, things like screening sector exposure, purification info, etc.

Would love to hear what would make this genuinely useful for your decision-making.

JazakumAllahu khyrn!

So this is something I didn’t really understand early on but it shows up everywhere once you notice it.

Loss aversion basically means… losing money feels way worse than making the same amount feels good.

Like a +10% gain feels nice, but a -10% loss feels painful in a completely different way. And that difference in feeling is what starts driving bad decisions.

What usually ends up happening is:
People hold on to losing stocks way too long because in their head it’s like “I’m not selling at a loss, it’ll come back eventually”

But then they’ll sell winning stocks way too early because they’re scared of losing the gains they already have.

It’s kind of weird when you think about it because it’s not really logic driving it… it’s just how our brain reacts to pain vs reward.

Example I’ve seen (and done myself tbh):
Stock goes +30% -> “ok I should probably take profit before it drops”
Stock goes -30% -> “nah I’ll just wait, it’ll recover”

Same investor, totally different mindset depending on direction.

And the problem is, over time this quietly destroys returns. Not because you picked bad investments, but because you managed them badly.

Winning stocks don’t get to run. Losing stocks get to linger.

The funny part is most people think investing is about picking the “right” stocks… but a big part of it is just not sabotaging yourself emotionally.

Anyway, key takeaway for me has been:
try to think less about what you paid, and more about where the money should go next.

If you’re new to investing, dollar-cost averaging (DCA) is one of the simplest strategies to follow. By investing a fixed amount consistently instead of trying to time the market, you increase your odds of staying invested for the long term. This is a habit used by many successful investors to build wealth over time.

Confirmation bias is one of the most common mistakes new investors do. Many of them don’t realize until they lose big. I used to do in my very early days of investing too. Fortunately, I realized it before It was too late.

Ever notice what happens after you buy a stock?

You stop searching “reasons not to buy” and start looking for posts, videos, and comments that tell you that you made the right decision.

Every bullish take sounds smart.

Every bearish take gets dismissed as fear, jealousy, or someone who “just doesn’t get it.”

I’ve seen people hold losing positions for months because they kept finding content that confirmed what they already wanted to believe.

The scary part is that algorithms make this even worse. Click on a few bullish videos and your entire feed starts agreeing with you.

One habit that has helped me is forcing myself to answer this question before investing:

“If I had to convince someone not to buy this stock, what would I say?”

If I can’t come up with a solid answer, I probably haven’t researched it enough.

Has this ever happened to you? What stock made you realize you were living in your own echo chamber?

Salam, SpaceX IPO'd on Nasdaq on June 12, 2026 under ticker SPCX, priced at $135/share, the largest IPO in history. For the first time ever, we get to see real audited numbers instead of guesswork from leaked memos and tender-offer rumors.

I run a halal stock screening tool, so I went into the S-1 specifically looking for the numbers that matter for debt-ratio and interest-income screening. Here's what's actually confirmed in the filing (Amendment No. 2, filed June 3, 2026) - not Twitter rumors, not "sources say."

Revenue is way more diversified than I expected

FY2025 total revenue: $18.67B, split three ways:

Connectivity (Starlink): $11.39B - up ~50% YoY, now the clear majority of revenue

Space (launch + Starship): $4.09B

AI (xAI/Grok integration): $3.20B

Starlink alone is now bigger than the entire rest of the company combined. That's the real story buried in this filing - SpaceX isn't really "a rocket company" on the income statement anymore, it's an internet/satellite company that also happens to launch rockets.

They're burning serious cash

Loss from operations, FY2025: -$2.59B
Loss from operations, Q1 2026 alone: -$1.94B (the burn rate is accelerating)
Total capex FY2025: $20.7B

Total capex Q1 2026 alone: $10.1B

For context, that Q1 capex number is more than half of all of FY2025's capex, in a single quarter. Starship development R&D alone was $3B for the year.

The debt picture (this is the part I actually needed)

This is where it gets murkier, and I want to be upfront: the precise audited balance sheet table is buried deep in the F-pages of an 11.8MB filing and didn't fully resolve through my research tools. What's corroborated by multiple secondary sources citing the S-1:

Cash & equivalents (as of 3/31/26):

~$15.8B, down from ~$25B at FY2025 year-end - they burned roughly $9B in cash in one quarter

Marketable securities: ~$7.8B

Long-term debt: ~$29B, mostly not maturing until after 2028

If those numbers hold, net debt is somewhere around $13B against a company now valued in the hundreds of billions. Not alarming on its own, but the cash burn rate is the number I'd actually watch. At ~$9B/quarter, that $15.8B cash pile doesn't last long without either revenue scaling faster or another raise.

Why this matters for halal screening specifically

AAOIFI-style screens look at two things mainly: (1) interest-bearing debt as a % of market cap, and (2) non-permissible income (mainly interest income) as a % of revenue. Until the first 10-Q lands (~September 2026), anyone running automated screens on SPCX is working off S-1 estimates, not GAAP-audited quarterly data. If you're using any stock screener - halal or otherwise that already shows a "compliant/non-compliant" verdict on SPCX, ask where that data is coming from. There's a real chance it's templated/placeholder data masquerading as real numbers, because I ran into exactly that problem building my own screen for it.

Question for everyone in this sub: anyone else found a cleaner source for the actual F-page balance sheet tables? The filing's XBRL tagging only covers the fee exhibit, not the financial statements themselves, which is unusual and made this way harder to parse than a typical 10-K.

Not financial advice, just sharing primary-source digging. Numbers above are either pulled directly from the S-1/A text (revenue/segment/capex figures) or from secondary reporting citing the S-1 (cash/debt figures), flagged accordingly above