Hello C3 Family!

Weekly Rant - A what if scenario...

Please let me know your thoughts on the following.

Let's say that you are approached by someone who works for something they call a Christian Mission Investment Fund (CMIF). They tell you that if you invest a $1,000 into the Fund, the fund managers will use that money to build Christian bookstores, community centers, and even churches. They also tell you that if and when those entities become profitable (certain stipulations would apply to the churches) you will get a portion of those profits based on your initial investment. Let's even say that you can pick which of the entities you want your investment to go to. Perhaps you would prefer to build a generic Christian bookstore over churches because of your particular denomination.

You are not required to do any labor, though this Christian Mission Fund does make decisions based on a vote and your investment would award you the chance to vote.

Also, once you invest you cannot divest. You can only take the profits awarded to you or transfer those profits to a beneficiary. You can also reinvest more money if you so choose.

Is there anything wrong with this scenario? I am genuinely curious what people will say. I have my thoughts that I will share next week.

Thanks, and God Bless!

FYI, had a lot of additional responses to the survey but the percentages largely remained the same. Largest group, 45%, are those that feel that the stock market is wrong but do not feel strongly enough to abandon it. Smallest group at 10% are those that think the stock market is a Good thing for society.

Top Stories

• The Dow ousted Walgreens and added Amazon in hopes that it will rise more quickly in the future. Stocks over all fell in the beginning of the week. 

• Reddit is filling to go Public. The meme stock creator is going to become a stock. Reddit is doing something unusual, instead of selling IPO shares to professional investors they are going to sell to 75,000 if their power users. most moderators for reddit are volunteers and reddit needs to keep those volunteers happy, this is the solution they have come up with. Giving these volunteers skin in the game to make them feel like owners. the moderators are not happy about this decision and see it as the beginning of the end for Reddit.

• The Europe 600 index has seen a big increase in the past 12 months and 50% of that increase comes from 11 different companies. Couple this information with the magnificent 7 from the US stock exchanges and we are looking at 18 companies that control just about everything in the western world. 

• Kroger and Albertsons, two big supermarket players are about to merge thanks to a $25 billion deal. However, the FTC is suing to stop the deal from going through. The reason the FTC wants the deal to stop is on behalf of the people, or so they say. If the 2nd and 4th largest grocery chains merge then that would mean two chains (The new one, and Walmart) would own over 45% of the market share giving them price control on your food. OF course, Albertsons and Kroger claim that customers would actually see lower prices because the new chain could compete with Amazon and Walmart.

• Sweden is now joining NATO after Hungary finally caved and let them in. The NATO military alliance is going to be a point of contention in the upcoming election. Trumps opinions on NATO are disputed and clouded in talking points, and NATO in general seems to be a point of conflict with many people who like to argue politics. Some think Sweden joining just means another country to protect for America.

• Microsoft is upping the stakes in the AI game. Microsoft is arguably the dominant player in the AI space thanks to its $13 billion stake in ChatGPT, but it is also making several partnership investments with AI startups like the $2.1 billion investment into French Startup Mistral AI.

• The Supreme Court is hearing cases from Texas and Florida about Big Tech censorship. Big Tech claims that they need to censor misinformation and hate speech and Texas and Florida are claiming that conservative voices are being treated unfairly. The real scare for Big Tech is that if they can't limit certain voices then that may scare away advertisers, which is obviously not good for the bottom line. A ruling is expected in June.

• Donald Trump is appealing the $350 million verdict against him in the NY Fraud Case. For those that do not know, this case is essentially claiming that Trump inflated the value of his properties in order to get certain loans. The kicker is that Trump has already paid back the loans with interest and the people who lent him the money said they would gladly lend it to him again. This shady type of business dealing is a common practice in the empire state.

• Yes, someone can out pizza the hut and they have, its Dominos. Dominos is the world's largest pizza chain, and they grew last quarter in both takeout and delivery. The stock popped earlier this week.

• Berkshire Hathaway saw dips in its stock price on Monday because Warren Buffet claims that the behemoth that him and the late Charlie Munger created is now so big that eye popping growth is near impossible. Berkshire Hathaway is now valued at over $900 billion.