Asalamualaikum and welcome to the MuslimShareTrader website. The idea for MuslimShareTrader came about by chance rather than a lifelong passion for blogging. The story begins in 2020, and had it been any other year, MuslimShareTrader wouldn't have come about at all. Read on to find out why...
In early 2020, my LinkedIn feed was full of posts suggesting people should leave their jobs and become entrepreneurs, that being 'your own boss' was the way forward. One particular (ex-teacher) contact on LinkedIn was on a mission to get teachers to leave the teaching profession and get into the property business. Now, I don't doubt being in the property business is more lucrative than teaching, but I love teaching. I was only interested in supplementing the income I received from teaching, not replacing that income altogether. At this point, supplementing my income was just a thought. I had previously done a bit of tutoring, as many teachers have done, but found it too time consuming. Alas, I had found ways to supplement my income, but not necessarily in a way that struck a good balance between the additional income, effort, time and general enjoyment.
Then, a quarter of the year into 2020, the United Kingdom, along with much of Europe, was put into lockdown. Suddenly, I had a lot of time on my hands, but with nowhere to go. I'm not the type to fritter away my time watching subscription TV, but plenty of other people were, it seemed. Indeed, the share price of Netflix rose 68% during lockdown compared to its March lows, according to Forbes. But Netflix wasn't the only company enjoying a lockdown popularity boom. Robinhood, the trading app aiming to "democratise" investing, made headlines for both the right and wrong reasons. Such was the popularity of the app, its valuation went from $8.6b to $11.2b in just a month. Apparently, people like me (still receiving an income but with nowhere to spend it), were fueling the rise of apps like Robinhood...and the ever-increasing rise of the stock market itself.
Now, I've dabbled in stocks previously and managed to escape with just getting my fingers burnt. But I know people who have lost entire holdings. It's not for everyone, and certainly not for the faint hearted. But that was 10 years ago. Were things still the same 10 years on? Trading on the stock market wouldn't have been my first choice activity. But this time, something different was brewing. I noticed there was a surge amongst Muslims dabbling in the stock market. This wasn't a problem in itself (so long as people were not investing beyond their means), but what did bother me was that very few Muslims concerned themselves with the Islamic rules of trading. Many, it seemed, were content being only armed with the basic knowledge that trading pork, alcohol and gambling stocks is haram. The more I spoke to people about this, the more it grated me down.
It wasn't that the people I spoke to had no desire to follow Islamic rules (indeed, in their own way, they were following the rules). Rather, people were too lazy to do the research. And let's face it, reading books on Islamic finance is neither easy nor enjoyable. As for asking scholars, very few are actually knowledgeable in modern day finance (such as CFDs, shorting, futures, etc.). So, I decided to put together a website that would bring research (both Islamic and conventional) and stock market know-how in one place.
So, there you have it. A service where someone does the research for you and puts it in one place, shares ways to supplement income and shares stock market know-how.
Welcome to MuslimShareTrader.
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