2025 Review 2026 Preview: Expensive Tech Arms Race & Many Reasons Why More Inflation Is Coming?
Summary
Precious Metals: Strong bullish stance on gold and silver amid central bank buying, currency debasement, and structural supply deficits in silver.
Energy Transition: Preference for integrated oil majors like XOM and CVX as low-cost winners, with potential upside in oil and a constructive view on natural gas.
Nuclear & Uranium: Ongoing data-center-driven power needs support the case for nuclear; CCJ cited as a prime beneficiary of uranium demand.
Semiconductors & Fabs: Re-shoring and chip diversification highlighted, with TSM Arizona fabs, INTC turnaround and subsidies, and big tech pivoting away from sole reliance on NVDA GPUs.
AI, Robotics, Data Centers: AI proliferation drives robotics and industrial automation demand; data center buildouts imply multi-year tailwinds for utilities and materials suppliers.
Materials & Miners: Positive on value-added rare earth processing and select miners like PAAS and IVN tied to world-class assets.
Industrials & Ag Tech: DE spotlighted for autonomous tractors and precision agriculture, leveraging AI and robotics for productivity gains.
Macro View: Expect persistent stagflationary forces, higher structural costs from deglobalization/reshoring, and continued pressure on government bonds.
Transcript
Hi everyone, this is Jason Brack of Wall Street from Main Street. Welcome back for another Wall Street from Main Street podcast interview. Instead of a normal interview, Aaron from Carnivore Trades and I will be doing our annual review and preview of the year. So, we're going to do our 2025 review and 2026 preview here on Monday night, January 12th, 2026. Happy New Year to everyone listening. Aaron, thank you for joining me. >> Good to be back. >> So, we're on you're on what? Episode number 245. I just put that out this morning for this week in charts. So, congratulations on that. That's almost five full years, right? >> Yeah. I was going to say uh it started I want to say April of 2021. >> Yeah. So, you're you're almost what 52 weeks uh 52 weeks in a year. So, you're you're almost to uh five full years. >> Yeah. It's getting there for sure. >> You've done a you've you've improved enormously, man. I mean, like you just crank these thing out. You're really really good. So, 20 minutes or less. Very efficient. I I think there's a bunch of copycat videos that are doing this now because I I remember when I suggested this idea to you years ago that like there was traders that would ramble on and on on a webinar going through all these charts for 90 minutes, 2 hours, 3 hours and I was like why are they doing this? Why can't they just be succinct with it like what you've done here with your show? >> Yeah. you and especially now uh you know in this social media age too like you know the longer you're talking I mean the more fluff that that you're going to put in there um it's just going to be harder to hold people's attention so you got to I mean people's time is valuable now so you got to really uh just get it out get the important information and you know that's really all all it really needs 10 15 minutes most of the time >> well yeah and people also have a very short attention span so you want to try to be efficient with people's time even though this is a free podcast so The S&P 500 is just under$7,000. The US dollar gold price, wow. Uh the US dollar gold price, it's rocketed up over the last 12 to 18 months. It hit $4,600 earlier today, a new all-time high. It seems like every couple weeks now, and we're doing that. and the silver price finally all the scenario the silver scenario that the silver bugs have been talking about for many many years we finally got to the scenario here where the exchanges the LBMA the comx they don't have the metal and the industrial end users in China and India so your um electronics manufacturer solar panel manufacturers jewelry people they actually want delivery of the metal and the exchanges do not have the metal and so now we have a scenario where the silver price I mean it's going for right now the spot price, Aaron, is at $83.96, but in in certain parts of Asia, it's up to $120. It's way over $100 an ounce for physical silver if you actually want the metal. >> Yeah. And um from what I've heard, the reports are that, you know, even JPM, JP Morgan has flipped their position uh as of I want to say late November. So, and that's kind of when it started to go parabolic. So, probably >> that would be a smart move on their part. Yeah, that would be if they if they did go long, that would be a smart move on their part because, you know, now they're not going to get the market, but someone has a short position though. So, it looks like the exchanges are not doing well and there are bullion banks that do have the short position. It might not be JP Morgan. I think I remember like 18 24 months ago, I think the short position, a lot of it had passed to Bank of America, but maybe another bank took it over. So, I I'm not exactly sure. But, let's get into the show here. We're going to try to keep it around 90 minutes or less because these shows normally go pretty long. So, let's just talk about um a quick review for your your thoughts on 2025, what happened, any calls you might have missed, and uh in general, what you think happened in 2025. Was it another year of what asset price a lot of asset price inflation where there was a lot of uh problems in the real economy showing, you know, potentially recession or these industries were not doing well and yet asset prices like the stock market, a lot of them continued to go higher? >> Yeah, 100%. uh you know going back to to the beginning of the year you know I was looking for you know you know we'll talk about maybe one or two things I was uh accurate on and you know some things that I missed uh but one thing that was you know pretty accurate as I was looking for you know a Q1 kind of correction uh you know in stocks in general we did get that went a lot deeper than I thought specifically the last couple of days but um you know probably one of the better calls I had uh you know was you know getting the bottom in that pretty close and I said you know just hold this throughout pretty much the whole summer. Uh you you'll do pretty well. And that that that ended up working out fairly well. I didn't think that we were going to finish the year as strong as we did in equities, but um you know, the trend was up the whole way. And you know, we know we had some choppy periods where we said, you know, we got to be careful here. Uh we saw some problems with uh Jeff u lot of private credit um you know, issues there, some uh issues with repo, but it never really materialized into stocks. I think >> it didn't spread. Yeah, it didn't spread either from bank to bank to bank to bank to bank or at least not yet. So like uh there's extended pretend games what in 20 similar to maybe 2022 >> where um you know Silicon Valley Bank and one other bank um decentized regional bank got into trouble and then you had what the uh BTFP you have the FHB go to 2 trillion. Um, I mean I even saw recently that uh quietly with the inflation reduction act they snuck in uh commercial real estate developers are getting enormous subsidies and loans to transition these office buildings over to residential. So they've been playing these games for a long time to prevent you know mass um bank panic bank spread you where the banks go into contagion and one bank fails and then the next bank fails. >> Yeah and I I warned about that too. I mean uh you know I saw the performance in stocks like Blackstone uh heavy in commercial debt or excuse me uh public uh you know public debt issuance and credit public credit excuse me uh they had you know a horrible year and but I I warned I said look they're not going to you know if this doesn't materialize in stocks and we don't start seeing risk assets start to sell off quickly like it's going to be over. They're not the Fed's not gonna wait they're not going to wait to plug the holes in repo. um and and they didn't you know so it seems right now it's it's mostly under control. I will say you know uh I can say anecdotally here though I I do see problems in uh in the private markets particularly real estate um you know just in this area it has cooled off substantially uh where I am and I've you know firsthand experience with that. >> You mean residential real estate? >> Yes. Yes. And uh in a very hot market here in Florida and um it is not hot right now at all. Uh, I could I could confirm that. >> Well, look at all the press releases that Trump is uh talking about what buying mortgage back securities to try to lower interest rates. He's threatening Jerome Powell that they didn't lower rates enough and now there's what charges against Powell. I think the the cover. So maybe we'll we'll talk about that, but we want to stay on point here first with the review of 2025. So I I'll talk about um that too. So I think like one of the main themes here is a lot of the deflationistas that are like, "Oh, there's a recession. It's going to be recession. Oh, there's going to be a stock market crash. What I think they're missing, Aaron, also is that there's been a weak dollar. So, when you have this currency creation and the money supply is growing, when you have a weak dollar, that's normally good for asset prices. It's the strong dollar raising interest rates, that's where something normally breaks and causes what a margin call, deflation, some type of credit freeze. That's what normally causes the problem. So like if the as long as the dollar is not being rapidly devalued. So if it's being devalued but not rapidly. So I I I would say that um overall a weak dollar cuz the dollar was very very weak and I think like the dollar as a percentage of global reserves is down. We know that like the BRICS countries the nonG7 they're not buying a lot of US treasuries. The central banks are not. They're dollar cost averaging uh dollar cost excuse me dollar cost averaging gold tonnage each month. Now, it's been the major macro theme that you and I have been talking about for years now. Really since the Russia sanctions that was the paradigm shift where the amounts increased enormously. >> Yeah. And I mean uh I mean you and I were talking about you know like Belman Road you know back what like 2012 and you know things like that and that was a scam though cuz actually they use dollar denominated debt. So they were like, "Oh, the Ewan's going to be internationalized." That actually the whole Belt and Road thing was debt diplomacy to get access to those natural resources ahead of time cuz China wanted, you know, the uh the arable land to grow and they wanted make works jobs programs and they wanted access to ports and access to copper mines and other key metals. But now we're seeing like the US scramble. We'll talk about that late later in the show though. But for 2025, I mean, like there was like a lot of with the weak dollar, other countries were printing, money supply was still growing. Aaron, I think one of the major important things for our listeners out there, I talk about this a lot now the last like four or five months cuz the hedge fund manager told me to take a look at this more was the global M2, the global money, that's the global money supply. And so that's like high-powered base money. It's not just the US, what it's European Union and China, uh, Japan, other countries. the global M2, global money supply, it's almost to 100 trillion and it's up enormously since like 2017 or 18. I think it was like 45 trillion. So, it's gone from 45 trillion in like 2017 or 18 up to 97 trillion now. And there's no hint it's going to slow down, >> right? You just look at bond yields of uh you know, pretty much every country. Uh and then you look at you know asset prices uh you know hard asset prices, what we're seeing now. It's no wonder what the you know that this has been the response here. uh you know and you talk about the other asset like talk look at beef prices I mean looking at I'm looking at a chart of feeder cattle right now in 2025 it's it's pretty much parabolic the entire year um and you know right so it's not just um it's not just hard assets it's it's the uh it's at the grocery store which never gets talked about in the reports but u that's the that's the reality for everyday Americans and everyday you know citizens of the world >> now I I'll talk about the call I missed the worst on in 2025. That was the oil price. So, I was predicting an oil price rally up to like $85$90 a barrel by I think um end of Q2 Q3 of 2025 cuz it's normally summer driving season. I thought demand would pick up. Now, we are seeing signs that oil prices putting in a bottom though. So over the last like six uh 2 or 3/4 so 6 to9 months we've seen a lot of the oil companies in the United States dra and Canada drastically cut back on their capital expenditure. >> So >> so that's a sign that like they don't think the oil price is very attractive with the oil price right now. Let me pull it up here. West Texas Intermediate is about it's just under $60 again. But it's been in what in the low to mid50s now rangebound for at least a year I would say. It's been in a range. It's not at a good economic price though where a lot of marginal barrel of oil, a lot of higher cost marginal barrels of oil are economic though. >> Yeah. Last year I I thought, excuse me, I thought we would have a decent uh kind of like second half of the year, you know, like towards that Q2 with uh with crude prices. That really wasn't the case so much. We had the spike uh with the Iran situation. I did get the call, you know, I said the oil equities, you know, XLE, those types of names would rally uh in January and and they did pretty good and they did have decent Q1, but they've been sideways. I do think this is the trade though uh right here. I, you know, and I've been in uh I've been at, you know, owning Exxon shares for a while here and it is just starting to break out to new highs right now and obviously that the situation with Venezuela certainly helps out. Um, but I think you know right now what's the only commodity that hasn't really run and I know that the administration is hellbent on keeping it down. But you've had a lot of negative news lately and the price has been putting at higher lows here. So that to me says that there's, you know, a surplus of uh sellers that are already in and they're unable to push price lower here. So I I think crude's attractive here. Um, got to break $60 from a technical level. If it could do that, um, you could have some some good legs to the upside here. >> Well, Exon Mobile and Chevron are also two of the lowerc cost producers. So, uh they can still make a profit with oil around these current prices, but some of the other higher cost producers are not uh exactly very profitable. So, they've been uh doing more rapid cuts on their businesses. So, e even companies that are doing acquisitions that did like a $15 billion acquisition up in Canada, a mid-tier company, White Cap Resources, they did an acquisition seven or eight months ago and then they drastically cut back on capital expenditure after the acquisition. And so they went and bought the assets and then they cut the capital expenditure by 20 or 30%. So you've seen a lot of that in the industry consolidation. The industry was setting up they're going to um setting up to try to be more efficient, leaner and meaner coming out of this. But really at the current price there's not a huge incentive to invest in in higher cost oil. And yet Trump is what trying to get I I saw an interview on Fox Business today with Harold Ham of Continental Resources. He said at least a hundred billion would be required to invest into Venezuela to get their oil production back to levels from 15, 10, 15, 20 years ago. And he said that was probably on the low end. So I I mean that's going to be Look, I think this is going to be a theme going forward where Trump is going to say there's no inflation. He's going to point to low gasoline and low oil prices. I I think that was one of the main reasons I was wrong about the oil price was that it was policy. they wanted to keep the oil prices low and I didn't understand how that fits. Um I didn't understand the level that that fits within um the technology arms race and the cold war 2.0 know with the US and China and all the stuff policies that the uh Trump administration and the Pentagon have planned for what natural resource security um what Trump just cited the Monroe Doctrine which is where they want control over what the um the the naval seat in the naval areas and all the natural resources in the Western Hemisphere and you're seeing a lot of those policies now play out where China what >> January 1st they put an additional export ban on silver they had export bans on key strategic metals for earth and other strategic metals and then to counter that what the US then moves 20% or so of the naval fleet into the Caribbean for Venezuela to regime change in Venezuela and then all the investments that are going now into the US for a supply chain and there's a ton of them so I'll just quickly rattle them a few of them off. So you have Taiwan semiconductor new a new announcement there the bailout with Intel Corporation that's for the semiconductor side. So, so Intel got a bailout cuz they had problems there with the um >> Well, they were getting sued, weren't they? They were going to get sued. >> Yes. There was also fraud. >> Nobody Nobody talked about that. >> Well, but it looks like now Intel may have turned it around. The new co they brought in is really good at at um the nuts to bolts all the entire um value chain for the semiconductor. and Taiwan semiconductor facilities in Arizona had immense problems over the last couple years trying to get like uh all the chemicals needed the clean water, the clean air at the uh at the semiconductor chip fabs to get it. And it looks like finally they've got things fixed um after many many billions of dollars and about three or four years longer than they expected. But all these investments you're seeing in the headlines uh Aaron now with uh the Trump administration, the Pentagon and private sector companies in the US negotiating partnerships with Korean firms, German firms. So these are for uh uranium nuclear power nuclear power uranium enrichment facilities. I think three companies US companies just got funding for additional uranium enrichment facilities. said the US is not reliant on importing Russia Russian uh enriched uranium there for nuclear power plants. You have an announcement where I think 40% ownership is going to go to the Pentagon for silver processing and other key strategic metals. You have new partnerships for for rare earth processing facility in addition to rear earth mining. So you're starting to see um the supply chains we're in. I think the new normal now and a key theme and it's not just for 2026 is going to be that the global economy the uh quote unquote free markets and they're you know not fully free but they were more free market what a just in time supply chain that that era of a just in time supply chain where the goods go on a container ship all the way across the world and then come back on a container ship back forth back and forth that era is coming to an end the countries like the US and China are going to be focused on reliable supply that's closer to home or within their own borders now. >> Yeah, 100%. And and uh to the other, you know, the free market too, it's really and I've been you've been using this term a lot. It's like the halves versus the have nots. That's why I like stocks like Exxon and Chevron. If we go into Venezuela, they're the ones that are going to get the government guarantees, the governmentbacked agreements. They're the ones that are going to get the military protection. And I hate to look at it this way, but that's just the reality of it, right? We saw that with the chip stocks. Uh, >> well, you and me aren't you and me are not going to get a vote. Aaron, sorry to interrupt you. You and me are not going to get a vote about how much money gets printed to buy Greenland or how much in how much mil how many military bases are going to get opened in Venezuela. I mean, like, okay, you elect one politician and that politician is is uh anti- uh empire building in Venezuela or anti-military base in Venezuela. Well, who knows who's going to fund that politician to be voted out a couple years from now in the midterms. >> Yeah. And uh I mean you you were saying hundred billion dollars uh you know earlier isn't that like what was on the receipt like every other month for Ukraine. >> Okay. Just for the oil that is just for the oil industry. Okay. So Harold Ham said that's just for the oil industry. That doesn't count building normal infrastructure and having military security. So that's just for the oil industry. That's just pipelines and refineries. >> I got you. I was going to say that seems kind of cheap. you know, but that's not that bad compared to what we've been doing for everyone else. >> No, he No, that's just for oil pipelines and refineries. That's just for the in infrastructure required to get the Venezuelan uh oil industry from a million barrels per day or lower now. I think it's down a little bit below a million barrels per day back up to the old levels of three or four million barrels per day. So, he was that he said their internal numbers were at least 100 billion on the low end, but it's probably more than that. But I mean, if the US is going to be there permanently, it could end up being a boondoggle similar to Iraq or Afghanistan where it cost I think the US taxpayer $9 trillion for 25 years post 911. By the time the US what left Afghanistan and moved uh a decent amount out of Iraq, I think the estimates are at least $9 trillion. >> Yeah. And the ironic part is by the end of it, it wasn't costing them that much at all and then they left anyway. >> Well, that was botched. Yeah. the the the departure part was oh my god I don't even want to talk we have >> yeah we go off track here >> but but I I think the the key theme here is that the people um a lot of the people are going to say oh there is no inflation and it's like the estimates here to move the supply chains back I was actually looking this up before I was using uh artificial intelligence software to do some additional research the estimates are saying Eron to move the supply chain back and so value chain for the US to have processing uranium ium enrichment, um, more silver processing, you know, all those things to start moving more of our domestic supply chains back. The costs are going to be at least estimates right now at least 20 20 or 30% higher across the board. >> Yeah. And uh, I mean, we are in an arms race, right, which is another word for a war, right? Uh, I mean, war is incredibly inflationary. It's incredibly bullish, right? put tech arms race in front of that cuz really it's about five or six key technologies and it's not just artificial intelligence. Go and watch the new stuff from the um 2026 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show last week. They are taking the AI software and using it as an operating system. It's going into better versions of driverless cars. It's going into better drones, better robots. Yeah. Everything. Oh, >> the the improvements in some of these things, Aaron, is insane. I mean, 3 or 4 years ago, some of these robots, like they were on a cord. They were on a cord and they'd fall over. So, they they could barely hold a charge. They were on a giant cord to be plugged in. And now they can, you know, some of them have way better dexterity and movement than most human beings. >> Yeah, I've seen a lot of uh a lot I think they just deployed some in uh San Francisco, I want to say. >> Uh it depends. Oh, those are the home robots. So, the home robots, there are huge issues with those moving around the house. They're more efficient at a factory. So, Figure AI robotics has been running at the BMW factory in South Carolina for over 6 months every single day. So, um the factory robots are better. They're not having nearly as many issues. The home robots, but I I think the um what the average person who's listening to this needs to understand is this is the worst it's going to get. So, the artificial intelligence research software, yeah, it some of it slop. Yeah, if you're asking it for legal research and casework, it might invent some legal cases or make mistakes on that or medical advice, it'll make mistakes. That's the worst it's going to get. There's going to be constant improvements going forward. And the same thing for for the robot. So, it's going to be constantly improving. I think that's what the average person misses cuz they just say AI bubble, AI slop. There is a bubble with valuations, but the technology is legit and it will keep improving. >> Yeah. And the government is going to keep subsidizing it. So, it's just it's going to be really hard to fight something like that. It's not like the uh the internet, you know, everybody compares it to the internet bubble, but uh I last I checked, the government wasn't literally subsidizing with billions of dollars like almost every day for these companies to for R&D and for everything else that they need. Like catering literally catering uh on a silver platter to their every need. >> Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Because uh you just hear this on TV. They mentioned artificial intelligence software as a national security issue that if China takes a huge advantage over the United States that you know they uh get an advancement in artificial intelligence to artificial general intelligence or supreme intelligence or they get a huge advantage in quantum computing then they could break all man-made encryption so that the people in power and look I I don't endorse all the spending obviously but I don't have control over this. So, as a investor, you kind of have to position yourself to where if the government's going to spend the money anyway for commodities and natural resources. I mean, Aaron, we were ahead of time. Remember, you and me were way ahead of the pack on Camo, uranium. We were talking about this way before I found those charts. >> I found those charts for the electricity demand growth for the data centers and projections. I was finding those at least 6 or 12 months before other people. I was digging through a lot of the papers there. So people are like, "What are you talking about?" I was sending these to all the newsletter writers that are making it like they discovered it now. >> Yeah. I remember um that was like one of the first kind of like videos I was like the one first like deep dives I did was on uranium. Uh and you know that was when everyone hated it cuz it was in a bear for so long and you got the that was in fact the uh the kind of the premise of the video was like this is we've reached bare capitulation here. This should start going up now. And yeah, that was uh like in early 2021 I think. So, >> it was cheap and it was hated. I remember when Kamikos was was stuck in a trading range between $8 at the low end and about 22. Yeah, it was years. It was literally years. And so, I I was researching I was going through the company's uh financials, their presentation was like the the company like if you just chopped it up and sold it, it's um and sold off all the assets, it's worth way more than $8 a share. So, the riskreward was good. As a contrarian value investor looking for undervalued growth, that was good risk and reward. I see similar things for oil and natural gas. So there's a lot of good valuations there depending upon where you look. And then I I also see similar similar um riskreward valuations for the rare earth processing. So not rare earth mining but the actual processing making the value added parts because there's a lot all these new technologies robots uh drones parts of the data center they all need um either rare earth permanent magnets electric vehicles which are going to benefit a lot I think from the artificial intelligence software improvements um some of the news releases that have just some of the uh product releases that just came out consumer electronic show they're talk they're showing like the next generation improvements of the software for um driverless cars. >> Yeah. And >> all these things are going to require and I think this is part of what the technology arms race and the resource wars and the US and China what in a cold war they all realize that all these new technology innovations the amount of energy, electricity, raw materials required is astronomically higher than what we thought we needed. um like the estimates for >> I honestly I mean you see it right now like I worry about the the system because um there's constantly uh server outages now all the time cloud flare is always going down uh there's lapses all the time that never were um and it's it's like this is we're building things too fast for the the capability that we have that's that's my take >> oh yeah I mean and China is building I think they 40 nuclear power plants under construction. They were building in the past one coal fired power plant a week. I'm not sure if they're still doing that pace, but they were for for many many years. Yeah. Well, but they so um they uh upgraded they retrofitted or upgraded the old coal fired power plants. They added the clean coal scrubbers. So, the uh coal pollution isn't as bad. And the really they're the only China and India are the only two countries that are importing mass amounts of of coal right now. So um but I I'm more bullish on you know natural gas and oil I think for the valuation for oil nuclear power obviously nuclear power is cleaner. So the next generations of nuclear we need to spend a lot of money on research and development for next generation nuclear power. I think we can do be a lot more efficient than the current nuclear power plants. But we should honestly just build across the board cuz the amount of energy and electricity the that is needed for all these new technologies is way way higher than any was than anyone was anticipating 5 or 10 years ago. >> Yeah. And this is all you know this is all going to cost a lot of money and really the only way to get it is to uh you know I mean we don't have uh the you know we don't have other countries buying our debt the way that they were before. And I mean this is all everything you're saying everything we're talking about here is just all I hear is just inflationary inflationary inflationary not just for the US but for everyone. >> Well the the main theme here and you brought this up inflationary no one buying debt. It's not just the US all these governments. So it seems like we're kind of back to the 1970s era where the worst asset class the worst performing asset class the last couple years has been government bonds has been government bonds. And I think that's going to continue. these deflationistas that keep predicting that oh there is no inflation there's no evidence of any inflation uh the rally in government bonds is just around the corner I mean they've gotten some of them gotten absolutely blown out of the water they've been lying and hiding about their um the amount of returns the losses that they have some one of one of the guys just closed his uh newsletter he he claims he sold the newsletter for macro newsletter for an enormous profit but why did he shut down all of his social media he was a by the way he was a bonfam manager at an investment bank. He was fired from that, too. I think he blew up in the repo crisis in 2019. And now what the speech is with Jerome Powell sounds very very similar to the repo crisis in 2019. >> Yeah, we won't see in my my take is we won't see any sort of actual asset price uh deflation. And of course, even if we do, it'll be temporary, but we won't see it until you see the twos and tens at about 100 basis point spread. And we're at about 64 right now. If you see that, then I think you'll see a rally in bonds. But it'll be cyclical. >> Now, now I know you were predicting a rally in the dollar index, but you know, all this stuff with Trump and Jerome Powell, the fight, I mean, the dollar index just got hit whack-a-ole again. A giant hammer just whacked it right back down. It's almost like it was intentional there to knock the dollar index back down after it was going to rally again. >> It still has to clear, you know, it held my support around 97 and uh 3/4. Uh it has it has rebounded off that. It's got to clear 100. Um, and my my my take here is I think a lot of people see the same thing that we're talking about and u I think that the the market's positioned short here and um that can lead to upside surprises. >> Well, you don't have to be a genius. You just have to listen to what some of these central bankers are saying, Aaron, because the central bankers are saying, "Look, we don't want to buy Treasury bonds anymore." They're like, um, yes, the gold price is higher, but we need to diversify more of our foreign exchange reserves reserves away from the dollar, away from US Treasury bonds. These are the nonG7 countries and the bricks because they see that like if they have a some type of policy, they piss Washington DC off their sanctions or the military, the naval fleet gets positioned around there. Look, I hope I'm wrong about this, but I I think there's going to be more regime changes. I'm not in favor of them, but um you know, we were talking before we started recording, I would not be surprised if many, many billions is printed by Greenland, if the naval fleet surrounds Cuba in the next 6 months or less and there's additional regime changes. There was a story that just came out an hour or two ago that Trump wants to send in like military on the ground into Iran. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean, I'm surprised it took him this long to start doing this stuff, honestly. Um, I mean they they it it seems that they they they know that they're slipping behind in Asia right now. Like I mean that's that's what this is about, right? Well, I I think that's why one of the major themes and we started talking about this around the Russia sanctions and it increased a lot over the last it's now almost four years since the Russia sanctions. It's it's a long time. So you have almost four years now Aaron postRRussia sanctions because that was early 2022 and then within a couple months the central banks just started massively increasing their dollar cost averaging monthly gold purchases of gold tonnage and now here we are what only in it was in 2025 the first time in many many decades I think it was four or five decades that the uh total global reserves were higher in gold than they were in US treasuries. Wow, that's pretty crazy. >> Well, you knew it was going to happen eventually because you saw that each month all the central banks were not buy net buyers of treasuries and they were net buyers of gold. So, you knew eventually it was going to happen at some point. Now, we're being called crazy when the gold price was still around 2000 cuz I I remember there was a lot of, you know, mainstream cuz I'm sure you deal with this in the chart community. There was a ton of mainstream chart people saying gold's overbought, silver is the most overbought in history on RSI, the relative strength index. And there's been people literally, you know, mainstream mainstream chart people, mainstream money managers, mainstream Keynesians, uh, on Wall Street that have been predicting crashes in gold and silver all the way up from like 2500 gold and like 30 35 silver every couple weeks. They've been wrong now for way way over your six to nine months. >> Yeah. Uh I mean you don't really fight, you know, I was just saying this today. Um you don't you don't fight those parabolic advances until it until it shows you uh weakness first and then you can trade it. But um you know I did call that I did say that we would probably see a pullback. Uh that was actually um the 26th of December. I said, "Yeah, uh, don't be surprised if it dips here." And it did the very next day, but bam, right back up. >> Well, that's because someone probably had, are you saying on silver? That's probably because someone didn't inside information in China was going to ban silver exports. >> Yeah. Well, they they've been increasing margin on it, too. But, I mean, a lot of people say like, "Oh, they're trying to whack it down." If this was uh if we were trading rocks, they would they would increase the increase margins. If something that if something in the futures market is up, let's say right now silver is 30, you know, was at $40 like 3 months ago. Um, you know, this is a global commodity. If it was anything's up that much, uh, they're going to hike margins. They're just going to they're not going to take risk. >> Well, but I I'll tell you like the people actually need the metal that in the past would have gotten delivery of a silver futures contract, they're avoiding the metals exchanges on COMX and LBMA because they can't get reliable delivery. So if you're a electronics manufacturer or you make gold or silver jewelry or you make uh solar panels, you need the metal or you have to shut down manufacturing and production. And so if the COMX and the LBMA and they they claim to have a lot of inventory in the past that they don't have the inventory now you're hearing all these anecdotal story errands uh Aaron were like um the manufacturer directly they're going directly to the mining companies in Latin America and they're asking can we buy directly from you because the exchanges don't have it and we'll even pay a premium. >> Well the exchanges you got to be careful that they don't send you goldplated tungsten. Yeah, I would >> if I mean they were doing that for years. Okay, let's I I don't want to go too far into that, but that was that was actually occurring. So, I don't know how much more of that is occurring, but it was occurring a lot over the years over the last 15 or 20 years. >> Yeah, it's uh I I can't imagine they getting away with it now. Well, I mean, but if they're going to raise margin requirements, but if you're a manufacturer and an industrial end user and you need the actual metal for something, especially for the silver, you're just going to avoid the COMX and the LBMA entirely because they're not reliable, >> right? >> And so, like Elon Musk even talked about this. He has what, SpaceX? He has Tesla Motors. He needs actual metal uh for a bunch of different things. He's like, "Well, we need the silver for electric vehicles. We need the silver for our rockets and our satellites." Um, so silver's used in a lot of different things and sometimes it's in what's trace amounts and sometimes it's a couple ounces. I think it's a couple ounces of silver per electric vehicle. So, uh, yeah. >> And that really saves the environment, too. >> I mean, no, no form of energy actually saves the unless we actually crack nuclear fusion, um, nothing actually saves the envir all forms of energy have positives and negatives. I wrote a long article on this a couple years ago for patrons. There's actually no form of energy that's actually fully environmentally friendly. It's just marketed one way or another. >> Yeah, of course. >> Yeah. Or or whichever like uh special interest group or lobbying group or whichever um political parties in power for subsidies or whoever uh decide they want they want to steal uh from the Department of Energy or or from the Inflation Reduction Act, which was really like 70% the Green New Deal. Oh yeah. Uh that's that's another great alphabet soup program. We're seeing this on the CARES Act. We talked about the repo stuff earlier. Uh you you talked about and it's amazing to me that most people don't even know this, but um yeah, the stuff that the SPV provision uh in in the CARES Act, I'm I'm not convinced that any of this stuff that the Fed wasn't already just buying. I mean, you if you want to tell me that they've been doing QT this entire time, I just I just can't buy it. I just cannot believe that. Uh we're looking at asset prices and then military spending. So, you have what interest payments. So, the officially what I think the budget deficits are projecting 1.8 trillion. The math just doesn't it doesn't make any sense. So you had record amounts of tax uh receipts coming in last year in 2024 almost 5 trillion but the government spent around 8 trillion but a lot of that was wasted or stolen on a lot of different projects. So green energy green new deal uh Medicare fraud what all those uh Somali daycare centers tons of tons and tons like in tons illegal immigrants got a ton of freebies. There was like stuff on social media where illegal immigrant, there was one like teenage boy who was an illegal immigrant and he had like almost $200,000 in debit cards that he had gotten in 30 minutes from crossing the border. I think the border agents were just handing it out. >> Yeah. And it took a YouTuber to figure all this stuff out. >> No. No way. They're actually bashing him. They're saying he made the whole thing up. So there's still people all over social media and the mainstream media that are bashing him saying he made the whole thing up and it was taken out of context. Oh boy. Um, meanwhile, you know, just strict math here, Aaron. >> Interest payments on the national debt and then the military spending. Military spending, come on. The Trump is announcing what all these new toys he wants, what new battleships, Trump class, uh, they got to upgrade this. Um, I've seen estimates, uh, there's rumors, the deal hasn't been announced yet. I've heard 250 billion of contracts for nuclear power plants. So, I don't know if that's going to get finalized in the next couple weeks or months, but they're discussing offering for through the Department of Energy 250 billion with a B for nuclear power. >> That's just for nuclear power >> in the United States. That's not counting other forms of energy like you said, Aaron. That's not counting rare earth. That's not counting semiconductors. That's not counting Greenland. I really hope Trump doesn't do it, but I think like he will probably just print the dollars since we have world reserve currency and go and buy Greenland since they view it as such a key strategic location and there's billions of dollars of metal under the ice, but they want a military base there. They want to set up a laser ant uh laser and satellite anti-missile um anti-hypersonic missile defense system and military bases. Yeah, I mean it's right now it just seems like uh that if you if there was a time to go all in, it might as well be now. So I think that's their their thought process like uh >> before US loses world reserve currency. >> Right. Right. Well, and it's like it's like if we can if we can if this works out and we win the arms race, then we just double down on hergemony. So we keep the reserve currency, right? Um, and if it doesn't work, then it wasn't going to work anyway. >> Yeah, I agree. You know what I mean? As a small government libertarian, I'm not in favor of any of this. I'm just saying what the people in power here at the Pentagon and kind of the neocons with our foreign policy want to happen. Cuz like with Venezuela, I mean, like if they're going to rebuild Venezuela, that we're talking like trillions of dollars it would take to potentially rebuild Venezuela. The oil industry is hundreds of billions if not more. and then the entire country to fix the infrastructure and stuff so it's stable and their economy. It would be very very expensive to to turn it around. But what the not only you have what the the drug issue with the drugs going through there, but you also have what the petro dollar. So if the US uh oil companies have control over the oil supply there that helps with the dollar as a world reserve currency and the petro dollar and then what 10 or 15 years from now we both think that if Venezuela is stable with um military protection and stuff Venezuela could turn into a mining powerhouse >> in addition to their oil natural gas >> if it works out and it has it has you know they're not doing it for no reason right it has there is upside there uh but it's it's it's going to be a long road and that's Why, you know, I said as soon as that that happened over the weekend, I was like, if if a crude oil gaps down, money, just buy it because that has zero bearing on the current crude uh contract. And um yeah, I mean, it's going to take a while. It's going to take a while. >> Okay. So, let me ask you about natural gas then. The natural gas price has been kind of rangebound, kind of in a bearish range because when it has a rally, kind of ends up back down. Do you think with all these data centers planned, the amount of spending the US has for infrastructure and all the technology um potentially switching to what more autonomous vehicles because I'm seeing headlines that they're planning on rolling out a bunch of new robo taxis fleets in a lot of different um cities and states now. So, it's not just uh Google which owns Whimo, it's like Uber, it's a bunch of other companies I think are also planning additional rollouts now with the new software uh over the next like 12 to 18 months. are going to start testing them in a lot of cities. Do you think then that natural gas is due for a large rally? >> It's had a decent it had a decent rally in Q4 which is off schedule. Normally uh that's not the case. Q4 it's is usually pretty poor for NA gas. Uh but you know going back to the last couple of years the price in the futures market has put in a it's been putting in higher lows and higher highs. So there has been a steady uh increase and yeah I mean there's a chance that that's the next one to run. I mean, we talked about, you know, oil itself, um, which is kind of the misdirection play where it's, you know, beef prices are tripling and all these other things. Oh, but oils, you know, gas is 250, so don't worry about it. >> How how have the agriculture stocks done since you brought up beef prices are like the potach stocks, the fertilizer, John Deere, the agriculture, cuz those those uh shares, those companies, we've talked about those in the past. Those ones always seem to lag like higher food prices. >> Definitely. Deer has done pretty well. Um, but Deer is also a They have a lot of defense though, >> if I'm not mistaken, don't they? >> Uh, for military contracts. I'm actually not sure, but guess what? They just rolled out a self-driving tractor that's AI powered with like LAR and all that. It's like they just released that at the Consumer Electronic Show. Um, that's pretty impressive. So that's just on a field >> and so you can have a drone flying over it that would uh dust the crops or other stuff and then you have a self-driving tractor that could save the farmers a lot of work if that thing is uh very good. >> Yeah, I noticed the pot I still think NTR is okay nutrient but it's um these Yeah, you're right. These names always lag. You know they they have had runs before. They they don't get me wrong they do go on runs. >> The farmers don't seem Yeah. So, so, um, I've spoken to farmers about this, Aaron. So, um, when the food prices go high, I've asked the farmers why the fertilizer, um, why the fertilizer companies don't do well. And what they say is that normally a lot of farmers have a lot of debt. And so, fertilizer is expensive. So, even if there's a higher food price, some of these farmers don't have enormous profits and they have a lot of debt and they have to pay off the debt. So they can't afford to go and borrow and pay for more fertilizer to increase uh to grow more and increase the crop yield because they don't want to take on the debt. >> Well, and the and the costs are just higher in general too. So I mean that's seating into their bottom line. >> I you know actually I would I have a question for you just given the price of metals here. At what point do and and not we we talked about silver, but we haven't even talked about copper. But at what point do input costs start to drag on the the economy? >> Uh I I think the Trump tariffs already did that, man. I think we see that with a lot of restaurants if you go so so we weren't planning on talking about this, but I think like the economy got people say K-shaped, but I would say it's like the the ultra rich influence. So if you're a hedge fund manager, you don't have a lot of debt or use debt to go buy assets, you've done very very well with this asset price inflation and the Cantalon effect for years now. While if you're a um middle class consumer, upper middle class consumer, you're a small business owner, these tariffs screwed you over bad. I mean, like these tar um the small business owners were getting screwed over disproportionately, Erin, on the tariffs compared to the large corporations in many cases where the large corporation got an exemption on the tariff or a low lower tariff because they can either talk to President Trump directly on the phone or they had a lobbyist go and do it, >> right? >> So, I would say there was already like there was already like a disproportion. We see this with the shares of the restaurants. So, go pull up uh shares of what? Cabba. Yeah. >> Yeah. the the bowl company. So that's where like the younger adults, they would normally go and eat out at like Chipotle Mexican Grill during the week or Cava Sweet Green, some of those other um Sweet Greens, the salad company that was actually founded locally here by Georgetown University students here in the DC metro area. >> The slot bowls. Yeah, they call them they call them sl they call them sloth bowls, but I mean they have some healthy ingredients except for the uh the seed oils that Chipotle used to cook their meat in, but I I had carnas a couple days ago when I was hung over for New Year's and actually I didn't I didn't get sick from that. So maybe they switched out of the seed oils then. >> But um so the uh consumer and and a lot of consumers though for your point here Erin a lot of the consumers a lot of them are tapped out. I mean, we just see this. There's a ton of different headlines. So, the uh you have a weak dollar asset price inflation that doesn't benefit the majority of people out there. The the real economy has been disproportionately hurt from inflation, stagflation, asset price inflation, the tariffs. They hurt small business, I would say, way worse uh than they hurt uh large corporations. It's very similar to the pandemic, you know, where a lot of small businesses were shut down because uh these small business owners their their customers a lot of cases their customers got hit with uh higher cost of living, uh higher interest rates on their credit cards, uh student loan debt payments, all those things. And so the um the small businesses on Main Street got double or triple whami from the tariffs, inflation, higher interest rates. >> Yeah. And uh you know there's a lot of >> but the the metal you want sorry you wanted to I went off a little on tangent. You wanted to know about the metals prices and substitution or if it's going to hurt demand. >> Yeah. Can it hurt you know the >> look I hope I'm wrong on this. I hope I'm wrong on this but Sam Alman was in Washington DC working both political parties in Congress um ne trying to negotiate like a backs stop. So government subsidies or bailouts. So this was what November he was here for a while cuz open look open AI they were the leader they were the first mover they were the leader >> they've fallen behind Google Google uh with uh Nanobanana VO3 their text to video Gemini 3 >> well once he had that once he had that uh that presentation where the the like host questioned him like how is your revenue going to do this and he just like snapped it and Yeah, he like he basically like exposed himself as to like how fraudulent his numbers were. I I think that's where the turning point kind of was. >> Look, I'm not predicting any bankruptcy for Nvidia. Even Nvidia's hedging cuz Nvidia just went and bought another company for around 20 billion aqua hire or acquisition acquisition hire. They bought a smaller company, the GRQ, not G, cuz there's two Grocks. I didn't know there was two and there's a lawsuit. So, so you have the Elon Musk um the AI software called Jirro K Grock. And then you have Jirro Q, the other Gro that was founded by Jonathan Ross. He was at Google. He's considered a genius. He invented the TPUs. So, those are the um alternatives to the Nvidia GPUs where they're more efficient and they use way less um electricity and energy per chip. So, the chips are 40 to 50% cheaper. So now you're seeing all the tech companies and the and the artificial intelligence software companies, Aaron, they're all starting to hedge and they're all starting to diversify away from the Nvidia GPU, which was good for the early first inning of the artificial intelligence software. But now the companies like Google, Amazon, Meta, um, Anthropic, uh, XAI, they're all starting to diversify and look for more efficient and cheaper chips that use way way less electricity than the Nvidia GPUs per chip, >> right? Nvidia had a monopoly and they're tired of, you know, dealing with that. And I mean, heck, even even Buffett uh, bought Google recently. >> Yes. Yes. So Berture bought bought Google and and Google has a bunch of other So Google also owns people are not aware of this Aaron Google owns like 8% of SpaceX. >> So they own and SpaceX is going to go IPO this year. So Google has almost a trillion dollars. It's like I think 800 billion estimates. Their valuation is worth a lot. I think they put in like a billion bucks initially into SpaceX and I think it they got like a 800x or something like that. >> Yeah, I know. or 8,000 up enormously. Sorry. >> I think I think Open AI was as a few months ago was supposed to be like 800 billion, but it might be lesser now. >> Uh yeah, I I don't Let's just say I don't think Open as a standalone business, I don't think Open AI is going to make it. I think like it's probably going to end up getting bought by larger acquired yet. >> Yeah. Well, it'll be like Meta or Microsoft. >> Nobody's going to pay 800 billion for it. I'll tell you that right now. >> Well, they don't have the cash flow. Nobody's got that cash. >> Well, I don't know. They're losing paying customers cuz they're like um there's tons of models available, the learning language models, the AI software that's either cheaper per month for the pro version or it's free. So, I don't know how they're going to make money. They were one of the only companies at first, but they lost first mover advantage. And you know when a company that has as much profits as uh Google cuz Google has tons of free cash flow from Google search for the ads and from YouTube and Meta has tons of free cash flow from from Instagram. You can't really compete if you have no profits and you're losing cash flow negative. You're not going to be able to compete with them those companies for very long if they decide they want to compete with you. They're just going to destroy you on on resources. >> They could Yeah, they could compete with them easily. Well, it took what a couple years and Google's already taken the lead and they're not even using Nvidia chips anymore. Google um all their uh software was all trained on their own TPU chips and now so Amazon and those guys are all diversifying away from only using Nvidia chips. >> Yeah. Nvidia Nvidia is sitting on you know all the thousands and thousands of inventory that can't even be used yet because the data centers aren't ready for them. And by the time they're ready, they're going to be obsolete by the time they're even ready. >> Yep. And Nvidia is talking about the next generation of chips. What um they have different ones that can come out over the next couple years. You have uh it's I I can't tell you who's going to win the chip race, but I can I can tell you that um it's going to be beneficial deflation and a lot of creative destruction. And the real beneficiaries of all this uh software increases are probably going to be businesses in other industries that are able to be more productive with artificial intelligence software and how their employees adapt to it. Those are the ones who are going to benefit all this money. So So these things are actually from a financial history perspective. Aaron, this is very similar. This infrastructure waste uh boom and bust the amount of waste. It's going to be similar to like the railroads in the United States after the Civil War where there was a ton of bailouts and they built railroads to nowhere and those railroad companies went bankrupt. Unfortunately, I think I see a lot of the same things that are going to happen, >> right? It's like it's the the consumer ultimately benefits and then the consumer in this case is the other business, right? let the tech companies bleed their pockets dry trying to figure out what's best and and in the process they're going to create, you know, an AI robot that, you know, a factory can all of a sudden like 10x their value, you know, in in production out of, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And they don't have to spend any money on it because like the company's just going to create it for them. They're going to make it cheap because it's going to be competition and then they should be able to buy it. >> Well, I I think Google will be fine. So Google is not maybe they're not going to be the most efficient at building this out, but I think since they have profits, free cash flow from other businesses and other industries, I think they're going to be fine. They can use some of that to subsidize uh the growth um their improvement in their chips, their alternative chips with the TPUs, uh improve processing power, improve their software for the regular Gemini 3, that's a regular AI software, and then also their text to video, which is like a nano banana. I don't know if you've seen that. So, like you have a the stuff coming out of that is amazing. The quality of the graphics. Now, we can only do they can only do short videos for a cheap price. Otherwise, you have to spend a lot six or seven figures to make like a uh 10 or 20 minute short video. >> Yeah, it certainly it's it it's definitely expensive now, but it'll it'll get better though. It's going to get better and it's going to get cheaper. That's the exciting Well, e even if the chips get cheaper, Aaron, I think overall they're going to use more chips cuz the data centers are scaling up from initially they thought 100,000 chips at a data center like a large neural network was impossible and we're already to 200,000 at the next generation data centers and scaling up to 1 million. So, we're going to be using now that's if hopefully things are more efficient. Hopefully, we're not destroying the water. Hopefully we can recycle, you know, disgusting waste water and turn that into usable water for our semiconductor foundaries and our data centers and our power supply. So hopefully we learn to use our resources more efficiently to where um we're not wasting electricity. We're more efficient with electricity generation. But overall, you know, energy, raw materials for all these data centers, chips, um, robots, drones, all these new technologies. I think that's going to be a long-term bull market for those things. Um, I can't tell you if copper is going to be the main beneficiary of this because I know that they're already working on using graphine in a lot of instances uh, at the data centers. They're already working on cheaper alternatives. So we could see a substitution here of some of the materials but overall they are focusing on improvement productivity improvement and efficiency reducing the amount of water that's used recycling water and um focusing on what more productivity and less electricity usage per chip. So I think that's like the main goal and they're all trying to do that now. All the tech companies and the companies building out the data centers. But I I think the beneficiaries are going to be what your oil, natural gas, key materials and I think that's why the US and China are in such a huge scramble and that's like the main overarching theme that I got wrong in 2025 and I think we're going to start to see even more so in uh 2026. So the people that are saying that like oh this is a bubble top in silver and silver is going to crash and silver's never going to go up again. I mean I'm actually seeing people write that not not talking about what the global money supply the amount the problems in the government bond market how all these currencies are being debased. I mean if people want to see currency debasement it's even worse in Japan. Go and look up u the gold price in Japanese yen. It's even more parabolic than than the dollar gold price. >> Yeah. Speaking of Japan, I was just reading right now uh the 20-year uh Japanese banial just hit an all-time high like as as we're doing this right now. >> Well, do you are are they doing uh QE? Are they monetizing more debt or stimulus? I mean, they don't have good options here and and obviously I don't think the US government wants them selling treasuries. They do have what that permanent foreign repo facility for central banks. I don't think they've posted any of the treasuries as collateral though to go get access to dollars. I >> I'm looking at the yen right now. It is getting hammered. I mean, the the dollar dollar right now versus the Yeah. dollar versus the yen is ripping right now. >> Not not a good time to be a bond fund manager, is it? >> No. No, not at all. >> Well, not not unless you're spending uh uh over hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on marketing budget on on uh YouTube videos to offiscate your track record or hiring consultants. >> Yeah. >> Marketing consultants to rebrand yourself. The other thing I thought was funny was earlier in 2025 when they were talking about like, oh, all this money is going back, you know, these Europeans are putting all their money back into sovereign bonds because of the juicy yields. Like, dude, the yields are juicy for a reason. And it's not a surprise that now in Q4 they had the highest inflows back to the US in earn risk. I think they had some sellers remorse there. Didn't you send me um didn't you send me some research that the inflows into US stocks from foreign from foreign capital were the most all time or something? >> Yeah, it was like the high I think I want to say like the most in a quarter ever or something like that. Uh but the outflows, you know, I and I predicted that the outflows were would come back because they would see they would get FOMO once they saw Nvidia and Google and all those as I knew that they were going to, you know, Uncle Scott as I call him, Scott Besson. I I knew he wasn't going to let the market go down for very long. And that's what they did. >> Well, I think the better bets rather than picking out which company wins the chip race or the robot race or the drone race, not an expert at those things. I think overall we're going to use way more raw raw materials, way more energy and electricity. So nuclear power is especially like a company like Kamico or one of the energy utility companies that's going to get um all these additional business uh opportunities because of data centers. One of these electrical utility companies that industry has not had growth for decades and now all of a sudden they're looking at the most growth they've had in 50 60 70 years. >> Yeah. Oh for sure. For sure. But it just in general though in terms of the Europe in foreign stocks they're they're buying you know index funds in the S&P and things like that. >> Yeah. So um you asked me about specific metals. Um I don't want to put like I've said this publicly recently. I don't want to put a price target on gold and silver anymore longterm. Tell me when the governments are going to stop monetizing debt which is creating new currency out of thin air to buy government bonds to try to cap the bond yields. so the government doesn't have to cut spending. Or in the case of like the US where only God knows all the all the uh expensive military toys that Trump is going to pay or the amount of money that's going to be printed to rebuild Venezuela or money that's going to be printed for additional bailouts uh across the United States domestically for infrastructure for the data centers or other electricity upgrades for nuclear power maybe that 250 billion I was talking about or even to buy Greenland. Well, and the thing is the Fed does not have control of the long end at all. Every time that they've cut, the long end just keeps going up. And you know, these economists and everybody else keeps acting. You know, all these mortgage mortgage bros are, oh, oh, you know, the Fed's going to cut, it's going to bring rates down. Every time they cut, it goes high. >> London going up and steepening. So, that means normally recession, but do you think that's bond vigilante saying, look, the math doesn't work and that that DC is going to run budget deficits. They're going to do bailouts. are going to do spending and inflation or stagflation and asset price inflation is coming. Do you think that's what the uh bond market is signaling? >> Uh yeah, I think that's it. And the thing is too, you know, we mentioned the 70s earlier, just so you know, like there was a lot of inflation in the 70s, but there was four recessions. So you can have a recession in an inflationary environment. It is possible. It has happened. Um so and I do think that that that is probably coming this year um to if we're going to be completely honest. But >> I I would argue a lot of those industries we said if the share prices are down 30 or 40% that industry like restaurant industry is in a is in a recession then. >> Yes. >> So if they have if it's a consumer discretionary business or a lot of restaurants I mean and they they're announcing bad and they're closing down um the amount of restaurants and they're firing workers off. I mean that's signs of recession. So I don't know if it's the whole country officially. I don't know if we'll have an official government recession, but clearly those industries, Aaron, are suffering. >> Well, and I think the the other key here is again, continue watching the repo market, continue watching private credit. Uh if private credit, you know, and not just private credit, but the companies specifically, right? Uh Blackstone, you know, Jeff, we know that Jeffre is in trouble. Um there was a few others. Aerys Capital Management, these guys are are big private lenders. all the private equity too supposedly from what I've there's insurance companies sitting on this private credit garbage they so the insurance companies bought data center debt >> and a lot of this private credit stuff they were tricked from what I've heard university endowments insurance companies private uh they were tricked >> to happen to a nicer group of guys >> well the insurance companies are tax aren't they backed by the US taxpayer because there's a bunch of old laws on the books uh well the the worst the bad people are the private equity guys that put this garbage together. >> Yeah. >> They're like the Black Rocks and the Blackstones and the Those are the bad guys that are packaging this garbage and then they're paying off what the uh ratings agencies again after they've chopped up these uh stuff as a income product to rubber stamp it what is AAA similar to the mortgage back securities 2005 6 and 7. >> Yeah. And speaking of mortgage back securities, that from what I hear is what all those repo spikes were related to. It's all MBS. And again, going to back to my anecdote, I can praise I can confirm that. I I know that there's there's private lenders that are in trouble right now. Oh, there's bad auto loan debt, too. There's bad credit card debt, auto loan debt. There's Dude, there was a spike in the buy now pay later. I mean, I I'm sure they've chopped that stuff up, too, and sold it to pension funds and and insurance companies, too, as an income product, especially pension funds. I mean, the majority of pension fund managers are not very competent. Let's just and I'm being nice. >> Uh, I can tell you right now, there are property management firms that are selling house homes in the Tampa Bay area, which is one of the hottest markets you can ever find, right? And they're they're selling them for a loss. I'm not kidding. >> Wow. >> I'm not kidding. And I I mean I can't get into specifics, but I can confirm that. And it's that that's how that and maybe that's maybe this is just isolated to hear. Uh but my guess is that's not true >> based on what I'm seeing in repo and everything. I I can't imagine it's isolated. >> There'll probably be a new uh government sponsored subsidy program or a new type of extend and pretend. I mean, they did games like that with >> builders. Yes. Yeah. That's why Trump's I I'm telling you that's why Trump's doing the whole Oh, we got to buy another 200 billion of NBS. The day after he says, "Oh, well, we're not going to let Black Rockck buy all these." Yeah. Right. Excuse you. So, you're going to let the mortgage market collapse? Okay. Yeah. And then the next day, he announces 200 billion in NBS buying. >> Well, they also secretly subsidize the uh commercial real estate developers to transition the uh commercial office space over to residential. So, they snuck in a bunch of programs over the last couple years, too. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean I there's no way that that market is so massive. I mean there's no way they can let that it is 100% too big to fail. >> Uh so so a major theme then for 2026 is more stagflation, more inflation continuing that when the Trump administration says inflation is not going to be a problem. We have inflation under control, you you don't believe in them because look at the military. I look at the military spending. I mean, what we're up to with all the increase in spending added in Venezuela or Greenland, the upgrades in new technology, the naval fleet upgrades that Trump wants. I mean, we're at a trillion dollars a year. >> How many greens does it take to get Greenland? Let's get it. >> Well, I mean, if it's if it's just paper and you can buy land, I mean, like, >> that's the fraudulent system we have of fiat currencies, right? So, >> I I remember I remember there's I was getting arguments. I'll share this anecdotal story. I used to have people cuz I was networking like many many years ago and I met like a metals expert commodities broker and the guy was like um he was working I think in Chicago on like the CME exchange and the guy was adamant that the silver price would never go above $20. Now, this was like like 2012 or 13. He was like, "Oh, there's so much silver above ground and we could bring on new silver mines." is and he was like, "Silver will never go above 20." And I was like, "What?" He was like, "I've been selling silver futures contracts and and arranging delivery for for my whole career and I'll never go above $20." And I was like, "Uh, do you understand economics?" >> Yeah. >> Oh, man. >> Well, I mean, like, look, the major driver here is actually for the last like five or six years has been industrial end users. If you pull up a chart of industrial demand for silver, it's been steadily growing, while supply, according to the silver institute, has been in a substantial deficit now for the last four or five years. So, if you're just going to talk about supply and demand for silver, we were going to hit this at some point cuz you can't have large deficits where demand is growing enormously and there's supply deficits for four or five years. the price was going to have to go up to incentivize what investment and new supply being brought online, >> right? And is everything else uh you know going up, you know, and input cost wise, you know, just even just the general level of inflation over time, you know, the mining company's going to get they need to get a yield, right? They need to get a yield for the for what they're doing, right? Well, especially cuz like the silver miners like for years uh needed way higher silver prices and the silver price was capped at such a low level that just to survive a lot of the silver miners had to go buy a gold mine. >> So for many many years >> it was bad. It was bad. >> Well, they were giving they a lot of them shut down the silver mine or they drastically reduce their production because they were running the mine at a loss or barely break even. It was it was not sustainable at all. >> Right. And in a business, it's already hard enough. I mean, there's so many problems that could go. >> Well, and this is why you and me were saying that platinum and platium would rally cuz what uh 12 12 18 months ago, what we had $900 an ounce each one for platinum and platium. >> Yeah. >> And I was getting people telling me it'll never go up again. I was like, >> miners are all running at losses. >> Palladium was my little pet project there. And it it finally broke out. It took it it took it a while but you know it was when if you stuck with it it it was rewarding. >> Wasn't that the bare market I think was like 3 years. >> Yeah. >> So in hindsight it was a >> it's not that bad. Yeah. Yeah. But but like considering what it did before that it's like that's a pretty standard you know it was a pretty standard cycle >> now at all time highs too. >> Yeah. And I remember uh before the rally what BHP Bulletin, one of the larger miners, it was Riotinto or BHP Bulletin. They wanted to do an acquisition of a copper miner, but they had a massive amount of platinum and palladium and they wanted zero exposure to it. And I was thinking like they're probably going to regret that 12 18 months from now. And now here we are. I think they did get rid of that asset and they sold it at the bottom for pennies. Pennies on the dollar. Yeah, that's that's a tough one there. >> Well, I mean this is well, this is why like um contrarian value investors like Rick Rule, this is why they make so much money buying in the bare market because when the markets turn, that's when you make the majority of your money. Normally as an investor or a speculator when you make the most money is when you buy the assets and then you patiently wait or you accumulate something that's cheap and hated and then the cycle turns or there's unexpected growth like with uranium and nuclear power. how like you know 3 or 4 years ago no one saw that there was going to be advancements in artificial intelligence and data centers and the amount of power requirements and now it looks like what the electrical utility companies natural gas and nuclear power are going to be some of the main beneficiaries of all that over for for many many years to come. >> Right. And that's the thing with uh with if something's hated enough, it doesn't even need to have an insane amount of growth potential. If if there's just enough of an upside surprise and everyone's short, you're going to get you're going to get paid on that. Yeah. So, for for long-term price targets and gold and silver, I won't give any long-term. Tell me if the governments are going to stop printing money, but for 2026, I think I think we're going to blow through 5,000 gold. Well, yeah. >> Yeah. Only only a couple hundred more at this point. >> Yeah. And I think the new normal for look, silver has to stay above 65, 70, $80. It has to stay above there, probably even triple digits. And it has to stay high for mining companies to bring new supply online. And you have to the the other major component from me interviewing you know a lot of these um gold stock newsletter golden silver stock newsletter writers like Adrien Day and Lobo Trey who travels all over the place and Durret and uh some of the others is is that I ask them about geopolitical risk because it's not just about the high metals prices. You also have to have private property rights in a country like Bolivia or Argentina. You have to have the right conditions in place. So the mining company, so even if the metals prices are high, if there's not good private property rights and other uh infrastructure and the right uh amount of uh labor and all these other things in place, the mining company's not going to make any investments in new supply. This is the issue with mining that the average hedge fund manager who says, "Oh, silver's way overbought um on RSI, alltime RSI overbought and it's going to crash and then it's never going to go up again." This is what they don't understand is that the supply response. Yes, people are selling junk silver right now here in the United States out of desperation for cash. Some uh there's a lot of people in the United States and other countries um liquidating their uh you know, silver antiques, silver bars. Some people are desperate, but for like mine supply to to come online, it has to stay at those levels. And it could take many many years, it the supply response is not going to be like oil where, you know, if the oil price is high for $130 a barrel, Erin, they could bring on new wells in 6 to 8 weeks. >> Yeah. It doesn't take long. So mining is very very different especially in countries that are um that have new rules, regulations, environmental regulations. So like Mexico which has a lot of silver to get the permitting process for an open pit mine a sizable one that has like uh copper or gold silver or uh silver lead and zinc like base metal mines you'll have to go through a lot of permitting could take years for the permits and then you have to build a mine then you have to raise the capital you have to build you have to construction could take years depending on the size of the mine. So you're seeing that right now with the uh massive uh platinum and plating mine in South Africa that's coming online. Just came online a couple months ago. That's Plat Reef. It's >> Yep. >> That's from Ivanho. That one uh I was talking about as a speculative play. That's the worldass platinum and platium mine. The phase two of the mine is going to be one of the largest in the world. So it's going to be high-grade and lowcost platinum and platium mine. That mine take took years to plan and build. Many many years. It's absolutely massive. So, the construction cost years billions of dollars. Not cheap. >> Yeah. I think it's uh PGM, right? >> Uh the mine or the the miner Ivanho >> Yeah, >> the mine is Ivanho Mines. It's uh run by uh Robert Freedelland. >> I remember I remember you talking about that. That's why >> the phase one of the mine just came online. Uh that's small. Phase two is under construction. So that'll be online probably they're estimating like sometime in 2027. Then um by then the projections are it will be the highest grade and lowest cost platinum and plating mine in the world. >> And most of the mine is uh mechanized or automated. >> Oh, that's nice. >> Well, it is in South Africa though, so it has to be like there there's a there's a armed military militia guarding it guarding the line. But >> you have to go where the medals are, right? So, I mean, that's why they're even talking about uh Venezuela, >> which uh and then uh Bolivia. Uh so, I think the guy who was uh >> I don't know if he's still there. The one who was a a plant from Chavez or Maduro, the one in Bolivia, there was like a a copycat, one of the puppets for Chavez or Maduro that was in Bolivia. I'm not sure if he's still there, but like Bolivia, I think, saw what what what was going to happen in Venezuela, and now they're talking about like, well, maybe we should >> they got lied. Yeah. >> Maybe we should start negotiating a trade deal and maybe we should start opening up to foreign investment. So, uh, >> you got to kiss the ring. >> Well, they should want to. I mean, there's uh their minds are worth uh billions of dollars. They have billions of dollars of metal there. That's jobs, tax revenue, investments into infrastructure, schools, clean water. So if the mining companies can make the investments into the infrastructure and the schools and stuff, they just have to agree on terms. But just banning, you know, banning investment into your country or banning M, it's stupid, >> right? >> Especially if if it could be competently done. >> Well, yeah. As long as you as long as you invest in the local community and you upgrade their infrastructure and schools and you hire local people and train them, I don't see a problem with it. But we'll see. We'll see uh how Latin America decides to do that. They have there's some mines in especially silver mines. There's some silver mines like the one in Guatemala. So Escoal that mine's on care maintenance. It hasn't restarted yet. That's worth many billions of dollars. Uh Pan-American Silver has that one. And then Pan-American Silver has the Alan Na'vi silver mine in Argentina. That's worth many, many billions of dollars. Over 500 million ounces of silver reserves, maybe even more than that. They haven't drilled it in a while. So that might have like way over 500 million ounces of silver reserves at a very high grade. They're not That's a many billions of dollars it's worth. >> Yeah. Yeah. So these uh countries these countries are not using their assets properly. We'll we'll see what what happens here. But hey, if that supply doesn't come online, we're looking at the new normal probably. These governments are going to keep uh you know monetizing government debt. The uh currency supply is going to keep growing. We're going to be looking at the new normal $60 to $100 silver, maybe even higher than that. >> Yeah. I mean, you know, there there will be I'm sure there'll be a correction, a sharp correction at some point, but there's higher floors, you know, that that's really the the takeaway. Number one, currency debasement. So, that's one of the thing, but the other issue is like the industrial usage and then the price has to stay higher with higher floors like you said or there's no incentive to bring on new supply. So, we're seeing people like, oh, everyone's just going to sell their silver antiques and the silver bars and coins and it's going to get melted down. That's a oneoff. So if you sell all of your silver coins, your bars, your silver antique, your silver jewelry, your silver cutlery, your antiques, that's a one time it's gone. You don't get to >> Most people don't even have that. Most people don't even have that much of of that anyway. Well, well, what's funny, Erin, is uh I was researching this over the last couple days, and there's a ton of stories out that literally like the uh pawn brokers and the um and the antique dealers, they're getting like entire inventories, like every single piece of silver, like uh antique jewelry, coins, some people are just liquidating everything because they need the cash. So, they're getting like an insane amount in, but they're like, "Well, that's not gonna make a huge dent in the uh demand for industrial usage, and that's a one-off." >> Yeah, that's nowhere close. >> Yeah. So, um the people that are predicting, you know, silver crashes back down to 2530, um I don't think so. I I definitely do not think so. And uh if they were, I would be a dip buyer. So, if it gets if it gets back down to, you know, below 50, I'm strong I would strongly consider to adding to positions again. >> You would need to have the the 10-year bid. There'd have to be like an actual uh contraction fear. >> You mean like a bank failure, like a credit freeze up? >> It's It's possible. It just won't last very long. That's why you want to be a dip buyer if that happens. >> Oh, yeah. I agree. I agree. Trump, Trump and whichever puppet. Yeah, I agree. Whichever Fed chairman Trump installs as his puppet and the Trump administration, >> they'll print. So even if the Democrats win the midterms in 2026, >> we'll see more printing. >> Yeah, >> it it won't be on the same projects necessarily. Um but I I think you know both political parties are spenders. Tax and spend or tax and borrow and spend. >> It lie. Oh, steel stackfully tax. Yep. >> Well, I mean like >> Well, did did I was watching I was watching Fox Business today and I was seeing uh literally I think it was Steve Moore and Art Laugher were both on it and other people and they were with a straight face. They're like, "The US is going to have 4% GDP growth and we might even have five." And I was like, "What?" I was like, "How much how much government spending are they projecting? How much inflation?" >> Yeah. Did you hear Trump? It was like a month ago. He said something like, you know, this is it's there's no excuse why GDP can't be 20%. I was like, do you know what you just said? >> Hey, let's just invent a number. Let's just like the Chinese Communist Party or the Soviet Union, let's just invent a number and say GDP is 20. Meanwhile, all the foreigners are going to be like, okay, buy gold, buy gold, buy gold, gold stocks. >> Yeah. If if he wants 20% the amount of bailouts and money printing and infrastructure, you we're looking at like eight or nine,000 gold pretty quick if he wants to get up to 20% GDP. >> He doesn't know what he said, but that's what it comes down to. >> Well, well, what a what an interesting time we live in, my friend here, with all these technology advancements on top of this and stagflate tax lie. But um in terms of bargains and riskreward, what what are you looking at for 2026 for for good value here? Because um you know, gold broke out in 2025. We had a big move. Do you see any other commodity or sector industry that could potentially have a similar move to the gold and silver companies from early 2025 to right now? Uh yeah, I would say I think robotics uh like specifically um the not just like you know like drones but specifically companies making the the robotics um for like all sorts of commercial uses. Um I think that's going to be kind of the next I know that it's already had they've already had a little bit of a chase, but um I think that's kind of your next like really big uh mover. There's also um I'll throw a little obscure one out there. >> Is there a ETF one for that? Is it BOTZ bots? Is that the robot ETF? >> I think so. Yeah. >> You see? >> Yes, it is. Yeah. >> Yeah, it's bots. BZ Bots. >> Yep. >> There's also a spin-off from uh ABB. That's the uh European manufacturer. They spun off their robotics unit. >> Those are the manufacturing ones. But there's a there's a ton of robot companies. So, you have like Figure AI, which is doing a lot. Um, they have the the robots that are working in BMW factories in South Carolina that have been running for over 6 months. So, I think like the manufacturing and industrial robots will be the uh most consistent and most profitable ones first. I don't know about the home ones. I wouldn't invest in those right now. >> Yeah. Uh, I'll throw out another one little bonus here. Um, I don't know if this is going to be a 20x or anything like that, but I'll say I'm interested in it. Um, Discord is set to do an IPO uh this year. a secret IPO. They should be valued at 15 billion and they a couple years ago, a lot of people don't know this, they turned down Microsoft for four billion. So now they they've, you know, essentially quadrupled their valuation. I don't know if they will do this, but I think personally if they did the right things, they could overtake text messaging. >> Okay. So that's that's like the encrypted chat Discord where you have like some of the the group uh the >> streaming and Yep. things like that. Okay. Yep. I don't know. I don't know if they're going to do it, but I think if they did the right things, they could they could overtake text messaging. >> Yeah. I don't know what any of their financials are, if they're cash flow positive, free cash. I I don't know any of that offh hand. I know SpaceX is the big um IPO and in the uh AI companies, so Anthropic, which is backed by a lot of the big tech companies and OpenAI, but um yeah, I'm avoiding Open AI. I I do use chat GPT now. So, I make, you know, these economic cartoons for the YouTube video thumbnails and the memes, but who knows? I might switch eventually to another AI program. So, I've been playing around now for seven or eight months, I think, with the AI software making like economic cartoons and memes. Know you like some of them. So, >> yeah. I'm not sure if President Trump and the Trump administration, I saw him copy one of them. He copied one of the drone pow fired ones like literally. Exactly. He scanned like the whole thing and it was up on his true social. >> I like using the one with him at the construction site. Him and Powell. >> Oh, where they have like the YMC doge dog. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Four. Well, I mean like they're already lying about like the amount of money that was going to be spent for the Federal Reserve with the construction. I thought it was 4 billion estimates and then on the news today they were saying 2.7 billion. Oh, what a crime compared to like literally everything else that's happened. >> Okay, so let me let me add in you mentioned robots. Is there a drone ETF yet? Is there like a sector industry a sector specific drone ETF yet? >> I believe there is. Uh I'm >> Yeah, I didn't I didn't check on in the last couple weeks, so I don't have it on my watch list. I have the robot one and the ABB spin-off. I don't think some of the other robot companies are publicly traded yet, but we could see over the next couple year. I know Unitry Robots. >> There's a new one. There's a new one. DRNZ. It's pretty new. It's only been out for two months. >> Okay. Oh, so it's not very liquid then. Okay. So, it just launched. >> It looks It looks uh see volume. It looks fairly It's decent. It's not like super thin. It's still new though. >> Well, let me add to your UAV. UAV. That's that's another one. >> So the uh supply chains have to be reshored >> and on top of those new technologies which are going to create additional demand growth that's going to be for rare the rare earth value chain. So the rare earth mining companies there's plenty of rare earths. It's not an issue. And most of the rare earth mining companies they actually have to store a lot of the thorium as a byproduct. There's no commercial product for it. Not right now anyway. There's liquid fluoride molten salt thorium reactor in the future maybe. So they have to store all that thorium byproduct because there's uranium or thorium as a radioactive byproduct with all the rare earth. So I'm not big on the rare earth mining. I'm looking at the value chain companies in the rare earth that are going to be reshort here in the United States cuz you're starting to see announcements of deals of German rare earth companies building a facility. I think in South Carolina. There's a Brazilian one that has a a joint venture deal with Virginia Tech University that's going to be opening up a processing facility I think in um Louisiana area next to the cheaper natural gas. So that's going to be and the profit margins for those uh gross profit margins. I was researching for the rarest value chain. So these are companies that do more value added work. It's more difficult. You need a chemistry background, engineering, better technical people. But if you can make rare earth permanent magnets with heavy rare earths or recycle old electronics waste rare earth into uh better versions of rare earth magnets for all the new technologies. So the rare earth magnets go into literally all the electronics. They're going to be in a lot of the robots. They're going to be in the drones. They use rare earth uh magnets for data center cooling fans. They're going to be in pretty much everything. The gross profit margins Aaron are between uh a lot of the the value chain companies 30 to 40%. But it's heavy manufacturing though and you need a lot of technical expertise. So it's not easy. It's not an easy business. You need a lot of technical expertise. >> So so that's a potential there. So we're going to need more materials. I'm even starting to see remember graphine. So like everyone's like oh graphine is going to be the best material and then for like 10 or 15 years there was no real uses for it. Well, well, apparently finally they've kind of figured out all the problems in the lab with manufacturing because they couldn't manufacture the right graphine that they needed. There were issues with uh purity similar to semiconductors actually. So all the heavy manufacturing in the value chains that are coming back to the United States are reshoring in more friendly countries that in North America. So uh that the US could import from here um in the Western Hemisphere. those companies will benefit I think from the uh era of the just in time supply chain ending. >> Right. Right. >> I I would look to target those as investments. The Taiwan Semiconductor, I think I just heard that Taiwan Semiconductor is going to get additional funding to open up more Arizona facilities. I think they're going to be moving even more of their facilities here in the United States. That's sort of the that's the plan the administration has that and it can't be clear to me. >> Well, and why Intel got a bailout, right? So, because like they were worried if they didn't bail out Intel that we wouldn't have enough semiconductors and they wanted to give the uh new CEO at Intel time with the investment from Nvidia to turn around their business so they would have plenty of supply um semiconductor supply. I think Intel did a there's actually good reviews though what Intel some of their new product innovations were at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronic Show last week. So >> interesting. Yeah, I mean they were a dunce of a company for a very long time. >> Well, but um there looks like the turnaround now um you know free market they probably would have went bankrupt. >> I was going to say I mean it's amazing what happens when you know you're given billions of dollars for failing but yeah. Well, they appear to have used the uh capital and the time wisely uh with the new CEO and they're look looking like they're going to turn around. So, our tech companies like Qualcomm, Broadcom, Taiwan Semiconductor moving here, Intel, these companies look like they're going to benefit from the reshoring and the technology upgrades. But um overall I think the a major theme here with the new technologies we were drastically underinvested Aaron in in infrastructure in electricity energy key energy reliable base load electricity raw materials we just didn't understand the amount of stuff we needed to build out the new technologies and I think now if you listen to the interviews Aaron from these tech people they all like the people running these tech companies they all get it now that we're that that's going to be the major choke point for the data centers and the uh the better chips, the better uh AI software that we just didn't have the uh energy and infrastructure needed to keep building this out. >> Well, it's cuz we we uh outsourced dollars for so many years instead of actually investing in it ourselves. >> Well, we outsourced everything, right? So, the dollars what we just printed dollars to buy stuff, >> right? That was that was >> which is great if you can it's great if you can do that but you should also you know like hedge that with a longer term you know just infrastructure plans >> well I mean you can't print dollars to buy stuff forever because then most Americans are not going to end up with jobs >> right and that's where well that's literally where we're at they're losing their jobs to AI now so >> well even before the AI I mean the economy was already had been hollowed out right with a lot of the just in time supply chain and outsourcing. So >> yeah, >> but if uh other countries what if China is going to put export bans on strategic metals where earth and then the US is going to counter that with additional policy then you're going to be in an era where you know global trade more free markets that era is ending unfortunately. Yeah, it's for there's a lot of deglobalization going on, a lot of protectionism, >> and that means higher costs. So, I I wouldn't believe the consumer price it means higher costs, but that means potentially more more investment opportunities locally and more jobs for people who have a specialty. >> Yeah. >> So, so uh any any more things that we we didn't bring up, Erin? I knew you were talking about healthcare, right? So, you were talking about a healthcare rally. said, uh, "Yeah, I uh, you know, nobody wanted to listen. I told you to buy XLV, uh, you know, last summer. Um, and it's at alltime highs now, you know. So, and this was simply based off of rotation and based off of, uh, just, you know, healthcare stocks, blue chips, everybody hated them. U, and you get, you know, you get a chance to buy a blue chip below its monthly 50 MA in an uptrend. Um, you just buy it. You don't really have to think about it. Just buy it." And yeah, it took a little bit of it took like good half of the year, but we're at alltime highs now with the XLV. And I've actually had a really nice trade on NVO uh Noroisk recently. Actually, a couple of trades. Uh we just got out of for a nice gain, though. I I like that level in the mid-40s. And uh it's just uh just trading at 60 right now. So that was a nice one for us. >> Yeah. So for riskreward undervalued growth stocks, I think like uh maybe I'll be wrong again, but I think we will have a oil rally by maybe Q2 or Q3 2026. And >> I really think it's got to be. I mean, it's got to be at at some point here. >> Well, I don't know if we'll get to 85 cuz I think then you'll see additional policies announced, but >> or more supply could come back online. But I I know the assets, the valuations are cheap. So, Canadian companies, so like a White Cap or some of these other Canadian companies that went and did acquisitions, they went and bought assets cheap. They're focusing on cutting a lot of the fat out, running operations more efficiently. They're not um you know, increasing new supply right now. So, they're focusing on becoming more efficient with their businesses. and uh Chevron and XL Mobile are kind of they're the they're the main ones, but um there's better valuations out there if you want to go to Canada or Deep Water or something like that on a rally. >> Yeah, I think 85 is reasonable. It's not it's not absurd. Um yeah, I mean that's kind of like the midpoint between where we are now and where we were in 2022. So that's pretty fair. Well, I mean, if they devalue the dollar more, what 85 will be what what used to be 65 will have to be 85 and the gold price will have to be 6 or 7,000. >> That's sort of the base case too, right? Because like if if everything else is going up, oil has to go up, right? Uh, you know, or, you know, perhaps there's a rot, you know, maybe there's a rotation where some of the metals take a breather, some of the other commodities take a breather, and then that money rotates into oil, right? that you know because smart money looks for what's not running and it looks to get into that uh you know for whatever the next rotation is. >> Yep. I agree. And uh well I I'm not sure if the the manage a lot of the generalist people are in gold socks yet. A lot of people don't believe the move. >> Yeah, that that's true as well. >> There's still a lot of people calling like oh it's about to crash. I especially for silver. I mean I hear that all the time. Every single day I be like silver's about to crash. Do you even understand why it went up in the first place? Yeah, I mean like I've warned about the chart being parabolic, but um I don't think that that means that the bull market's over with if it if it has a correction. >> Yeah. I mean, even if it corrects 20 or 30%, I don't think that stops the bull market at all. In fact, I think people will buy the dip. And I I would think hardly any new supply will be online. >> The price has to stay >> substantially at a very very high price. and we're we're at $100 an ounce or more in Asia for silver prices. If the silver price stays at triple digits, we can bring on new supply. If it corrects 20 or 30%, some of these projects might get delayed further, >> right? And that's thing too like they're the the producers are going to want to see where this price settles. you know, uh, if and when there is a correction, is there a range that it can trade in? Then they can now expect, okay, it's going to be between this price and this price, we can expect it to stay in this range. Right now, it's just uncertainty, right? Cuz it it it could it could have a nasty correction. It could also go up to 100, right? There's, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty there. They're not going to start making investment decisions when the price is in motion like this >> or or they'll only bring on they'll make smaller investments. So they'll bring on a they'll make an incremental increase say at a mill at an existing mine. >> And so they'll expand the mill. They'll uh expand the production at an existing mine, but in terms of like bringing on a much more expensive silver mine that's way larger, there might they're probably going to be hesitant to necessarily bring that online if there's a correction in the price. >> Right. Right. Exactly. But if you're a producer, so if you're an existing producer, I mean, you're minting money right now. So, but I I would watch for for uh cash uh capital allocation for management. So, you want to make sure the management team is not going and let's say buying land in Venezuela if with this much uncertainty. Yeah. So like let let's say some of these mining companies be like, "Oh man, this is going to be the largest deposit ever in Venezuela, but and they go and buy something right now and they overpay for it for a couple billion dollars, be like, "Well, we don't know if it's even going to be safe if there's any infrastructure there or private property rights or safety." So I would be careful where the company and the mining company is allocating the capital, >> right? And if they're there government guarantees. Well, this is why the royalty and streaming companies is such a good business model. Uh they're diversified, especially the larger ones, the larger medium-sized ones. They're diversified and so they're not going to bet the whole company on like one mine in a geopolitically unstable area or if even if there's a mine problem in Canada. And so that happened with a a couple gold miners a couple years ago where there was a open pit gold mine in Canada and then there was a landslide and the mic collapsed or SSR mining in Turkey where they had financial problems before the gold price rallied. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. >> Well, I I want to thank you so much for your time today, Erin. I think we covered pretty much everything. I think overall the one asset class that I am least confident in right now is government bonds. What about you? Yeah, I agree. And um you know that's that's a a longer term thing too. Um there's nothing saying that excuse me that bonds can't uh you know have a rally or anything like that but um >> I mean short-term rally shortterm rally maybe >> right but you know the the trajectory here that the long-term trend is now down here. Well, I mean, if the M2, global M2, if the M2 is growing that much, what are they what are the governments and central banks and commercial banks, what are they buying with the new currency? Are they doing bailouts? Are they monetizing government debt? And I would I would argue that a lot of that currency creation ended up being bailouts and monetizing government debt. And so, we've had a lot of um currency debasement now for years. And the market, a lot of people are finally starting to figure that out. And that's why the gold and silver prices are parabolic in pretty much every single currency. >> Well, and if you have the Fed basically saying that CPI 3% is the new floor. I mean, why would anybody want to own bonds? >> Uh especially with all the stuff Trump's saying. I mean, like he's like, it sounds like every couple weeks he's talking about a new expensive project that he wants to spend on. >> Yeah, but that but he says there's no inflation. Okay. Well, as long as there's cheap oil, there's uh he claims there's But um in Venezuela, they had what oil for below a dollar a gallon and there was hyperinflation. So, >> tell tell that tell that to uh we can't say we can't name names, but we know who we're talking about. The people in the comments will know. >> Deflationist. Yeah, I I'm sure there there's deflationistas. >> Hey, gas was a dollar a gallon. can't there can't be any inflation. >> There's there's one deflationist he's adamant there's been there's a couple of them that are adamant there's been no evidence of any inflation for decades. I don't know what what type of drugs he's doing but >> no he he went to Japan with yelling and uh had some those mushrooms >> or the weed brownies. She looks like She looks like a grandma that like like that sneaks in a little extra sauce there. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, did you see her stage grocery shopping? Um they staged it to make her look normal. Do you remember this like a couple years ago? She did it. >> I remember >> I remember Chuck Schumer though where that the piece of cheese on the burger that's not even cooked. >> Yeah. He doesn't know how to cook. Um Yeah. His butler or his personal chef didn't didn't cook for him. No, that they actually did a staged Janet Yellen grocery shopping. This was a couple years ago to claim that there was no inflation and it looked like she hadn't been grocery shopping in a long time. So, she went into a giant locally here and she just stuffed the shopping cart full of like like um potato chips. So, like all types of uh junk food, snack chips, and drink mixes for alcoholic beverage drink mixes. So, she's clearly a party animal. She just threw all the party materials into there >> for her drugs and alcohol. >> Okay. Well, um I want to thank everyone for for listening to this long show, listening to us rant. We're going to see a lot more currency debasement. I can't tell you which country is going to win the race to debase, but uh it's not going to be pretty. There's going to be a lot more uh stagflate tax lie and asset price inflation. the like Aaron I I think the the one asset class whether that's US treasuries, Japanese government bonds, European debt, Chinese debt, I do not the one asset class I do not want to have a lot of exposure to is government bonds. There might be a short-term trade there, here, or there, but anytime there's uh deflation or or uh bank problems, um there's really nothing in the current system we have now to stop the people in DC from changing the rules, moving the gold post, doing secret bailouts, overt or covert bailouts, on or off balance sheet. And I think unfortunately the Federal Reserve Bank is long overdue for doing a 180 and starting to expand its balance sheet again. And normally when the Fed starts to expand its balance sheet aggressively, that means more inflation. >> Yeah, that's usually how it works, >> especially with the money supply growth. Yet in that money, the money supply, we're almost to 100 trillion. So all these people like, oh, deflation is the more likely one. It's like look at the global M2s, not just the US. We're up to almost 100 trillion of liquidity sloshing around out there. That's a lot, >> right? And even if it was, they're getting in front of it. Like they're getting in front of anything that that could ever be any sort of contractionary force. >> Yeah. I I would not be surprised if Fanny and Freddy start buying some of that private credit debt. Um I thought they were going to buy commercial real estate, some of the buildings, but instead what they did is they extended and pretended the loans. So they're not calling in the loans on default. And then the commercial real estate developers, Aaron, are getting like these subsidized loans that were snuck in to transition the commercial real estate building office space to residential now. >> Yeah. >> So that's what a hidden subsidy or bailout that the taxpayer didn't even get a chance to vote for. >> Yep. And they're making them into luxury condos. >> But you but but you have to be uh you know they're like dual purpose. So you got section 8 and you're, you know, paying for a condo next to a section 8 resident. >> Just all types of distortions that the taxpayer and well, Congress probably did do the subsidies cuz there's a ton of um politicians in both political parties in Congress that take lobbying dollars from um a lot of the homebuilders. Same thing for the healthcare insurance companies. >> Uh what's his name? Bill P. He's the head of like the FHA like the guy like like PY like PY Homes like yeah that that same guy that's not a conflict of interest at all right >> well I mean he is a real estate expert so Trump Trump does like pick people by resume like that but yeah I don't know I don't know what the guy's ethics or morals is so >> I mean he founded like one of the largest homebuilding companies ever but >> well our treasury secretary is a George Soros hedge fun manager I mean I've listened to him do macro interview he's a smart smart dude He He is smart. He is smart. He But you can tell the things he has to say. It's like he can't like there's certain things he can't say. And so he he sounds stupid sometimes. But it's he knows he does know. He understands how markets work. But I mean what's he going to do? Say, "Oh, my hands are tied." And like nobody's >> before before he took the job. I mean he was saying that the gold price was going to go way higher. when he was just a g global macro hedgeman manager and he used to do like macro podcast he was talking the gold price was going to go way higher recently speeches I mean he was talking about asset price inflation and distortions >> yeah he was talking about um like the income disparity and uh financial repression and all that stuff he was talking about that last year even >> Mhm. So he does he he knows what he's he knows what he's talking about. But I mean his hands are tied. There's really not anything. >> Well, it's it's also an issue of morals and ethics because I mean like you know the the Trump family has made billions of dollars in crypto and under five years and there's other stuff I won't say publicly right now. The other well rumors I haven't confirmed any of them. It's tough to prove or disprove certain of the things I've heard that are gone. I mean like you mean like the uh the all the the people who bought call options on Loheed Martin right before the uh invasion and I mean like there's uh or the Lockhe Martin I think it was the one they took out an insurance policy on uh operations in Venice. It was something like that like a few a few weeks before they went in there. >> Well look at the Intel uh trading position right? So there was a ton there was a ton of share purchases and options activity >> prior to the government announcing what the the additional bailout for Intel and the Nvidia investment into Intel. 5 billion. >> Yeah. And this is very widespread with this administration. >> Yeah. Well, it it's the new normal. There's this is I I would argue that this is what happens when your central bank with the world reserve currency and fiat currencies when it has too much power and control over the economy and it can do bailouts and both political parties prefer asset price inflation and getting rich quick. >> Yep. >> Yeah. This is the problem with Washington DC. All the corruption here and how easy it is to come to Congress, not provide any value and then just become a millionaire very very quickly. >> That's the game. Well, thank you so much for your time and uh uh thanks to our listeners for listening to Aaron and I ran and talk about different markets and asset classes. 2026 is going to be crazy because of the people uh here in Washington DC in the district criminals are crazy and they like they're corrupt. Their morals and ethics are highly questionable and um we're probably going to have a new Fed chairman and they're probably going to want to do balance sheet expansion, maybe even uh bailouts or quantitative easing. So, we'll see what happens, but um I think uh the probability is pretty high. We're going to see Fed balance sheet expansion. Trump's going to lower interest rates on the short end with his the new Fed chairman. And then, um the yield curve, like Aaron said, I think it's going to steepen because I think like what there's a little bond vigilantes and the average uh person looking at this rationally sees the odds for more inflation and currency debasement are quite high. >> Yep. Absolutely.
2025 Review 2026 Preview: Expensive Tech Arms Race & Many Reasons Why More Inflation Is Coming?
Summary
Transcript
Hi everyone, this is Jason Brack of Wall Street from Main Street. Welcome back for another Wall Street from Main Street podcast interview. Instead of a normal interview, Aaron from Carnivore Trades and I will be doing our annual review and preview of the year. So, we're going to do our 2025 review and 2026 preview here on Monday night, January 12th, 2026. Happy New Year to everyone listening. Aaron, thank you for joining me. >> Good to be back. >> So, we're on you're on what? Episode number 245. I just put that out this morning for this week in charts. So, congratulations on that. That's almost five full years, right? >> Yeah. I was going to say uh it started I want to say April of 2021. >> Yeah. So, you're you're almost what 52 weeks uh 52 weeks in a year. So, you're you're almost to uh five full years. >> Yeah. It's getting there for sure. >> You've done a you've you've improved enormously, man. I mean, like you just crank these thing out. You're really really good. So, 20 minutes or less. Very efficient. I I think there's a bunch of copycat videos that are doing this now because I I remember when I suggested this idea to you years ago that like there was traders that would ramble on and on on a webinar going through all these charts for 90 minutes, 2 hours, 3 hours and I was like why are they doing this? Why can't they just be succinct with it like what you've done here with your show? >> Yeah. you and especially now uh you know in this social media age too like you know the longer you're talking I mean the more fluff that that you're going to put in there um it's just going to be harder to hold people's attention so you got to I mean people's time is valuable now so you got to really uh just get it out get the important information and you know that's really all all it really needs 10 15 minutes most of the time >> well yeah and people also have a very short attention span so you want to try to be efficient with people's time even though this is a free podcast so The S&P 500 is just under$7,000. The US dollar gold price, wow. Uh the US dollar gold price, it's rocketed up over the last 12 to 18 months. It hit $4,600 earlier today, a new all-time high. It seems like every couple weeks now, and we're doing that. and the silver price finally all the scenario the silver scenario that the silver bugs have been talking about for many many years we finally got to the scenario here where the exchanges the LBMA the comx they don't have the metal and the industrial end users in China and India so your um electronics manufacturer solar panel manufacturers jewelry people they actually want delivery of the metal and the exchanges do not have the metal and so now we have a scenario where the silver price I mean it's going for right now the spot price, Aaron, is at $83.96, but in in certain parts of Asia, it's up to $120. It's way over $100 an ounce for physical silver if you actually want the metal. >> Yeah. And um from what I've heard, the reports are that, you know, even JPM, JP Morgan has flipped their position uh as of I want to say late November. So, and that's kind of when it started to go parabolic. So, probably >> that would be a smart move on their part. Yeah, that would be if they if they did go long, that would be a smart move on their part because, you know, now they're not going to get the market, but someone has a short position though. So, it looks like the exchanges are not doing well and there are bullion banks that do have the short position. It might not be JP Morgan. I think I remember like 18 24 months ago, I think the short position, a lot of it had passed to Bank of America, but maybe another bank took it over. So, I I'm not exactly sure. But, let's get into the show here. We're going to try to keep it around 90 minutes or less because these shows normally go pretty long. So, let's just talk about um a quick review for your your thoughts on 2025, what happened, any calls you might have missed, and uh in general, what you think happened in 2025. Was it another year of what asset price a lot of asset price inflation where there was a lot of uh problems in the real economy showing, you know, potentially recession or these industries were not doing well and yet asset prices like the stock market, a lot of them continued to go higher? >> Yeah, 100%. uh you know going back to to the beginning of the year you know I was looking for you know you know we'll talk about maybe one or two things I was uh accurate on and you know some things that I missed uh but one thing that was you know pretty accurate as I was looking for you know a Q1 kind of correction uh you know in stocks in general we did get that went a lot deeper than I thought specifically the last couple of days but um you know probably one of the better calls I had uh you know was you know getting the bottom in that pretty close and I said you know just hold this throughout pretty much the whole summer. Uh you you'll do pretty well. And that that that ended up working out fairly well. I didn't think that we were going to finish the year as strong as we did in equities, but um you know, the trend was up the whole way. And you know, we know we had some choppy periods where we said, you know, we got to be careful here. Uh we saw some problems with uh Jeff u lot of private credit um you know, issues there, some uh issues with repo, but it never really materialized into stocks. I think >> it didn't spread. Yeah, it didn't spread either from bank to bank to bank to bank to bank or at least not yet. So like uh there's extended pretend games what in 20 similar to maybe 2022 >> where um you know Silicon Valley Bank and one other bank um decentized regional bank got into trouble and then you had what the uh BTFP you have the FHB go to 2 trillion. Um, I mean I even saw recently that uh quietly with the inflation reduction act they snuck in uh commercial real estate developers are getting enormous subsidies and loans to transition these office buildings over to residential. So they've been playing these games for a long time to prevent you know mass um bank panic bank spread you where the banks go into contagion and one bank fails and then the next bank fails. >> Yeah and I I warned about that too. I mean uh you know I saw the performance in stocks like Blackstone uh heavy in commercial debt or excuse me uh public uh you know public debt issuance and credit public credit excuse me uh they had you know a horrible year and but I I warned I said look they're not going to you know if this doesn't materialize in stocks and we don't start seeing risk assets start to sell off quickly like it's going to be over. They're not the Fed's not gonna wait they're not going to wait to plug the holes in repo. um and and they didn't you know so it seems right now it's it's mostly under control. I will say you know uh I can say anecdotally here though I I do see problems in uh in the private markets particularly real estate um you know just in this area it has cooled off substantially uh where I am and I've you know firsthand experience with that. >> You mean residential real estate? >> Yes. Yes. And uh in a very hot market here in Florida and um it is not hot right now at all. Uh, I could I could confirm that. >> Well, look at all the press releases that Trump is uh talking about what buying mortgage back securities to try to lower interest rates. He's threatening Jerome Powell that they didn't lower rates enough and now there's what charges against Powell. I think the the cover. So maybe we'll we'll talk about that, but we want to stay on point here first with the review of 2025. So I I'll talk about um that too. So I think like one of the main themes here is a lot of the deflationistas that are like, "Oh, there's a recession. It's going to be recession. Oh, there's going to be a stock market crash. What I think they're missing, Aaron, also is that there's been a weak dollar. So, when you have this currency creation and the money supply is growing, when you have a weak dollar, that's normally good for asset prices. It's the strong dollar raising interest rates, that's where something normally breaks and causes what a margin call, deflation, some type of credit freeze. That's what normally causes the problem. So like if the as long as the dollar is not being rapidly devalued. So if it's being devalued but not rapidly. So I I I would say that um overall a weak dollar cuz the dollar was very very weak and I think like the dollar as a percentage of global reserves is down. We know that like the BRICS countries the nonG7 they're not buying a lot of US treasuries. The central banks are not. They're dollar cost averaging uh dollar cost excuse me dollar cost averaging gold tonnage each month. Now, it's been the major macro theme that you and I have been talking about for years now. Really since the Russia sanctions that was the paradigm shift where the amounts increased enormously. >> Yeah. And I mean uh I mean you and I were talking about you know like Belman Road you know back what like 2012 and you know things like that and that was a scam though cuz actually they use dollar denominated debt. So they were like, "Oh, the Ewan's going to be internationalized." That actually the whole Belt and Road thing was debt diplomacy to get access to those natural resources ahead of time cuz China wanted, you know, the uh the arable land to grow and they wanted make works jobs programs and they wanted access to ports and access to copper mines and other key metals. But now we're seeing like the US scramble. We'll talk about that late later in the show though. But for 2025, I mean, like there was like a lot of with the weak dollar, other countries were printing, money supply was still growing. Aaron, I think one of the major important things for our listeners out there, I talk about this a lot now the last like four or five months cuz the hedge fund manager told me to take a look at this more was the global M2, the global money, that's the global money supply. And so that's like high-powered base money. It's not just the US, what it's European Union and China, uh, Japan, other countries. the global M2, global money supply, it's almost to 100 trillion and it's up enormously since like 2017 or 18. I think it was like 45 trillion. So, it's gone from 45 trillion in like 2017 or 18 up to 97 trillion now. And there's no hint it's going to slow down, >> right? You just look at bond yields of uh you know, pretty much every country. Uh and then you look at you know asset prices uh you know hard asset prices, what we're seeing now. It's no wonder what the you know that this has been the response here. uh you know and you talk about the other asset like talk look at beef prices I mean looking at I'm looking at a chart of feeder cattle right now in 2025 it's it's pretty much parabolic the entire year um and you know right so it's not just um it's not just hard assets it's it's the uh it's at the grocery store which never gets talked about in the reports but u that's the that's the reality for everyday Americans and everyday you know citizens of the world >> now I I'll talk about the call I missed the worst on in 2025. That was the oil price. So, I was predicting an oil price rally up to like $85$90 a barrel by I think um end of Q2 Q3 of 2025 cuz it's normally summer driving season. I thought demand would pick up. Now, we are seeing signs that oil prices putting in a bottom though. So over the last like six uh 2 or 3/4 so 6 to9 months we've seen a lot of the oil companies in the United States dra and Canada drastically cut back on their capital expenditure. >> So >> so that's a sign that like they don't think the oil price is very attractive with the oil price right now. Let me pull it up here. West Texas Intermediate is about it's just under $60 again. But it's been in what in the low to mid50s now rangebound for at least a year I would say. It's been in a range. It's not at a good economic price though where a lot of marginal barrel of oil, a lot of higher cost marginal barrels of oil are economic though. >> Yeah. Last year I I thought, excuse me, I thought we would have a decent uh kind of like second half of the year, you know, like towards that Q2 with uh with crude prices. That really wasn't the case so much. We had the spike uh with the Iran situation. I did get the call, you know, I said the oil equities, you know, XLE, those types of names would rally uh in January and and they did pretty good and they did have decent Q1, but they've been sideways. I do think this is the trade though uh right here. I, you know, and I've been in uh I've been at, you know, owning Exxon shares for a while here and it is just starting to break out to new highs right now and obviously that the situation with Venezuela certainly helps out. Um, but I think you know right now what's the only commodity that hasn't really run and I know that the administration is hellbent on keeping it down. But you've had a lot of negative news lately and the price has been putting at higher lows here. So that to me says that there's, you know, a surplus of uh sellers that are already in and they're unable to push price lower here. So I I think crude's attractive here. Um, got to break $60 from a technical level. If it could do that, um, you could have some some good legs to the upside here. >> Well, Exon Mobile and Chevron are also two of the lowerc cost producers. So, uh they can still make a profit with oil around these current prices, but some of the other higher cost producers are not uh exactly very profitable. So, they've been uh doing more rapid cuts on their businesses. So, e even companies that are doing acquisitions that did like a $15 billion acquisition up in Canada, a mid-tier company, White Cap Resources, they did an acquisition seven or eight months ago and then they drastically cut back on capital expenditure after the acquisition. And so they went and bought the assets and then they cut the capital expenditure by 20 or 30%. So you've seen a lot of that in the industry consolidation. The industry was setting up they're going to um setting up to try to be more efficient, leaner and meaner coming out of this. But really at the current price there's not a huge incentive to invest in in higher cost oil. And yet Trump is what trying to get I I saw an interview on Fox Business today with Harold Ham of Continental Resources. He said at least a hundred billion would be required to invest into Venezuela to get their oil production back to levels from 15, 10, 15, 20 years ago. And he said that was probably on the low end. So I I mean that's going to be Look, I think this is going to be a theme going forward where Trump is going to say there's no inflation. He's going to point to low gasoline and low oil prices. I I think that was one of the main reasons I was wrong about the oil price was that it was policy. they wanted to keep the oil prices low and I didn't understand how that fits. Um I didn't understand the level that that fits within um the technology arms race and the cold war 2.0 know with the US and China and all the stuff policies that the uh Trump administration and the Pentagon have planned for what natural resource security um what Trump just cited the Monroe Doctrine which is where they want control over what the um the the naval seat in the naval areas and all the natural resources in the Western Hemisphere and you're seeing a lot of those policies now play out where China what >> January 1st they put an additional export ban on silver they had export bans on key strategic metals for earth and other strategic metals and then to counter that what the US then moves 20% or so of the naval fleet into the Caribbean for Venezuela to regime change in Venezuela and then all the investments that are going now into the US for a supply chain and there's a ton of them so I'll just quickly rattle them a few of them off. So you have Taiwan semiconductor new a new announcement there the bailout with Intel Corporation that's for the semiconductor side. So, so Intel got a bailout cuz they had problems there with the um >> Well, they were getting sued, weren't they? They were going to get sued. >> Yes. There was also fraud. >> Nobody Nobody talked about that. >> Well, but it looks like now Intel may have turned it around. The new co they brought in is really good at at um the nuts to bolts all the entire um value chain for the semiconductor. and Taiwan semiconductor facilities in Arizona had immense problems over the last couple years trying to get like uh all the chemicals needed the clean water, the clean air at the uh at the semiconductor chip fabs to get it. And it looks like finally they've got things fixed um after many many billions of dollars and about three or four years longer than they expected. But all these investments you're seeing in the headlines uh Aaron now with uh the Trump administration, the Pentagon and private sector companies in the US negotiating partnerships with Korean firms, German firms. So these are for uh uranium nuclear power nuclear power uranium enrichment facilities. I think three companies US companies just got funding for additional uranium enrichment facilities. said the US is not reliant on importing Russia Russian uh enriched uranium there for nuclear power plants. You have an announcement where I think 40% ownership is going to go to the Pentagon for silver processing and other key strategic metals. You have new partnerships for for rare earth processing facility in addition to rear earth mining. So you're starting to see um the supply chains we're in. I think the new normal now and a key theme and it's not just for 2026 is going to be that the global economy the uh quote unquote free markets and they're you know not fully free but they were more free market what a just in time supply chain that that era of a just in time supply chain where the goods go on a container ship all the way across the world and then come back on a container ship back forth back and forth that era is coming to an end the countries like the US and China are going to be focused on reliable supply that's closer to home or within their own borders now. >> Yeah, 100%. And and uh to the other, you know, the free market too, it's really and I've been you've been using this term a lot. It's like the halves versus the have nots. That's why I like stocks like Exxon and Chevron. If we go into Venezuela, they're the ones that are going to get the government guarantees, the governmentbacked agreements. They're the ones that are going to get the military protection. And I hate to look at it this way, but that's just the reality of it, right? We saw that with the chip stocks. Uh, >> well, you and me aren't you and me are not going to get a vote. Aaron, sorry to interrupt you. You and me are not going to get a vote about how much money gets printed to buy Greenland or how much in how much mil how many military bases are going to get opened in Venezuela. I mean, like, okay, you elect one politician and that politician is is uh anti- uh empire building in Venezuela or anti-military base in Venezuela. Well, who knows who's going to fund that politician to be voted out a couple years from now in the midterms. >> Yeah. And uh I mean you you were saying hundred billion dollars uh you know earlier isn't that like what was on the receipt like every other month for Ukraine. >> Okay. Just for the oil that is just for the oil industry. Okay. So Harold Ham said that's just for the oil industry. That doesn't count building normal infrastructure and having military security. So that's just for the oil industry. That's just pipelines and refineries. >> I got you. I was going to say that seems kind of cheap. you know, but that's not that bad compared to what we've been doing for everyone else. >> No, he No, that's just for oil pipelines and refineries. That's just for the in infrastructure required to get the Venezuelan uh oil industry from a million barrels per day or lower now. I think it's down a little bit below a million barrels per day back up to the old levels of three or four million barrels per day. So, he was that he said their internal numbers were at least 100 billion on the low end, but it's probably more than that. But I mean, if the US is going to be there permanently, it could end up being a boondoggle similar to Iraq or Afghanistan where it cost I think the US taxpayer $9 trillion for 25 years post 911. By the time the US what left Afghanistan and moved uh a decent amount out of Iraq, I think the estimates are at least $9 trillion. >> Yeah. And the ironic part is by the end of it, it wasn't costing them that much at all and then they left anyway. >> Well, that was botched. Yeah. the the the departure part was oh my god I don't even want to talk we have >> yeah we go off track here >> but but I I think the the key theme here is that the people um a lot of the people are going to say oh there is no inflation and it's like the estimates here to move the supply chains back I was actually looking this up before I was using uh artificial intelligence software to do some additional research the estimates are saying Eron to move the supply chain back and so value chain for the US to have processing uranium ium enrichment, um, more silver processing, you know, all those things to start moving more of our domestic supply chains back. The costs are going to be at least estimates right now at least 20 20 or 30% higher across the board. >> Yeah. And uh, I mean, we are in an arms race, right, which is another word for a war, right? Uh, I mean, war is incredibly inflationary. It's incredibly bullish, right? put tech arms race in front of that cuz really it's about five or six key technologies and it's not just artificial intelligence. Go and watch the new stuff from the um 2026 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show last week. They are taking the AI software and using it as an operating system. It's going into better versions of driverless cars. It's going into better drones, better robots. Yeah. Everything. Oh, >> the the improvements in some of these things, Aaron, is insane. I mean, 3 or 4 years ago, some of these robots, like they were on a cord. They were on a cord and they'd fall over. So, they they could barely hold a charge. They were on a giant cord to be plugged in. And now they can, you know, some of them have way better dexterity and movement than most human beings. >> Yeah, I've seen a lot of uh a lot I think they just deployed some in uh San Francisco, I want to say. >> Uh it depends. Oh, those are the home robots. So, the home robots, there are huge issues with those moving around the house. They're more efficient at a factory. So, Figure AI robotics has been running at the BMW factory in South Carolina for over 6 months every single day. So, um the factory robots are better. They're not having nearly as many issues. The home robots, but I I think the um what the average person who's listening to this needs to understand is this is the worst it's going to get. So, the artificial intelligence research software, yeah, it some of it slop. Yeah, if you're asking it for legal research and casework, it might invent some legal cases or make mistakes on that or medical advice, it'll make mistakes. That's the worst it's going to get. There's going to be constant improvements going forward. And the same thing for for the robot. So, it's going to be constantly improving. I think that's what the average person misses cuz they just say AI bubble, AI slop. There is a bubble with valuations, but the technology is legit and it will keep improving. >> Yeah. And the government is going to keep subsidizing it. So, it's just it's going to be really hard to fight something like that. It's not like the uh the internet, you know, everybody compares it to the internet bubble, but uh I last I checked, the government wasn't literally subsidizing with billions of dollars like almost every day for these companies to for R&D and for everything else that they need. Like catering literally catering uh on a silver platter to their every need. >> Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Because uh you just hear this on TV. They mentioned artificial intelligence software as a national security issue that if China takes a huge advantage over the United States that you know they uh get an advancement in artificial intelligence to artificial general intelligence or supreme intelligence or they get a huge advantage in quantum computing then they could break all man-made encryption so that the people in power and look I I don't endorse all the spending obviously but I don't have control over this. So, as a investor, you kind of have to position yourself to where if the government's going to spend the money anyway for commodities and natural resources. I mean, Aaron, we were ahead of time. Remember, you and me were way ahead of the pack on Camo, uranium. We were talking about this way before I found those charts. >> I found those charts for the electricity demand growth for the data centers and projections. I was finding those at least 6 or 12 months before other people. I was digging through a lot of the papers there. So people are like, "What are you talking about?" I was sending these to all the newsletter writers that are making it like they discovered it now. >> Yeah. I remember um that was like one of the first kind of like videos I was like the one first like deep dives I did was on uranium. Uh and you know that was when everyone hated it cuz it was in a bear for so long and you got the that was in fact the uh the kind of the premise of the video was like this is we've reached bare capitulation here. This should start going up now. And yeah, that was uh like in early 2021 I think. So, >> it was cheap and it was hated. I remember when Kamikos was was stuck in a trading range between $8 at the low end and about 22. Yeah, it was years. It was literally years. And so, I I was researching I was going through the company's uh financials, their presentation was like the the company like if you just chopped it up and sold it, it's um and sold off all the assets, it's worth way more than $8 a share. So, the riskreward was good. As a contrarian value investor looking for undervalued growth, that was good risk and reward. I see similar things for oil and natural gas. So there's a lot of good valuations there depending upon where you look. And then I I also see similar similar um riskreward valuations for the rare earth processing. So not rare earth mining but the actual processing making the value added parts because there's a lot all these new technologies robots uh drones parts of the data center they all need um either rare earth permanent magnets electric vehicles which are going to benefit a lot I think from the artificial intelligence software improvements um some of the news releases that have just some of the uh product releases that just came out consumer electronic show they're talk they're showing like the next generation improvements of the software for um driverless cars. >> Yeah. And >> all these things are going to require and I think this is part of what the technology arms race and the resource wars and the US and China what in a cold war they all realize that all these new technology innovations the amount of energy, electricity, raw materials required is astronomically higher than what we thought we needed. um like the estimates for >> I honestly I mean you see it right now like I worry about the the system because um there's constantly uh server outages now all the time cloud flare is always going down uh there's lapses all the time that never were um and it's it's like this is we're building things too fast for the the capability that we have that's that's my take >> oh yeah I mean and China is building I think they 40 nuclear power plants under construction. They were building in the past one coal fired power plant a week. I'm not sure if they're still doing that pace, but they were for for many many years. Yeah. Well, but they so um they uh upgraded they retrofitted or upgraded the old coal fired power plants. They added the clean coal scrubbers. So, the uh coal pollution isn't as bad. And the really they're the only China and India are the only two countries that are importing mass amounts of of coal right now. So um but I I'm more bullish on you know natural gas and oil I think for the valuation for oil nuclear power obviously nuclear power is cleaner. So the next generations of nuclear we need to spend a lot of money on research and development for next generation nuclear power. I think we can do be a lot more efficient than the current nuclear power plants. But we should honestly just build across the board cuz the amount of energy and electricity the that is needed for all these new technologies is way way higher than any was than anyone was anticipating 5 or 10 years ago. >> Yeah. And this is all you know this is all going to cost a lot of money and really the only way to get it is to uh you know I mean we don't have uh the you know we don't have other countries buying our debt the way that they were before. And I mean this is all everything you're saying everything we're talking about here is just all I hear is just inflationary inflationary inflationary not just for the US but for everyone. >> Well the the main theme here and you brought this up inflationary no one buying debt. It's not just the US all these governments. So it seems like we're kind of back to the 1970s era where the worst asset class the worst performing asset class the last couple years has been government bonds has been government bonds. And I think that's going to continue. these deflationistas that keep predicting that oh there is no inflation there's no evidence of any inflation uh the rally in government bonds is just around the corner I mean they've gotten some of them gotten absolutely blown out of the water they've been lying and hiding about their um the amount of returns the losses that they have some one of one of the guys just closed his uh newsletter he he claims he sold the newsletter for macro newsletter for an enormous profit but why did he shut down all of his social media he was a by the way he was a bonfam manager at an investment bank. He was fired from that, too. I think he blew up in the repo crisis in 2019. And now what the speech is with Jerome Powell sounds very very similar to the repo crisis in 2019. >> Yeah, we won't see in my my take is we won't see any sort of actual asset price uh deflation. And of course, even if we do, it'll be temporary, but we won't see it until you see the twos and tens at about 100 basis point spread. And we're at about 64 right now. If you see that, then I think you'll see a rally in bonds. But it'll be cyclical. >> Now, now I know you were predicting a rally in the dollar index, but you know, all this stuff with Trump and Jerome Powell, the fight, I mean, the dollar index just got hit whack-a-ole again. A giant hammer just whacked it right back down. It's almost like it was intentional there to knock the dollar index back down after it was going to rally again. >> It still has to clear, you know, it held my support around 97 and uh 3/4. Uh it has it has rebounded off that. It's got to clear 100. Um, and my my my take here is I think a lot of people see the same thing that we're talking about and u I think that the the market's positioned short here and um that can lead to upside surprises. >> Well, you don't have to be a genius. You just have to listen to what some of these central bankers are saying, Aaron, because the central bankers are saying, "Look, we don't want to buy Treasury bonds anymore." They're like, um, yes, the gold price is higher, but we need to diversify more of our foreign exchange reserves reserves away from the dollar, away from US Treasury bonds. These are the nonG7 countries and the bricks because they see that like if they have a some type of policy, they piss Washington DC off their sanctions or the military, the naval fleet gets positioned around there. Look, I hope I'm wrong about this, but I I think there's going to be more regime changes. I'm not in favor of them, but um you know, we were talking before we started recording, I would not be surprised if many, many billions is printed by Greenland, if the naval fleet surrounds Cuba in the next 6 months or less and there's additional regime changes. There was a story that just came out an hour or two ago that Trump wants to send in like military on the ground into Iran. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean, I'm surprised it took him this long to start doing this stuff, honestly. Um, I mean they they it it seems that they they they know that they're slipping behind in Asia right now. Like I mean that's that's what this is about, right? Well, I I think that's why one of the major themes and we started talking about this around the Russia sanctions and it increased a lot over the last it's now almost four years since the Russia sanctions. It's it's a long time. So you have almost four years now Aaron postRRussia sanctions because that was early 2022 and then within a couple months the central banks just started massively increasing their dollar cost averaging monthly gold purchases of gold tonnage and now here we are what only in it was in 2025 the first time in many many decades I think it was four or five decades that the uh total global reserves were higher in gold than they were in US treasuries. Wow, that's pretty crazy. >> Well, you knew it was going to happen eventually because you saw that each month all the central banks were not buy net buyers of treasuries and they were net buyers of gold. So, you knew eventually it was going to happen at some point. Now, we're being called crazy when the gold price was still around 2000 cuz I I remember there was a lot of, you know, mainstream cuz I'm sure you deal with this in the chart community. There was a ton of mainstream chart people saying gold's overbought, silver is the most overbought in history on RSI, the relative strength index. And there's been people literally, you know, mainstream mainstream chart people, mainstream money managers, mainstream Keynesians, uh, on Wall Street that have been predicting crashes in gold and silver all the way up from like 2500 gold and like 30 35 silver every couple weeks. They've been wrong now for way way over your six to nine months. >> Yeah. Uh I mean you don't really fight, you know, I was just saying this today. Um you don't you don't fight those parabolic advances until it until it shows you uh weakness first and then you can trade it. But um you know I did call that I did say that we would probably see a pullback. Uh that was actually um the 26th of December. I said, "Yeah, uh, don't be surprised if it dips here." And it did the very next day, but bam, right back up. >> Well, that's because someone probably had, are you saying on silver? That's probably because someone didn't inside information in China was going to ban silver exports. >> Yeah. Well, they they've been increasing margin on it, too. But, I mean, a lot of people say like, "Oh, they're trying to whack it down." If this was uh if we were trading rocks, they would they would increase the increase margins. If something that if something in the futures market is up, let's say right now silver is 30, you know, was at $40 like 3 months ago. Um, you know, this is a global commodity. If it was anything's up that much, uh, they're going to hike margins. They're just going to they're not going to take risk. >> Well, but I I'll tell you like the people actually need the metal that in the past would have gotten delivery of a silver futures contract, they're avoiding the metals exchanges on COMX and LBMA because they can't get reliable delivery. So if you're a electronics manufacturer or you make gold or silver jewelry or you make uh solar panels, you need the metal or you have to shut down manufacturing and production. And so if the COMX and the LBMA and they they claim to have a lot of inventory in the past that they don't have the inventory now you're hearing all these anecdotal story errands uh Aaron were like um the manufacturer directly they're going directly to the mining companies in Latin America and they're asking can we buy directly from you because the exchanges don't have it and we'll even pay a premium. >> Well the exchanges you got to be careful that they don't send you goldplated tungsten. Yeah, I would >> if I mean they were doing that for years. Okay, let's I I don't want to go too far into that, but that was that was actually occurring. So, I don't know how much more of that is occurring, but it was occurring a lot over the years over the last 15 or 20 years. >> Yeah, it's uh I I can't imagine they getting away with it now. Well, I mean, but if they're going to raise margin requirements, but if you're a manufacturer and an industrial end user and you need the actual metal for something, especially for the silver, you're just going to avoid the COMX and the LBMA entirely because they're not reliable, >> right? >> And so, like Elon Musk even talked about this. He has what, SpaceX? He has Tesla Motors. He needs actual metal uh for a bunch of different things. He's like, "Well, we need the silver for electric vehicles. We need the silver for our rockets and our satellites." Um, so silver's used in a lot of different things and sometimes it's in what's trace amounts and sometimes it's a couple ounces. I think it's a couple ounces of silver per electric vehicle. So, uh, yeah. >> And that really saves the environment, too. >> I mean, no, no form of energy actually saves the unless we actually crack nuclear fusion, um, nothing actually saves the envir all forms of energy have positives and negatives. I wrote a long article on this a couple years ago for patrons. There's actually no form of energy that's actually fully environmentally friendly. It's just marketed one way or another. >> Yeah, of course. >> Yeah. Or or whichever like uh special interest group or lobbying group or whichever um political parties in power for subsidies or whoever uh decide they want they want to steal uh from the Department of Energy or or from the Inflation Reduction Act, which was really like 70% the Green New Deal. Oh yeah. Uh that's that's another great alphabet soup program. We're seeing this on the CARES Act. We talked about the repo stuff earlier. Uh you you talked about and it's amazing to me that most people don't even know this, but um yeah, the stuff that the SPV provision uh in in the CARES Act, I'm I'm not convinced that any of this stuff that the Fed wasn't already just buying. I mean, you if you want to tell me that they've been doing QT this entire time, I just I just can't buy it. I just cannot believe that. Uh we're looking at asset prices and then military spending. So, you have what interest payments. So, the officially what I think the budget deficits are projecting 1.8 trillion. The math just doesn't it doesn't make any sense. So you had record amounts of tax uh receipts coming in last year in 2024 almost 5 trillion but the government spent around 8 trillion but a lot of that was wasted or stolen on a lot of different projects. So green energy green new deal uh Medicare fraud what all those uh Somali daycare centers tons of tons and tons like in tons illegal immigrants got a ton of freebies. There was like stuff on social media where illegal immigrant, there was one like teenage boy who was an illegal immigrant and he had like almost $200,000 in debit cards that he had gotten in 30 minutes from crossing the border. I think the border agents were just handing it out. >> Yeah. And it took a YouTuber to figure all this stuff out. >> No. No way. They're actually bashing him. They're saying he made the whole thing up. So there's still people all over social media and the mainstream media that are bashing him saying he made the whole thing up and it was taken out of context. Oh boy. Um, meanwhile, you know, just strict math here, Aaron. >> Interest payments on the national debt and then the military spending. Military spending, come on. The Trump is announcing what all these new toys he wants, what new battleships, Trump class, uh, they got to upgrade this. Um, I've seen estimates, uh, there's rumors, the deal hasn't been announced yet. I've heard 250 billion of contracts for nuclear power plants. So, I don't know if that's going to get finalized in the next couple weeks or months, but they're discussing offering for through the Department of Energy 250 billion with a B for nuclear power. >> That's just for nuclear power >> in the United States. That's not counting other forms of energy like you said, Aaron. That's not counting rare earth. That's not counting semiconductors. That's not counting Greenland. I really hope Trump doesn't do it, but I think like he will probably just print the dollars since we have world reserve currency and go and buy Greenland since they view it as such a key strategic location and there's billions of dollars of metal under the ice, but they want a military base there. They want to set up a laser ant uh laser and satellite anti-missile um anti-hypersonic missile defense system and military bases. Yeah, I mean it's right now it just seems like uh that if you if there was a time to go all in, it might as well be now. So I think that's their their thought process like uh >> before US loses world reserve currency. >> Right. Right. Well, and it's like it's like if we can if we can if this works out and we win the arms race, then we just double down on hergemony. So we keep the reserve currency, right? Um, and if it doesn't work, then it wasn't going to work anyway. >> Yeah, I agree. You know what I mean? As a small government libertarian, I'm not in favor of any of this. I'm just saying what the people in power here at the Pentagon and kind of the neocons with our foreign policy want to happen. Cuz like with Venezuela, I mean, like if they're going to rebuild Venezuela, that we're talking like trillions of dollars it would take to potentially rebuild Venezuela. The oil industry is hundreds of billions if not more. and then the entire country to fix the infrastructure and stuff so it's stable and their economy. It would be very very expensive to to turn it around. But what the not only you have what the the drug issue with the drugs going through there, but you also have what the petro dollar. So if the US uh oil companies have control over the oil supply there that helps with the dollar as a world reserve currency and the petro dollar and then what 10 or 15 years from now we both think that if Venezuela is stable with um military protection and stuff Venezuela could turn into a mining powerhouse >> in addition to their oil natural gas >> if it works out and it has it has you know they're not doing it for no reason right it has there is upside there uh but it's it's it's going to be a long road and that's Why, you know, I said as soon as that that happened over the weekend, I was like, if if a crude oil gaps down, money, just buy it because that has zero bearing on the current crude uh contract. And um yeah, I mean, it's going to take a while. It's going to take a while. >> Okay. So, let me ask you about natural gas then. The natural gas price has been kind of rangebound, kind of in a bearish range because when it has a rally, kind of ends up back down. Do you think with all these data centers planned, the amount of spending the US has for infrastructure and all the technology um potentially switching to what more autonomous vehicles because I'm seeing headlines that they're planning on rolling out a bunch of new robo taxis fleets in a lot of different um cities and states now. So, it's not just uh Google which owns Whimo, it's like Uber, it's a bunch of other companies I think are also planning additional rollouts now with the new software uh over the next like 12 to 18 months. are going to start testing them in a lot of cities. Do you think then that natural gas is due for a large rally? >> It's had a decent it had a decent rally in Q4 which is off schedule. Normally uh that's not the case. Q4 it's is usually pretty poor for NA gas. Uh but you know going back to the last couple of years the price in the futures market has put in a it's been putting in higher lows and higher highs. So there has been a steady uh increase and yeah I mean there's a chance that that's the next one to run. I mean, we talked about, you know, oil itself, um, which is kind of the misdirection play where it's, you know, beef prices are tripling and all these other things. Oh, but oils, you know, gas is 250, so don't worry about it. >> How how have the agriculture stocks done since you brought up beef prices are like the potach stocks, the fertilizer, John Deere, the agriculture, cuz those those uh shares, those companies, we've talked about those in the past. Those ones always seem to lag like higher food prices. >> Definitely. Deer has done pretty well. Um, but Deer is also a They have a lot of defense though, >> if I'm not mistaken, don't they? >> Uh, for military contracts. I'm actually not sure, but guess what? They just rolled out a self-driving tractor that's AI powered with like LAR and all that. It's like they just released that at the Consumer Electronic Show. Um, that's pretty impressive. So that's just on a field >> and so you can have a drone flying over it that would uh dust the crops or other stuff and then you have a self-driving tractor that could save the farmers a lot of work if that thing is uh very good. >> Yeah, I noticed the pot I still think NTR is okay nutrient but it's um these Yeah, you're right. These names always lag. You know they they have had runs before. They they don't get me wrong they do go on runs. >> The farmers don't seem Yeah. So, so, um, I've spoken to farmers about this, Aaron. So, um, when the food prices go high, I've asked the farmers why the fertilizer, um, why the fertilizer companies don't do well. And what they say is that normally a lot of farmers have a lot of debt. And so, fertilizer is expensive. So, even if there's a higher food price, some of these farmers don't have enormous profits and they have a lot of debt and they have to pay off the debt. So they can't afford to go and borrow and pay for more fertilizer to increase uh to grow more and increase the crop yield because they don't want to take on the debt. >> Well, and the and the costs are just higher in general too. So I mean that's seating into their bottom line. >> I you know actually I would I have a question for you just given the price of metals here. At what point do and and not we we talked about silver, but we haven't even talked about copper. But at what point do input costs start to drag on the the economy? >> Uh I I think the Trump tariffs already did that, man. I think we see that with a lot of restaurants if you go so so we weren't planning on talking about this, but I think like the economy got people say K-shaped, but I would say it's like the the ultra rich influence. So if you're a hedge fund manager, you don't have a lot of debt or use debt to go buy assets, you've done very very well with this asset price inflation and the Cantalon effect for years now. While if you're a um middle class consumer, upper middle class consumer, you're a small business owner, these tariffs screwed you over bad. I mean, like these tar um the small business owners were getting screwed over disproportionately, Erin, on the tariffs compared to the large corporations in many cases where the large corporation got an exemption on the tariff or a low lower tariff because they can either talk to President Trump directly on the phone or they had a lobbyist go and do it, >> right? >> So, I would say there was already like there was already like a disproportion. We see this with the shares of the restaurants. So, go pull up uh shares of what? Cabba. Yeah. >> Yeah. the the bowl company. So that's where like the younger adults, they would normally go and eat out at like Chipotle Mexican Grill during the week or Cava Sweet Green, some of those other um Sweet Greens, the salad company that was actually founded locally here by Georgetown University students here in the DC metro area. >> The slot bowls. Yeah, they call them they call them sl they call them sloth bowls, but I mean they have some healthy ingredients except for the uh the seed oils that Chipotle used to cook their meat in, but I I had carnas a couple days ago when I was hung over for New Year's and actually I didn't I didn't get sick from that. So maybe they switched out of the seed oils then. >> But um so the uh consumer and and a lot of consumers though for your point here Erin a lot of the consumers a lot of them are tapped out. I mean, we just see this. There's a ton of different headlines. So, the uh you have a weak dollar asset price inflation that doesn't benefit the majority of people out there. The the real economy has been disproportionately hurt from inflation, stagflation, asset price inflation, the tariffs. They hurt small business, I would say, way worse uh than they hurt uh large corporations. It's very similar to the pandemic, you know, where a lot of small businesses were shut down because uh these small business owners their their customers a lot of cases their customers got hit with uh higher cost of living, uh higher interest rates on their credit cards, uh student loan debt payments, all those things. And so the um the small businesses on Main Street got double or triple whami from the tariffs, inflation, higher interest rates. >> Yeah. And uh you know there's a lot of >> but the the metal you want sorry you wanted to I went off a little on tangent. You wanted to know about the metals prices and substitution or if it's going to hurt demand. >> Yeah. Can it hurt you know the >> look I hope I'm wrong on this. I hope I'm wrong on this but Sam Alman was in Washington DC working both political parties in Congress um ne trying to negotiate like a backs stop. So government subsidies or bailouts. So this was what November he was here for a while cuz open look open AI they were the leader they were the first mover they were the leader >> they've fallen behind Google Google uh with uh Nanobanana VO3 their text to video Gemini 3 >> well once he had that once he had that uh that presentation where the the like host questioned him like how is your revenue going to do this and he just like snapped it and Yeah, he like he basically like exposed himself as to like how fraudulent his numbers were. I I think that's where the turning point kind of was. >> Look, I'm not predicting any bankruptcy for Nvidia. Even Nvidia's hedging cuz Nvidia just went and bought another company for around 20 billion aqua hire or acquisition acquisition hire. They bought a smaller company, the GRQ, not G, cuz there's two Grocks. I didn't know there was two and there's a lawsuit. So, so you have the Elon Musk um the AI software called Jirro K Grock. And then you have Jirro Q, the other Gro that was founded by Jonathan Ross. He was at Google. He's considered a genius. He invented the TPUs. So, those are the um alternatives to the Nvidia GPUs where they're more efficient and they use way less um electricity and energy per chip. So, the chips are 40 to 50% cheaper. So now you're seeing all the tech companies and the and the artificial intelligence software companies, Aaron, they're all starting to hedge and they're all starting to diversify away from the Nvidia GPU, which was good for the early first inning of the artificial intelligence software. But now the companies like Google, Amazon, Meta, um, Anthropic, uh, XAI, they're all starting to diversify and look for more efficient and cheaper chips that use way way less electricity than the Nvidia GPUs per chip, >> right? Nvidia had a monopoly and they're tired of, you know, dealing with that. And I mean, heck, even even Buffett uh, bought Google recently. >> Yes. Yes. So Berture bought bought Google and and Google has a bunch of other So Google also owns people are not aware of this Aaron Google owns like 8% of SpaceX. >> So they own and SpaceX is going to go IPO this year. So Google has almost a trillion dollars. It's like I think 800 billion estimates. Their valuation is worth a lot. I think they put in like a billion bucks initially into SpaceX and I think it they got like a 800x or something like that. >> Yeah, I know. or 8,000 up enormously. Sorry. >> I think I think Open AI was as a few months ago was supposed to be like 800 billion, but it might be lesser now. >> Uh yeah, I I don't Let's just say I don't think Open as a standalone business, I don't think Open AI is going to make it. I think like it's probably going to end up getting bought by larger acquired yet. >> Yeah. Well, it'll be like Meta or Microsoft. >> Nobody's going to pay 800 billion for it. I'll tell you that right now. >> Well, they don't have the cash flow. Nobody's got that cash. >> Well, I don't know. They're losing paying customers cuz they're like um there's tons of models available, the learning language models, the AI software that's either cheaper per month for the pro version or it's free. So, I don't know how they're going to make money. They were one of the only companies at first, but they lost first mover advantage. And you know when a company that has as much profits as uh Google cuz Google has tons of free cash flow from Google search for the ads and from YouTube and Meta has tons of free cash flow from from Instagram. You can't really compete if you have no profits and you're losing cash flow negative. You're not going to be able to compete with them those companies for very long if they decide they want to compete with you. They're just going to destroy you on on resources. >> They could Yeah, they could compete with them easily. Well, it took what a couple years and Google's already taken the lead and they're not even using Nvidia chips anymore. Google um all their uh software was all trained on their own TPU chips and now so Amazon and those guys are all diversifying away from only using Nvidia chips. >> Yeah. Nvidia Nvidia is sitting on you know all the thousands and thousands of inventory that can't even be used yet because the data centers aren't ready for them. And by the time they're ready, they're going to be obsolete by the time they're even ready. >> Yep. And Nvidia is talking about the next generation of chips. What um they have different ones that can come out over the next couple years. You have uh it's I I can't tell you who's going to win the chip race, but I can I can tell you that um it's going to be beneficial deflation and a lot of creative destruction. And the real beneficiaries of all this uh software increases are probably going to be businesses in other industries that are able to be more productive with artificial intelligence software and how their employees adapt to it. Those are the ones who are going to benefit all this money. So So these things are actually from a financial history perspective. Aaron, this is very similar. This infrastructure waste uh boom and bust the amount of waste. It's going to be similar to like the railroads in the United States after the Civil War where there was a ton of bailouts and they built railroads to nowhere and those railroad companies went bankrupt. Unfortunately, I think I see a lot of the same things that are going to happen, >> right? It's like it's the the consumer ultimately benefits and then the consumer in this case is the other business, right? let the tech companies bleed their pockets dry trying to figure out what's best and and in the process they're going to create, you know, an AI robot that, you know, a factory can all of a sudden like 10x their value, you know, in in production out of, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And they don't have to spend any money on it because like the company's just going to create it for them. They're going to make it cheap because it's going to be competition and then they should be able to buy it. >> Well, I I think Google will be fine. So Google is not maybe they're not going to be the most efficient at building this out, but I think since they have profits, free cash flow from other businesses and other industries, I think they're going to be fine. They can use some of that to subsidize uh the growth um their improvement in their chips, their alternative chips with the TPUs, uh improve processing power, improve their software for the regular Gemini 3, that's a regular AI software, and then also their text to video, which is like a nano banana. I don't know if you've seen that. So, like you have a the stuff coming out of that is amazing. The quality of the graphics. Now, we can only do they can only do short videos for a cheap price. Otherwise, you have to spend a lot six or seven figures to make like a uh 10 or 20 minute short video. >> Yeah, it certainly it's it it's definitely expensive now, but it'll it'll get better though. It's going to get better and it's going to get cheaper. That's the exciting Well, e even if the chips get cheaper, Aaron, I think overall they're going to use more chips cuz the data centers are scaling up from initially they thought 100,000 chips at a data center like a large neural network was impossible and we're already to 200,000 at the next generation data centers and scaling up to 1 million. So, we're going to be using now that's if hopefully things are more efficient. Hopefully, we're not destroying the water. Hopefully we can recycle, you know, disgusting waste water and turn that into usable water for our semiconductor foundaries and our data centers and our power supply. So hopefully we learn to use our resources more efficiently to where um we're not wasting electricity. We're more efficient with electricity generation. But overall, you know, energy, raw materials for all these data centers, chips, um, robots, drones, all these new technologies. I think that's going to be a long-term bull market for those things. Um, I can't tell you if copper is going to be the main beneficiary of this because I know that they're already working on using graphine in a lot of instances uh, at the data centers. They're already working on cheaper alternatives. So we could see a substitution here of some of the materials but overall they are focusing on improvement productivity improvement and efficiency reducing the amount of water that's used recycling water and um focusing on what more productivity and less electricity usage per chip. So I think that's like the main goal and they're all trying to do that now. All the tech companies and the companies building out the data centers. But I I think the beneficiaries are going to be what your oil, natural gas, key materials and I think that's why the US and China are in such a huge scramble and that's like the main overarching theme that I got wrong in 2025 and I think we're going to start to see even more so in uh 2026. So the people that are saying that like oh this is a bubble top in silver and silver is going to crash and silver's never going to go up again. I mean I'm actually seeing people write that not not talking about what the global money supply the amount the problems in the government bond market how all these currencies are being debased. I mean if people want to see currency debasement it's even worse in Japan. Go and look up u the gold price in Japanese yen. It's even more parabolic than than the dollar gold price. >> Yeah. Speaking of Japan, I was just reading right now uh the 20-year uh Japanese banial just hit an all-time high like as as we're doing this right now. >> Well, do you are are they doing uh QE? Are they monetizing more debt or stimulus? I mean, they don't have good options here and and obviously I don't think the US government wants them selling treasuries. They do have what that permanent foreign repo facility for central banks. I don't think they've posted any of the treasuries as collateral though to go get access to dollars. I >> I'm looking at the yen right now. It is getting hammered. I mean, the the dollar dollar right now versus the Yeah. dollar versus the yen is ripping right now. >> Not not a good time to be a bond fund manager, is it? >> No. No, not at all. >> Well, not not unless you're spending uh uh over hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on marketing budget on on uh YouTube videos to offiscate your track record or hiring consultants. >> Yeah. >> Marketing consultants to rebrand yourself. The other thing I thought was funny was earlier in 2025 when they were talking about like, oh, all this money is going back, you know, these Europeans are putting all their money back into sovereign bonds because of the juicy yields. Like, dude, the yields are juicy for a reason. And it's not a surprise that now in Q4 they had the highest inflows back to the US in earn risk. I think they had some sellers remorse there. Didn't you send me um didn't you send me some research that the inflows into US stocks from foreign from foreign capital were the most all time or something? >> Yeah, it was like the high I think I want to say like the most in a quarter ever or something like that. Uh but the outflows, you know, I and I predicted that the outflows were would come back because they would see they would get FOMO once they saw Nvidia and Google and all those as I knew that they were going to, you know, Uncle Scott as I call him, Scott Besson. I I knew he wasn't going to let the market go down for very long. And that's what they did. >> Well, I think the better bets rather than picking out which company wins the chip race or the robot race or the drone race, not an expert at those things. I think overall we're going to use way more raw raw materials, way more energy and electricity. So nuclear power is especially like a company like Kamico or one of the energy utility companies that's going to get um all these additional business uh opportunities because of data centers. One of these electrical utility companies that industry has not had growth for decades and now all of a sudden they're looking at the most growth they've had in 50 60 70 years. >> Yeah. Oh for sure. For sure. But it just in general though in terms of the Europe in foreign stocks they're they're buying you know index funds in the S&P and things like that. >> Yeah. So um you asked me about specific metals. Um I don't want to put like I've said this publicly recently. I don't want to put a price target on gold and silver anymore longterm. Tell me when the governments are going to stop monetizing debt which is creating new currency out of thin air to buy government bonds to try to cap the bond yields. so the government doesn't have to cut spending. Or in the case of like the US where only God knows all the all the uh expensive military toys that Trump is going to pay or the amount of money that's going to be printed to rebuild Venezuela or money that's going to be printed for additional bailouts uh across the United States domestically for infrastructure for the data centers or other electricity upgrades for nuclear power maybe that 250 billion I was talking about or even to buy Greenland. Well, and the thing is the Fed does not have control of the long end at all. Every time that they've cut, the long end just keeps going up. And you know, these economists and everybody else keeps acting. You know, all these mortgage mortgage bros are, oh, oh, you know, the Fed's going to cut, it's going to bring rates down. Every time they cut, it goes high. >> London going up and steepening. So, that means normally recession, but do you think that's bond vigilante saying, look, the math doesn't work and that that DC is going to run budget deficits. They're going to do bailouts. are going to do spending and inflation or stagflation and asset price inflation is coming. Do you think that's what the uh bond market is signaling? >> Uh yeah, I think that's it. And the thing is too, you know, we mentioned the 70s earlier, just so you know, like there was a lot of inflation in the 70s, but there was four recessions. So you can have a recession in an inflationary environment. It is possible. It has happened. Um so and I do think that that that is probably coming this year um to if we're going to be completely honest. But >> I I would argue a lot of those industries we said if the share prices are down 30 or 40% that industry like restaurant industry is in a is in a recession then. >> Yes. >> So if they have if it's a consumer discretionary business or a lot of restaurants I mean and they they're announcing bad and they're closing down um the amount of restaurants and they're firing workers off. I mean that's signs of recession. So I don't know if it's the whole country officially. I don't know if we'll have an official government recession, but clearly those industries, Aaron, are suffering. >> Well, and I think the the other key here is again, continue watching the repo market, continue watching private credit. Uh if private credit, you know, and not just private credit, but the companies specifically, right? Uh Blackstone, you know, Jeff, we know that Jeffre is in trouble. Um there was a few others. Aerys Capital Management, these guys are are big private lenders. all the private equity too supposedly from what I've there's insurance companies sitting on this private credit garbage they so the insurance companies bought data center debt >> and a lot of this private credit stuff they were tricked from what I've heard university endowments insurance companies private uh they were tricked >> to happen to a nicer group of guys >> well the insurance companies are tax aren't they backed by the US taxpayer because there's a bunch of old laws on the books uh well the the worst the bad people are the private equity guys that put this garbage together. >> Yeah. >> They're like the Black Rocks and the Blackstones and the Those are the bad guys that are packaging this garbage and then they're paying off what the uh ratings agencies again after they've chopped up these uh stuff as a income product to rubber stamp it what is AAA similar to the mortgage back securities 2005 6 and 7. >> Yeah. And speaking of mortgage back securities, that from what I hear is what all those repo spikes were related to. It's all MBS. And again, going to back to my anecdote, I can praise I can confirm that. I I know that there's there's private lenders that are in trouble right now. Oh, there's bad auto loan debt, too. There's bad credit card debt, auto loan debt. There's Dude, there was a spike in the buy now pay later. I mean, I I'm sure they've chopped that stuff up, too, and sold it to pension funds and and insurance companies, too, as an income product, especially pension funds. I mean, the majority of pension fund managers are not very competent. Let's just and I'm being nice. >> Uh, I can tell you right now, there are property management firms that are selling house homes in the Tampa Bay area, which is one of the hottest markets you can ever find, right? And they're they're selling them for a loss. I'm not kidding. >> Wow. >> I'm not kidding. And I I mean I can't get into specifics, but I can confirm that. And it's that that's how that and maybe that's maybe this is just isolated to hear. Uh but my guess is that's not true >> based on what I'm seeing in repo and everything. I I can't imagine it's isolated. >> There'll probably be a new uh government sponsored subsidy program or a new type of extend and pretend. I mean, they did games like that with >> builders. Yes. Yeah. That's why Trump's I I'm telling you that's why Trump's doing the whole Oh, we got to buy another 200 billion of NBS. The day after he says, "Oh, well, we're not going to let Black Rockck buy all these." Yeah. Right. Excuse you. So, you're going to let the mortgage market collapse? Okay. Yeah. And then the next day, he announces 200 billion in NBS buying. >> Well, they also secretly subsidize the uh commercial real estate developers to transition the uh commercial office space over to residential. So, they snuck in a bunch of programs over the last couple years, too. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean I there's no way that that market is so massive. I mean there's no way they can let that it is 100% too big to fail. >> Uh so so a major theme then for 2026 is more stagflation, more inflation continuing that when the Trump administration says inflation is not going to be a problem. We have inflation under control, you you don't believe in them because look at the military. I look at the military spending. I mean, what we're up to with all the increase in spending added in Venezuela or Greenland, the upgrades in new technology, the naval fleet upgrades that Trump wants. I mean, we're at a trillion dollars a year. >> How many greens does it take to get Greenland? Let's get it. >> Well, I mean, if it's if it's just paper and you can buy land, I mean, like, >> that's the fraudulent system we have of fiat currencies, right? So, >> I I remember I remember there's I was getting arguments. I'll share this anecdotal story. I used to have people cuz I was networking like many many years ago and I met like a metals expert commodities broker and the guy was like um he was working I think in Chicago on like the CME exchange and the guy was adamant that the silver price would never go above $20. Now, this was like like 2012 or 13. He was like, "Oh, there's so much silver above ground and we could bring on new silver mines." is and he was like, "Silver will never go above 20." And I was like, "What?" He was like, "I've been selling silver futures contracts and and arranging delivery for for my whole career and I'll never go above $20." And I was like, "Uh, do you understand economics?" >> Yeah. >> Oh, man. >> Well, I mean, like, look, the major driver here is actually for the last like five or six years has been industrial end users. If you pull up a chart of industrial demand for silver, it's been steadily growing, while supply, according to the silver institute, has been in a substantial deficit now for the last four or five years. So, if you're just going to talk about supply and demand for silver, we were going to hit this at some point cuz you can't have large deficits where demand is growing enormously and there's supply deficits for four or five years. the price was going to have to go up to incentivize what investment and new supply being brought online, >> right? And is everything else uh you know going up, you know, and input cost wise, you know, just even just the general level of inflation over time, you know, the mining company's going to get they need to get a yield, right? They need to get a yield for the for what they're doing, right? Well, especially cuz like the silver miners like for years uh needed way higher silver prices and the silver price was capped at such a low level that just to survive a lot of the silver miners had to go buy a gold mine. >> So for many many years >> it was bad. It was bad. >> Well, they were giving they a lot of them shut down the silver mine or they drastically reduce their production because they were running the mine at a loss or barely break even. It was it was not sustainable at all. >> Right. And in a business, it's already hard enough. I mean, there's so many problems that could go. >> Well, and this is why you and me were saying that platinum and platium would rally cuz what uh 12 12 18 months ago, what we had $900 an ounce each one for platinum and platium. >> Yeah. >> And I was getting people telling me it'll never go up again. I was like, >> miners are all running at losses. >> Palladium was my little pet project there. And it it finally broke out. It took it it took it a while but you know it was when if you stuck with it it it was rewarding. >> Wasn't that the bare market I think was like 3 years. >> Yeah. >> So in hindsight it was a >> it's not that bad. Yeah. Yeah. But but like considering what it did before that it's like that's a pretty standard you know it was a pretty standard cycle >> now at all time highs too. >> Yeah. And I remember uh before the rally what BHP Bulletin, one of the larger miners, it was Riotinto or BHP Bulletin. They wanted to do an acquisition of a copper miner, but they had a massive amount of platinum and palladium and they wanted zero exposure to it. And I was thinking like they're probably going to regret that 12 18 months from now. And now here we are. I think they did get rid of that asset and they sold it at the bottom for pennies. Pennies on the dollar. Yeah, that's that's a tough one there. >> Well, I mean this is well, this is why like um contrarian value investors like Rick Rule, this is why they make so much money buying in the bare market because when the markets turn, that's when you make the majority of your money. Normally as an investor or a speculator when you make the most money is when you buy the assets and then you patiently wait or you accumulate something that's cheap and hated and then the cycle turns or there's unexpected growth like with uranium and nuclear power. how like you know 3 or 4 years ago no one saw that there was going to be advancements in artificial intelligence and data centers and the amount of power requirements and now it looks like what the electrical utility companies natural gas and nuclear power are going to be some of the main beneficiaries of all that over for for many many years to come. >> Right. And that's the thing with uh with if something's hated enough, it doesn't even need to have an insane amount of growth potential. If if there's just enough of an upside surprise and everyone's short, you're going to get you're going to get paid on that. Yeah. So, for for long-term price targets and gold and silver, I won't give any long-term. Tell me if the governments are going to stop printing money, but for 2026, I think I think we're going to blow through 5,000 gold. Well, yeah. >> Yeah. Only only a couple hundred more at this point. >> Yeah. And I think the new normal for look, silver has to stay above 65, 70, $80. It has to stay above there, probably even triple digits. And it has to stay high for mining companies to bring new supply online. And you have to the the other major component from me interviewing you know a lot of these um gold stock newsletter golden silver stock newsletter writers like Adrien Day and Lobo Trey who travels all over the place and Durret and uh some of the others is is that I ask them about geopolitical risk because it's not just about the high metals prices. You also have to have private property rights in a country like Bolivia or Argentina. You have to have the right conditions in place. So the mining company, so even if the metals prices are high, if there's not good private property rights and other uh infrastructure and the right uh amount of uh labor and all these other things in place, the mining company's not going to make any investments in new supply. This is the issue with mining that the average hedge fund manager who says, "Oh, silver's way overbought um on RSI, alltime RSI overbought and it's going to crash and then it's never going to go up again." This is what they don't understand is that the supply response. Yes, people are selling junk silver right now here in the United States out of desperation for cash. Some uh there's a lot of people in the United States and other countries um liquidating their uh you know, silver antiques, silver bars. Some people are desperate, but for like mine supply to to come online, it has to stay at those levels. And it could take many many years, it the supply response is not going to be like oil where, you know, if the oil price is high for $130 a barrel, Erin, they could bring on new wells in 6 to 8 weeks. >> Yeah. It doesn't take long. So mining is very very different especially in countries that are um that have new rules, regulations, environmental regulations. So like Mexico which has a lot of silver to get the permitting process for an open pit mine a sizable one that has like uh copper or gold silver or uh silver lead and zinc like base metal mines you'll have to go through a lot of permitting could take years for the permits and then you have to build a mine then you have to raise the capital you have to build you have to construction could take years depending on the size of the mine. So you're seeing that right now with the uh massive uh platinum and plating mine in South Africa that's coming online. Just came online a couple months ago. That's Plat Reef. It's >> Yep. >> That's from Ivanho. That one uh I was talking about as a speculative play. That's the worldass platinum and platium mine. The phase two of the mine is going to be one of the largest in the world. So it's going to be high-grade and lowcost platinum and platium mine. That mine take took years to plan and build. Many many years. It's absolutely massive. So, the construction cost years billions of dollars. Not cheap. >> Yeah. I think it's uh PGM, right? >> Uh the mine or the the miner Ivanho >> Yeah, >> the mine is Ivanho Mines. It's uh run by uh Robert Freedelland. >> I remember I remember you talking about that. That's why >> the phase one of the mine just came online. Uh that's small. Phase two is under construction. So that'll be online probably they're estimating like sometime in 2027. Then um by then the projections are it will be the highest grade and lowest cost platinum and plating mine in the world. >> And most of the mine is uh mechanized or automated. >> Oh, that's nice. >> Well, it is in South Africa though, so it has to be like there there's a there's a armed military militia guarding it guarding the line. But >> you have to go where the medals are, right? So, I mean, that's why they're even talking about uh Venezuela, >> which uh and then uh Bolivia. Uh so, I think the guy who was uh >> I don't know if he's still there. The one who was a a plant from Chavez or Maduro, the one in Bolivia, there was like a a copycat, one of the puppets for Chavez or Maduro that was in Bolivia. I'm not sure if he's still there, but like Bolivia, I think, saw what what what was going to happen in Venezuela, and now they're talking about like, well, maybe we should >> they got lied. Yeah. >> Maybe we should start negotiating a trade deal and maybe we should start opening up to foreign investment. So, uh, >> you got to kiss the ring. >> Well, they should want to. I mean, there's uh their minds are worth uh billions of dollars. They have billions of dollars of metal there. That's jobs, tax revenue, investments into infrastructure, schools, clean water. So if the mining companies can make the investments into the infrastructure and the schools and stuff, they just have to agree on terms. But just banning, you know, banning investment into your country or banning M, it's stupid, >> right? >> Especially if if it could be competently done. >> Well, yeah. As long as you as long as you invest in the local community and you upgrade their infrastructure and schools and you hire local people and train them, I don't see a problem with it. But we'll see. We'll see uh how Latin America decides to do that. They have there's some mines in especially silver mines. There's some silver mines like the one in Guatemala. So Escoal that mine's on care maintenance. It hasn't restarted yet. That's worth many billions of dollars. Uh Pan-American Silver has that one. And then Pan-American Silver has the Alan Na'vi silver mine in Argentina. That's worth many, many billions of dollars. Over 500 million ounces of silver reserves, maybe even more than that. They haven't drilled it in a while. So that might have like way over 500 million ounces of silver reserves at a very high grade. They're not That's a many billions of dollars it's worth. >> Yeah. Yeah. So these uh countries these countries are not using their assets properly. We'll we'll see what what happens here. But hey, if that supply doesn't come online, we're looking at the new normal probably. These governments are going to keep uh you know monetizing government debt. The uh currency supply is going to keep growing. We're going to be looking at the new normal $60 to $100 silver, maybe even higher than that. >> Yeah. I mean, you know, there there will be I'm sure there'll be a correction, a sharp correction at some point, but there's higher floors, you know, that that's really the the takeaway. Number one, currency debasement. So, that's one of the thing, but the other issue is like the industrial usage and then the price has to stay higher with higher floors like you said or there's no incentive to bring on new supply. So, we're seeing people like, oh, everyone's just going to sell their silver antiques and the silver bars and coins and it's going to get melted down. That's a oneoff. So if you sell all of your silver coins, your bars, your silver antique, your silver jewelry, your silver cutlery, your antiques, that's a one time it's gone. You don't get to >> Most people don't even have that. Most people don't even have that much of of that anyway. Well, well, what's funny, Erin, is uh I was researching this over the last couple days, and there's a ton of stories out that literally like the uh pawn brokers and the um and the antique dealers, they're getting like entire inventories, like every single piece of silver, like uh antique jewelry, coins, some people are just liquidating everything because they need the cash. So, they're getting like an insane amount in, but they're like, "Well, that's not gonna make a huge dent in the uh demand for industrial usage, and that's a one-off." >> Yeah, that's nowhere close. >> Yeah. So, um the people that are predicting, you know, silver crashes back down to 2530, um I don't think so. I I definitely do not think so. And uh if they were, I would be a dip buyer. So, if it gets if it gets back down to, you know, below 50, I'm strong I would strongly consider to adding to positions again. >> You would need to have the the 10-year bid. There'd have to be like an actual uh contraction fear. >> You mean like a bank failure, like a credit freeze up? >> It's It's possible. It just won't last very long. That's why you want to be a dip buyer if that happens. >> Oh, yeah. I agree. I agree. Trump, Trump and whichever puppet. Yeah, I agree. Whichever Fed chairman Trump installs as his puppet and the Trump administration, >> they'll print. So even if the Democrats win the midterms in 2026, >> we'll see more printing. >> Yeah, >> it it won't be on the same projects necessarily. Um but I I think you know both political parties are spenders. Tax and spend or tax and borrow and spend. >> It lie. Oh, steel stackfully tax. Yep. >> Well, I mean like >> Well, did did I was watching I was watching Fox Business today and I was seeing uh literally I think it was Steve Moore and Art Laugher were both on it and other people and they were with a straight face. They're like, "The US is going to have 4% GDP growth and we might even have five." And I was like, "What?" I was like, "How much how much government spending are they projecting? How much inflation?" >> Yeah. Did you hear Trump? It was like a month ago. He said something like, you know, this is it's there's no excuse why GDP can't be 20%. I was like, do you know what you just said? >> Hey, let's just invent a number. Let's just like the Chinese Communist Party or the Soviet Union, let's just invent a number and say GDP is 20. Meanwhile, all the foreigners are going to be like, okay, buy gold, buy gold, buy gold, gold stocks. >> Yeah. If if he wants 20% the amount of bailouts and money printing and infrastructure, you we're looking at like eight or nine,000 gold pretty quick if he wants to get up to 20% GDP. >> He doesn't know what he said, but that's what it comes down to. >> Well, well, what a what an interesting time we live in, my friend here, with all these technology advancements on top of this and stagflate tax lie. But um in terms of bargains and riskreward, what what are you looking at for 2026 for for good value here? Because um you know, gold broke out in 2025. We had a big move. Do you see any other commodity or sector industry that could potentially have a similar move to the gold and silver companies from early 2025 to right now? Uh yeah, I would say I think robotics uh like specifically um the not just like you know like drones but specifically companies making the the robotics um for like all sorts of commercial uses. Um I think that's going to be kind of the next I know that it's already had they've already had a little bit of a chase, but um I think that's kind of your next like really big uh mover. There's also um I'll throw a little obscure one out there. >> Is there a ETF one for that? Is it BOTZ bots? Is that the robot ETF? >> I think so. Yeah. >> You see? >> Yes, it is. Yeah. >> Yeah, it's bots. BZ Bots. >> Yep. >> There's also a spin-off from uh ABB. That's the uh European manufacturer. They spun off their robotics unit. >> Those are the manufacturing ones. But there's a there's a ton of robot companies. So, you have like Figure AI, which is doing a lot. Um, they have the the robots that are working in BMW factories in South Carolina that have been running for over 6 months. So, I think like the manufacturing and industrial robots will be the uh most consistent and most profitable ones first. I don't know about the home ones. I wouldn't invest in those right now. >> Yeah. Uh, I'll throw out another one little bonus here. Um, I don't know if this is going to be a 20x or anything like that, but I'll say I'm interested in it. Um, Discord is set to do an IPO uh this year. a secret IPO. They should be valued at 15 billion and they a couple years ago, a lot of people don't know this, they turned down Microsoft for four billion. So now they they've, you know, essentially quadrupled their valuation. I don't know if they will do this, but I think personally if they did the right things, they could overtake text messaging. >> Okay. So that's that's like the encrypted chat Discord where you have like some of the the group uh the >> streaming and Yep. things like that. Okay. Yep. I don't know. I don't know if they're going to do it, but I think if they did the right things, they could they could overtake text messaging. >> Yeah. I don't know what any of their financials are, if they're cash flow positive, free cash. I I don't know any of that offh hand. I know SpaceX is the big um IPO and in the uh AI companies, so Anthropic, which is backed by a lot of the big tech companies and OpenAI, but um yeah, I'm avoiding Open AI. I I do use chat GPT now. So, I make, you know, these economic cartoons for the YouTube video thumbnails and the memes, but who knows? I might switch eventually to another AI program. So, I've been playing around now for seven or eight months, I think, with the AI software making like economic cartoons and memes. Know you like some of them. So, >> yeah. I'm not sure if President Trump and the Trump administration, I saw him copy one of them. He copied one of the drone pow fired ones like literally. Exactly. He scanned like the whole thing and it was up on his true social. >> I like using the one with him at the construction site. Him and Powell. >> Oh, where they have like the YMC doge dog. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Four. Well, I mean like they're already lying about like the amount of money that was going to be spent for the Federal Reserve with the construction. I thought it was 4 billion estimates and then on the news today they were saying 2.7 billion. Oh, what a crime compared to like literally everything else that's happened. >> Okay, so let me let me add in you mentioned robots. Is there a drone ETF yet? Is there like a sector industry a sector specific drone ETF yet? >> I believe there is. Uh I'm >> Yeah, I didn't I didn't check on in the last couple weeks, so I don't have it on my watch list. I have the robot one and the ABB spin-off. I don't think some of the other robot companies are publicly traded yet, but we could see over the next couple year. I know Unitry Robots. >> There's a new one. There's a new one. DRNZ. It's pretty new. It's only been out for two months. >> Okay. Oh, so it's not very liquid then. Okay. So, it just launched. >> It looks It looks uh see volume. It looks fairly It's decent. It's not like super thin. It's still new though. >> Well, let me add to your UAV. UAV. That's that's another one. >> So the uh supply chains have to be reshored >> and on top of those new technologies which are going to create additional demand growth that's going to be for rare the rare earth value chain. So the rare earth mining companies there's plenty of rare earths. It's not an issue. And most of the rare earth mining companies they actually have to store a lot of the thorium as a byproduct. There's no commercial product for it. Not right now anyway. There's liquid fluoride molten salt thorium reactor in the future maybe. So they have to store all that thorium byproduct because there's uranium or thorium as a radioactive byproduct with all the rare earth. So I'm not big on the rare earth mining. I'm looking at the value chain companies in the rare earth that are going to be reshort here in the United States cuz you're starting to see announcements of deals of German rare earth companies building a facility. I think in South Carolina. There's a Brazilian one that has a a joint venture deal with Virginia Tech University that's going to be opening up a processing facility I think in um Louisiana area next to the cheaper natural gas. So that's going to be and the profit margins for those uh gross profit margins. I was researching for the rarest value chain. So these are companies that do more value added work. It's more difficult. You need a chemistry background, engineering, better technical people. But if you can make rare earth permanent magnets with heavy rare earths or recycle old electronics waste rare earth into uh better versions of rare earth magnets for all the new technologies. So the rare earth magnets go into literally all the electronics. They're going to be in a lot of the robots. They're going to be in the drones. They use rare earth uh magnets for data center cooling fans. They're going to be in pretty much everything. The gross profit margins Aaron are between uh a lot of the the value chain companies 30 to 40%. But it's heavy manufacturing though and you need a lot of technical expertise. So it's not easy. It's not an easy business. You need a lot of technical expertise. >> So so that's a potential there. So we're going to need more materials. I'm even starting to see remember graphine. So like everyone's like oh graphine is going to be the best material and then for like 10 or 15 years there was no real uses for it. Well, well, apparently finally they've kind of figured out all the problems in the lab with manufacturing because they couldn't manufacture the right graphine that they needed. There were issues with uh purity similar to semiconductors actually. So all the heavy manufacturing in the value chains that are coming back to the United States are reshoring in more friendly countries that in North America. So uh that the US could import from here um in the Western Hemisphere. those companies will benefit I think from the uh era of the just in time supply chain ending. >> Right. Right. >> I I would look to target those as investments. The Taiwan Semiconductor, I think I just heard that Taiwan Semiconductor is going to get additional funding to open up more Arizona facilities. I think they're going to be moving even more of their facilities here in the United States. That's sort of the that's the plan the administration has that and it can't be clear to me. >> Well, and why Intel got a bailout, right? So, because like they were worried if they didn't bail out Intel that we wouldn't have enough semiconductors and they wanted to give the uh new CEO at Intel time with the investment from Nvidia to turn around their business so they would have plenty of supply um semiconductor supply. I think Intel did a there's actually good reviews though what Intel some of their new product innovations were at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronic Show last week. So >> interesting. Yeah, I mean they were a dunce of a company for a very long time. >> Well, but um there looks like the turnaround now um you know free market they probably would have went bankrupt. >> I was going to say I mean it's amazing what happens when you know you're given billions of dollars for failing but yeah. Well, they appear to have used the uh capital and the time wisely uh with the new CEO and they're look looking like they're going to turn around. So, our tech companies like Qualcomm, Broadcom, Taiwan Semiconductor moving here, Intel, these companies look like they're going to benefit from the reshoring and the technology upgrades. But um overall I think the a major theme here with the new technologies we were drastically underinvested Aaron in in infrastructure in electricity energy key energy reliable base load electricity raw materials we just didn't understand the amount of stuff we needed to build out the new technologies and I think now if you listen to the interviews Aaron from these tech people they all like the people running these tech companies they all get it now that we're that that's going to be the major choke point for the data centers and the uh the better chips, the better uh AI software that we just didn't have the uh energy and infrastructure needed to keep building this out. >> Well, it's cuz we we uh outsourced dollars for so many years instead of actually investing in it ourselves. >> Well, we outsourced everything, right? So, the dollars what we just printed dollars to buy stuff, >> right? That was that was >> which is great if you can it's great if you can do that but you should also you know like hedge that with a longer term you know just infrastructure plans >> well I mean you can't print dollars to buy stuff forever because then most Americans are not going to end up with jobs >> right and that's where well that's literally where we're at they're losing their jobs to AI now so >> well even before the AI I mean the economy was already had been hollowed out right with a lot of the just in time supply chain and outsourcing. So >> yeah, >> but if uh other countries what if China is going to put export bans on strategic metals where earth and then the US is going to counter that with additional policy then you're going to be in an era where you know global trade more free markets that era is ending unfortunately. Yeah, it's for there's a lot of deglobalization going on, a lot of protectionism, >> and that means higher costs. So, I I wouldn't believe the consumer price it means higher costs, but that means potentially more more investment opportunities locally and more jobs for people who have a specialty. >> Yeah. >> So, so uh any any more things that we we didn't bring up, Erin? I knew you were talking about healthcare, right? So, you were talking about a healthcare rally. said, uh, "Yeah, I uh, you know, nobody wanted to listen. I told you to buy XLV, uh, you know, last summer. Um, and it's at alltime highs now, you know. So, and this was simply based off of rotation and based off of, uh, just, you know, healthcare stocks, blue chips, everybody hated them. U, and you get, you know, you get a chance to buy a blue chip below its monthly 50 MA in an uptrend. Um, you just buy it. You don't really have to think about it. Just buy it." And yeah, it took a little bit of it took like good half of the year, but we're at alltime highs now with the XLV. And I've actually had a really nice trade on NVO uh Noroisk recently. Actually, a couple of trades. Uh we just got out of for a nice gain, though. I I like that level in the mid-40s. And uh it's just uh just trading at 60 right now. So that was a nice one for us. >> Yeah. So for riskreward undervalued growth stocks, I think like uh maybe I'll be wrong again, but I think we will have a oil rally by maybe Q2 or Q3 2026. And >> I really think it's got to be. I mean, it's got to be at at some point here. >> Well, I don't know if we'll get to 85 cuz I think then you'll see additional policies announced, but >> or more supply could come back online. But I I know the assets, the valuations are cheap. So, Canadian companies, so like a White Cap or some of these other Canadian companies that went and did acquisitions, they went and bought assets cheap. They're focusing on cutting a lot of the fat out, running operations more efficiently. They're not um you know, increasing new supply right now. So, they're focusing on becoming more efficient with their businesses. and uh Chevron and XL Mobile are kind of they're the they're the main ones, but um there's better valuations out there if you want to go to Canada or Deep Water or something like that on a rally. >> Yeah, I think 85 is reasonable. It's not it's not absurd. Um yeah, I mean that's kind of like the midpoint between where we are now and where we were in 2022. So that's pretty fair. Well, I mean, if they devalue the dollar more, what 85 will be what what used to be 65 will have to be 85 and the gold price will have to be 6 or 7,000. >> That's sort of the base case too, right? Because like if if everything else is going up, oil has to go up, right? Uh, you know, or, you know, perhaps there's a rot, you know, maybe there's a rotation where some of the metals take a breather, some of the other commodities take a breather, and then that money rotates into oil, right? that you know because smart money looks for what's not running and it looks to get into that uh you know for whatever the next rotation is. >> Yep. I agree. And uh well I I'm not sure if the the manage a lot of the generalist people are in gold socks yet. A lot of people don't believe the move. >> Yeah, that that's true as well. >> There's still a lot of people calling like oh it's about to crash. I especially for silver. I mean I hear that all the time. Every single day I be like silver's about to crash. Do you even understand why it went up in the first place? Yeah, I mean like I've warned about the chart being parabolic, but um I don't think that that means that the bull market's over with if it if it has a correction. >> Yeah. I mean, even if it corrects 20 or 30%, I don't think that stops the bull market at all. In fact, I think people will buy the dip. And I I would think hardly any new supply will be online. >> The price has to stay >> substantially at a very very high price. and we're we're at $100 an ounce or more in Asia for silver prices. If the silver price stays at triple digits, we can bring on new supply. If it corrects 20 or 30%, some of these projects might get delayed further, >> right? And that's thing too like they're the the producers are going to want to see where this price settles. you know, uh, if and when there is a correction, is there a range that it can trade in? Then they can now expect, okay, it's going to be between this price and this price, we can expect it to stay in this range. Right now, it's just uncertainty, right? Cuz it it it could it could have a nasty correction. It could also go up to 100, right? There's, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty there. They're not going to start making investment decisions when the price is in motion like this >> or or they'll only bring on they'll make smaller investments. So they'll bring on a they'll make an incremental increase say at a mill at an existing mine. >> And so they'll expand the mill. They'll uh expand the production at an existing mine, but in terms of like bringing on a much more expensive silver mine that's way larger, there might they're probably going to be hesitant to necessarily bring that online if there's a correction in the price. >> Right. Right. Exactly. But if you're a producer, so if you're an existing producer, I mean, you're minting money right now. So, but I I would watch for for uh cash uh capital allocation for management. So, you want to make sure the management team is not going and let's say buying land in Venezuela if with this much uncertainty. Yeah. So like let let's say some of these mining companies be like, "Oh man, this is going to be the largest deposit ever in Venezuela, but and they go and buy something right now and they overpay for it for a couple billion dollars, be like, "Well, we don't know if it's even going to be safe if there's any infrastructure there or private property rights or safety." So I would be careful where the company and the mining company is allocating the capital, >> right? And if they're there government guarantees. Well, this is why the royalty and streaming companies is such a good business model. Uh they're diversified, especially the larger ones, the larger medium-sized ones. They're diversified and so they're not going to bet the whole company on like one mine in a geopolitically unstable area or if even if there's a mine problem in Canada. And so that happened with a a couple gold miners a couple years ago where there was a open pit gold mine in Canada and then there was a landslide and the mic collapsed or SSR mining in Turkey where they had financial problems before the gold price rallied. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. >> Well, I I want to thank you so much for your time today, Erin. I think we covered pretty much everything. I think overall the one asset class that I am least confident in right now is government bonds. What about you? Yeah, I agree. And um you know that's that's a a longer term thing too. Um there's nothing saying that excuse me that bonds can't uh you know have a rally or anything like that but um >> I mean short-term rally shortterm rally maybe >> right but you know the the trajectory here that the long-term trend is now down here. Well, I mean, if the M2, global M2, if the M2 is growing that much, what are they what are the governments and central banks and commercial banks, what are they buying with the new currency? Are they doing bailouts? Are they monetizing government debt? And I would I would argue that a lot of that currency creation ended up being bailouts and monetizing government debt. And so, we've had a lot of um currency debasement now for years. And the market, a lot of people are finally starting to figure that out. And that's why the gold and silver prices are parabolic in pretty much every single currency. >> Well, and if you have the Fed basically saying that CPI 3% is the new floor. I mean, why would anybody want to own bonds? >> Uh especially with all the stuff Trump's saying. I mean, like he's like, it sounds like every couple weeks he's talking about a new expensive project that he wants to spend on. >> Yeah, but that but he says there's no inflation. Okay. Well, as long as there's cheap oil, there's uh he claims there's But um in Venezuela, they had what oil for below a dollar a gallon and there was hyperinflation. So, >> tell tell that tell that to uh we can't say we can't name names, but we know who we're talking about. The people in the comments will know. >> Deflationist. Yeah, I I'm sure there there's deflationistas. >> Hey, gas was a dollar a gallon. can't there can't be any inflation. >> There's there's one deflationist he's adamant there's been there's a couple of them that are adamant there's been no evidence of any inflation for decades. I don't know what what type of drugs he's doing but >> no he he went to Japan with yelling and uh had some those mushrooms >> or the weed brownies. She looks like She looks like a grandma that like like that sneaks in a little extra sauce there. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, did you see her stage grocery shopping? Um they staged it to make her look normal. Do you remember this like a couple years ago? She did it. >> I remember >> I remember Chuck Schumer though where that the piece of cheese on the burger that's not even cooked. >> Yeah. He doesn't know how to cook. Um Yeah. His butler or his personal chef didn't didn't cook for him. No, that they actually did a staged Janet Yellen grocery shopping. This was a couple years ago to claim that there was no inflation and it looked like she hadn't been grocery shopping in a long time. So, she went into a giant locally here and she just stuffed the shopping cart full of like like um potato chips. So, like all types of uh junk food, snack chips, and drink mixes for alcoholic beverage drink mixes. So, she's clearly a party animal. She just threw all the party materials into there >> for her drugs and alcohol. >> Okay. Well, um I want to thank everyone for for listening to this long show, listening to us rant. We're going to see a lot more currency debasement. I can't tell you which country is going to win the race to debase, but uh it's not going to be pretty. There's going to be a lot more uh stagflate tax lie and asset price inflation. the like Aaron I I think the the one asset class whether that's US treasuries, Japanese government bonds, European debt, Chinese debt, I do not the one asset class I do not want to have a lot of exposure to is government bonds. There might be a short-term trade there, here, or there, but anytime there's uh deflation or or uh bank problems, um there's really nothing in the current system we have now to stop the people in DC from changing the rules, moving the gold post, doing secret bailouts, overt or covert bailouts, on or off balance sheet. And I think unfortunately the Federal Reserve Bank is long overdue for doing a 180 and starting to expand its balance sheet again. And normally when the Fed starts to expand its balance sheet aggressively, that means more inflation. >> Yeah, that's usually how it works, >> especially with the money supply growth. Yet in that money, the money supply, we're almost to 100 trillion. So all these people like, oh, deflation is the more likely one. It's like look at the global M2s, not just the US. We're up to almost 100 trillion of liquidity sloshing around out there. That's a lot, >> right? And even if it was, they're getting in front of it. Like they're getting in front of anything that that could ever be any sort of contractionary force. >> Yeah. I I would not be surprised if Fanny and Freddy start buying some of that private credit debt. Um I thought they were going to buy commercial real estate, some of the buildings, but instead what they did is they extended and pretended the loans. So they're not calling in the loans on default. And then the commercial real estate developers, Aaron, are getting like these subsidized loans that were snuck in to transition the commercial real estate building office space to residential now. >> Yeah. >> So that's what a hidden subsidy or bailout that the taxpayer didn't even get a chance to vote for. >> Yep. And they're making them into luxury condos. >> But you but but you have to be uh you know they're like dual purpose. So you got section 8 and you're, you know, paying for a condo next to a section 8 resident. >> Just all types of distortions that the taxpayer and well, Congress probably did do the subsidies cuz there's a ton of um politicians in both political parties in Congress that take lobbying dollars from um a lot of the homebuilders. Same thing for the healthcare insurance companies. >> Uh what's his name? Bill P. He's the head of like the FHA like the guy like like PY like PY Homes like yeah that that same guy that's not a conflict of interest at all right >> well I mean he is a real estate expert so Trump Trump does like pick people by resume like that but yeah I don't know I don't know what the guy's ethics or morals is so >> I mean he founded like one of the largest homebuilding companies ever but >> well our treasury secretary is a George Soros hedge fun manager I mean I've listened to him do macro interview he's a smart smart dude He He is smart. He is smart. He But you can tell the things he has to say. It's like he can't like there's certain things he can't say. And so he he sounds stupid sometimes. But it's he knows he does know. He understands how markets work. But I mean what's he going to do? Say, "Oh, my hands are tied." And like nobody's >> before before he took the job. I mean he was saying that the gold price was going to go way higher. when he was just a g global macro hedgeman manager and he used to do like macro podcast he was talking the gold price was going to go way higher recently speeches I mean he was talking about asset price inflation and distortions >> yeah he was talking about um like the income disparity and uh financial repression and all that stuff he was talking about that last year even >> Mhm. So he does he he knows what he's he knows what he's talking about. But I mean his hands are tied. There's really not anything. >> Well, it's it's also an issue of morals and ethics because I mean like you know the the Trump family has made billions of dollars in crypto and under five years and there's other stuff I won't say publicly right now. The other well rumors I haven't confirmed any of them. It's tough to prove or disprove certain of the things I've heard that are gone. I mean like you mean like the uh the all the the people who bought call options on Loheed Martin right before the uh invasion and I mean like there's uh or the Lockhe Martin I think it was the one they took out an insurance policy on uh operations in Venice. It was something like that like a few a few weeks before they went in there. >> Well look at the Intel uh trading position right? So there was a ton there was a ton of share purchases and options activity >> prior to the government announcing what the the additional bailout for Intel and the Nvidia investment into Intel. 5 billion. >> Yeah. And this is very widespread with this administration. >> Yeah. Well, it it's the new normal. There's this is I I would argue that this is what happens when your central bank with the world reserve currency and fiat currencies when it has too much power and control over the economy and it can do bailouts and both political parties prefer asset price inflation and getting rich quick. >> Yep. >> Yeah. This is the problem with Washington DC. All the corruption here and how easy it is to come to Congress, not provide any value and then just become a millionaire very very quickly. >> That's the game. Well, thank you so much for your time and uh uh thanks to our listeners for listening to Aaron and I ran and talk about different markets and asset classes. 2026 is going to be crazy because of the people uh here in Washington DC in the district criminals are crazy and they like they're corrupt. Their morals and ethics are highly questionable and um we're probably going to have a new Fed chairman and they're probably going to want to do balance sheet expansion, maybe even uh bailouts or quantitative easing. So, we'll see what happens, but um I think uh the probability is pretty high. We're going to see Fed balance sheet expansion. Trump's going to lower interest rates on the short end with his the new Fed chairman. And then, um the yield curve, like Aaron said, I think it's going to steepen because I think like what there's a little bond vigilantes and the average uh person looking at this rationally sees the odds for more inflation and currency debasement are quite high. >> Yep. Absolutely.