Alex Ebkarian: Gold, Silver 2026 Price Calls, Key Drivers to Watch Now
Summary
Gold Bull Cycle: Guest argues gold entered a 10–12 year bull market in 2020, driven by deficits, de-dollarization risks, and sustained central bank accumulation.
Silver Outlook: Expects silver to challenge the three-digit level near $100 over the next year, citing structural deficits, rising industrial demand, and exchange inventories drawing down.
Central Bank Buying: Highlights World Gold Council data showing broad plans to increase gold reserves, noting gold’s neutrality and seizure-resistant qualities as key drivers.
Inflation and Oil: Projects higher inflation due to elevated oil and fertilizer costs and prolonged conflict, reducing odds of Fed rate cuts and supporting precious metals.
Fed and Banking Risks: Anticipates no near-term rate cuts; watches commentary on jobs, GDP, and private credit stress as potential catalysts for risk-off moves that favor gold.
Physical vs Paper: Emphasizes owning physical bullion outside the financial system; voices skepticism on paper markets/ETFs decoupling from physical, while noting fully-backed options exist.
Investor Behavior: Sees both defensive and offensive buyers; rotation between gold and silver when ratios are extreme, and increased interest influenced by big-bank allocation shifts.
Price Targets: Near term volatility expected, but long-term targets are $6,000+ for gold by 2026 and $10,000–$12,000 by 2030–2032, with silver around $100 in the next year.
Transcript
I'm Charlotte Mloud at investingnews.com and here today with me is Alex Ecarian, co-founder at Allegiance Gold. Thank you so much for being here. Great to have you. >> Thanks for having me, Charlotte. >> Really good to be speaking with you. I think it's going to be a fun conversation. I was thinking just because it's our first time talking, it would be great if we led with an introduction, brief introduction to yourself, how you came to the gold industry and your work now at Allegiance Gold. >> Sure. Well, um I started my career with a company called Smith Barney, which got acquired by Morgan Stanley. Uh then I was a former banker for about 12 years financing publicly traded companies a lot of private equitybacked uh venturebacked and a lot of large real estate projects and uh in the last decade uh we actually I've been very much involved in building and growing the Legion's gold. Uh being on the other side of the aisle it's very unconventional for someone to come into the physical world. Um, I was born and raised in in Lebanon, Beiruts, and at a very young age, I've experienced a civil war and what currency fluctuation meant. And I visually remember how my parents would exchange a portion of their currency into physical gold. So, fast forward, 2008 was a stark reminder that you can't just depend on the system. uh and my background was in finance and statistics and even with that knowledge I couldn't really anticipate how bad the economy was and and how my parents were impacted. That was a lesson learned. So I went back and I basically started asking the the question what is money and why is it that uh it's not really thought well in school? Wall Street doesn't want you to know a lot about it. I remember my days at Smith Barney. um the banks really discourage people and and obviously governments don't want you to own a lot of it. That's when the catalyst began to to start um asking and questioning the conventional wisdom. So fast forward, Allegiance Gold is a fullervice physical precious metals dealer. U we've been in business for almost a decade and we really focus on education, relationship and full transparency. >> Well, thank you for that introduction. I think it is always very very insightful to hear how people came to this industry. Certainly we have a lot to go over today when it comes to gold. I wonder if we can begin with the big picture and learn where you see gold as being in the cycle right now. >> So anytime you have a bull market in gold, if you go back and study the history from the 70s to the early 2000, it's typically a 10 to 12 year cycle. And for me really the last starting point was during 2020. And basically at at that point we know what every government did in terms of overprinting providing some support for the people to stay home and and not make a big deal. Essentially we sacrificed the currency to save the economy. And fast forward what's happened is 2022 there was another catalyst change in the market specifically when the US government and Western banks seized Russian assets and the world started paying attention that if you're not fully aligned with the US because it happened where they took over the US Treasury bonds that is a national risk thereafter you have the central banks the I call them the insiders of the money game they're the ones that are deciding what to do with the interest rates and they're deciding how much money to print. So essentially we've seen central banks go from on average about four to 600 tons to over a,000 tons in the last few years. 2025 was roughly about 900 tons. But what I pay attention to is what is their direction? uh the survey that the world gold council does on an annual basis in June last time when they did the survey almost 79% of the central banks basically said that we are on a path of having more gold why because it's a neutral asset once you have it in their jurisdiction it's not something that could be seized by the uh western banks or even the US government so what does that mean when you understand that things work in a cycle and the starting point was about the year 2020. If you take the lowest points of 2020 was roughly gold around 1,500. Today we're about 5,000. And if you understand that the second half of the cycle actually moves faster than the first half, I think we're in the fourth or fifth inning uh in terms of the the bull market because the fundamentals are the same. We have an unprecedented amount of deficit spending and the debt is growing. We have pressure on lowering the interest rates, but yet quietly in the background, central banks continue to basically buy more and more gold. >> I think that really helps to situate where we're at today. So, we've got these major underlying drivers for gold. I want to hone in a little bit more on current events right now because one of the big questions we've been getting from our audience in the last couple of weeks is of course we have gold at historically high levels right now but we have conflict in the Middle East that continues to play out and people are wondering gold is supposed to be a safe haven asset that people flock to in times of turmoil. So why isn't the price higher right now? So what are your thoughts on on that angle? >> See gold is not responding to war. Gold is simply responding to the fact that the Federal Reserve might not lower interest rate as anticipated. Let me explain my thesis. If you think about what's happening, you have a trifecta of things that will affect inflation. Number one, you have higher oil prices. When oil prices goes from about $50 a barrel at the beginning of the year to over 100, and then you have the International Energy Agency and and President Trump intervene in two ways. number one releasing 400 mil million uh uh barrels of oil and at the same time removing sanctions from Russia so that way they can actually sell start selling oil. So we know that oil is a big component of the inflation numbers. Now obviously President Trump has the pump baby pump policy where we're almost independent from an oil consumption at this point and we're getting roughly 2% of the oil from the straight of Hermuse. But at the end of the day, oil is a global commodity priced. So what happens is as the price continues to be above for a long period of time, it will have a triple effect on a on the inflation itself. So on one hand, you have inflation, excuse me, oil. On the other hand, you also have the fertilizers. One-third of fertilizers comes from that straight of her moose. Now, why is that important? Typically when farmers start farming for the season they buy fertilizers in February and March and that is one of the key ingredients for their uh crops. If that cost increases eventually it's going to trickle down on the production cost and food costs in general. So the second big thing that I see is an increase in the food cost. And last but not least the war was anticipated to last about 4 to 5 weeks. Obviously for strategic military purposes you cannot really put a specific time frame and the rhetoric from both parties is that it's going to continue. Nothing is going to end in the next week or so. With that being said, original forecast of war was anywhere between 50 to about 255 billion. And think about it this way, we are essentially printing money to pay the deficit. The $2 trillion deficit that we have here in the US interest represents about half of that nearly a trillion dollars. Does it make sense for us to continue to borrow more simply pay the interest on the debt? So we have a big math problem. And if you think about these three components, you are expected to see much higher inflation. What does that do? that will force the hand of the Federal Reserve not to cut interest rates and the market is waiting for lower interest rate including what has been factored in into the price of oil forecast for this year. So in summary, I think oil is responding to higher anticipated inflation which would defer or deter the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates. And that's why we're seeing the metal trade from about 5,000 to about 5,200 in the last couple weeks. Very helpful explanation there and it really highlights the massive inflation that could be coming. If we look forward into 2026, I know the Fed is already struggling to get inflation down to its 2% target level. How would you put a number on where we could go in 2026 for inflation? >> I think it all depends on how long the war is going to last or I should say how long the energy prices will be high. So, I think the estimate that I was reading about uh when this first started that a $10 increase in the price of a barrel of an oil will result anywhere between 0.1 to 0.3% in increase in inflation. So, right now we didn't go up 10 20 30 40 we went up about 50%. Excuse me, $50. Um, which means if you take the same numbers, it's fair to anticipate 0.5 to about 2% increase in the inflation number. So, but don't forget the way that the government measures inflation, they're only looking at the last 12 month period. February inflation numbers came were on at par at whatever the anticipated market rate was at about 2.4. But the average American or the average consumer knows by now that inflation is much much higher than that. So the thing with with inflation that you have to pay attention to is if the price has gone up and you're used to paying $150 for something that you were paying $100, now it if it only goes up another $45, the reported inflation numbers appears to be de accelerating, but in reality we're still paying a higher price. I don't pay attention to the actual percentage of the inflation because in my professional opinion because of the fact that it's been changed over the years since 1980, it could very well be manipulated on how the government wants it. The same argument I can make about the GDP numbers and anytime you see revisions after revisions after revisions, we just revised down the job numbers for February to 92,000. We just revised down the fourth quarter GDP number from 1.4 four to half of that to 0.7%. What I what I look at is what is the where's the disconnect between the real economy and the stock market in general. So here to date the market has dropped very minimally about 2%. But we're we are expected to see a lot more simply because when the job numbers drop, consumer confidence drops, consumer spending uh drops and the US economy roughly 70% of that is based on U the consumer spending. So when you think about higher oil prices, it affects corporate earnings. And speaking of which, we're at a time that we're seeing some cracks within the banking system. Couple weeks ago, Black Rockck came out and uh Morgan Stanley came out and they said, "We are minimizing the redemption of the private credit market." For the listeners that don't know what the private credit is, think about you uh going online and buying this concept of let me um buy now and pay later has nothing to do with a credit card. Has nothing to do with a conventional bank extended credit. You have a lot of these private companies that have started and a bank indirectly is investing in them taking an equity position. Now that market is about a1 to3 trillion but what happens is when you start seeing defaults after defaults because the consumer doesn't have the ability or the wherewithal to pay back that has a triple effect. So the way I look at this is the bond market is also signaling some weakness. Specifically, if you look at the tripleB rated bonds where companies are continuing to borrow, their balance sheet is not healthy, their income statement is not healthy. So, if the entire system is depending on more and more borrowing, there comes a point where we're going to see the system is not going to function properly and you need the banking sector. So, in in terms of the rates, it's it's important for the listeners to understand. Back in 2008, we had $140 a barrel of oil, but back then we were only producing about 5 million barrel. Today, the market cannot withstand that high a figure. Why? Because the corporate earnings will drop, their bond rating will drop, and that will further affect the liquidity within the banking system. So, what people need to kind of pay attention to is don't just look at the the gold price and think that the 5,200 has dropped to 5,000 that this is a falling knife. Keep in mind, gold is still up year to date at about 17%. In the last year, gold is still up about 65%. But the intention of gold is not for now. It's for the mid to long term. And if you understand the fundamentals of what's happening with the debt, with the money, with the interest rates, and where we are with the cycle of the economy, just today I read that Goldman Sachs is increasing the recessionary uh probability from 20% to 25%. So what what people have to understand is that how do I position myself that in the event something happens, at least I have something that is really outside of the system. >> I think it's so important to highlight what's going on under the surface. So thank you for going into that. And speaking about the economic outlook, a word that I have heard brought to the surface a little bit more again is stagflation. So I'm wondering your thoughts on the economic outlook. Do you see a stagflationary scenario unfolding here? >> Yes and no. No, because the government can influence the GDP number. War in itself is spending. and you're spending on the military complex weaponry. So at some point you might very well see a increase on the large goods from a weaponary perspective. No, because uh excuse me. Yes, because if we continuously see this revision down from the GDP number, I mean, the whole point of the big beautiful bill was we're going to deregulate, we're going to increase the debt, we're going to lower the taxes, and the uh growth will more than compensate the increase in inflation or the increase of debt servicing. that if it doesn't work out, it will have a big impact. Number one, midterm elections are are around the corner. So, the word uh uh affordability has to be addressed. The reason why President Trump asked or allowed Russia to start selling oil, he understand that it this is going to come back home. If the oil prices continue to be this high, not only is it going to impact the corporate earnings, although Chevron and some other uh oil industry are doing well, but in general, the consumer and other corporate earnings, that will have a a a lot more political uh uh impact on the midterm election. So I what I'm looking for is the first quarter uh GDP that's going to come out at some point in in April and May will give us a little bit of a consensus of what happened with the Supreme Court's decision on the trade. Speaking of trade, we have uh President Trump and Ashi Ping scheduled well they were scheduled. They they pushed back the meeting to talk about trades and and possibly have other discussions. But I think that straight of Hermuz is the battlefield not only from an oil perspective but the dominance of currency. You know one day Iran came out and said we're not going to allow uh oil that's going to US or Israel and another day they came out and they said we're only going to allow oil uh that's going out to be paid in in Juan. So there's a lot of mixed signals from this geopolitical aspect and and I think that battleground is important for people to pay attention and understand how everything is connected from dollar, oil, gold and and the market in general. So if the second if the first quarter GDP numbers continue to drop and we see a hike in inflation, you're going to see not only chatters, but you're going to see that baked in in the price of gold. There's definitely so many different events to pay attention to and hopefully connect the dots on. I want to take you back a little more to current events once again because we do have the next Fed meeting happening this week. So, it sounds like despite what's going on with oil and inflation. Rates are largely expected to stay unchanged at least at this meeting. But, as you've been saying, inflation looks likely to rise. It looks like decreases in interest rates are becoming increasingly unlikely. We also have a new Fed chair coming in in just a couple of months. So what will you be watching at this meeting? I know the commentary portion is always typically something that people look at. >> Absolutely. I think if you look at the CME forecast of the rate, it's 99.9% that there nothing will happen this meeting. You can also make the argument that uh the Fed doesn't have the necessary data and at the same time it's almost a political decision. if Jerome Powell is gonna be replaced by Kevin Walsh, which by the way, he's known to not like the idea of inflating the balance sheet, uh, but at some point, uh, his conviction will be tested because the market and what President Trump is pushing for is actually lower interest rates. And in in an environment where inflation might be increasing, you actually don't want a uh a lower interest rate. You actually want a higher interest rates. And I'm not talking about a Paul Vulker uh uh policy of really raising the rates too much, but the conventional wisdom is from a central banker's perspective that in order for me to bring down inflation, I have to raise the rates. This is one of the things that uh Jerome Powell did uh previously. Now, what I'm paying attention to is what is their rhetoric on the trade numbers, on the job numbers? Uh what's the plot? Uh what what are they anticipating in terms of a commentary? Are they seeing higher volatility? Are they seeing some more concerns that we don't we haven't seen yet? But you know the banking sector for me is where uh the cracks will start showing because a bank is sits in a very unique position. On one side they have all the depositors money and on the other side they have the loans that they've given out. So if there is some problems with these loans, if there is impairment, then that will trickle down on how much more they can lend, what how much they can change their underwriting guidelines. And what the central bank is paying attention to is should we uh where is this fiscal uh uh uh uh measurement like can we continue on this path? They're going to look at the GDP and the government can influence GDP. And if you look at if you think about the US government as a US corporation for a second and you measure their entire debt, don't just look at the national debt of about 38 39 trillion. Think about the unfunded liabilities and all the debt and then compare that to the size of the GDP. You're going to realize that it's three times worse than what the numbers are being reported. So long as we're able to increase the GDP on paper and and keep inflation at bay, then the status quo will continue. So in a nutshell, I don't anticipate a lot of movement from the next two days meeting. I do anticipate some political rhetoric of President Trump basically calling out Jerome Powell for not wanting to lower the interest rates. I think it's premature for for the Fed to lower the interest rates in an environment where they anticipate inflation to go up. And one thing just to mention about inflation the numbers that they report it's backwards looking the unemployment number is backwardlooking but there are some numbers that you can take and understand what is the implication at the present and moving forward. So consumer spending is going to be key and corporate confidence in spending is also going to be key. >> Yeah I think it's so important to look at the the trickiness and how some of these numbers are delivered to us. So we've gone over a lot of the price drivers that are behind gold. I'm wondering, do you have a particular price target that you're looking at for gold in 2026? It's been a pretty interesting year with the price going to all-time highs. We're in this bit of a pullback right now. So, what do you see coming for the price? >> You know, I think shortterm you're going to have some volatility with about 20 to 25% standard deviation on both sides. I think the forecast at the beginning of the year, uh, we had a video and we talked about how it's 6,000 plus. And I I look at gold as a bull cycle in terms of a 10 to 12 year period. And and my starting point has been the year 2020. And if you take that lowest point in 2020 and go back and study how gold performed during modern daytime and and again 1970s, it's almost a anomaly, an outlier because you had the Nixon, you had such a high interest rates, the the Paul Verer uh uh changed the rates and inflation was out of control. that is almost very difficult for us to use as a a base or or reference point. So I I think anytime gold enters a bull market, you have a 7 to eight times X from its lowest point to its highest. U you know my personal forecast is by 2030 2032, we could very well see price between 10 to 12,000. >> Yeah, I think those those larger gold price predictions are starting to sound more and more realistic as we move. And of course, we have to take some time to talk about silver as well. Like gold, it had that major run up at the end of January. We're in a correction or consolidation period right now. Moving forward, do you see a similar trajectory for the silver price where we get to new highs or or how are you looking at silver? >> I think uh silver this year will uh challenge the three-digit level. We could very well see another $100 level. Uh the movement from 30 to 40 was very methodical. It took some time but the movement from 40 to 60 and then from 80 to 120 was very very fast. If you look at the chart specifically from uh November right right around Thanksgiving until the height of of uh January and I remember I was in um the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference and the enthusiasm and the excitement of the investors from the mining side and the metal side. It was was almost at an all-time high uh in terms of both attendance and just the energy. Uh I think the fundamentals are still there. It was good for silver to have a little bit more uh retraction so that way we can solidify and and and have more of a tested level as opposed to this wild ride. Like for example, before the war, silver was at 96. Now we're around 80. I think in the next month or so, we we would anticipate a lot more of volatility and and confirmation. But mid to longterm, I would say for the next year, our our forecast is around $100 level. Uh keep in mind that the invisible hand of the government uh that buys for the military complex is unknown and silver institute.org does not report that considering that there is that industrial aspect of silver. Yes, we have some a structural deficit. Yes, we have demand more than available supply. Yes, if you look at the CME numbers, you can see that allocated silver has been dropping from about 124 to about almost 80 from the beginning of the year. There are a lot of indication that says that there should be a decoupling from the physical market versus the actual paper market and um in due time we will see that again. I think having a bid and ask spread with from the physical side it's it's a lot more narrower than what it used to be. uh when silver peaked between 110 to 120 uh that uh gap widened and uh it's almost you know I don't see it as a penalty I see it more as a signal that uh the market you know some people are really taking the the profit off table but eventually essentially I should say uh because silver is indispensable and we have this such a growing uh demand u it's not a matter of paying attention to the short-term price volatility it's more about positioning because in metals in general, you actually need time. It's always difficult to to time the market. Who would have thought at the beginning of the year that we were going to go to war end of February? Maybe President Trump thought knew that, but the general public did not. And we we weren't able to factor that in in that decision-m process. >> Very, very true. And I want to go back to your comment about the physical and paper silver markets decoupling because I think that's been a hot topic of conversation. It's something that people in the silver sector would like to see. What do you think would be the trigger for that to actually happen? Would it just be growing demand, a short supply? How how would you look at it? >> Well, let's uh look at the macro picture and then maybe u go down to the micro level. It's it wasn't a surprise that uh that the US went to Venezuela because if you understand that uh silver supply side of it you know Mexico and and Peru are top two top three in the world of silver production for years the the China had so much of a influence and control in the western American region where the western hemisphere I should say specifically in South America where they would basically go into these corrupt uh uh governments where they knew very well that they need to borrow, they're not going to be able to repay, but at the very least they have that collateral in place. So that the bricks nation, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, the way that they've been expanding uh by uh incorporating the uh bricks plus members from Egypt to Nigeria to Iran uh to uh uh these nations that are rich in in in minerals. So the move to kind of take over Venezuela and kind of put pressure on Cuba and Colombia was to essentially push out Chinese influence. Now why is that important? Because we want to control more of the commodities. When silver was added part of the critical metal here in the US, that was not a noise. That was a signal that we need it and we want to control it. And by the way, because we don't have enough of it, we're not going to tariff yet. Okay? Even though at the beginning of 2025 there was a lot of confusion what's been happening with silver globally you've been seeing uh metals travel from Europe from London bullion market to the New York because of that arbitrage and then go from New York to the Shanghai exchange because they only do physical settlement versus here um there's a little bit more of the leasing so on and so forth you know I I think as you start seeing that the u and The clearest indication for me was back in 2020 where the SLV uh I think back then was being managed by um I'm trying to think if it was HSBC and then JP Morgan took over the c the custodian role but basically there was a single day the volume of a single day covered the entire annual supply of silver. That's when I realized that this this this connection between paper and and physical specifically within the uh ETFs doesn't make sense. Although there are some other ETFs like the Sprat ETF that is one to one at least you have that coverage. So to go back to your question when you see the big players getting involved from JP Morgan Chase being uh uh fined up to a billion dollar for spoofing the market but yet taking custody of the SLV. Uh there's a lot of invisible hand. What I would pay attention to is where is the growing demand and how much of the silver is being removed from these exchanges because once it it's removed in order for it to go back into the exchange as uh and allocated for a specific it has to go through a lot of shipment and insurance and even the authentication process. So, as the prices kind of move up where the US is is getting a lot more control and and we have better access, you know, I I think you're going to see a lot more manipulation in the short term. That's why it's a good idea to kind of view silver as a mid to long term. And and the best way to kind of remove this emotional uh roller coaster is to constantly average up or average down and and think about what is my exit strategy and what's the point. A lot of times investors make the mistake of looking at the silver mining stocks the same way of of their silver stock. You know, one is something that you actually control and own. The other one you're actually participating in in in the in the business, how well it's run and and really the the margin expansion and the company's performance. So, the way I look at this, it's it's a lot better to speculate on the paper side of it as opposed to the physical side of it. just think about the the the physical gold and silver as an actual form of wealth that you have outside of the system. >> I think that makes a lot of sense and it leads into another topic that I wanted to bring up with you. I always like to ask this to physical bullion dealers. What trends are you seeing among buyers right now? Are they buying and selling? Who's doing the buying and selling? Especially as we're at this very interesting time for gold and silver. >> Yeah. So in the last couple of years, the perspective buyers um psychology has changed because a lot of times people would come to us, they're concerned about the dollar, they're concerned about the market, they're concerned about the bank, and they want to have something that it's physical. So it was always that um a defensive positioning so to speak, more of a protection, more of a privacy, more of a wealth preservation. But in the last two years, we've seen because of the evidence, we've seen the performance. As a matter of fact, uh Bank of America uh wrote an article about how gold is becoming an alpha, how it is actually enhancing the performance of portfolios. So, we're we're seeing three types of buyers. You have your opportunistic strategic buyers that are looking at this uh 6 to 12 month period. You have your conventional buyers that are mid to long term. And then you have the third type of buyer who's actually saying, you know what, I really want to take advantage of the markets of this fluctuation. So specifically in 2025 in the first half before silver started taking off when the gold to silver ratio was at about 100, uh we saw some of our clients strategically kind of trade in some of their golds, locking in the profit and and and capitalizing on the silver move. Uh we also had a lot of clients at the beginning of 2025 really diversify a portion of their portfolio in platinum and also take advantage of the uh uh the uh shift in uh allocation within the precious metals. Uh but overall I would say you have two types of mindset right now more of a defensive and an offensive and it you know when when the big players JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley come out and Goldman where they revise up the forecast and they tell the market hey instead of the 60/40 portfolio you might be better off with a 60 2020 20 you know that's a shocker right from the conventional uh uh uh system. uh all of a sudden you're having people that were complacent that were just following the financial advisor's suggestion questioning that narrative and saying actually I do want to have something alternative and I do want to have some some physical. >> Yeah, I think those those comments from the big banks really have spurred maybe some new entrance. So that's that's really interesting to hear about. I think we'll we'll start to wrap it up now. This has been really educational. Are there any final thoughts that you would leave investors with right now during these interesting times? >> Number one, you want to differentiate the uh uh the noise from the signal. We don't know how long this war is going to last, but we do know this that it's going to cost a lot more money and it's going to affect the value of the dollar. And if you're someone who's thinking about precious metals as a mid to long term, this is one of the things that you want to factor in into your decision-m process. Number two, but you want to start asking the the right question, which is why am I even looking at precious metals? Because if you have the wrong expectation, you're going to be disappointed. And right now, my concern is that you have a lot of firsttime buyers that have this fear of missing out that they're exclusively looking at this as a short-term positioning where I want to get in at 5,000 and I want to exit the 5,500. When you're investing in the physical precious metals, it's important for you to start learning the two-way markets. When you buy, you buy at the retail. When you sell, you're going to sell at the wholesale cost. There is a little little bit of a delta. And moreover, you want to start educating yourself on what are the optimal best products. If you're not a coin collector, if this is the first time, you might want to consider to stick to plain vanilla bullion products that are widely recognized from the US Mint, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Perth Mint, and the British Mint. and always think about what is my exit strategy and what's my time frame. So those are the type of conversation we'd like to have here at Allegiance Gold and making sure that it's the right fit for the right uh client. >> Well, I think that's so that's so important making sure that people are not disappointed when they do come into the sector. So thank you so much for coming on to go over what's going on in gold and silver. This was great. >> Thanks Charlotte. Thanks for having me. >> Of course. And once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Alex Ocarion with Allegiance Gold. Thank you for watching. If you like this video, make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. We'd also love to hear your thoughts, so leave us a comment below.
Alex Ebkarian: Gold, Silver 2026 Price Calls, Key Drivers to Watch Now
Summary
Transcript
I'm Charlotte Mloud at investingnews.com and here today with me is Alex Ecarian, co-founder at Allegiance Gold. Thank you so much for being here. Great to have you. >> Thanks for having me, Charlotte. >> Really good to be speaking with you. I think it's going to be a fun conversation. I was thinking just because it's our first time talking, it would be great if we led with an introduction, brief introduction to yourself, how you came to the gold industry and your work now at Allegiance Gold. >> Sure. Well, um I started my career with a company called Smith Barney, which got acquired by Morgan Stanley. Uh then I was a former banker for about 12 years financing publicly traded companies a lot of private equitybacked uh venturebacked and a lot of large real estate projects and uh in the last decade uh we actually I've been very much involved in building and growing the Legion's gold. Uh being on the other side of the aisle it's very unconventional for someone to come into the physical world. Um, I was born and raised in in Lebanon, Beiruts, and at a very young age, I've experienced a civil war and what currency fluctuation meant. And I visually remember how my parents would exchange a portion of their currency into physical gold. So, fast forward, 2008 was a stark reminder that you can't just depend on the system. uh and my background was in finance and statistics and even with that knowledge I couldn't really anticipate how bad the economy was and and how my parents were impacted. That was a lesson learned. So I went back and I basically started asking the the question what is money and why is it that uh it's not really thought well in school? Wall Street doesn't want you to know a lot about it. I remember my days at Smith Barney. um the banks really discourage people and and obviously governments don't want you to own a lot of it. That's when the catalyst began to to start um asking and questioning the conventional wisdom. So fast forward, Allegiance Gold is a fullervice physical precious metals dealer. U we've been in business for almost a decade and we really focus on education, relationship and full transparency. >> Well, thank you for that introduction. I think it is always very very insightful to hear how people came to this industry. Certainly we have a lot to go over today when it comes to gold. I wonder if we can begin with the big picture and learn where you see gold as being in the cycle right now. >> So anytime you have a bull market in gold, if you go back and study the history from the 70s to the early 2000, it's typically a 10 to 12 year cycle. And for me really the last starting point was during 2020. And basically at at that point we know what every government did in terms of overprinting providing some support for the people to stay home and and not make a big deal. Essentially we sacrificed the currency to save the economy. And fast forward what's happened is 2022 there was another catalyst change in the market specifically when the US government and Western banks seized Russian assets and the world started paying attention that if you're not fully aligned with the US because it happened where they took over the US Treasury bonds that is a national risk thereafter you have the central banks the I call them the insiders of the money game they're the ones that are deciding what to do with the interest rates and they're deciding how much money to print. So essentially we've seen central banks go from on average about four to 600 tons to over a,000 tons in the last few years. 2025 was roughly about 900 tons. But what I pay attention to is what is their direction? uh the survey that the world gold council does on an annual basis in June last time when they did the survey almost 79% of the central banks basically said that we are on a path of having more gold why because it's a neutral asset once you have it in their jurisdiction it's not something that could be seized by the uh western banks or even the US government so what does that mean when you understand that things work in a cycle and the starting point was about the year 2020. If you take the lowest points of 2020 was roughly gold around 1,500. Today we're about 5,000. And if you understand that the second half of the cycle actually moves faster than the first half, I think we're in the fourth or fifth inning uh in terms of the the bull market because the fundamentals are the same. We have an unprecedented amount of deficit spending and the debt is growing. We have pressure on lowering the interest rates, but yet quietly in the background, central banks continue to basically buy more and more gold. >> I think that really helps to situate where we're at today. So, we've got these major underlying drivers for gold. I want to hone in a little bit more on current events right now because one of the big questions we've been getting from our audience in the last couple of weeks is of course we have gold at historically high levels right now but we have conflict in the Middle East that continues to play out and people are wondering gold is supposed to be a safe haven asset that people flock to in times of turmoil. So why isn't the price higher right now? So what are your thoughts on on that angle? >> See gold is not responding to war. Gold is simply responding to the fact that the Federal Reserve might not lower interest rate as anticipated. Let me explain my thesis. If you think about what's happening, you have a trifecta of things that will affect inflation. Number one, you have higher oil prices. When oil prices goes from about $50 a barrel at the beginning of the year to over 100, and then you have the International Energy Agency and and President Trump intervene in two ways. number one releasing 400 mil million uh uh barrels of oil and at the same time removing sanctions from Russia so that way they can actually sell start selling oil. So we know that oil is a big component of the inflation numbers. Now obviously President Trump has the pump baby pump policy where we're almost independent from an oil consumption at this point and we're getting roughly 2% of the oil from the straight of Hermuse. But at the end of the day, oil is a global commodity priced. So what happens is as the price continues to be above for a long period of time, it will have a triple effect on a on the inflation itself. So on one hand, you have inflation, excuse me, oil. On the other hand, you also have the fertilizers. One-third of fertilizers comes from that straight of her moose. Now, why is that important? Typically when farmers start farming for the season they buy fertilizers in February and March and that is one of the key ingredients for their uh crops. If that cost increases eventually it's going to trickle down on the production cost and food costs in general. So the second big thing that I see is an increase in the food cost. And last but not least the war was anticipated to last about 4 to 5 weeks. Obviously for strategic military purposes you cannot really put a specific time frame and the rhetoric from both parties is that it's going to continue. Nothing is going to end in the next week or so. With that being said, original forecast of war was anywhere between 50 to about 255 billion. And think about it this way, we are essentially printing money to pay the deficit. The $2 trillion deficit that we have here in the US interest represents about half of that nearly a trillion dollars. Does it make sense for us to continue to borrow more simply pay the interest on the debt? So we have a big math problem. And if you think about these three components, you are expected to see much higher inflation. What does that do? that will force the hand of the Federal Reserve not to cut interest rates and the market is waiting for lower interest rate including what has been factored in into the price of oil forecast for this year. So in summary, I think oil is responding to higher anticipated inflation which would defer or deter the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates. And that's why we're seeing the metal trade from about 5,000 to about 5,200 in the last couple weeks. Very helpful explanation there and it really highlights the massive inflation that could be coming. If we look forward into 2026, I know the Fed is already struggling to get inflation down to its 2% target level. How would you put a number on where we could go in 2026 for inflation? >> I think it all depends on how long the war is going to last or I should say how long the energy prices will be high. So, I think the estimate that I was reading about uh when this first started that a $10 increase in the price of a barrel of an oil will result anywhere between 0.1 to 0.3% in increase in inflation. So, right now we didn't go up 10 20 30 40 we went up about 50%. Excuse me, $50. Um, which means if you take the same numbers, it's fair to anticipate 0.5 to about 2% increase in the inflation number. So, but don't forget the way that the government measures inflation, they're only looking at the last 12 month period. February inflation numbers came were on at par at whatever the anticipated market rate was at about 2.4. But the average American or the average consumer knows by now that inflation is much much higher than that. So the thing with with inflation that you have to pay attention to is if the price has gone up and you're used to paying $150 for something that you were paying $100, now it if it only goes up another $45, the reported inflation numbers appears to be de accelerating, but in reality we're still paying a higher price. I don't pay attention to the actual percentage of the inflation because in my professional opinion because of the fact that it's been changed over the years since 1980, it could very well be manipulated on how the government wants it. The same argument I can make about the GDP numbers and anytime you see revisions after revisions after revisions, we just revised down the job numbers for February to 92,000. We just revised down the fourth quarter GDP number from 1.4 four to half of that to 0.7%. What I what I look at is what is the where's the disconnect between the real economy and the stock market in general. So here to date the market has dropped very minimally about 2%. But we're we are expected to see a lot more simply because when the job numbers drop, consumer confidence drops, consumer spending uh drops and the US economy roughly 70% of that is based on U the consumer spending. So when you think about higher oil prices, it affects corporate earnings. And speaking of which, we're at a time that we're seeing some cracks within the banking system. Couple weeks ago, Black Rockck came out and uh Morgan Stanley came out and they said, "We are minimizing the redemption of the private credit market." For the listeners that don't know what the private credit is, think about you uh going online and buying this concept of let me um buy now and pay later has nothing to do with a credit card. Has nothing to do with a conventional bank extended credit. You have a lot of these private companies that have started and a bank indirectly is investing in them taking an equity position. Now that market is about a1 to3 trillion but what happens is when you start seeing defaults after defaults because the consumer doesn't have the ability or the wherewithal to pay back that has a triple effect. So the way I look at this is the bond market is also signaling some weakness. Specifically, if you look at the tripleB rated bonds where companies are continuing to borrow, their balance sheet is not healthy, their income statement is not healthy. So, if the entire system is depending on more and more borrowing, there comes a point where we're going to see the system is not going to function properly and you need the banking sector. So, in in terms of the rates, it's it's important for the listeners to understand. Back in 2008, we had $140 a barrel of oil, but back then we were only producing about 5 million barrel. Today, the market cannot withstand that high a figure. Why? Because the corporate earnings will drop, their bond rating will drop, and that will further affect the liquidity within the banking system. So, what people need to kind of pay attention to is don't just look at the the gold price and think that the 5,200 has dropped to 5,000 that this is a falling knife. Keep in mind, gold is still up year to date at about 17%. In the last year, gold is still up about 65%. But the intention of gold is not for now. It's for the mid to long term. And if you understand the fundamentals of what's happening with the debt, with the money, with the interest rates, and where we are with the cycle of the economy, just today I read that Goldman Sachs is increasing the recessionary uh probability from 20% to 25%. So what what people have to understand is that how do I position myself that in the event something happens, at least I have something that is really outside of the system. >> I think it's so important to highlight what's going on under the surface. So thank you for going into that. And speaking about the economic outlook, a word that I have heard brought to the surface a little bit more again is stagflation. So I'm wondering your thoughts on the economic outlook. Do you see a stagflationary scenario unfolding here? >> Yes and no. No, because the government can influence the GDP number. War in itself is spending. and you're spending on the military complex weaponry. So at some point you might very well see a increase on the large goods from a weaponary perspective. No, because uh excuse me. Yes, because if we continuously see this revision down from the GDP number, I mean, the whole point of the big beautiful bill was we're going to deregulate, we're going to increase the debt, we're going to lower the taxes, and the uh growth will more than compensate the increase in inflation or the increase of debt servicing. that if it doesn't work out, it will have a big impact. Number one, midterm elections are are around the corner. So, the word uh uh affordability has to be addressed. The reason why President Trump asked or allowed Russia to start selling oil, he understand that it this is going to come back home. If the oil prices continue to be this high, not only is it going to impact the corporate earnings, although Chevron and some other uh oil industry are doing well, but in general, the consumer and other corporate earnings, that will have a a a lot more political uh uh impact on the midterm election. So I what I'm looking for is the first quarter uh GDP that's going to come out at some point in in April and May will give us a little bit of a consensus of what happened with the Supreme Court's decision on the trade. Speaking of trade, we have uh President Trump and Ashi Ping scheduled well they were scheduled. They they pushed back the meeting to talk about trades and and possibly have other discussions. But I think that straight of Hermuz is the battlefield not only from an oil perspective but the dominance of currency. You know one day Iran came out and said we're not going to allow uh oil that's going to US or Israel and another day they came out and they said we're only going to allow oil uh that's going out to be paid in in Juan. So there's a lot of mixed signals from this geopolitical aspect and and I think that battleground is important for people to pay attention and understand how everything is connected from dollar, oil, gold and and the market in general. So if the second if the first quarter GDP numbers continue to drop and we see a hike in inflation, you're going to see not only chatters, but you're going to see that baked in in the price of gold. There's definitely so many different events to pay attention to and hopefully connect the dots on. I want to take you back a little more to current events once again because we do have the next Fed meeting happening this week. So, it sounds like despite what's going on with oil and inflation. Rates are largely expected to stay unchanged at least at this meeting. But, as you've been saying, inflation looks likely to rise. It looks like decreases in interest rates are becoming increasingly unlikely. We also have a new Fed chair coming in in just a couple of months. So what will you be watching at this meeting? I know the commentary portion is always typically something that people look at. >> Absolutely. I think if you look at the CME forecast of the rate, it's 99.9% that there nothing will happen this meeting. You can also make the argument that uh the Fed doesn't have the necessary data and at the same time it's almost a political decision. if Jerome Powell is gonna be replaced by Kevin Walsh, which by the way, he's known to not like the idea of inflating the balance sheet, uh, but at some point, uh, his conviction will be tested because the market and what President Trump is pushing for is actually lower interest rates. And in in an environment where inflation might be increasing, you actually don't want a uh a lower interest rate. You actually want a higher interest rates. And I'm not talking about a Paul Vulker uh uh policy of really raising the rates too much, but the conventional wisdom is from a central banker's perspective that in order for me to bring down inflation, I have to raise the rates. This is one of the things that uh Jerome Powell did uh previously. Now, what I'm paying attention to is what is their rhetoric on the trade numbers, on the job numbers? Uh what's the plot? Uh what what are they anticipating in terms of a commentary? Are they seeing higher volatility? Are they seeing some more concerns that we don't we haven't seen yet? But you know the banking sector for me is where uh the cracks will start showing because a bank is sits in a very unique position. On one side they have all the depositors money and on the other side they have the loans that they've given out. So if there is some problems with these loans, if there is impairment, then that will trickle down on how much more they can lend, what how much they can change their underwriting guidelines. And what the central bank is paying attention to is should we uh where is this fiscal uh uh uh uh measurement like can we continue on this path? They're going to look at the GDP and the government can influence GDP. And if you look at if you think about the US government as a US corporation for a second and you measure their entire debt, don't just look at the national debt of about 38 39 trillion. Think about the unfunded liabilities and all the debt and then compare that to the size of the GDP. You're going to realize that it's three times worse than what the numbers are being reported. So long as we're able to increase the GDP on paper and and keep inflation at bay, then the status quo will continue. So in a nutshell, I don't anticipate a lot of movement from the next two days meeting. I do anticipate some political rhetoric of President Trump basically calling out Jerome Powell for not wanting to lower the interest rates. I think it's premature for for the Fed to lower the interest rates in an environment where they anticipate inflation to go up. And one thing just to mention about inflation the numbers that they report it's backwards looking the unemployment number is backwardlooking but there are some numbers that you can take and understand what is the implication at the present and moving forward. So consumer spending is going to be key and corporate confidence in spending is also going to be key. >> Yeah I think it's so important to look at the the trickiness and how some of these numbers are delivered to us. So we've gone over a lot of the price drivers that are behind gold. I'm wondering, do you have a particular price target that you're looking at for gold in 2026? It's been a pretty interesting year with the price going to all-time highs. We're in this bit of a pullback right now. So, what do you see coming for the price? >> You know, I think shortterm you're going to have some volatility with about 20 to 25% standard deviation on both sides. I think the forecast at the beginning of the year, uh, we had a video and we talked about how it's 6,000 plus. And I I look at gold as a bull cycle in terms of a 10 to 12 year period. And and my starting point has been the year 2020. And if you take that lowest point in 2020 and go back and study how gold performed during modern daytime and and again 1970s, it's almost a anomaly, an outlier because you had the Nixon, you had such a high interest rates, the the Paul Verer uh uh changed the rates and inflation was out of control. that is almost very difficult for us to use as a a base or or reference point. So I I think anytime gold enters a bull market, you have a 7 to eight times X from its lowest point to its highest. U you know my personal forecast is by 2030 2032, we could very well see price between 10 to 12,000. >> Yeah, I think those those larger gold price predictions are starting to sound more and more realistic as we move. And of course, we have to take some time to talk about silver as well. Like gold, it had that major run up at the end of January. We're in a correction or consolidation period right now. Moving forward, do you see a similar trajectory for the silver price where we get to new highs or or how are you looking at silver? >> I think uh silver this year will uh challenge the three-digit level. We could very well see another $100 level. Uh the movement from 30 to 40 was very methodical. It took some time but the movement from 40 to 60 and then from 80 to 120 was very very fast. If you look at the chart specifically from uh November right right around Thanksgiving until the height of of uh January and I remember I was in um the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference and the enthusiasm and the excitement of the investors from the mining side and the metal side. It was was almost at an all-time high uh in terms of both attendance and just the energy. Uh I think the fundamentals are still there. It was good for silver to have a little bit more uh retraction so that way we can solidify and and and have more of a tested level as opposed to this wild ride. Like for example, before the war, silver was at 96. Now we're around 80. I think in the next month or so, we we would anticipate a lot more of volatility and and confirmation. But mid to longterm, I would say for the next year, our our forecast is around $100 level. Uh keep in mind that the invisible hand of the government uh that buys for the military complex is unknown and silver institute.org does not report that considering that there is that industrial aspect of silver. Yes, we have some a structural deficit. Yes, we have demand more than available supply. Yes, if you look at the CME numbers, you can see that allocated silver has been dropping from about 124 to about almost 80 from the beginning of the year. There are a lot of indication that says that there should be a decoupling from the physical market versus the actual paper market and um in due time we will see that again. I think having a bid and ask spread with from the physical side it's it's a lot more narrower than what it used to be. uh when silver peaked between 110 to 120 uh that uh gap widened and uh it's almost you know I don't see it as a penalty I see it more as a signal that uh the market you know some people are really taking the the profit off table but eventually essentially I should say uh because silver is indispensable and we have this such a growing uh demand u it's not a matter of paying attention to the short-term price volatility it's more about positioning because in metals in general, you actually need time. It's always difficult to to time the market. Who would have thought at the beginning of the year that we were going to go to war end of February? Maybe President Trump thought knew that, but the general public did not. And we we weren't able to factor that in in that decision-m process. >> Very, very true. And I want to go back to your comment about the physical and paper silver markets decoupling because I think that's been a hot topic of conversation. It's something that people in the silver sector would like to see. What do you think would be the trigger for that to actually happen? Would it just be growing demand, a short supply? How how would you look at it? >> Well, let's uh look at the macro picture and then maybe u go down to the micro level. It's it wasn't a surprise that uh that the US went to Venezuela because if you understand that uh silver supply side of it you know Mexico and and Peru are top two top three in the world of silver production for years the the China had so much of a influence and control in the western American region where the western hemisphere I should say specifically in South America where they would basically go into these corrupt uh uh governments where they knew very well that they need to borrow, they're not going to be able to repay, but at the very least they have that collateral in place. So that the bricks nation, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, the way that they've been expanding uh by uh incorporating the uh bricks plus members from Egypt to Nigeria to Iran uh to uh uh these nations that are rich in in in minerals. So the move to kind of take over Venezuela and kind of put pressure on Cuba and Colombia was to essentially push out Chinese influence. Now why is that important? Because we want to control more of the commodities. When silver was added part of the critical metal here in the US, that was not a noise. That was a signal that we need it and we want to control it. And by the way, because we don't have enough of it, we're not going to tariff yet. Okay? Even though at the beginning of 2025 there was a lot of confusion what's been happening with silver globally you've been seeing uh metals travel from Europe from London bullion market to the New York because of that arbitrage and then go from New York to the Shanghai exchange because they only do physical settlement versus here um there's a little bit more of the leasing so on and so forth you know I I think as you start seeing that the u and The clearest indication for me was back in 2020 where the SLV uh I think back then was being managed by um I'm trying to think if it was HSBC and then JP Morgan took over the c the custodian role but basically there was a single day the volume of a single day covered the entire annual supply of silver. That's when I realized that this this this connection between paper and and physical specifically within the uh ETFs doesn't make sense. Although there are some other ETFs like the Sprat ETF that is one to one at least you have that coverage. So to go back to your question when you see the big players getting involved from JP Morgan Chase being uh uh fined up to a billion dollar for spoofing the market but yet taking custody of the SLV. Uh there's a lot of invisible hand. What I would pay attention to is where is the growing demand and how much of the silver is being removed from these exchanges because once it it's removed in order for it to go back into the exchange as uh and allocated for a specific it has to go through a lot of shipment and insurance and even the authentication process. So, as the prices kind of move up where the US is is getting a lot more control and and we have better access, you know, I I think you're going to see a lot more manipulation in the short term. That's why it's a good idea to kind of view silver as a mid to long term. And and the best way to kind of remove this emotional uh roller coaster is to constantly average up or average down and and think about what is my exit strategy and what's the point. A lot of times investors make the mistake of looking at the silver mining stocks the same way of of their silver stock. You know, one is something that you actually control and own. The other one you're actually participating in in in the in the business, how well it's run and and really the the margin expansion and the company's performance. So, the way I look at this, it's it's a lot better to speculate on the paper side of it as opposed to the physical side of it. just think about the the the physical gold and silver as an actual form of wealth that you have outside of the system. >> I think that makes a lot of sense and it leads into another topic that I wanted to bring up with you. I always like to ask this to physical bullion dealers. What trends are you seeing among buyers right now? Are they buying and selling? Who's doing the buying and selling? Especially as we're at this very interesting time for gold and silver. >> Yeah. So in the last couple of years, the perspective buyers um psychology has changed because a lot of times people would come to us, they're concerned about the dollar, they're concerned about the market, they're concerned about the bank, and they want to have something that it's physical. So it was always that um a defensive positioning so to speak, more of a protection, more of a privacy, more of a wealth preservation. But in the last two years, we've seen because of the evidence, we've seen the performance. As a matter of fact, uh Bank of America uh wrote an article about how gold is becoming an alpha, how it is actually enhancing the performance of portfolios. So, we're we're seeing three types of buyers. You have your opportunistic strategic buyers that are looking at this uh 6 to 12 month period. You have your conventional buyers that are mid to long term. And then you have the third type of buyer who's actually saying, you know what, I really want to take advantage of the markets of this fluctuation. So specifically in 2025 in the first half before silver started taking off when the gold to silver ratio was at about 100, uh we saw some of our clients strategically kind of trade in some of their golds, locking in the profit and and and capitalizing on the silver move. Uh we also had a lot of clients at the beginning of 2025 really diversify a portion of their portfolio in platinum and also take advantage of the uh uh the uh shift in uh allocation within the precious metals. Uh but overall I would say you have two types of mindset right now more of a defensive and an offensive and it you know when when the big players JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley come out and Goldman where they revise up the forecast and they tell the market hey instead of the 60/40 portfolio you might be better off with a 60 2020 20 you know that's a shocker right from the conventional uh uh uh system. uh all of a sudden you're having people that were complacent that were just following the financial advisor's suggestion questioning that narrative and saying actually I do want to have something alternative and I do want to have some some physical. >> Yeah, I think those those comments from the big banks really have spurred maybe some new entrance. So that's that's really interesting to hear about. I think we'll we'll start to wrap it up now. This has been really educational. Are there any final thoughts that you would leave investors with right now during these interesting times? >> Number one, you want to differentiate the uh uh the noise from the signal. We don't know how long this war is going to last, but we do know this that it's going to cost a lot more money and it's going to affect the value of the dollar. And if you're someone who's thinking about precious metals as a mid to long term, this is one of the things that you want to factor in into your decision-m process. Number two, but you want to start asking the the right question, which is why am I even looking at precious metals? Because if you have the wrong expectation, you're going to be disappointed. And right now, my concern is that you have a lot of firsttime buyers that have this fear of missing out that they're exclusively looking at this as a short-term positioning where I want to get in at 5,000 and I want to exit the 5,500. When you're investing in the physical precious metals, it's important for you to start learning the two-way markets. When you buy, you buy at the retail. When you sell, you're going to sell at the wholesale cost. There is a little little bit of a delta. And moreover, you want to start educating yourself on what are the optimal best products. If you're not a coin collector, if this is the first time, you might want to consider to stick to plain vanilla bullion products that are widely recognized from the US Mint, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Perth Mint, and the British Mint. and always think about what is my exit strategy and what's my time frame. So those are the type of conversation we'd like to have here at Allegiance Gold and making sure that it's the right fit for the right uh client. >> Well, I think that's so that's so important making sure that people are not disappointed when they do come into the sector. So thank you so much for coming on to go over what's going on in gold and silver. This was great. >> Thanks Charlotte. Thanks for having me. >> Of course. And once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Alex Ocarion with Allegiance Gold. Thank you for watching. If you like this video, make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. We'd also love to hear your thoughts, so leave us a comment below.