Van Eck's Q1 2026 Market Outlook: Risk On, Baby! | Jan van Eck

Summary

• Risk-On Outlook: The guest frames 2026 as a year of greater policy visibility, supporting a risk-on stance with limited surprise from the Fed and fiscal policy.
• AI: He argues the AI "bubble" has already popped in weaker names, while underlying token/compute demand remains robust, making it an attractive time to reload AI exposure.
• Key AI Beneficiaries: NVDA is viewed as fundamentally supported with improving valuation on earnings growth; ORCL saw a sharp run-up then reset after a big compute deal, reflecting healthy market discipline.
• Scale Profiteers: Mega-cap platforms with operating leverage are still attractive; the guest remains comfortable owning leaders benefiting from AI-driven demand and efficiency.
• Private Credit: The guest sees opportunity after a tough 2025; BDCs yield around 9% and the managers (e.g., ARES) have re-rated from extreme multiples to more reasonable levels.
• Gold: He is high conviction that gold is undergoing a secular repricing as a global reserve asset amid geopolitical unpredictability and EM central bank demand.
• Nuclear Power: As an “AI 2.0” beneficiary, nuclear equities corrected from nosebleed levels but retain multi-year tailwinds from rising electricity demand.
• Selective Crypto: While cautious near term on Bitcoin’s cycle, he sees dislocated value in select Crypto Tokens and points to actively managed approaches as a way to participate.

Transcript

Number one, we have a lot of clarity around interest rates and the Federal Reserve that came out of a talk that Scott Bessant gave. The fear out there is that we are selecting a new Fed uh chair as we do every four years in May of 2026 and that Donald Trump is exerting too much control over the Fed. We'll talk about that. Secondly, the AI bubble. We're in a bubble. We're in a bubble. We're in a bubble. I We heard that so much at the end of last year. I I I hope to show you that the bubble has popped and it's time to to reload your AI allocations. Uh private credit also had a very tough end of 2025. The the a famous uh Wall Street CEO said there was a cockroach in the private credit markets. And I think that um those fears are overdone but well priced and again an opportunity. Welcome to thoughtful money. I'm its founder and your host Adam Taggard. Today we've got the great fortune of having the return appearance of one of the most respected capital allocators in the business Yan Vanek. Jan is CEO of Vanek, an asset management firm with over a hundred billion in assets under management, invested across its wide family of ETFs and funds, spending equity, bond, commodity, digital, and regional asset classes, as we've done over the past several quarters. Now, Jan and I will spend the next hour discussing his Q1 macro, and market outlooks, as well as where he sees the biggest opportunities for investors right now. Yan, thanks so much for joining us today. >> Great to see you. Happy New Year. >> Thanks. Happy New Year to you as well. Um, you look great. I understand you were just in the sun up until yesterday. I hope you had a fantastic winter holiday with your family. >> Uh, it was restful. Thank you. Yeah. >> All right. Good. Well, Yan, look, we've kind of done this drill enough recently that uh the audience is probably just saying, "Adam, stop talking and just let him get to his slides." Um, so I guess let's let's go straight to them. But I guess before you pull them up, if you had to just sort of highlight a central theme or maybe even a central word or phrase for 2026, what comes to mind? >> Uh yeah, visibility, I guess, which means risk on. I mean, that's the title. So maybe I should just say risk on >> if you want one phrase. >> Okay. Well, that's uh that's that's very optimistic and exciting. So, I think folks are going to be really interested to hear where you see the opportunities in a risk-on year. >> Yep. Um, all right. Well, before I get into it, just if if you haven't heard this quarterly outlook before, as Adam mentioned, uh, I am CEO, but I also sit on Vanex investment committee and what what we try to do in this quarterly outlooks, I see a lot of charts and my 52 investment colleagues at Vanex see a lot of charts every day. Um, and what I try to do is in this quarterly outlook emphasize what might be missing if you're just tuning into a lot of the financial noise uh that comes out of the markets. So, um, you know, so I tried to pick charts hopefully that maybe you haven't seen before or a little bit more interesting and and and relevant. So, that's that's the hope. Um, well, >> you always do a great job with that, Yan. I'm sure it's going to be no different this time. Well, h so thank you. Um so, uh starting it off just besides the fact that um you know, you know, we try to make these charts interesting, our perspective is very much that the financial markets sit within a world that is changing very quickly because of political events or uh economic changes or technology. And so we think those forces can pull the market in ways that you might not fully appreciate if you just stare at market prices themselves. So that's our that's our perspective. It's also if you want to say there's an inefficiency that we try to take advantage of, it's having a longer time perspective. So that time perspective means actually changes can happen very quickly but sometimes you can feel more conviction about something that's going to happen in 2030 or 2035 than what everyone else is trying to do which is you know say what's going to happen in 2026. >> So you can decide at the end of this whether the experiment is worth it. So from the perspective of 2020 2035 there are these big magnets I call pulling at the financial markets uh one is this fu huge fiscal deficit that we had that was worst ever in peace time how do we stand relative to that again to my theme of the day we have greater visibility and better situation and fiscal situation so we'll get into that um artificial intelligence uh the the token demand that's out there, we spent a lot of time talking about it last quarter, continues to be extremely strong as reflected in the MAG7 earnings. Um India is is still growing. I won't spend a lot of time on that. And we had a lot of financial innovation last year. What does that mean coming into today and the themes that I'm going to talk about today? Number one, we have a lot of clarity around interest rates and the Federal Reserve that came out of a talk that Scott Bessant gave. The fear out there is that we are selecting a new Fed uh chair as we do every four years in May of 2026 and that Donald Trump is exerting too much control over the Fed. We'll talk about that. Secondly, the AI bubble. We're in a bubble. We're in a bubble. We're in a bubble. I We heard that so much at the end of last year. I I I hope to show you that the bubble has popped and it's time to to reload your AI allocations. Uh private credit also had a very tough end of 2025. The the a famous uh Wall Street CEO said there was a cockroach in the private credit markets. And I think that um those fears are overdone but well priced and again an opportunity. Um I asked the question investors say did I miss gold? And the reason for an action is a very simple yes I feel like I miss gold. Um and we'll so we'll talk about that and then a little bit about what else to buy at the end. I love to to pick on stuff that's so hated and feared and where we see opportunity. Okay. So, uh, Scott Bessant snuck in an interview, a podcast interview the last week of of 2025 that is so profound. I actually listened to it three times. Um, and there are just a ton of takeaways that I tried to summarize on this slide. So first of all, he articulated a very thoughtful academically supported view that the Fed should be much more restrained that the amount of QE after COVID uh was excessive. He calls it a gain of function Fed in in an October article. Um and he said basically he his philosophy that he was selling is whoever the chair is these are my Jan's interpretation not his words is it doesn't matter because there's no way we are going to nominate a Fed chair that's going to be as active as the Fed was during Biden and he's very clearly his critique although he doesn't name names is that the excessive QE of the Fed caused 10% inflation which Americans are very upset about and continue to be upset about and that's what he's he's fighting and he blames basically the Fed for that. >> All right, sorry to interject but just for the few folks that might not know Secretary Treasury Scott Besson is leading the Fed chair selection process for Trump. >> Great point. Right. he has he's at the table right and and defining this and importantly the Fed needs to chair nominee from the Trump administration needs to be approved by the Senate. So I really feel like he was speaking to the Senate here Adam and trying to lay the groundwork. So my basic point is I think that he's doing such a good job at this that this that we know what is that it will be smooth. There will be people are worried about Fed independence. I don't think that's what's going to end up happening. They'll pick a nominee, the Senate will approve the nominee. The the second point here though that's probably surprising if you listen to Donald Trump last year is Scott Besson said that interest rates are at normal levels. Now, he didn't nuance it short-term versus long-term, but can you imagine like that is that is such a sales pitch, right, to people that are afraid that they're going to cut short-term interest rates, you know, from 3% to 1% like Donald Trump might say that he wants. So, that the market's expectations to me of 25 to 50 basis points or a quarter or to a half percent at the short term seem very reasonable. Um so I would be surprised to be surprised here by monetary or fiscal policy. Um he also does talk about housing uh to the third point explicitly as something that was pumped up by the Fed. Um asset price inflation, stock prices being up and that those are the enemy and the Fed should not be in the uh business of pumping up asset prices. And then lastly, if inflation gets below 2%, he basically said we shouldn't have an inflation target anymore at the Fed of two, which is 2%. Um, he said make it a range. He said the markets are way too complicated. It's much more like bioh biology than math. Um, so I would again we should not be surprised if inflation continues to trend down that the Fed will will change this kind of philosophy. So I I feel like really clear monetary policy, not a big change, no surprises. Maybe they cut a little bit. It's basically what happened last year. It just felt much more dramatic. >> Okay. Can I ask two quick questions? >> Of course. Yeah. Let's go. Um so given this is your expectation that the Fed's reaction function will be slower in the future to economic weakness or market instability? >> No, he he he made it very clear he he liked the central banks that got involved postcoid but he specifically mentioned that he liked it them to be involved for two or three months not two or three years. Okay. So, still swift action but just less of the action. >> Correct. And much less longer. Like not don't try to manipulate the financial markets. Like we were buying housing bonds two years and the housing prices were setting all-time records, right? It was like no more of that. >> Okay. Got got that. Um and then from an inflation standpoint, do you expect 2026 then to be a year of disinflation of continued falling CPI? >> All right. We'll we'll get there. Okay. >> All right. So, um really just one or two slides on fiscal government spending. Um you know that you know just to highlight it's a different chart. Our US budget deficit versus Germany. So this is how much the government is spending relative to GDP. It should be no more than 3%. We got to over 10% in COVID. This is what Besson's talking about. And even a couple of years later, our fiscal deficit was way way worse. Um, I've updated my little yan math um for the federal budget deficit and um I disagree like you will what I'm saying is very different than what other people saying. We are now in fiscal 2026 and and I'm predicting less five and a half percent or less. And I can't tell you how many wall there there's not many Wall Street economists that agree with this, but we snuck in last year's fiscal deficit below 6% which no one was predicting. >> We'll see. This is controversial, but I think this sets the floor for um kind of a calmer monetary policy as well. >> Okay. And and this is quite consistent, I believe, with what Secretary Basant has been trying to guide people to. >> Yeah. I mean, this is his sales pitch for sure. Um but you know so far the the numbers have tracked and and if I maybe just highlight one thing that I did hear GDP is at was at 4% in the third quarter. That was a big surprise and one of the things that Bessant said is Wall Street is getting this wrong and I haven't seen one Wall Street prediction of growth above much above 2% for next year. He's saying you guys are an order of magnitude wrong. The reason I bring this up here is that if that GDP number is higher, then the percent of GDP number will be even lower. So I kind of cheated and made GDP growth for this next year at 4%. And so that's why why we're at 5.3% uh budget deficit. But the main point is we're we're trending the right way. If you know from what we know now, again, we can talk let's not talk about tariffs on this Zoom. We know there's risks. Well, you can ask, but we know >> I was just gonna ask how much, if you would know, off the top of your head, did you put in for tariff revenues? >> I didn't change them. Um, and Besson talked about tariffs and he said he was at that Supreme Court hearing and we shouldn't think of the outcome, which I totally agree, as comp 100% approval of Trump tariffs or zero, you know, 0% like 100% rejection. It's going to be somewhere in there. And I and I feel like I I would just be surprised if the court were to really change the revenue figures here. >> Okay. >> But that's there's always risks to my outlook. So, let me talk about the report card uh for fiscal. Um because short-term interest rates are are set by the Fed, but long-term interest rates are what the market is looking at. Um, and again, I think we're what this shows is we're in a troubled world actually, but the US did okay. So, let me interpret the US's 10-year interest rates, and I know it's not 10 year, it's not 30-year. I'll show you that in a second, showed a better fiscal situation. The fact that um, you know, 10-year interest rates went from 4.8% 8% down all the way to four last year reflected this better fiscal situation. In contrast, other developed markets here, Japan and the UK are are having quasi mini crises, right? So the Japanese um 30-year interest rates are in green at the bottom. That interest rates going up is not good when you have a lot of debt. And so countries >> it's got it's gone up by it's like quintupled or more since 2022. >> Yeah. I mean they tried to control interest rates. It's it's they're getting into this vicious cycle where you can't get out of and that's really what I was worried about and that's why I'm talking about in this um in this uh outlook. It's the biggest risk to the markets is from the government spending and deficits this time around. Not households, not corporations. And so it's just something to keep an eye on. But that's why I think we have visibility and and and a good outlook. This is just the 30 years. Um you know, so the same thing for the UK and Japan. Um you can see we did sideways. Um so the government, sorry, the markets aren't totally um giving us a break yet. So it's still it's still a risk to be managed would be my interpretation of this. C can I ask a quick question here? >> Yeah. >> Um, so I remember interviewing people in 2022 uh who were saying look there's no way that interest rates in the US are going to go above three because the economy is going to crater under that. That's been disproven. Um so you know with a 10ear US tenure around fourish or so um do you think the US economy can sustain at interest rates at that level? >> Yeah of course. Okay. >> And and and you know, I I I violated my own rules. So, uh thank you for not calling me out. I love multi-deade charts. And so, if you took this chart back multi-deads, 4% on the 10 years, not not abnormal at all. It was that very very odd period of the of the teens past the financial crisis that puts everything in a bad, you know, in in a wrong perspective >> that were apparent. Yeah. And now of course the people were saying well it's different this time because we have a lot more debt and we can't handle you know three or more now again the economy seems to be doing quite you know fine. How about Japan? Can Japan sustain at at bond yields like this given its level of indebtedness? >> I mean it's it's really hurting its currency. Uh and I I think that is why we're we're keeping an eye out uh for it. Adam, now people have literally spent our entire careers calling for the end of Japan, right? And and and the end of the Japanese bond market, and that's a little bit why I'm highlighting it now because it actually is really under stress. Um, you know, given its its history. So, uh, I can't really time a crisis there because everyone who's done it for the last 25 years is out of a job or broke or both. Um, so I'm just going to pass on that. I know that's a copout, but um, it it it it's it's something to watch. >> Okay. >> All right. Um, so let's just hit some other macro concerns that people have. Uh, uh, first of all, inflation. Um, and as you can see here, we got great news on services inflation. So, um, this is a little bit of an odd chart because it's only the one, uh, the prior change over the last 12 months, but it's really, really good that services inflation is coming down here. Um, you know, goods went up a lot, then went down a lot. So, the fact that it's going up is kind of like a reaction to just the shape of the curve. So, listen, I think inflation is well behaved. Um, let me uh >> All right. talk about this. C >> can I ask you a question on this chart? >> Yeah. >> Um, first off, do you know off the top of your head in terms of the US economy what the percentage of services is versus goods? >> Well, we're mainly a services economy and and the reason um I got it right. I mean, manufacturing and agriculture are teeny part. We're a consumer economy. The the reason I focused on this so much over the last couple of years is sort of once people get it's one thing for the price of coffee to go up and down and the price of meat to go up and down. I think what's what's really dangerous is wage mentality uh starts going like wait a minute my cost of living is this so I need a 5% raise and that 5% raise trickles through to all the other industries and so that is the psychology I think that's a little bit harder to break >> but it's big and and important from that perspective as well >> okay but on a on a on a marginal basis per equal unit uh Falling services inflation likely outweighs rising goods inflation because services are such a bigger percentage of the economy. >> If you're a Wall Street investor or an economist, but voters, >> yes, >> if you allow me to go forward, are not Wall Street economists. Um, uh, and so they are very worried about inflation still according to the polls. And this is just one thing on electricity costs. Um, I would I really want to use this as an excuse to talk about the 2026 midterms. Uh, again, we have visibility. Even if the Democrats sweep, it's very unlikely that the Fed's policy will change. We'll have a new chair at that point. >> And it's very unlikely that they will change fiscal policy. Um, I guess I'm I'm I'm assuming the Republicans keep the Senate, but um I know I just said the opposite, but I just think the chances, you know, there could be a lot of political noise and stress, but I if you just boil it down to did fiscal policy change, did monetary policy change, I I I don't I would don't expect a change there. So again, that's why I'm saying 2026 right now seems like the year of visibility. Let me let me jump uh from the 26 midterms to just talk about one other element of that which is uh unemployment. Obviously unemployment um is a big concern and jobs added fell a lot and a lot of the concerns are around AI. >> So I um as I said at the top I like to steal other people's charts if they're good and Morgan Stanley had two really good charts here. So this is a multi-deade chart. So it meets meets our standards, Adam. Um and it shows um you know that that admins um or secretaries fell from 4.8% of the workforce to 1.3 over this multi-deade time period. That's 75% assuming stable jobs, but that's 75% loss of jobs in a particular category. And obviously computer programming rose 3x. So these are dramatic changes but the point here is that these are sloped lines and you know that something is falling but something else is rising. So another chart that sort of has a similar theory here is uh again computer programming versus retail. here in retail you did see bigger jumps down partially due to COVID in in percent of people employed but this is the effect of automation and my main point is it's slow so to think that we're going to have a big shock to employment in 2026 I think it would be against my expectations >> okay so those that are ringing the warning bell saying AI is going to just take all our jobs tomorrow you're saying slow your um >> it doesn't if you look at employment stats over the last hundred years, it's it's generally smooth stuff like this rather than you know kind of massive layoffs. >> Okay, two two quick questions and they're they're kind of both around inflation. Um you stay on this chart but back to the chart um that showed services versus goods inflation. Goods inflation was rising in the past couple years largely due to the impact of tariffs. Do you see that as a sustained rise or do you see that as sort of a one-time repricing um because tariffs, you know, okay, we we slapped X new tariff and then we're just keeping it going forward. >> Yeah. I mean, listen, what the person, the average consumer says, this is not a great slide because my prices went up and then they never really came back down. They stopped going up. That's all this chart says. But they still are higher than they were five years ago, right? That's why this chart >> is how economists look at it but not the average person. So, >> you know, that's why I think on the margin consumers and voters are very sensitive to inflation now and want to see prices down. I I don't think this goods number continues to rise. Um again, it's a lot of it is just >> if you look at 24, it went negative, >> right? because it got so high during COVID, then it came down, you know, a little bit >> and then it went up a little bit. So, it going up a little bit is is that last thing. I wouldn't focus on it too much. >> Okay, great. But just to be clear, you you don't expect the goods inflation to to really continue rising from here. That said, highly likely to be affordability highly likely to still be a major voting issue during the midterm elections on the um on the jobs slides that you had there. Um so, okay. So you don't think that AI is necessarily going to create a job apocalypse anytime soon, but um we are seeing things like the quits rate being real low and companies just not hiring. And so could hey could AI still be somewhat uh you know dampening wage inflation because people don't feel like they've got the bargaining power at work to demand more. No, I think there's definitely a a mentality shift by employers um in in hiring um and and entry level. I mean, you see this in the statistics, right? Computer programming is stressed um because AI is is is giving high productivity increases in that particular sector. Um and entrylevel college graduates, you know, looking for white collar jobs. Um it's tough. So, I'm I'm not I'm I'm not addressing it to say it's a perfect world out there. Um I'm just saying that there's constantly shifts because of technologies right this this this admin loss of jobs by 75% you can call Bill Gates and Microsoft right that's basically the automation of the office uh workplace all I'm saying is it just it tends to be delayed and deployed over time but it's definitely I'm not changing the trend. >> Got it. Okay. >> All right. Um just this is this is also a chart crime way too much data uh but but I wanted to to highlight a couple of things. So these um are the five um again original to Vande research here but the five sectors of the economy that lost the most jobs um in 2025 and um I have 24 data but let's not go there. uh effectively uh one big thing is right there was a lot of layoffs at the federal government level and that finally rolled through in October um and November. So, but if you just um eyeball some of these other areas like manufacturing or information in particular, you see that the job losses, Adam, are kind of consistent monthtomonth. >> You know, they're not particularly accelerating. maybe transportation. So, um you know, so again, most of >> there's a big one in the federal government, but that probably was because of the shutdown there. >> Yeah. No, no, no. That was the the layoffs that uh took six months to get go into effect. >> Oh, okay. So um yeah I mean that was you know that was well we know about that but my my my point is that you know if you look at the weakest sectors for employment only maybe with transportation do you see an acceleration and even that I would say is probably noise. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Retail trade actually you know even though we keep hearing about how tough it is out there for the the average retail worker there's not doesn't seem to be a fall-off there. >> Yeah. And and I think this is interesting because remember Amazon laid off some people in the fall and and I think that that's these numbers and I think >> it it is interesting how we're getting more efficient in logistics, >> right? People talk about robotics and things like that and drone deliveries and and uh you know that's that's a a multi-year trend that that's interesting. So anyway, listen um I want to move on but from macro and uh you know sort of monetary fiscal employment inflation my main point is we kind of know what's going to happen in 2026 right we know what's going to happen at the Fed if if Bessant's not totally wrong and I'm wrong and saying that he wasn't very persuasive um in in laying out this new policy for the Fed that's visible the midterms probably won't won't change a lot I don't think tariffs will change a lot. Inflation is kind of in a good spot. Employment is weaker, but it's not critical or we don't see signs of criticality. Um, and we don't have historical evidence of of massive shifts there. Um, you know, I'm not saying everything is great. I just want to bring up the next market concern. And the next market concern is it's way overpriced, right? So, if you remember my what Jan thinks and what what's happening. So, I'm going to do maybe only five minutes here on on AI compute, but I my basic theory is the underlying demand is big. Number one, bullet one. Number two, the AI bubble actually popped, meaning the weaker capitalized firms had big destruction in their stock prices. I'm talking about down 50%. And then third, some of the what I call AI 2.0 trades at Van like nuclear power and things like that. They have corrected as well. Thank goodness. I called them nose at nosebleleed. Um and and they have they they went down from the nosebleleed seats to the you know the mezzanine seats. Uh so so that's really healthy as well. So I'm just really happy. Adam, can you tell? So >> I can tell. So what's interesting I tried to update this token demand slide which um which I borrowed from um you know someone else um and you know Google and and a lot of these firms don't talk a lot about their AI token consumption. They very rarely do. Um but anyway we know it's growing every time you hear Jensen Wong talking about insatiable demand um and the hyperscalers. Sam Alman talked about it a couple months ago. So, I'm assuming that that's continuing probably at a slower rate. It it's just went parabolic and and I think that's coming down. Um, the math again is tokens again are like words in in kind of AI speak, let's call it that. And um, you know, the math is that the demand is going up vertically almost, but costs of processing them are coming down a lot as well. Um the one thing I would highlight for 2025 that changed a lot is that um prompts there's several signs of AI adoption and that's kind of my theory for 2026 is AI is embedded in our workforce and increasingly doing tasks um that used to be manual like and I can see that at VANC. So prompts are four times as long. The processing of an AI prompt now takes three times as long, which suggests that they're it's asking for a lot more processing or the the tasks are more uh complicated. And then lastly, um, if you think about who's using the LLM, it's a lot less of, uh, me and my kids using Chat GPT, and it's a lot more of, uh, basically computer programs themselves, uh, kind of running other computer programs. And that always seemed very abstract to me, but um I saw a demo two weeks ago of how complicated it is just to add a single page to our website. It's it's like it's like a full day work and I'm like and even that's automated and I'm like man and now we're developing some basic some AI programs to make that a lot faster. So that's what agentic use is. So, so is the punchline to all this Yan that corporate efficiency is going to rise as a result across the wider corporate fleet? >> Yeah, I think it's Yes. Yeah. But the the main Yeah. The All right, let me let me let me just continue here. The second thing that people miss when they talk about valuations is these companies are glorious scale. We've talked about it, so I'm going to keep it short. They have scale advantages, right? They're able to like Microsoft and Amazon, their their employee base is staying flat, but they're growing their revenue constantly. So, they are just profit machines. Now, I'm say I'm not saying that small caps won't do okay, we'll get to that in a second, but I'm just people are for when they talk about this valuation and they're so worried about how the equity markets are valued. It's a huge trend. number one like I just showed and number two it's generating profitability you know and and and people sort of skirt around that well anyway so let's just talk about this it could be um if looking forward to 2026 which is the last column that the profit growth of the mag 7 will come down from 34% this la sorry in 2025 and 59% the following year so yeah uh maybe Nvidia's profit growth is you know not you know 50% or 100% uh but it's still it's still growing. So that's mainly what I'm saying is I I feel still feel comfortable with the structure of our equity markets which is very overweight these top 10 companies because of the underlying um phenomena and you and you have to like kind of analyze this every quarter because it is a risk to the market if some of these assumptions are wrong. Does the um so the the expected earnings growth for the Russell 1000 small cap? >> Yeah. >> Um that's obviously a pretty big trend change. Is that largely due to what you just had in the previous slide that that these small companies are all of a sudden really starting to take advantage of the benefits of AI? >> Um I think small companies are benefiting from a lot of uh Trump policies. Frankly, deregulation, the fall in short-term interest rates, uh, does help them because they tend to be a little bit more leveraged, especially like regional banks and things like that. Like Secretary Treasury Scott Besson specifically called out, you know, kind of regional banks and smaller companies. So, I think those things are all going to be tailwinds, >> okay? >> Not just AI. >> Okay. Um, the AI bubble concern. This is the image of everything. Everyone just buying stuff from each other and there's no there there. It's just Enron 2.0. So, I just wanted to show some quick charts of stocks. It doesn't look like it, but this stock was blown up, right? This is down 50% from the summer from 180 got down to, you know, way less than than than uh 90, which is half of that. Um and so what these companies are relying on is contracts and and and debt to build out these big data centers, right? Um and and their stock prices were punished for that. And Oracle is which is this chart um I I really like because it's such a diversified well-known company that um announced a compute deal. It drove their stock price up dramatically and it's really corrected. Um I mean it got so ridiculous last quart sorry I I call I'm extreme Adam but you know on the our internal investment calls people started talking about the credit default swaps of Oracle which is like you know anyway it was happening there was a popping of the bubble there was a resetting of prices and the people that write rely too much on debt have weaker stock prices um and that's that's healthy. So the AI bubble to me has popped. Okay. I think I got one or two more slides here. >> Okay. So just to be clear though, and you're going here now. I was just gonna say, all right, what about the big hyperscalers who aren't as debt dependent but have been on a tear? You think they're still pretty well priced? >> Yeah. I mean, but that's why I kept saying like it's okay, you know, in prior quarters that there there the market is a discipline mechanism and it was disciplining some companies. It's just that the mag seven are in just such a great situation that you may not see it there. And just because you don't see it there doesn't mean it's not happening. >> Um and and Nvidia has been treading water. I mean, it doesn't look like it on this chart, but it's been charting water for, you know, solid six months. Um, which means that its earnings are growing. It's becoming cheaper. And as you can see here, you know, it's it's at multi-year lows basically on a PE basis. So, it's not crazy. Did I convince you? >> Yeah. Um, I'm still processing, but it's Let me just ask a general question. So folks who have sort of watched the Mag Seven party rage but sort of passed them by you know over the past five years um in their mindset is a lot like okay look these things have overperformed for so long they just can't keep overperforming like this. Sounds like you think no they can. >> I don't know about overperform but I'm very comfortable owning them and I'm comfortable buying them. That's really my point and and and it's because again to get to the sort of van macro view >> because don't just look at don't look at chart just look at charts like this. The fact is out there the demand for tokens is going nuts and and even you know um like some of these high bandwidth memory companies like Highex and Samsung uh again their their stocks you know kind of hit a wall because people were concerned there wasn't enough demand for their goods in the last week they've hit all-time highs you know so sure there I'm not saying these stocks always go up certainly they don't and I'm you know this isn't a forever view. All I'm saying is the reality is the AI trend is continuing and the fourth quarter gave us much cheaper prices. So let's if I could just jump to like what we call a beneficiary of this demand this increase for electrical demand nuclear stocks and you know what I called was nosebleleed um has really corrected right it's corrected down you know 40% uh of the move that we saw last year if you just base it to January >> so >> and this this index what it went up a 100% between April and October. Yeah. >> Yes. And that's when I said nosebleleed. >> Yeah. >> You know, um but you know, it's it's it's a solid multi-year global trend. So it's very diversified. This isn't relying on a couple of you know um policies from just one or two jurisdictions. So anyway, so that's again, you know, uh AI trade still in effect, attractive prices. Um, so any anything on that before I move on? >> No, I mean again you sort of said this but what I'm taking from you is just look don't worry so much about the wiggles of the stock prices in the near term. The tailwinds that are driving this phenomenon are still very much in place. >> Yeah. I mean people are using if I go back to that slide which will at the end you know the excuses not to buy our valuations and I I you know I'm just saying that's not persuasive to me and it was it was persuasive to me three months ago right so I'm not >> um I'm not immune to that but I argument but I just don't think it holds. >> Yeah. All right. So, another a third asset class um I want to talk about private credit really quickly. Um and is you know I think BDC's uh business development companies are really attractive here. Now this chart is uh don't look at all the numbers all you have to know is that you really in fixed income earn your yield. you generally don't earn. Sometimes you earn less like in the 2000s. Sometimes you earn a little bit more like the 1980s, but generally the the yield you get is what you get as a return. And BDC's are yielding 9% now. And they were a tough area to be in last year. Um, and this is remember where there were a couple of uh frauds in the private markets. uh BDC's for people that don't know them invest or lend money, excuse me, to private companies, generally small and midsize private companies, but they themselves are listed on the stock market. So, they provide uh daily liquidity, and that's why I really like them. when these concerns emerged, I said, "Whoa, if if there's a crisis in this private credit world, um, you know, prices could fall to 20% discounts of of NA asset value." So, I said there's there's definitely downside here. And part of the reason BDC's fell this last year is they expected as short-term rates were cut that the payouts from BDC's would be cut too because they have a lot of floating rate debt. So um but uh those fears I think are priced in. So um go into reverse order. Yeah, I won't go into reverse order. So these are just the prices on two uh BDC's. One's run by, let's call it, um, one of the top names, Aries Capital, and the other is is Blue and Blue is a big big name, big big great big great big company. Um, but, uh, they were punished a little bit more than than Aries last year. So, my main point is that BDC market is becoming better managed. Uh Goldman uh Goldman Sachs had a BDC Adam that was run by an independent group um and not their general private credit group and it underperformed and it had some credit issues. So Goldman stepped in and they basically now have it the same management team as their private credit group. My only point is there's a lot of brand importance against these BDCs. There's visibility and there's accountability. Um, so I, you know, I kind of really think that with the selloff last year, they were down last year, Baron just mentioned BDC's as an interesting income area in the in their latest edition. So, um, you know, I I think it's I think it's attractive. I was cautious last year. Um, and I'm attract I'm I'm I'm interested now. Let me talk about the companies that manage the BDC's. So, these are the BDC's themselves, the pools of debt that trade on the market. the companies got a little wakeup call themselves last year um as these concerns arose and so um this is the area stock price I I don't really need to say much more clearly uh it got punched a couple of times during tariffs and and then the credit concerns right this is a perspective um and this is multi-deade so it meets my standards right of what I think people weren't getting which is the context texts of these private credit companies. So the the line I'm looking at here is the blue line which is the price toearnings ratio of Aries. >> And these companies used to be kind of looked down as second class companies and you can see here traded at something like 10 times forward earnings um up you know kind of up until they got discovered. And the reason was is that they earn a lot of their fees through incentive fees. So not um based just on the amount of assets under management but also on the performance of the funds. So the market used to say well that's very nice that you have 10 billion under management but how do I know that you're going to perform again next year and if you don't then you're not earning anything. So I'm not going to pay a lot for your stock. And then something happened in the minds of investors uh to Blackstone, Aries, Apollo where the market goes, I love these companies and I'm going to pay a premium, right? I'm going to pay 25 20 times 25 times 35 times up to 50 times forward earnings for these um private credit firms. And you know my again my attitude last year was uh no thank you. Um and so uh that that's where I was a little bit of cautious but now um if earnings are okay it's still a little bit rich but if these companies are down um you know from 50 times to 35 uh that's much more comfortably in the in the range of the last five or six years. >> Yeah. Oh, and they're paying what? 9% right now. >> The BDC's are paying 9%. Um, I don't know off the top of my head what the dividend rates are for for Aries. >> Okay. But but still, if it's in the same ballpark, um, even though you might have some valuation concerns, still, you're making some money back in the immediate term with that nice dividend. >> Yeah. So whether you buy BDCs or you buy the the management companies, I think you're you're getting better value than you got last year. So just in in the moving forward, I'm just going to touch on gold briefly um because I I know I'm a broken record on this. Um, we are seeing gold reemerge as a leading global currency and what we just saw in Venezuela just reinforced the fact that there is geopolitical uncertainty in the world and that's some of it's generating from the United States and it's a was a Biden administration that seized Russian assets after their invasion of Ukraine. It was Trump, right, that went into a a South American country and surprising the world and the world is reminded daily that if you the government of the United States doesn't like what you're doing, you don't know what they're going to do about you, >> right? And that's why and also central banks um you know are not in in China and India are just not dollar centric and as emerging market countries grow in wealth, they're just going to be buying more gold. Um, these are just two crazy charts from gold history. Basically, >> there's your multi- there's your multi-deade chart all the way back to 1790s. >> Yeah. And look, and my main point is obviously um we went off the gold standard in 1971. But my point is when you have a paradigm change, you can't look backward at your charts, you know. Now, here the charts were flat, so it's kind of ridiculous, but >> um I I think that's just, >> you know, I I I it's hard because gold isn't tethered to an income level or anything like that, but I just think that it is it is a bearer asset that is increasingly in demand from emerging market countries. Emerging markets are passing the developed markets. And anyway, here's another gold chart. the the main point is when it changes uh for for various reasons here it was the civil war and it was FDR it it it it moves by leaps and bounds so don't expect you know a well- behaved chart so when you look at something like this and if you squeeze the time frame it'll look similar don't don't you know don't be scared out of your position if you own it um listen as I said before I'm not saying it can't correct 20% in a bull market And technically it's overextended. That's why I'm showing this. But I would um you know I think all the trends are going to be the same in 2026 and 27 and 28. So I see that as multi-year anyway. >> So not just similar to AI which is just the the the tailwinds. There may be some volatility but the tailwinds driving it are still strong. >> Yeah. I mean for gold I really see it for many years. I would say AI we have a two-year compute shortage. Uh so comfortable with 26 and 27 um not sure about after that. So um you know whenever there's monopolies like in Nvidia there's people coming in after it and you can tweak chips you can tweak programming to try to make things more efficient. That's part of the dynamic that was the deepseek concern. Um so that is that's part of the cycle. So I I don't know. Yeah the visibility is not as long Adam. All right. Meaning, sorry, but it sounds like you're saying you expect the bull run in gold. You've got more confidence it's going to last longer than you do the AI bull market. >> I do. I think it's a global it's a global shift. And and I guess what irritates me is when people talk about, oh, inflation versus gold. Gold's a global asset. If if anything last year, you know, demonstrated we had a fall in inflation and a big rise in gold, >> right? So the whole narrative is when people talk about the US this and the price of an asset like gold that I'm like you're missing think global. You've got to think global. So anyway um here's some more gold charts. Um I >> sorry before before you get to India can I ask you a precious metals question? >> Sure. Yeah please. I >> I just I I can't not ask you your thoughts on silver given how silver has performed of late. Um, I'm I'm of the camp that I'm a bullish on copper. I've I've never really understood silver. Um, so it's obviously appreciated way faster and way more than gold. So I I think if it's in a reasonable proportion in your portfolio, if you're really bullish gold and you have, you know, 10 to 20 to 30% of of that size in silver, I I I'll still have a I'll still have dinner with you. But um I I I I just don't it's it's just been too volatile over history. It's too driven by industrial demand relative to investment demand. So, I I just view it as a a sort of a pale competitor, but it's a sign of exuberance, right? It's gone berserk, and so has copper. >> Yeah. Um Okay. Uh so, so there may be some real froth in there, which is kind of a warning to that comment. Um let me just ask you this. So, it sounds like you're saying that gold is going through a, you know, a permanent repricing here or a secular repricing. >> Yes. Um, do you believe that silverber is as well? Forgetting about how high it could go or whatever, but is is silver being repriced as well? >> Yes, to the Yes, I guess to the extent you're forcing me. I mean, Neil Ferguson just wrote an interesting piece comparing the world today to, you know, I think it was 1906. And let me look the main point I would just say is is is this fact that the developed markets are shrinking as a percent of world GDP is relentless and it's happening every year and the world still wants a global currency. It was a global gold was the global currency then. It wasn't dominated by a world power like Britain or the US. It's just going back to the way it was. Why fight it? makes sense to me. >> Okay. Um I I I I guess um I would just skip my India charts for the most part. I just articulated my thesis about the world that you know India is going to again has been a great equity market. It's going to be the size of Europe in 10 years. It was disappointing to people last year because it didn't perform as well as China as well as the US. So, it had a little bit of an off year. I I I still am pounding the table. I'm super high conviction that that that country is doing all the right things. They did a lot of uh pro business reforms um that they continued with last year. Um I won't get into those. So, maybe some other time we do a drill down. Um I point out that the Indian stock market historically has done almost as well it's done as well as the US except for um last year. Valuations are high. Um but you know I those companies are just growing and I'm I'm super high conviction about it. >> Okay. I want to save my time if I could for my favorite section which is the beat up area. >> Go for it. >> All right. So, um, Van has been enthusiastic about Bitcoin since 2017. Uh, we we do think it's a it's a reasonable sort of companion to gold, but something fundamentally broke in the in the old Bitcoin cycle. So uh without getting into a lot of detail, one of the first things you know uh about Bitcoin is that the overall supply is capped and that every four years Bitcoin miners get half the number of Bitcoin for running the network and not directly synced with that but there has been a four-year cycle where Bitcoin has been the best performing asset for three years and then the worst performing asset The fourth year you will notice that if you can count you won't count three years where Bitcoin was the best performing asset. So Bitcoin not only disappointed I would call it traditional Bitcoin investors and were in that group myself is in that group but it was the worst performing asset last year. So the four-year cycle is broken. Uh I am concerned about 2026 because that would have been the normal bad year for Bitcoin. Um and so I think there is should be more uncertainty around people's Bitcoin price predictions. Um, I guess this the last thing I would say on this topic is that um I I haven't changed my view on gold or our view on gold. So I I don't think it's Bitcoin. I think if it goes down further, it's at 90,000 now. If it goes down to in the 70s, that would be a great buy. And typically, you want a dollar cost average into a bare market. Maybe we don't get there. Um, we have a split view at Vanex. some of my colleagues are more bullish short shorter term or medium-term than I am. Um I I just want to let it rest for three to six months um before I I could see getting very enthusiastic. Having said that, I have not sold any of my Bitcoin. >> Okay, good to know. Um and so this is sort of a cycle break that you're noting here in terms of just sort of a foundational reason for owning Bitcoin or anything like that. Doesn't sound like you've seen a change in that because you're obviously haven't sold any. >> Yeah. I mean, in 2023, for this reason and because the Fed had stopped raising rates, I pounded the table with both fists on gold and Bitcoin, right? And and I'm saying, you know, maybe you can pound one fist on Bitcoin. You can argue, you know, that, you know, it's corrected, but not more than that. And if you ask me, I would still wait a little bit. >> Okay. Uh but anyway, there's an adjacent area. Again, this may be um it's not inaccessible to your your listeners, Adam, because we have an actively managed ETF that that reflects this philosophy, but tokens and crypto was wiped out last year. And this doesn't show it, but but most tokens, even though the stable coin bill was passed, the average token was down 57% according to an index, the light, the turquoise index, the digital assets 100. You can't really tell from this chart, but most tokens have been decimated uh last year. And you can see here Ethereum, which is the dark blue line, you know, struggling, right? struggling. It did great into the 2021 cycle. It started the year optimistic, but it's it's been changing its tok to tokconomics. Um there has been a lot of activity on the Ethereum network. So that this is kind of the best asset in a really really bad neighborhood. But I can tell you my my colleagues, Adam, are going there. They they're drooling by some of the opportunities that they see in this area. And you may say, Yan, what the hell could that be? Um, I'm just going to give you one example here of um a token uh that performed really well. And you I'm sure you haven't heard of it. It's a uh it's called Hyperliquid. Um it's a decentralized offshore derivatives exchange and decentralized also means not regulated. So there's risks around that. Um but it has the Vanguard, you know, concept of token ownership. And what do you mean by that, Yan? Vanguard, the the mutual fund and ETF firm is a mutual ownership, right? No one owns the equity of Vanguard. No private or no public investor owns Vanguard. Instead, they give back their profits, right? And sort of by cutting the fees on their funds. And that is the concept of tokconomics where the community, the people that trade on Hyperlid share in the benefits because Hyperlid uses its profits to buy back um the the tokens that are out there. It generates 1.25 billion a year and its market cap is 26 billion. Now you can argue with you can't argue with the revenue. Revenue is revenue. You can argue with the value, but my only point is that is a valuable asset out there. So if you find the right use case, there are values in tokens. Again, I don't expect your average investor um to care about hyperlquid. But my point is that there are there is a lot of damage in the crypto world. There was a big selloff at the end of last year, but the whole year was a disaster for most of the space. There are money managers out there both in hedge fund form um and in ETF actively managed ETF form where you can take advantage of this. Now I'm not saying it again like Bitcoin it's not going to turn around in January. I'm not predicting that. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But I'm just saying if you want an area of the market that's been really damaged um then uh you know then then to then crypto is actually one of them. So if I could just summarize and maybe we could have a conversation. Great macro, great visibility, better fiscal policies from the US which should l you know result in slightly looser monetary policy. We've had falling inflation. The employment market is stressed but it would be surprising if there was a crisis there. So that's number one. Great setup from from the government. Number two, um the AI demand continues to be there, but the market disciplined a lot of players in the fourth quarter and so there's a good setup. Third, BDC's worst performing area of fixed income in 2025. I think good opportunities now worthwhile looking at they 9% yield. Um you can buy them on a diversified basis. uh gold broken record. Um it's it's reemerging. It's a different paradigm. It's a different world. That trend continues. Uh the US's actions in Venezuela over the last couple of days again this this just causes people to say I want to own my own money and and and gold is plays that role around the world. Um and then you know there's there's uh there's stuff to buy in India and selected crypto. Um I I hate to be so bullish on so many different things. I love it >> but you know all I can say is I wasn't bullish on these on some of these things three months ago. So um you know at least uh you know at least there's that. >> Don't apologize. I get people all the time saying Adam you need more bulls on your channel. And I do you know I don't screen for bullish or bearishness. Um, but it is harder for me to find people who are bullish. So, it's great to have you on telling that side of the story. Um, and telling it so empirically. Um, a couple couple of specific questions for you. Um, I I I know you do this to come and educate folks um and not to promote Van uh necessarily, but uh did you say that you have an ETF for that crypto token space that Van manages? >> Uh, yeah. our our um our ETF uh ticker is N O D Node um and it's it's actively managed and if people want a lot of information the portfolio manager Matt Seagull um he actually actually used to work with Kathy Wood um so he communicates his opinions obviously because of ETF transparency you can see what he owns every day but um he communicates why he owns what he owns and that alone is interesting at least to me. >> Um, that's fantastic. Okay. And when I edit this, I'll put the uh the ticker symbol up there on the screen so folks know exactly where to go. Similarly, does VANEC have an ETF for India? uh we have two um uh one is uh growth leaders um so GLIN and the other focus is just on their tech sector um you know has a very vibrant tech sector and uh that's digital India or DGI is the ticker symbol >> all right awesome um just very helpful for people to to have specific solutions they can go out there and research um so let me ask you this um you you know made a very compelling datadriven case why you think it's going to be a risk on year and a lot of these asset classes should do well. Uh what worries, if any, do you have um just statistically? Right. Like we've had coming into 2025, people were saying, you know what, we've had two really good backto-back years in the market, 20% plus. The odds of us having a third year of strong double digit growth just isn't that high from a statistical standpoint. And then we've had I don't know what the final number was, but but probably 18% year or so in 2025. Getting a four pete is really rare statistically. Um, and I know, you know, every time you flip a coin, every time you flip it, the odds are 50/50. Are they going to you going to get four heads in a row? Unlikely, but can happen, right? That third time you're flipping it, it's a 50-50 flip still. But do you have any kind of worries just about the math not supporting a a fourth year of of great returns? >> Well, uh, I would say two things. Number one, what's a normal year? You're going to get a 10% selloff like that. like it would be very odd if that didn't happen. So even though I feel like you're not going to get a lot of macro policy surprises, um you're gonna get market volatility. So that's number one. Number two, uh let's say that market uh that earnings that profits go up 10%. Well, people, you know, as we've talked about on this PE ratios or what you pay for profits goes all over the place >> and you know, you could eas easily see profits go up 10% and investors going, I don't care. I'm not going to chase that. I want to, you know, a lower PE and the market's flat, right? So, even if the profits go up. So I do think you know valuation is kind of unpredictable and I I I don't like to talk about it a lot but but there's a range of of that for the market. So um I it's very unlikely for the valuations to go higher right that the the S&P is in a sort of what 20% earnings multiple. >> You know we're at historical highs. So I would say you could that that would be the second concern, Adam, just that that that you know PE ratios come down there. Cape Cape ratios are at yeah crazy highs. Yeah. Or or I should say just historic extremes, we'll say. Um okay. Uh bonds just real quick. Um what's your general thought on bonds for 2026 in terms of how you expect that sector to perform? Yeah, I mean I I said like you only really get your yields um in bonds and I'm a I want to get paid. So I'm a higher yield BDC kind of person. I don't see any huge risks to the US economy. So if I'm gonna if Jan is going to own bonds like I I don't feel like I need to own a bunch of investment grade 2% 3% bonds, you know, unless you know with duration risk. Uh we we do have some >> uh CLO ETFs that I like a lot, but you know, you're not you don't have quite the duration risk there. So, um >> so that's yeah, that's I'm a risk-on guy, right? Especially right now. >> Okay. Um All right. And then then last um and I'm just asking you to pontificate here. Um but this goes back to the um inflation and employment discussion we had earlier. So this is a mid-year election. uh as you said, you know, people um have been angry about affordability or really unaffordability for a good while now. And even even if inflation, you know, stops uh goes to zero. Um it doesn't mean that prices have come down for people, right? That that the injury they sustain still is stinging, right? Um so in a in a midterm election, usually the incumbent party doesn't fare very well. um you know just his history has just shown that okay the guy promised me the world we're now two years into the administration everything he promised didn't didn't come by to to pass and I'm kind of cranky about it so let me let me vote somebody else into office um so the I think the prevailing wisdom is that uh you know the current administration's probably likely to lose Congress um unless people are starting to feel more chipper you know by the time the election rolls around given your you know you talk to you listen to somebody like the president or Scott Bessent and they're saying hey there's all sorts of tailwinds coming we've laid great foundations for this in 2025 just wait this is going to get great um you're kind of in that camp you know you're saying look it's a riskon year you know still should be pretty good do you think that this actually might uh or let me put it this way do you think the year has good potential to perform such that it may actually swing the the midterms um uh towards the current administration's favor at least on the economic side of things. >> Yeah. I mean, look, it's it's look, I I it's to your point, it's hard to predict number one. >> Uh but there there is a scenario where where the incumbent does okay in the midterms. Um it's it's unlikely statistically. So, uh, but but I think it's possible. Um, >> yeah. Well, definitely one thing that would swing their way is if people are feeling better economically. >> Yeah. So, we should Sorry, that's what I was going to do. I I think we need to stress what is the positive scenario for for the Trump administration and and Scott Besson talked about it. You you can't make it up through prices actually falling that much. It has to be people feel like they have bigger more income, right? and he said they're going to get more income because there not going to be taxes on tips, right? There's going to be some tax breaks that kick in in 2026. Number one, um and that people were uh didn't adjust the amount that they were paying out of their paycheck, so they're going to be getting tax refunds in the first quarter. and um you know he's secretary of the treasury and runs the IRS so he has 100% knowledge about that visibility. Yeah. So I I wouldn't bet I would but all my money that that's actually going to happen. Now whether that extends through the rest of the year I don't know. >> Um you know but uh I I think they're very conscious of the political cycle. Um and so you know I would think they're going to try to time things to to to their best advantage. All right. Um well, look, Yan, um I I cannot thank you enough. Um these quarterly outlooks from you are are so not just, you know, interesting and useful, but they're just they're just so appreciated and I get so much feedback from the audience after you come on about um just how how valuable they find this. So, thank you for putting in the time to do this and for going through it all in such great depth. Is there any thing that is on your radar or on your mind that I just haven't thought to ask you about yet? Oh, I mean I was hoping for extra time. I'd love to talk about Venezuela for a little bit. >> Yeah, go for it. >> So, uh, just a a couple of thoughts. My view of the world is over the next 10 years as we are having four huge economies, the US, Europe, China, and India. and other countries in the world have to figure out how they fit into that those ecosystems. Mhm. >> And South America is really realigning. Uh um if if the if Venezuela can transition to a promarket um economy, >> if the Colombian election in a couple of months, and we'll know soon, also moves to the right, South America will be a very pro business continent. >> Chile was just elected, etc., etc. You've got El Salvador in Central America, Argentina obviously. Um, so I will say, listen, I don't speak Spanish, but I've actually been to Venezuela. I've traveled to almost every country in South America. I was in Peru last year. The gang situation that people just may not appreciate is unbelievable. um you know what's happened there and and the takeover of Venezuela by the gangs meant that eight million people it's a really a big refugee crisis left Venezuela which affected Colombia which affected Peru gangs >> is basically a fifth of the population left >> yeah and and in Peru like they talked like the gangs are taking over parts of the economy I mean they talked about the informal economy like but mining forestry agriculture like they're just using violence to get their way. So, if this is a big change, it'll be interesting from a humanitarian perspective. >> Um, I like to say there's three big international cities in the United States, New York, LA, and then people often forget Miami. Miami is the capital of of South America. Um, and so if again, if things go forward, man, Republicans will have even more of a lock on southern Florida, right? because all of those there's so many refugee communist refugees there. So, we'll we'll see how that works. That's mainly humanitarian, but if if there's more of a pro business environment in South America, that that will be very interesting to see because culturally we are so close to basically that region, right? So many people go to college in the United States from those countries. So, there's a lot of cultural affinity. Um, so I I'm I'm optimistic from from that perspective. >> Okay. And so obviously that could have positive implications for sort of the global economy if Latin if Latin and South America become more of a >> Yeah. >> I forgot, sorry to interrupt, but I forgot the most important thing. It doesn't matter at all for markets. >> Okay. >> It doesn't matter at all. Like you know, we have oil experts. We have energy funds. You know, we've went to Gana. We've looked at oil fields. It's it's just not it's not going to matter that much. They can't just turn on oil production overnight. There's a lot of infra legal infrastructure. Contracts have to be rewritten on how revenue gets funded because people are going to have to spend money to to rebuild their oil infrastructure. So, it's just not it's not really an economic story at all. The only possible thing I could think about is again the US unpredictability which leads to greater gold demand. >> Okay. Uh so basically Yan is saying while it might have you know near to midterm uh social uh social impact um and and maybe even who knows ge geopolitical impact don't really expect a um a market reaction anytime soon from this that's really truly meaningful. Let me ask you this. So, um, you know, the administration has talked a lot about it and Trump himself has talked about it a lot even since, um, extraditing Maduro, um, you know, the Monroe Doctrine. Um, and saying, look, this is kind of the it's a good playbook and we kind of forgot about it for a while, but we're picking it back up here now. Assume for a moment that uh the US is successful in its designs on revitalizing the Monroe Doctrine and they help South America really become, you know, clean up its act, really become a lot more market friendly. Um they help increase the economic uh output of that area. We enter into more, you know, sort of tighter trade agreements. So we've got access to resources and cheap labor. they've got access to the US consumer market. Everything's protected by a golden dome. You know, uh maybe we get Greenland in the process. Obviously, that that that's a long process, but to the extent that that was actually successfully pursued and executed. Um how does that change your future outlook? Does it does it does it make you substantially more optimistic about kind of the long-term prospects in the world? Is it is it more of a nothing burger than people who were advocating for it might think? Do you have a strong opinion one way or the other? >> Good humanitarian nothingberger economics basics. >> I think look I think from a US foreign policy perspective and this is just a speculative guess. I'm not an expert on this. >> Yeah. Neither you or I are geopolitical experts. Yeah. >> Right. But but but but what the gangs were doing in Venezuela and then elsewhere in the region and then you know whatever China was doing and Russia was doing right we Monroe doctrine or not like that that was that was a threat that would have been a big threat to the United States if that continued and I think that stuff >> we don't know that stuff now maybe we never will but um I I wouldn't be surprised I mean look Trump like he says he really cares about law and order. He's a law and order president and I think there there was stuff happening there that no American would be happy with. >> Happy with. Yeah. And I appreciate you really highlighting that. Um I I get it because my younger sister lives in Colombia and I've been there a couple of times uh and enough to see the the Venezuelan refugees that are in all the streets. I mean, and their poverty is just it it's crippling, right? >> Yeah. Um, and the crime as well. You know, Colombia cleaned up a lot of its act during the FARC era and whatnot. Um, but there's still gang influence and spilling over from Venezuela. My my sister and her husband actually got they they was a home invasion. They got tied up. Um, so like I mean this stuff is really going on. A lot of us sitting here in America don't really fully understand how how real it is from a day-to-day basis. in some of these other countries that it's spilling over into. >> Well, I mean, they just and the people in the region, they just don't want it. Like, no one like don't no one actually wants lawlessness in their backyard, right? And and you hear stories like that, but and and and when I was in in Peru, you know, Bouetle in El Salvador has been extreme on this law and order. Like, whatever Trump may say, Boule is just way out there, right? I mean, he just threw he created those prisons. He threw all those all those gang members in jail >> and there were bouquet you know spray painted his name was everywhere in Peru and I'm like >> like at first I was like what like how can people be that conscious but I think that's what's what's different to me a little bit having traveled to Latin America a lot more over the last decade is there's more of a regional sensibility now those countries are so entirely different they're separated by the Andes mountains that I think in a say like, you know, I I asked a big ch very very wealthy, successful Chilean businessman, you know, kind of what he thought about Colombia and if he'd ever been there because he was buying a business there and goes, "Oh, I've never been there." And I'm like, "What?" You know, but but I think that's that's more an older generation. like I think the younger generation like even the crypto communities um media, social media, there's just a lot more um you know so I think this trend towards pro business and law and order I should say in the reverse order law and order and then maybe pro business um I think is is will be interesting to see what happens in Colombia. >> All right well look I'll be rooting for it as I'm sure a lot of viewers here will as well. Um Jan can't thank you enough. Last question for you. For people who would like to follow you in your work and your thinking in between now and your your next quarterly outlook appearance on this channel, where should they go? >> Uh, yep. Uh, on X or Twitter, Yanvan number three. Um, and uh, on LinkedIn, you can just follow me. I, uh, I do try to post like podcasts I like or videos like the Scott Besson thing are so important. So, I posted some bullets on that. So, um, and then the VANC website has, uh, has our outlooks. And Adam, I just wanted to I will promise to get you this deck so you can distribute it to your listeners. >> Fantastic. So, yes, folks, if you want to get the slides that um, Yan just referred to and had walked through earlier. Uh, just sign up for uh, Thoughtful Money's um, Substack. You can do so for free at thoughtfulmoney.com/newsletter and that'll be the way to get them. Um, Yan, can't thank you enough, my friend. It's always so wonderful to have you do this. >> Happy New Year. Good to see you. >> All right, take care, buddy. All right, well, now is the time in the program. We bring in the lead partners from New Harbor Financial, one of the endorsed financial advisory firms by Topful Money. I'm joined as usual by uh lead partners John Lodra and Mike Preston. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me. Hope you guys had a wonderful holiday and happy new year. >> We did, Adam. Thank you. Hope you did, too. Great. Uh really great to be back after a short break. >> Great to be with you, Adam. Thank you so much. In fact, I've got to apologize. I still got my Christmas tree in the background. It's a fake one. It takes all about 10 seconds to dismantle, but I've been so busy that it's still up there. Might as well continue celebrating, right? >> Yeah. So, I I know you guys were were quite busy. Um, and as you had warned us, you know, at the end of the year, you guys get uh inundated with a bunch of client requests for all the end of the year steps that we were advising people to consider taking, although we were advising them to consider taking it before the last week of the year. But I know that there's some procrastinators that uh always slip in there at the end. So you guys, I hope you get some good times with your family, but I know that that the whole team at New Harbor has been working in Overdrive to help with all that stuff get done and then help folks uh now that it's the new year, you know, get positioned for the new year here. So anyways, I appreciate you making the time to hop on here given uh all those demands. So um it's always great to have Yan on. I know you guys at New Harbor are um big followers of of Yan and the Van team. I know that some of the funds that you guys hold are VanC funds. Um you guys are the ones that actually introduced me uh in person to Yan uh the first time I got a chance to interview him. So thank you for that. So anyways, Yan quite optimistic uh big risk on year ahead. Um love to get your guys' reaction to that. Mike, why don't we start with you? >> All right. So thank you Adam. really enjoyed uh Yan's talk. We we've been big fans of Yan Vanek and of Van in general for a long time. With a quick disclaimer, nothing we say here is construed as a recommendation, but GDX is in our portfolio. You know, that's how right now we um we take a position in miners. It's done really well. We maybe we'll talk about that later in the program, but we've seen a big move in miners. Of course, we've seen a big move in silver and gold as well. and uh we don't really think the move in miners is over. So, we're big fans of VanX viewpoint, particularly their their embracing of alternative assets. So, I'd like to just talk about some high points here about what Yan talked about, what we agree with and what we don't agree with. Everything of course is in a market is opinions and we don't know who's right until it's all over. But, uh I I think there's a lot of gems in here that that I'd like to kind of list out. Now, he talked about 2026 being a a year of greater visibility in macro and and Fed policy. That's probably true. You know, the the old the dot plot and the you know, the Fed funds target rate predictions are pretty stable here. Um we've we we've the Fed has had great success and slowly reducing interest rates. Inflation has stayed tame and the markets have liked that. We were up 16% or so I think last year 16 or 18% in the 500. >> Yeah. So it's it was a really good year other than the you know the whole thing um uh liberation day April 1st which started April 1st that was a quick sell off of around 22% or so but since then it was straight up all year and certainly towards the end of the year we saw some acceleration in the real assets gold silver and miners and so that's been really good for our clients. our model did very well and so uh you know Jan says that this is going to lead to a risk-on environment. Well, I think we agree. We may not agree on the actual path of the time frame. We think that we might very very likely squeeze to a to a higher uh you know higher S&P might very well get a blowoff top. I'm I'm watching the market here. We hit a new high again today. We're at around 6950 on the S&P. It looks like it wants to go through 7,000. And I wonder if that will ignite the fires, so to speak. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a little bit of a squeeze or a parabolic blowoff top. I think if we get that, it's going to be a signal that we're closer to the end versus not. So maybe we disagree with Yan a little bit there. I think he thinks or at least he talked about this year being more risk with an upward bias. I think it might be more of a very short-term more vertical upward bias followed by crash risk. So, he talked a lot about taking risk in stock, credit, hard assets. I think you're going to have to be very, very careful if you do. So, if you're a selfdirected investor, you're going to have to be more tactical in my view. If you're a passive investor, you should really dial down your equity risk uh or your equity percentage. If you're a passive investor, get down to 30% equities. That'll bring you through whatever comes. Even if we're right and we get a big crash. If you're tactical, watch for that big up move. If we're lucky enough to get that fat pitch, that will be the time to start reducing your equities. He talked a lot about the uh the Federal Reserve as well. Uh says there's going to be quick but short interventions and crises. I'm not sure I really agree with that either. If there's a big crisis, I think it's not going to be short and quick. It's going to be nothing uh like that. It's going to be more like uh the Fed all the time to the rescue. I think that's what we'll we'll likely see. Um talked about the fiscal policy and deficits improving things like that. Um and and I'm not so sure about that data, but he talked about US hand the United States handling higher interest rates. Well, I guess that's true. We've been stuck here around 4.15 or so on the 10-year for a while. The housing market hasn't fallen apart in the last couple years, which is really surprising to me. Uh, when mortgage rates went from 3% to almost 7%. We live through 10 years of hearing how higher housing prices were justified because rates were so low and then rates doubled and then housing prices just went higher. It's a headscratcher, but it is true that the US has been handling these rates better. And I have to admit the 4% uh 10-year Treasury is not out of the long-term norm. It's probably back to the normal range, if anything. So, we'll see what that means. I'm not sure it means much. Inflation has been relatively behaved. Employment has softened. Unemployment's gone up a little bit. Um, but it hasn't mattered. Hasn't triggered a recession like the other times that uh that indicator has suggested that that it should have predicted a recession. this time. I think it's the the SAM indicator and you had her on your program when you have higher unemployment versus 6 months ago and it goes from negative to above zero every time it's predicted a recession. >> Well, guess what? Not this time. So, everything's different this time. It's kind of crazy. Um, he talked about some specific opportunities in AI. He he suggested that the AI bubble burst. I'm not so sure I really saw a burst, but we are we have seen valuations quite a bit lower in AI. If we're right about potentially a higher market, a short-term blowoff, AI is going to do great. In fact, everything's going to do great. He talked about Mag 7s still having really good earnings. They should do great as well. But the big picture is that we have a date with Destiny. We're three times long-term normal valuations, and we think we're closer to the end of the story than not. In fact, I think that 2026 is likely the year that we enter the crisis of this fourth turning that we've been talking about all this time and which will eventually lead to a climax. So again, if you're tactical and short-term, maybe you can get away with playing the game. But otherwise, I would just be careful. Dial down your exposure or do the old T- billill and chill thing even is not a bad idea. Uh just in wrapping up, I'll try to move through quickly quickly here. Uh he talked about private credit. He's bullish on it. We don't like private credit. Uh we just really feel like it's better off being avoided. I guess I'll leave it at that. Um still Jan is bullish on gold. Obviously, we agree with him there. Uh he talked about being more cautious on Bitcoin. Bitcoin has had a big pullback of 30%. Historically, it does this. uh it's pulled back to long-term moving averages and it just signaled a you know bottom fish opportunity let's say on this move from 85,000 to 92 or 93,000. So for those that aren't there it might be a good time to think about dabbling a little bit. In general we don't recommend very much exposure there if at all. We don't think you have to have it because we tell everybody they should have 5 to 10% precious metals that probably covers you. But if you want some Bitcoin exposure and maybe a good exposure would be something like 1 to 2%. On top of that 5 to 10% metals I just mentioned. And so if you're of the mind to do that, you could buy a third of that position here or half of that position here. We might be at a shortterm low. That's what the charts are looking like here uh to us. Um bottom line, let me just wrap up here. JAN is decidedly bullish I think across the board and we're not. So I wouldn't say we disagree. I think we probably disagree on path. So I think that these markets will likely trade lower two between now and two years from now. I wouldn't be surprised to see the markets 50% or more lower at some point. And I based on what I heard I think Yan probably disagrees with that. But that's okay because that's what makes a market. And so, uh, we really like Vanek has this alternative viewpoint that they embrace the things that we think will do well, like real assets and Bitcoin. And, um, we're just going to have to take it from there. We're going to have to be tactical, be really careful about being passive and all, you know, all one thing or all another thing. And, you know, reach out if you want to chat with us and get some ideas. We're happy to help. >> All right. Thanks, Mike. John, I got some questions for you, but first, anything you want to add to Mike's reaction to to Jan's analysis there? >> Yeah, I think Mike did a great job covering most of the bases. Um, yeah, we, you know, we we appreciate uh the the thought and the broad-based thought that goes into to VanX and and other folks, you know, big picture fundamental kind of takes on where we are likely going. And um just like valuations um are black and white numbers, they are very poor timing indicators. I would put fundamental, you know, thesis driven kind of viewpoints like this and kind of the same c camp. It's really important to have a a road map of of the likely landscape, but markets have proven time and time again to us and anybody that's been in them. Uh they don't they don't follow the rules of what should happen happens. In fact, there's always twists and turns. So, we we very much uh it's important to have that landscape but not become too wedded to it. And for example, Yan uh acknowledged that India despite the um very fundamentally strong case that can and and has been made it it was a a laggered asset in in its peer group last year. We were happy to have sold out of it. Not because we had any preient kind of fundamental take that the Indian market was you know suddenly the thesis that that was supportive of multi-year growth suddenly was no longer valid. Simply the market started to u not value that as much as you So we use technical analysis in various forms to help guide our hands. Same reason why despite viewing energy as a relatively under undervalued asset class for for some time you know we were very patient not to enter in in a in a in a kind of intentional way the energy market until um the last you know 3 4 months and we did so through specifically oil and gas service services companies not the producers not the explorers but the services companies which have been you know relatively a better performer uh and again it's the market kind of guided us there And I I would use the the bond market as another example. You know, there has been, you know, probably no market that you can point to that has been more lopsidedly negative sentiment than the bond market. And tra traditional contrarian takes on things will be well that's that's why you should be very bullish. Uh we have been patiently very modestly invested in the bond market. Most of our non-equity exposure, non-risisk exposure in very short-term treasuries. um we have like a 7 and a half% um you know allocation to longerterm treasuries intentionally small not because there isn't a good contrarian case to be made for that but because the the the yield pressures have been very much in in front of us. So, I I would kind of validate all of what what Jan said as being a very thoughtful and and um you know, certainly a you know, kind of conceivable pathway, but as Mike pointed out, markets have a different way of interpreting things. And just like I'm sure we'll talk about the silver market in a bit. Uh there's compelling cases to be made for silver going straight to 100 uh as well as back into the 50s. and and each one. Yeah, you got to the job of an investor is to handicap those odds. But it's, you know, anytime someone thinks, especially in in markets like this, that you have a, you know, certain uh probability of of of one outcome over another, one should just remind themselves that they're get they're going to get schooled like markets of time and time done. So, you know, just a couple broad perspectives there. I know you had some specific questions, though, Adam. >> Yeah. Um, and first, let me say um I I I really value um Yan's outlooks for a whole host of reasons, but one of which is, as I you know, said in the intro, FANC is a massive firm and they have uh you know ETFs and assets in all sorts of different sectors and you know I think one of the one of the great values of Yan is he kind of sits at the center of all that. He gets to have a z gazillion different discussions against across a zillion different industries and different countries and different asset classes with a whole ton of people. And so I I I really value you know his sort of synthesis as the guy who's at the center of all that information flow. >> Um you a couple things you said uh John um uh I've recorded a couple of uh videos this week. Uh it'll be I'm not entirely sure how many of them will be out by the time this video releases. Um but like Michael How the liquidity specialist um uh you know he is he is sort of predicting that that next year is probably not going to be such a great year and that we might even have a couple years of of rough sledding ahead of us because of liquidity flows which is a whole other uh dimension that I didn't get a chance to talk about with Yan here. Um and uh you know he makes some cases for assets like bonds that again are to your point John really contrarian plays here right now. Um, so what's what's interesting is I think Yan is right where we have we probably have a lot more visibility going into 2026 than we than we had in recent years, especially going into 2025 where we had no idea at the beginning of the year what was going to happen with trade and all that type of stuff, right? There was that was all an unknown and then everybody freaked out when Trump came out with his poster board on on Liberation Day. um this year we do seem to have a lot more clarity into to what's um what's going to happen in terms of the decisions that we're going to make. What we might not have is is as much clarity into to actually how things actually unfold. And one of the things I talked with Michael How a lot about is, you know, don't forget um while the market has has sort of metastasized to become so large in our financialized economy and it's kind of become the tail that that now wags the economy dog, um the markets and the economy are still two separate things and and you can have a year where the economy actually does quite well. Um but the markets maybe don't >> and uh and right now I think too many investors just assume that they're always going to be you know correlated have a correlation of one and and this may be a year that that maybe re-educates people on that. So anyways my my my point is just it's so great to hear um you the wisdom and and the expertise of guys like Yan and some of the other folks that we're interviewing. It's going to be a really interesting year to see what actually plays out in practice. Um, so real quick in terms of the year that we just had, John, um, that actually I believe was a pretty darn good year for New Harbor. Um, maybe even your best year ever. Can you just talk for a moment about what that what the past year was like for you guys? >> Yeah. Yeah, happy to. I I first have to take a huge dose of humble pie because any investment manager that starts talking about performance. Um you know we we look at things every day we come in as a brand new day. You know yeah it's great to have good years but uh all that matters is where we go from here and we try very hard to to set our framework and our mindset that way. Yeah, we were up. I mean, certain clients have different tilts depending on their situations, but for our our core tactical portfolio, um, we soundly bit beat the S&P 500. I'll I'll say that. Um, you know, we were up net of fees in the ballpark of 20% plus or minus. And again, this is first thing I want to say is I don't want anybody hearing that and making any kind of extrapolation into any future. Uh, I I I would be shocked if we could do similar to that this year to be candid. Um, so I, you know, please take that with a grain of salt, that backward-looking, um, commentary, uh, deserves. Um, I think this year is going to be quite a bit more challenging. Um, you know, where where we had some really good success. Obviously, we've been bullish in precious metals for a long time. Last year was very, very constructive for precious metals. uh in some ways too constructive and that's why we have some hedges in place and we're we're we're bullish still bullish long term but we do have some concerns about the near-term path that they they might follow. Um we very intentionally even though we're underweight equities we were in certain sectors that were strong outperformers relative to others and we had a very intentional um you know overweight relative to the market for for for for sure or traditional investment you know kind of allocations overweight to to non- US equities so emerging markets uh we were not in India but we were in things like Latin America for example which did very well and again this is all backward looking not a recommendation going forward. But, you know, our our our, you know, our simple recipe, if you will, and it's not a perfect recipe. We're all we're always learning new things every day, and our system is always teaching us new lessons, but um you know, you want to be in the areas that are are relatively strong out of the areas that are are relative lagard no matter what the fundamental case is. Um you know as I said like for for example energy we felt has been very undervalued relative to the market but it was a lagard for a big lagard for most of last year and we held off investing in that until we got some technical signals that confirm some some momentum in that space. You know, I I do want to comment this year ahead. I you know, in in the you know, a bit of you know, put this in your contrarian um you know, kind of bucket of caution. You know, you look at Wall Street analysts right now, there there rarely have been this uniformly bullish and and the degree of bullish. You know, I you know, there's probably examples that exceed this, but you know, we were just I don't know if Mike, I don't know if it was the Barrens kind of round table. We were talking about in our investment committee as a team last week and uh that alone should be enough uh reason to have some caution even if the fundamentals even if the economic outlook is is supportive. Um usually there's some contrarian um wisdom in in going against the crowd in that in that in that regard. So we expect as Mike put put it and I'll put a emphasis quite a bit different uh pathway than than Yan um right here in the moment our our technical indicators are actually quite bullish. So we so you know I would say yeah here and now we're quite bullish but that's a very tentative um and we have little doubt that will change you know uh before too long to become constructively less bullish and and quite likely even quite bearish as we get further into the year. >> Okay. Um well so folks you know we're going to hopefully have Yan on every quarter this year to deliver his quarterly outlook. So you'll get to see as Yan's thinking evolves across course the across the year and of course we'll have the new harbor guys on every week. Uh so you'll see how their thinking evolves as well. Um on the energy side of things, John, um you said you were sort of waiting to get the green light from the market that it was time to enter. Um so you did. Um I know that's still a relatively recent trade, but what has the uh what have the technicals been telling you and what if any impact do the recent developments in Venezuela have on your guys's outlook for energy? Yeah, obviously there's been some recent headlines that affected the oil market. You know, let's start with the uh the knee-jerk reaction. Okay, Venezuela's got I don't know what the number was 300 billion, you know, you know, barrels of oil or whatever the number was. Point first thing I'd like to make is uh OPEC numbers firstly are are numbers that are given to them by the members. They're not independently audited. So, and if you look at actually the history of Venezuelan numbers in in in that survey, uh it wasn't until fairly recently that uh I don't know if it was under Chavez or under um uh Maduro, but uh there was a big big jump there. It's essentially a political messaging jump. So, you know, you have to take it a grain of salt firstly what what the supply even is. Um add to that that the type of oil it is, the the heavy crude, >> very heavy. Yeah. >> Yeah. Very heavy, very complicated and messy to refine. It just so happens that we have some, you know, >> we have the refineries that specialize in it. >> Yeah. And and there's I we read a fascinating historical I forget who it was that put it out there, but I learned quite a bit about the the history, you know, just in the in the shadows of um uh Fenway Park where the Red Sox play for those that aren't familiar with Fenway Park. Um there's a big sitco sign. >> I was going to say the Siko sign. >> Yeah. And I just knew I just knew anecdotally that that cichla sign had a very sicko had a very historyed relationship and and connection to to Venezuela. And honestly, I wasn't quite sure about how that played out and what the current stat was, but but it's fascinating history there. And and um you know, long short of it is we had we were getting cozy with Venezuela. We we started you know at the time the you know we here in the US we thought the the light sweet crude days were over and we needed to posture to be able to uh process the heavy crude that was elsewhere in the world including Venez Venezuela and then of course the shale revolution came about and it suddenly unlocked uh you know massive amounts of the light sweet crude and much of which we have to export because we don't have the uh refining capabilities to the degree we have the the heavy crude. So in some ways you can view this as not about oil but but a massive uh geopolitical game that you know you dovetail that and by no means are we experts on geopolitics like geopolitics. I know Adam you just mentioned the geopolitical uh interview you just did but um you know you dovetail that with Marco Rubio's comments you know not so veiled comments to China and Russia. Hey we we control the the Western Hemisphere stay out of our backyard. I mean this is this is way bigger than oil and I I agree with you on that this is this is not likely to have any immediate kind of tangible market effects on on the oil market bigger longer term it quite likely will but all this stuff that you know we've seen in the energy uh market was coming before this you know sudden weekend news uh you know that that we you know invaded uh or or did an operation in Venezuela however you want to frame that. So I I I agree this is probably just, you know, news circus headlines that's not really certainly doesn't affect our uh reason for being in the space and and won't we think have dramatic near-term impacts on the on the energy market? There's plenty of other things that will will drive that. >> All right. But but Venezuela aside, as you look at your your newfound energy position, um are you looking at it as, hey, we've made it? Are you looking at 2026 as an additive process for you in this sector? Um see >> or or something changed. >> Yeah, we'll see. We'll let the the kind of the technicals guide us there. Um, you know, we're not in love with it for any fundamental reason. If the prices start to uh, you know, kind of erode and we see relative strength pick up in other sectors uh and and and and weaken in the energy sector, we'll have no qualms about um trimming or or you know, taking stops on a position there. >> Okay, Mike, I'm going to give you the last topic here, which is the precious metals. something that you are very much uh an afficionado in. Um they've cooled off a little bit today, but gold and silver pretty much hit new highs just a couple days ago. Yesterday silverber got back up above at least silver futures got back up above 80 bucks an ounce. Uh they're like a buck or two below that that they were talking here. But um you know what was it not that long ago? a week and a half ago, um folks were starting to bite their nails of, hey, you know, we just saw a 15% correction in the price of silver. Is this this did it just peak out and are we starting to see a a big massive correction like we saw after the previous two peaks? Realistically, jury is still out on that, but we've seen some some pretty strong resilience in in silver since then and in gold. Um what are you looking at most closely right now? >> Yeah, you're right, Adam. We've seen some really good resilience. Let me share some charts here and then uh we'll go through it. Uh this is a chart. It'll you'll see in a second here. This is an ETF that track silver. It's SLV. It's the easiest thing to uh to show. >> This is a monthly, right? >> This is the monthly chart of SLV. That's right. So, take a look what happened back here in 2011. We we hit a high and we basically came right back down the following four months. This time we broke through that and now we have one, two, three months that we haven't immediately rejected. I guess I'd submit that that part is different so far, right? And um silver might very well be the largest triple top that in nominal terms that I've seen in any chart. 1980, 2011, and just now we hit $50 an ounce. But of course, we're up to $80 an ounce. It it is decidedly different, at least on the monthly chart. So take a look at the daily chart. It's been all over the place. This is the 21-day moving average. This is the 50-day moving average. And just today, silver's down three $3 and change. There's a lot of people out there on Twitter and on the web saying, you know what, this is probably a or could be a double top. So, there's very there's a lot of skittishness. Maybe it's a double top. I don't know. There's a lot of air here between the current price and even the 21-day moving average. So, I would say anything's possible. But trying to call a top here has been a fool's game. I can tell you we're seeing a lot of skittishness even in diehard bulls. And that to me is a relatively good sign. Not a good excuse to go in too heavy still think you should be selling on the way up a little bit at a time. Those people that have bought maybe 10% back when we were recommending it all these years now have 20 or 30%. Sell 5% something like that up here. It's going to help you refresh your mind. It's going to free up cash to use for other meaningful things and maybe even other meaningful real things like construction or buying property or things like that or even a vacation. So, don't forget to ring the register a little bit, but I don't see any indication here that this top is in. You know, I guess we won't know till we know, but I wouldn't have thought that we'd be up at $78 an ounce, which is where we are right now. It's kind of amazing. And that and that's despite your pretty strong bullishness on silver heading into 2025. >> Yeah, I was really really really bullish about it. I didn't actually think we'd get to even where we are here. But I've also learned that I can't call a top or a bottom precisely. Nobody can. The gold silver ratio show that here has now normalized. I remember talking about this back in liberation day. We were saying, you know, the gold silver ratio is like 103, right? And this is this is just a year chart, but 103 is pretty rarified. uh you know t level. It's only seen that a few times in the last 20 years and now we've come all the way down to 55. I'd say the long-term average over the last 10 or 15 years for the gold silver ratios 40 to 60. So down here in 55 we're at the top end of that range. I don't think it's a screaming valuation advantage for silver versus gold anymore. I think that easy money has been made. But having said that, I don't see any reason to believe we've seen the top in silver or gold. So there again, the daily chart. I don't know. We might chop around here and then go higher. If you take a look at some of the mining stocks, you know, particularly silver miners, a lot of people have been saying here's SIL silver miners. They have lagged a little bit. They're still up quite a bit over the last year, close to the same amount as silver, but we haven't seen the multiplication effect there quite yet. There's a lot of head scratching going on right now about that. >> A lot. And you know, I kind of attribute it to nervous Nellies a little bit. There's a lot of, you know, the diehard kind of gold and silver bulls. They're looking to ring the register left and right because they've been out of the money for so many years and they keep thinking we're going to see the next big collapse. It just hasn't happened yet. So I don't >> sorry to interject here but but to the extent that prices remain at these levels then price really is your friend as an investor in the miners right because the one thing you know you can't deny is earnings and if these companies you know start or continue to produce great earnings growth because the product they're digging out of the ground is now worth a lot more eventually Wall Street's going to have to take note of that. Correct. >> I think so. You know, right now we're looking at a chart of the gold miners GDX, um, which of course happens to be a VAC product and it's in our model. I think that the earnings are likely to come through in the next couple quarters, assuming they didn't hedge away the advantage um, uh, in mass, and I don't think that they did. It should come through very positively. You know, here's GDX. It has essentially doubled off this base early in the year, and I've we've talked about this before. when you have a big bull market kickoff, particularly in commodities, you'll often see a doubling, then another doubling. So, when is that next doubling going to come? Again, this is not a projection or a recommendation. But if you take a look at some of these things like SIL, the silver majors, we doubled off that 40 area up to 80. Now, we're chopping around. And a lot of people are thinking it's the the high. And I don't know 100% for sure either, but I believe that we're going to start seeing some positive earnings reports. And I believe the big picture is that these things might double again from here. And that's where you get the real multiple expansion. But that's the that's the head scratcher, right? Going back to silver. Silver's had this vertical move. Silver miners and even gold miners haven't had the same vertical move. Is this a a um you know, some kind of signal? Is this a negative signal or are the miners just going to catch up in their own time? That's the hardest thing, Adam, to say. my and like all of investing, you have to have a bias and make a guess. You know, I I believe that we're going to see that expansion come through in the miners. >> So, we'll talk about this with a with with a mining chart in just a second, but looking at silver here, you know, again, two guys that have been quite bullish on silver. You've been touting it for a long time, Mike. I had my, you know, silver laser eyes that I put on my ex profile back in June. um you know looking here at the current silver price versus its its moving averages which are the colored lines there. Um you know this is a this is a huge deviation folks right from the moving averages. And so uh those deviations don't last. Um, so what's either going to happen is the price is going to come down to to get more into historical context versus these moving averages or it just might cool off and give those moving averages time to catch up to it. We'll see. But Mike, as as you've often said, when you when you have technical momentum, the trend is your friend, right? And so generally you you play it, right? I think you've even said the trend is your friend until the end, right? Um, I don't believe, correct me if I'm wrong, while yes, this trend might reverse and and and maybe it it, as I said earlier, the price comes down to match the to the moving averages, um, but right now we're not yet seeing signs of a trend breakdown. Would you agree with that? >> I Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. We're we're looking at a weekly chart and there's a lot of air here. It's true, you know, but that does in itself is not a signal that we're going to see an impending collapse. On a weekly chart, we had this triangle back here in October. We broke out of that and it was 1 2 3 4 5 five straight weeks up and now we're chopping around on SLV between 65 and the low 70s. A lot of people we might be looking at this chart and say, "Well, look, we have a shooting star here, you know, potentially maybe, but it's only Wednesday as of at the time of this recording and we don't know what's going to happen." So, no, there's no trend break. And if I went back to daily my, you know, we'd have to come all the way down to maybe 65 or even 62 on SLV before we even talk about a trend break. And that would bring us down to maybe 68 or 70 on silver, which is right at 78 now. So, >> which we would have been thrilled at if we heard six months ago that that's >> I know, but that's what's hard. It's hard to hold on. I'll tell you, real bull markets are hard to hold on. And the market will do everything possible to get you out and play with your emotions, >> you know. So, so Mike, if you could pull up um whichever chart will best show it, but I'm guessing it's GDX. Um you mentioned you guys had some hedges on the positions now um because they've moved so far so fast. Where are your current hedges in this space? >> Yeah, we we only have it half hedged. So, first of all, we we admit that this is a powerful bull market and we don't want to we don't want to cap it. At the same time, we want to have something in place so that we can um reduce volatility. Right now, our call option is at 880. Okay. So on half of it, so that means on half of it we're capped out, but the other half of it is unencumbered. But we also get accumulated premiums for that half. So it's not really easy to say exactly where the break even would be. But I can tell you on a big pullback, uh, we would get more bullish because as we come down towards that line, we move more towards 100% in the position. As we move away from that line, we move more towards 50% exposed. and then and then the premiums that we take in for that half hedge part acrue to the the uh the account. So we use pullbacks like this like this to reset those hedges. We just did it here. Um so we'll see if we go straight up from here. Well, I guess that's going to say that on half of the position we're missing out on further upside. Overall, we're okay with that in exchange for the overall experience of dampening the ride and staying on board. This has not been an easy thing to stay on board these last few years. And even now, it's doing its best to throw everybody off, including the diehard believers, right? So, we talked to a lot of people in the audience. Your audience tends to be more believers in gold and silver like we are. Sometimes we have to walk people back from an all-in mentality when they say, "Well, there's nothing else to invest in. I might as well just put everything in gold and silver." And you know, they've been right. That's been right. But allin mentality gets you hurt and it gets you a little bit stuck sometimes mentally. We sometimes see people like all-in miners and then they get shaken out on the first big downturn. If I go back to like silver juniors for instance, just a few days ago, we had a downturn. And that, you know, that doesn't look like much, but that's painful. And you know, these these downturns shake people out and they start to question their beliefs and they stop out. Get your position in place and just let it be. And if anything, sell a little bit on the way up in into strength to rebalance yourself a little bit. That's the way. If you're hyperfocused, hyper emotional, you're going to get you're going to get in trouble. This silver junior minor, since we're looking at it, the chart looks great. Cup and handle breakout. But look at all this chop between 27 and 30 on this ETF. A lot of people out there, I guess including me even, are saying, "What the heck is going on? Silver's going vertical. Aren't these miners supposed to go vertical, too?" All I can say is give them time. It doesn't happen on your time frame. It happens on the market's time frame. >> All right. Well, very well said, Mike. We'll have to end it there just in the interest of time. Um, real quick, um, uh, you know, you were talking about the the the folks who, you know, went all in and then maybe got shaken out in in the recent, uh, price weakness there. Um, I had Andy Sheckchman on, um, Thoughtful Money's endorsed precious metals uh, solutions provider, his firm, Miles Franklin. And, and you know, talked at length about that in, uh, a video I just released with him a couple of days ago about how he thinks that that was actually kind of engineered, you know, by the bigger, uh, the bigger longs. Now, the institutional longs, they call it shaking the bushes. It's just literally to try to bang the price down to shake out the weak hands, buy silver at a lower price, and then ride it right back up again, which, you know, obviously seems to have happened over the past week. Um, Andy also is quite bullish about silver's momentum from here. The title of the of the uh video was, "Has has silver peaked out here?" Um, he gives uh a very strong argument for no and gives a whole bunch of reasons why. So folks, if you want to get kind of the latest on his precious metals uh thoughts uh as an industry insider, go listen to that that video. Uh but also just a reminder that Andy, for folks that are still looking to either get in for the first time um or to add to their positions uh on the silver side, he has been offering the thoughtful money audience for about the past month or so um a a an exclusive price discount on junk silver. and he was offering it at a dollar below spot and kudos to everybody who took advantage of that one because silverber's higher today but you bought it at a really good price. Um so you know he can't because of the recent CME hikes he can't offer the same uh quite low price but he's now offering while supplies last still of course uh now junk silver at just $135 cents over spot. So, if you want to take advantage of that, just go fill out the short form at thoughtfoldmoney.com/bygold and he and his team will respond right away and uh you know, either get you hooked up with that uh offer or if you've got other questions or needs around, you know, buying precious metals or storing them, he and his team will will definitely be happy to help you with that. Um, all right, gentlemen. Well, look, uh, great kickoff to the year. Um, thanks so much for coming on this week. look forward to 51 more weeks of doing this uh with you guys in 2026. Uh kudos to to you and the whole team there at New Harbor for having such a great year next year or last year and um you know whatever happens from here very much appreciate you guys tracking it for my viewers here in real time on the channel. Um, all right folks. Well, in wrapping up, if you um again enjoy these um quarterly outlooks with Yan, would like to see them continue, please let us know that by hitting the like button and then clicking on the subscribe button below as well as that little bell icon next to it if you haven't clicked that already. Uh, and if you would like to get help early here in 2026 in setting your um, uh, personal portfolio up for what is uh, likely to happen this year, whether it plays out the way that Jon thinks or some of the other experts on this channel think, uh, highly recommend that you get that help from a good professional financial adviser. If you don't have one that's already providing that guidance to you, well, and consider talking to one of the financial adviserss that Thoughtful Money endorses. These are the firms you see with me on this channel week in and week out. You might even like to talk to John and Mike themselves there at New Harbor. So to set up one of those consultations, which are totally free, just fill out the very short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. Only takes you a couple seconds to fill out the form. As I said, these discussions are totally free. There's no commitments involved. It's just a service these firms offer to be as helpful to as many people as possible. John and Mike, again, can't thank you guys enough. Look forward to spending the rest of year doing the same thing right here with you guys. So happy to be here. Thanks again for the opportunity. Happy New Year to everybody. We'll see you next week. >> Thanks again, Adam. I think we're going on something like 15th or 16th year kind of being friends and collaborators. So, we appreciate this opportunity and uh um we look forward to a great year ahead. >> Yeah, I think this is year 16. Um and it has been a wonderful partnership and I look forward to at least 16 more with you guys ahead. Um all right, thanks so much, boys. Everybody else, thanks so much for watching.