Transcription
I think that could be the black swan of 2026, the story of 2026, and the market will get very spooked because of that. I do think we get at least a 20% drawdown at some point in 2026. I think it's probably in the first half of 2026 that we'll see it. You could be talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in additional money that has to go. And it bleeds the US and the American people dry. And that's where that craziness could start.
So then Gareth, what is your top trade for 2026?
This is the Real Story with Michelle Makori. Hello, I'm Michelle Makori. Thank you for watching The Real Story here on MFM. And 2025 has been a phenomenal year for precious metals. Gold, silver, platinum, all hitting new all-time highs. Gold has surged more than 70% year to date, setting over 50 all-time highs in 2025 so far. In the second half of this year, silver finally caught up and then some, doubling gold's rally, breaking record after record and climbing above $72 an ounce, up roughly 145% year to date. Platinum also standing out, up roughly 150%.
So when precious metals are leading and leading so decisively, it does raise a bigger question. What exactly is the market preparing for? Because while metals surged, equity markets also had a very strong year with new record highs and double-digit percentage gains for the S&P 500, the Dow, and the Nasdaq. So what does all of this mean heading into 2026?
Well, to help us break it all down, I am joined by Gareth Soloway, Chief Market Strategist at Verified Investing. Gareth is a widely followed technical analyst. He has over two decades of experience as a trader and a chartist. And he's known for his bold and timely calls like his big contrarian call in late 2021 that Bitcoin, then at $69,000, would fall to $20,000 in 2022. He got that correct. And he also correctly forecast gold's breakout when it was stuck around $1,900 in 2023, saying that gold would reach $3,000 by late 2024, early 2025.
Now, Gareth combines technical chart analysis with macro fundamentals to cut through the noise and to tell investors where the opportunities and the risks really are. Gareth, always great chatting with you. Good to have you back.
Oh, thank you, Michelle. It is wonderful to be back and talk to you.
All right, Gareth, I do want to do a look back on 2025, a year in review a bit and a look ahead to 2026. Of course, I want to get your forecasts on gold and on silver and your top trade for 2026. But before we do that, as we wrap up 2025 here, I'll start off gently and I will let you take a victory lap. What was your top call of 2025?
So, I think, I think the top call for me was Bitcoin. Um, Bitcoin topping out at around $127,000. Uh, it was a great run in Bitcoin. There were lots of calls for $250,000 by year-end, but the chart just did not give us that indicator, right? It was telling us that it was at the top. And in fact, I can briefly show on my chart how I was able to make this call very simply by following a key trend line.
So, let's take a look here. And if we look at Bitcoin and we go to our monthly chart, what we can see here is that in December 2017, we had our peak, our bull market peak. And then here you have your sec, your first high in 2021. And all you're doing here is connecting a trend line between those two points. And notice, no other time does Bitcoin tag that line until we got to October and September of this year. And we had a one hit, two hits, and three hits. And then Bitcoin came down. And really, the key to technical analysis is not overthinking it, right? There doesn't need to be a lot of indicators here. You just simply have a trend line that has told you price could not get through any time in the past really five, six, seven, eight years. And therefore, we have to assume it's going to stop price here. And so, simply put, that was one of the calls that I made this year, and it was a good one. We've seen Bitcoin really pull back substantially. And you got a lot of people very upset when you told them that Bitcoin was going to do that.
Uh, I want to get, of course, uh, your thoughts on gold, on silver, on the metals, but I do want to focus a little bit more on Bitcoin here because investors, Gareth, they got practically everything that they wanted in 2025. We had a a crypto-friendly president in the White House, talk of a federal Bitcoin reserve, friendly regulations, Bitcoin Treasury companies, rate cuts. All of this good news though wasn't enough to lift prices to a new all-time high for Bitcoin. As you quite said, on the contrary, Bitcoin down over 6% year to date, significantly underperforming gold and the S&P 500. So, I see the charts here, but but what happened, you know, why did you make this call? Why did we see this pullback?
Yeah. And so, I, I look at this and just keep in mind, even though I called Bitcoin's pullback this year, I'm actually still very bullish on Bitcoin longer term. And so the key here is it's more of a momentum trade, right? You came into the year, Trump was coming into the White House, there was so much excitement and it drove Bitcoin up for quite a good portion and then it kind of stalled out. We haven't seen a lot of the new initiatives come through. We still can't again trade Bitcoin in the US, um, or at least buy other coins, um, through some of the other players out there, the exchanges here in the US. You have to have your uh, know your customer type rules going on. And so again, for me, this is a lot of just of a stall out where there's not been the the key initial or continued catalyst for Bitcoin. And I ultimately think that there's also a rotation of capital here. We've seen silver. I bet silver has taken a large percentage of money from retail investors that were in Bitcoin, that were in altcoins, and they've rushed into silver for the momentum trade thing. Same thing for the stock market. The stock market has been the hot trade. And so ultimately, I still think Bitcoin after a pullback, maybe a little bit lower, is going to make a bigger move up.
And I'd love to show you guys something because, you know, most key players out there will say, "Oh, well, every Bitcoin bare market, and by the way, it is the four-year cycle if you believe in it, is going to correct by 70, 75%." I don't think that's going to happen this time. And I'm going to show you why here.
So, if we look at this same chart, look at what we have. Here's your December 2017 high. When we corrected in the bare market in 2021 into 2022, we only came down to the previous cycle high, right? And so, if we follow that same methodology and we look at the highs from 2021, you're really only looking for a pullback for this cycle, that's going to take you down towards around $70,000 or maybe just below. And at that point, you're only down about 45% on Bitcoin. And we honestly could be there very, very soon if we see another leg lower. And so ultimately for the bulls out there in Bitcoin, I think again, we're actually closer to the bottom than than where people actually would think. And I think you're going to start to see money rotating from the stock market and from some of the metals plays here back into Bitcoin sooner than later.
All right. I, I do want to focus on a point though. You said, uh, something about the Bitcoin ETFs. I mean, one would could actually make the argument that since the launch of the spot Bitcoin ETFs, Bitcoin has effectively moved from a relatively high friction asset into a one-click trade. Bitcoin has become dramatically easier to buy and to sell. I mean, initially it helped propel prices higher that it was easier to get into, but now it's a lot easier to get out of Bitcoin positions, especially for those institutions that now treat it like any other macro risk asset. And especially for retail traders that didn't want to go through the hassle of a Coinbase account or wallet, it's become, you know, the barrier to entry and the barrier to exit, I guess, is is a lot more, um, easy these days. Uh, you've also had all of these derivatives, you know, uh, that make it, uh, easier to short the Bitcoin and the underlying asset there. So, it's a fi, it's more of a financial instrument than it was when you and I started talking about Bitcoin.
Does that impact the trajectory? Does that limit the ability of Bitcoin to go to the moon? Does that now curtail how much of an upside there is to Bitcoin?
So, so the wider it's owned and especially the more institutionally owned, the the lower the drawdowns are and the lower the big bull markets will be. Meaning that again, you're not going to get your thousand percent type moves in a bull market because again, the law of large numbers, the institutional base is going to keep it from going too far to the downside. But I think going back to what you mentioned on ETFs, it's that was such a great thing for Bitcoin, but it also was why it's probably underperforming now. There was so much hype over this over the last couple years that everyone rushed in. And because now people are buying it in their stock portfolios, many people are saying, "Wait a minute, why am I holding Bitcoin that is underperforming? I need to dump this and go into stocks." And so it's now competing more. Right? If you go back a few cycles ago, Bitcoin really wasn't competing with anything else. Maybe gold to a small percentage, but overall it was on its own because of the ETFs. Now people owning it in their stock portfolios. Now people are actually actively dumping the ETF because they want to take that money and put it in a better performing asset like gold, like silver, like stocks.
So, but yet you're still bullish on Bitcoin long term. What's your Bitcoin outlook for 2026?
Yeah. And so I actually think in the first half of 2026, we're going to see a move down on the charts back to this kind of $69,000 level. And then once we get to that $69,000, maybe a little bit lower, I think you're going to start to see the next bull run come in. And again, people shouldn't be expecting this right to $250,000. It's now going to compete with some of these other trillion-dollar assets, including Apple, including silver, and some of these other ones. But ultimately, I do think next year, by late next year, you're probably near $150,000. So again, it will have some significant upside here. Again, especially if you're patient and wait for that next leg down to buy.
Okay. So, you're seeing it hit below $70,000 by the first half of 2026. What do you see would be the catalyst for higher price action second half of 2026?
Yeah, I think my guess is what we're going to see is more concerns about interest rates being dropped and being forced down even in light of strong GDP. We know we got the GDP reading of 4.3%. These are things that are going to make people very nervous about the financial system and we've already seen it, right? I mean, de-dollarization is slowly occurring with other countries now want not wanting the US to have as much control over them. So they're starting to sell off dollars, not as willing to buy US debt as the debt source here in the US. And I think again, we just heard just in the last 24 hours that government spending is even higher now. Even though Doge came in early in the year and cut some spending, it's now ballooned back to the upside. And that again is going to be one of the key catalysts here is the inability for Americans and global participants of the financial system to actually trust the fiat currencies. And that is going to continue to drive the want for holding Bitcoin.
Yeah. The fiscal dominance and that was part of the debasement trade that we had earlier this year. And the big banks like uh JP Morgan, they did have Bitcoin as part of that debasement trade. They were like gold, absolutely, but a lot of them also had Bitcoin as a counter to this debasement and devaluation of the dollar and of fiat currencies at large. I, I want to get back to that, but I just want to go back into a point that you said. You said that a lot of people were opting out of Bitcoin and going for silver. Now, traditionally, it's been Bitcoin versus gold. So, explain why that trade happened. Was it more of a let's jump on what could be the hottest trade sort of idea? Was this more of a a retail day trader sort of, um, mentality? What, what was that the thinking there?
You're 100% right on that. And so you have, you have the hardcore Bitcoin believers, the Michael Sailors of the world, and a lot of retail investors that really believe in Bitcoin. And then it also attracts the get-rich-quick people, right? And the get-rich-quick people are going to be always fair-weather friends, they're going to be loving Bitcoin when it's surging to the upside. And then as soon as Bitcoin underperforms and there's a shinier play out there, ala silver, they're going to take that money out and run into silver. And so the idea here is you could actually see in the next few weeks potentially a bounce in Bitcoin if silver does pull back. And I think that's kind of a short-term trade, but something that investors may want to pay attention to in the near term, uh, for Bitcoin.
All right, we'll get into silver because I think the fundamentals there are a whole, you know, different conversation. But before we do that, I gave you your your victory lap and you were correct on Bitcoin. However, when we last spoke in September, Gareth, your big call was that we would see a major equity top, that it was forming, and that we would likely see a correction as much as 20% early 2026, 20 to 30% to early 2026 after choppy trading. Uh, we haven't seen a major sell-off yet. Uh, as I mentioned, the S&P 500, as of recording, up about 18% year to date. The Dow up roughly 14 and a half percent. The Nasdaq up more than 22% as of recording now. So, didn't quite get that one right, but I'll let you put it, frame it how you see it. What would you say was your worst call of 2025 and why?
Yeah. And so, I came into 2025 thinking that by the end of the year we would see a recession or at least be on the verge of recession. Per the latest GDP number, that certainly isn't the case. Granted, I'm a believer that about 90% of that GDP is the AI capex right now. So, I do think that most Americans out there feel like they're struggling with inflation, with the economy slowing down, with the labor market slowing down. But ala the numbers, we are definitely not in a recession and the S&P continues to stay very, very strong. However, take a look at this chart. If we bring up this chart here on the S&P 500, it is a remarkable one.
All right. So on the S&P chart we have here, look at this. We're in a parallel which is again a way of tracking market action where again it caps the highs but also gives you bottoms. And if we go back to the COVID low in 2020, that's where this bottom trend line starts. And look at how it connects perfectly through the bare market lows here in 2022. And then when we sold off for the liberation tariffs, we actually came right down to that trend line. And that was where the catapult took place to the upside. Now, if you look here and we extend this parallel up to the bull market of 2021, where do we see the S&P? We just pierced it back in October. We got a sell-off. Now, we're coming back on up to do a double tap. I still think in the first half of 2026, we are going to see some sort of rejection here. And you can see every time we were at the bottom of this parallel, we had major moves to the upside, right? And then every time again, there it is. And when we were at the highs, we had a big sell-off to the downside. And so just following technical analysis, this chart definitely tells us be very wary in the first half of 2026. We could be due for a major, major downside move in the S&P 500.
What, what could trigger that?
It's a great question. So again, there's a lot of potential issues out there. I see things like the Japanese 10-year yield now blasting through 2.2%. That hasn't been this high in 30 plus years. And again, that can affect the yen carry trade where money gets sucked out of the US back to Japan. Um, it could be also just a global bond market issue where everyone's expecting yields to go down, but the 10-year yield is actually making a bull flag right now. And if we see Japan's rates continuing to go up, the idea is a rising tide raises or or lifts all boats. And again, what we're looking at here is you have Japan's debt to GDP at 240%. The US, while better, is still not good. And we know the spending that's going on. And I do wonder if in 2026, could it be the year where we start to see foreign entities and big buyers of US debt and global debt, meaning bonds, maybe step back and demand higher interest rates in spite of the Fed lowering rates? And I think that could be the black swan of 2026, the story of 2026.
Okay, we're going to have to break that down. Um, the black swan of 2026, investors, foreign investors wanting higher returns for holding US treasuries even in an environment where we're going to see the Fed cut rates.
That's right.
So, how does that work? How does that happen?
So, number one, the Fed when they lower rates, they only control the short end of of the curve, right? They only control the very near-term Treasury market. The 10-year, the 20-year, and the 30-year are controlled by the market forces. So again, if you're trying to sell a trillion dollars in US debt and there's no buyers, the US must let that interest rate go up until they can convince people to say, "Okay, I will lend the US a trillion dollars. And they're paying me enough interest to make it worth the risk." And we're already seeing that going on in Japan with rates going up there as well with their massive debt to GDP. And if that happens here, it's not going to matter that the Fed is lowering rates. The long end is what's going to be important and the market will get very spooked because of that.
So investors are going to want more, more assurance, more return for lending.
And you can't really blame them, right, Michelle? I mean, look at what's going on. Is there any fiscal responsibility in the US whatsoever? Absolutely none. We're hearing all about this other stuff about now maybe the inflation rate can be higher at 3% longer term. That's okay. I mean, you tell that to average Americans, it's ridiculous, you know, like, yeah, okay, you've been hurt already, but let's let it float even higher. I think again, this could be a major story of 2026.
Right? You're referring to recent comments by Treasury Secretary Scott Bent. I want to get to that, but you've said yen carry trade. Again, I like to make this information as accessible as possible to our viewers. So for those that don't really understand what that means, why people were able to borrow money so cheaply, give the breakdown of what we mean by the yen carry trade.
Right?
And why Japan raising rates is such a big problem for US markets.
Right? Absolutely. So the yen carry trade, just to summarize that, it's where essentially investors would borrow money at near zero interest rates from Japan and then they would put it in the US for a much higher return. So it's basically risk-free, right? You're borrowing from this side and you're getting a better return over here on your money. You only pay a tiny amount of interest to Japan, but you're making let's say 3, 4% in the US. So, it's one of those almost like free money type scenarios. But as Japan's rates are going up, that no longer is in play. And so, what had happened over the last many, many years of 10, 20 years, the yen carry trade had a trillions of dollars being borrowed from Japan and being invested in the US. If interest rates rise there, that trade is going to unwind, sucking trillions of dollars out of the US back to Japan because the rates are higher there now and it's not as lucrative to borrow money from Japan.
And we did see signs of that, uh, earlier this year and we sort of seem, we saw markets start to to wobble, uh, on that idea. But so your theme here, if I may say, your big black swan macro theme of 2026 is that the Fed may have to make long-term debt much more attractive by raising interest rates there because there's just not going to be demand. And, and what's amazing about this is you can see the writing on the wall already because if, if President Trump puts a very dovish Fed chair into place and let's say he 50 basis points and the market, the global market views him as basically a puppet of the administration that's going to decrease the trust in the US financial system, which is going to make these investors that are buying US debt say, "Hey, listen, we don't trust you as much. We want 5% on this 10-year yield versus 4%." And that's where that craziness could start.
Right. So, let's bring it back to what you mentioned about, uh, Treasury Secretary Scott Vent. Uh, he has been saying that, yeah, we maybe should be looking at where inflation is. He was speaking a few days ago on the All-In podcast. Uh, and he goes on about, you know, some long-standing obsession with precision, arguing that the economy isn't physics or mathematics. It's something more organic, more unpredictable, and that once inflation is re-anchored at 2%, that policymakers should considering abandoning that fixed target altogether and operate within a broader inflation range. Let's play that sound bite for our viewers.
Once we are back to two, which I, I think will be in sight, then we can have a discussion. Is it much smarter to have a range? Like, what, what drives me crazy, the, the economy, the markets are biology. They're not math. They're not physics. They're, they're nonlinearities. And this idea that we can have this decimal point certainty is, is just absurd. So I, I believe that once we re-anchor to the target, then we could talk about a range. And we could decide whether the range is from 2.5 to 1.5, is it from 1 to three? But I, I think it's very difficult to, uh, re-anchor until you meet the target and maintain credibility.
Look, to be fair, he is saying maintain credibility. He is saying re-anchor at 2% first, to be fair. And that, by the way, was just a number that was randomly rather arbitrarily that they came up with after, I believe it was the Bank of New Zealand who first set that 2% target and everybody just kind of went along with that many years ago. Um, but when he does say that the economy is biological, nonlinear, incompatible with decimal point precision, is that just being realistic, you know, or is this, does he have a point, or is this groundwork being laid for what potentially could just be accepting permanently higher inflation and that's just the spin?
Right. And that's what I worry about. He, he makes a lot of sense, but I would also argue that we kind of have a range already. For instance, we're already seeing the Fed lowering rates back towards their normal, let's say, rate range based on inflation that is still north of 2%. Right? So again, the Fed is already saying, "All right, let's bring these interest rates down and it's okay that inflation is above because we expect it to slowly come back in." And so I kind of think that the Fed already does that even though they have that target of 2%. And my worry again is what you just mentioned, which is again this is a slippery slope. You start to say, "Okay, our range is 2% to 3%." All right. Well, now it's been, let's say it's 3% for five straight years, but you're like, "Oh, but it's in the range." And then it's 3.1. Oh, well, the range could be, you know, it's, it's just one of those things where, you know, you see the goalposts starting to be moved. And you really have to feel for Americans that, you know, if you're not someone who's invested heavily in the stock market, you're probably struggling. And we know there's a huge percentage of the population that is already really hurting because of where inflation has been. And now you're starting to talk about, well, it's okay if it's a little bit above 2%. We're going to deal with that and that's acceptable. I think that's a bigger issue. And I would just warn that that the Trump administration going into the midterms, they need to really clarify this for the regular folks in the United States to not say that they're going to accept inflation at 3% now versus 2%. Because it will bite them. I, I do worry about that.
I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, this is something that everybody is feeling on a real, real level. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm back in New York, Gareth. I make this example because late nights, I like to get a slice of pizza and forget about the dollar pizza. Dollar, the first slice, that's long gone. Last night, Gareth, $4 for one slice of pizza. Plain margarita pizza. No olives, no mushrooms, no nothing. You know, this is, this is what it's come to.
It is. And and that's just to me like a little, you know, you used to have those signs, $1 pizza slice history.
Yeah. And I mean, I'm, I'm seeing the same thing, right? I mean, you know, we order for the family, we, we go out to the supermarket, we do our family shopping, and it literally, you, you could make a case that it's almost doubled from where it was years ago or just, you know, three years ago or so. Um, and for, again, it's not something that we can't handle as a family, but there are a lot of Americans that are really struggling and that's the issue out there. And again, you know, most people, if you ask most people, they prefer zero inflation versus being okay with even 2%. But 2% I think people can deal with because it's been what it has been for a long time. But let's not be moving the goalposts.
Well, look, and to your point, the Fed traditionally is supposed to be apolitical. It is supposed to be independent. Now, you can make the argument that there have been times where the Fed has been influenced by whatever political party was in power. You could say that Biden had an impact on Powell when he decided to cut rates right before the election. And there are plenty of examples, you know, throughout, uh, American history where perhaps the Fed has not been as apolitical and as independent as we would like, but at least there was an attempt to maintain that illusion, right?
Absolutely.
And now we have a President Trump who did post, uh, on Truth Social, "Anybody that disagrees with me will never be the Fed chairman." Okay, that's a very long post that that he put there. Um, I'm gonna give you like the gist of it without, without reading the whole thing. But basically, you know, he takes aim at the whole idea of what he calls, you know, the fundamental inversion in today's market where good economic news now triggers sell-offs because investors expect the Fed to respond with tighter policy to preempt inflation. So, you know, he's the good news is bad news sort of, uh, idea or bad news is good news because it means the Fed will act, the Fed put that we've all become, you know, very used to. And, you know, he, he does make a point. He says, "When you have, uh, good news, the market stays even or goes down because Wall Street's heads are wired differently than they used to be. In the old days, when there was good news, the market went up. Nowadays, when there is good news, the market goes down because everybody thinks that interest rates will be immediately lifted to take care of potential inflation. That means essentially we can never have a great market again. Those markets from the time when our nation was building up and becoming great, strong markets, even phenomenal markets don't cause inflation. Stupidity does. I want my new Fed chairman to lower interest rates if the market is doing well, not destroy the market for no reason whatsoever. I want to have a market like the likes of which we haven't had in many decades. The market that goes up on good news and down on bad news, the way it should be and the way it was."
So, you know, the only kind of pushback I would say, what kind of stock market have we had since COVID? We're up over 200% in 5 years. I mean, how much better can it be? And part of this is too, and you're right, he's right about this, is that the market, and this is a problem that has occurred because of the Fed and because of the government and spending, is that the market has been basically addicted to money printing, right? And that's what he's actually talking about where bad news is great because they'll just feed more drugs into the system. And I would argue that you have to attack that at the core. And there's no way to get away with that or get away from that impact unless we take some hard medicine. And so, you know, this is a tricky thing, right? The markets have gained massive amounts. So, I'm not sure what he's talking about with how the market isn't good. I mean, it's been an amazing market for most investors that have been long the stock market. But at the same time, there's a core fundamental issue here, which is the addiction to money printing, which by the way is great for gold and silver and Bitcoin, arguably, but again, it is not healthy for the system. It's not healthy for the system which has been artificially stimulated here, you know, and we have to return to fundamentals one way or another. And I do believe that the president has good intentions of trying to make the economy stronger, trying to help everyday Americans, trying to make us an independent nation that can stand on its own, hence the onshoring of manufacturing. Uh, all of these attempts to not make us as vulnerable to global supply chains and being dependent on our adversaries for critical minerals and, uh, supplies and so forth and so on. But, you know, when the president says, "We're going to make America great again, the United States should be rewarded for success, not brought down by it. Anybody that disagrees with me will never be the Fed chairman." Again, he's not saying that it kind of leaves some room for interpretation, but he's also made it very, very clear that he wants someone that's going to cut rates. So, I guess going, going into 2026, what do you expect from the Fed? Granted, Powell's resigning, we're going to have to have a confirmation process. Most likely Kevin Hassett will see. But give me your scenarios. What do you think we can expect from the Fed going into 2026?
So, so that exact quote of from Trump talking about how he wants a Fed chair that's going to basically agree with him and cut rates is exactly what we just discussed earlier on and the reason why this whole scenario of higher long-end yields could be the trigger for something bigger in 2026. So, we have to keep that in mind. Now, again, if we turn back to the charts here, let's go back to the charts. Based on the charts, the market is in trouble here. We are going to see some sort of bigger drawdown in 2026. My base case would be a pullback back to the highs of 2025, which would be a 12% drawdown. I do worry that if we see what I'm talking about with the bond market, it could be a lot bigger than that, potentially to the lower end of this parallel channel. But again, to me, this is an issue. And then if we flip over to the 10-year yield, this is the 10-year yield chart and it's actually making a bull flag right now into the year-end. This is a bullish pattern formation that generally leads to moves to the upside when you talk probabilities. And so again, the groundwork is being laid and I do wonder if as we get closer to the new Fed chair taking over, are the long end of that yield curve, the 10-year, the 20-year, the 30-year, are we going to see a move up? And that again would be the trigger for some sort of bigger sell-off in the US equity markets.
Why and how? Why would that be a trigger? Why could that be a black swan that then creates the contagion and brings everything down?
Well, I think again, we've looked at history, right? We've seen when yields, when interest rates go up, the market tends to revert and get panicky about it because again, it's telling you number one, when we have, I think now we're at $1.2 trillion in interest that we're paying a year on the US debt. I mean, this is all debt that's needing to be refinanced. I think there's something like $7 trillion in debt that needs to be refinanced just over the next year or so. And so, these interest payments really do have a major impact. Whether it's 4%, 4.5%, you could be talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in additional money that has to go and it bleeds the US and the American people dry when our tax dollars are essentially being used to pay off the interest on this debt. And so you look at that, then you also look at the valuations in stocks and you say, well, you know, if I can get 4.5 or 5% basically guaranteed, is that better? And so people remove money from the stock market and put it in the bond market and that again can be another trigger. So there's just a lot of scenarios here where higher yields on the long end will spook investors. And I think the biggest one of all is the loss of confidence in the US financial system, which then brings us back to the de-dollarization that has already started and likely will continue for the next decade.
Which of course brings us to gold. But I'm not quite ready to go to gold just yet, Gareth. Because so far the markets, it seems have been an inflation hedge themselves, right? People have been like, "Well, they're cutting rates. Sure, the fundamentals are completely out of sync. Sure, price-to-earnings ratios are ridiculous, but where else am I going to put my money?" And it seems as though that the even though a lot of people, not just you, a lot of people were calling for a correction this year, um, they've just been wrong, wrong, wrong. And the markets continue to defy gravity, continue to go high. And a lot of it has to do with where are we going to put our money? We see inflation happening. Let's put it in equities so we can at least, you know, keep up with inflation if nothing else. Why would that change if we do see rate cuts happening into next year and we do have these pro-growth economic policies and we do have a president that wants the markets higher and that is doing a lot of things to juice the economy with some genuine growth as well as a Fed chair that is, you know, let's say more, uh, conducive to the president's wishes. I, I get the loss of faith potentially, but wouldn't people still be rushing into equities?
Yeah, and you're right. Partially that would be the case is that, well, where else are you going to put your money? I would just say this is the, the kind of the black swan event is not only what we're talking about with the 10-year, the 20-year, and the 30-year and long end of the yield curve going up, but also the potential that we could see an economic slowdown. And so, when you look at the GDP, it looks amazing on the outskirts. That 4.3% growth is absolutely remarkable. But when you think about it, it's so tied to the AI trade and the capex from all of these AI companies. $100 billion this way, $100 billion that way, $500 billion this way, from OpenAI to Nvidia to AMD. But the key here is if you take that away, you're essentially on the borderline of a recession in the US. And so sure the Fed can cut rates, but if you look historically, if the Fed cuts rates because the economy is weakening into a recession, then actually the stock market sells off on the back of that as well. And so you have these concurrent kind of factors that are going to be battling. But again, if they happen together like I think, and I do think we will see a continued slowdown in the labor market in 2026, then we could be looking at even with rate cuts, the market then takes a big dump because valuations are too high and profits are going to start to fall.
All right, let's bring it to gold because I know everybody's very eager to hear what you have to say there. And again, I will give you props. You know, back in 2023 when gold was stuck at $1,900, you said it was heading to $3,000 by end of 2024, early 2025. I read the comments. People were making fun of you all the time. Um, what was
Not your audience though, let's be fair. They, they got it.
Uh, some of my audience, but still, you got a lot of heat on that. Look, I, I give you credit because you come out there and you're not afraid to take a position and people love you when you're right and they hate you when you're wrong, but, uh, you're right definitely more often than you're wrong and, uh, you, you make these bold calls and I certainly respect you for that. And the gold call was very, very, very accurate. So what is your call for gold now?
Yeah. So if we look at the chart here, gold has broken out from its previous high of just in October, right? So, here's our previous high on gold. We've now, you can see this classic up, upsloping trend line to the upside. Not sure where it went right there, but nonetheless, beautiful move to the upside. And then ultimately, we've now broken out above it. So, gold, honestly, it looks like 2026 is going to be another solid year for gold. I'm a little bit more nervous about silver, we'll talk about that just because of the massive gains that we've seen. But I do think gold now, if you're looking at your next target for the first half of 2026, all we need to do is put a parallel trend line in from this one right here. We drag it to our previous all-time high from October and we bring that down and you're looking at basically a target of $5,000. And I think that'll be hit in the first half, maybe even in the first quarter of 2026. But gold looks great here. As long as it does not break back below $4,300, this is a bullish chart and should continue to see upside.
So, your key support level then is $4,300.
Yeah. And you can see it right here. So, you've had this trend line. You can see how the price came down multiple times and is just bouncing off of it and is now broken here above the all-time high from over in October. So, as long as we hold that trend line and don't start trading below, then this chart really tells you that probability favors a move to that $5,000 level, which again is right at the high end of the parallel channel.
So, $5,000 gold by Q1 of 2026.
That would be the aggressive target. I, I'd like to give myself the first half to get there, but nonetheless, I think it could be based on the momentum. I mean, we're going up $100, $200 sometimes in a day on these bigger days. So, it could be easily in the first quarter of 2026.
I mean, we have Jim Rickett saying we could even see $10,000 gold in 2026.
Yep. Yeah. Listen, I mean, that's an amazing list. I hold long-term holdings in gold. I would be thrilled with that. I love that thought process, but again, I'm just more of a technical trader, so I have to have the charts telling me that. And we would have to get through this $5,000 trend line for me to go with that. Just like with Bitcoin, you could see that trend line from 2017 to 2021. It capped the upside at about $127,000. So, I have to go with the charts on this, but I love his thought process.
I'm not sure that I love it because I think gold at $10,000 tells you that a lot of other things are going well, very sideways, very unpredictably. So, I always say, you know, gold helps you sleep better at night. It's a store of value. It's, uh,
Insurance.
It's insurance. It's insurance that's really outperforming everything, but that in itself, as we've discussed several times on this show, is an indicator. Is there a bottom that you're comfortable calling for gold in 2026?
So, if we go back to the chart, like, and this would be a worst case where if let's just say things go horribly wrong for gold and it starts to have a bigger correction. There is one area that I would be, and, and I myself will buy more physical, I'll buy it as a longer-term play. If we ever retrace to the former all-time high from April, look at that base point right here. Look at all these high pivots. Now, again, people won't want to hear this, but it's my job as a technician to always look at the worst-case scenario, just like the best-case scenario. And that would be the worst case back to $3,500, which in all fairness, you know, a pullback on gold, we've seen them before. It would be approximately from current levels about a 22% correction, but I would be buying like crazy if it ever gets there.
Mhm. What would be like a trigger for something like that?
Oh, that's a good question. I mean, again, you know, you'd be looking at scenarios where there could just be, and we saw this in COVID, right? When the panic hit COVID, and this would be, I think if it does happen, it would be one of these very quick correction moves where all-out panic hits. I don't know what the trigger if it's the bond market or what, but investors tend to sell first and ask questions later. And we saw that in COVID in March of 2020 and then gold rebounded. That would probably be that some sort of event like that where it just dumps out in a week or two. You got to buy it fast and then it goes right back up.
Right. Now again, I know you're a technical analyst, but your macro is always very solid. Gold drivers for 2026. Obviously, you mentioned de-dollarization. What would be the big drivers for gold in 2026?
Pretty much more of the same of 2025.
Yeah. Yeah. More of the same. Again, losing confidence in the financial system, de-dollarization. I think you're even looking at scenarios where if we go to my charts here and I bring up the Dixie, the DXY, there's some really troubling things going on here. So, if we look at the DXY, the dollar, which again, this is a against a basket of other currencies, right? The dollar versus a basket of currencies. Look at this chart. This is the '08 low. So, in '08, the financial crisis height, the dollar began to gain strength. Well, look at where we are right on this trend line. If this trend line breaks, the dollar starts going into a much faster descent to the downside. And we know that that would generally be very, very bullish for gold. So watch this level on the Dixie on the DXY. We're talking about around 96.50 to 97. If we start breaking below that, that's very big trouble. And I would think a momentum increase in the dollar dropping would occur there.
Okay, let's bring it to silver. Gareth, because, uh, silver has had an extraordinary year in 2025, uh, outperforming gold. Prices have rallied to fresh all-time highs. What's, what's your read there?
Yeah, and what a move in gold. I mean, incredible. I think it's over from the April.
lows, so eight months ago, over 150% gain on silver, blowing everything else out of the water. The only thing I'm watching here is just in the last day or so, we've now hit this level. And look at this trend line. This trend line, you guys know I'm big on these longer term trend lines. And listen, it doesn't mean price has to stop here, but I think we can all agree that in in reality, logic would dictate some sort of retrace here.
But if there's the bare market low of 1982 here, if we take that low and connect it to the bull market high of 2011, we literally just tagged that trend line here at 72 to $73. Now again, it could continue, but as a technician, I need to monitor this line over the next week or two to see if it turns out to have teeth. Does it cause some sort of corrective move?
And the only other thing I would say is I do believe we've seen a lot of momentum from Bitcoin going into silver. Uh even investors, it's almost like become the meme stock is being in silver now. And we know that when these things have corrections, they can be sudden and quick. As much as I love silver long term, don't be surprised if you have a very quick one or two week correction of 20% in silver and then look to buy that retrace.
>> Okay. So you would maybe see a small pullback on on what because the fundamentals I mean this is this has been the argument that you've got so many positive factors driving silver obviously huge industrial demand as uh from everything from the electrification process to AI to solar we've got this whole idea that the physical silver isn't there in the exchanges that we've got more paper silver than physical silver and that those shorts are starting to show or that the the demand is starting to expose that lack of physical silver. We've got the debasement uh idea. We've got the silver as as a monetary asset as well as a hedge to the as we discussed before lack of faith in fiat. There are this perfect storm of forces for silver. Um even a lot of people are saying military industrial use that there's just a lot of um war drums rattling on the horizon for 2026 2027 and silver is used very heavily in defense. So that there's just so many factors driving silver higher. Why would we see a a pullback?
>> Yeah. And so that's a great question and I think what we have to understand is silver is a very momentum driven asset right when things are bad things are bad. And when we see like the 2011 run, it was just epic to the upside. And one more thing I'll show you on this chart and this is and this is you're right about all these other factors, right? They're very bullish, although those narratives can switch very quickly. But if we look at the move here that we saw in 2011, it was about 500%. And we are now at that same approximate extension move from the April or I should say from the March 2020 lows. We're at about 515%. And so what we know about silver is that again they call it the poor man's gold. People rush into it for the momentum trade. And while I love every point you made on a macro longer term scale and it has me bullish for silver over the next five years in the near term I do think that we are now overdone on silver and silver needs a flush out of the weak hands that have been jumping on this like a meme stock. You and I both know that the meme stock crowd that's just buying bit because they think they can dump it for another 50% upside. Those are the ones that have to be washed out. Clean house and then silver can get back to fundamentals of grinding higher at a slower pace that will be much much healthier. But it's not healthy to see silver go this much vertical and that'll catch people offguard when it corrects massively.
>> So where do you see silver Q1 of 2026? So, I think I think we're going to get a pull back to $50. I think you have the former all-time high here from 2011. I think we're going to have a correction back down in the first quarter of 2026 back to $50. I will be waiting there and buying like crazy, but I do think we will get a flush back down. And again, if we talk percentages, what kind of drop from here would that be? We'd be looking at about a 30% pullback in silver. Again, considering it's up 150% from the lows in April, that wouldn't be super outlandish in terms of a retrace.
>> And that you say is weak hands uh short-term traders, retail investors just getting out. I mean, is that enough? I mean, it's a small market relatively speaking, but is that enough to make such a big uh correction in silver?
>> It will be. Yeah, it will be. And we we can see the momentum. I mean, look at what we what we've gained just in the past week when most institutions honestly are on vacation, right? I mean, most institutions, they left a week ago and they won't be back until the beginning of the year. And so, it really leads the retail crowd to drive the silver market, right? They're buying options on silver. And when they buy, and this is what happened in the meme craze with GameStop, is that they'll buy options and then because these institutions are filling those orders via options, they have to protect themselves and ultimately buy silver to back that just in case it does go up. And so it creates this almost self-fulfilling prophecy of price going up up up until it turns. Once it turns, it corrects massively.
>> Okay. So, a correction in Q1 of 2026. Is 2026 the year of tripledigit silver though? Do you see it coming back?
>> Wow. I'm going to go on the No, I don't think it is triple triple digits. I think we could get close into the 80s. I think it'll take till 2027 before we get through $100 on silver. You're breaking the hearts of so many silver investors right now, Gareth.
>> Sorry. Listen, listen, I hope I'm wrong for all those silver investors out there.
>> Why? Why? If we're gonna have rate cuts, arguably, if we're still going to have the AI war, because regardless of what the economy does, nations still need to, you know, win the AI race. If we still have industrial demand, if we still have fiat debasement, devaluation, again, the macro fundamentals are still there. And yes, silver has toyed with people's emotions notoriously through the years. Um,
>> I would just throw this out at you is like the all these bullish scenarios, you're basic what we're basically doing is we're pricing it to perfection. Meaning saying, okay, well, assuming the AI buildout of of hyperscalers and data centers goes everything according to plan. But one of the things we know is that a lot of these proposed hundred billion dollar investments, there's no money there. They have to raise this capital. We've seen what happens happened to Oracle when they raised a hundred billion dollars in debt. The stock dropped 50% from those highs. And we also know that these data centers, there's literally no energy to power them. And so we've seen data centers being put on hold because of that. So I do wonder if we're pricing in this scenario where everything goes perfectly so silver can continue to go up. But if there's one hiccup, does then silver have that correction and the dash the dreams are essentially dashed?
>> Okay. I mean, what about the idea that it's still below its inflation adjusted 1980 high? I believe that's still where we're at.
>> True. True. Yeah. And that's that would be another case for the bulls. Absolutely 100% right. And I think that plays for me that plays more into my bullishness on the longer term. Listen, for everyone out there, I'm bullish silver, gold, platinum, and palladium for the next multiple years. All I'm saying here is that when you have this type of move to the upside, and I think most people know this deep down, is that there's going to be a correction, all right, things don't go vertically 500% or 150% from April lows without having some sort of pullback. And I just wonder if we're going to get that pullback. And I do think we'll get that in the first quarter of 2026 before the bull market resumes to the upside.
>> Okay. But no tripledigit silver according to Gareth Soloway in 2026. uh talk us through some of the other metals you mentioned very briefly.
>> Yeah, so let's look at the charts here briefly on palladium. Incredible move. We did get a pullback in palladium, but look at this. Look at all of this resistance here. So, I think palladium is due for a little bit of a short-term pullback off of this $2,000 level. Again, notice how over here we had so much support. Support kept on coming down. Finally, it breaks down. In technical analysis, when something breaks down and gets back to that level, it gets rejected. Case in point, support here just drawing a trend line in. It breaks, it goes back and gets rejected. So essentially what we have here is a move up into now resistance. Price should come in. It already did that a little bit. I think it just pulls back to about 1,600 and then it can start to move back up again. And then platinum. Platinum made a new all-time high breaking the monthly chart high from 2008. It again this is in technical analysis what we call a double top. So, we should see some sort of retrace on platinum as well. However, again, watch this key level at $1,860. That will be your first major support on some sort of pullback. And so, really, platinum, this the the white metals, right? These are all looking like they're due for some sort of pullback before the bull market resumes in them.
>> Okay. So, then Gareth, what is your top trade for 2026?
>> All right. So, this is going to be fun, folks. And again, it's not the most popular out there. In fact, it's lagged incredibly. But if we go to the charts here, my top first half of 20 2026 is going to be oil. And the key here is this is I still think the economy is generally going to weaken in 2026. But there's something bigger at play here. It's money rotation. And so when you're looking at commodities, you see again all of these commodities, gold, silver, platinum, palladium soaring. Even natural gas had a big move before the recent correction. And oil is still trading at levels when it that it was trading back in 2019 and even further back than that. And so what you're looking at here is you're looking at a rotation of capital from institutional money rushing into the one asset, the one major traded asset I should say that hasn't had a big bull move. And I think oil's about to break out here to the upside. Keep in mind if you talk inflation adjusted like we talking about with silver, think about what inflationadjusted oil is. I mean, that's incredibly cheap. And remember, you could say, "Oh, we're flushed with oil. There's so much oil out there." That's true. But remember, wages have gone up. A lot of costs have gone up for these oil drillers. And that again is going to put pressure. And so, you've seen the rig count starting to fall down here. Ultimately, this table is set, I think, for a 50% up move in oil in the first half of 2026.
>> A 50% up move in oil 2026. First half.
>> Yep. that and that again is also another issue that if that does happen that will play a role in the midterm. So the the political parties need to be watching this very very closely because again we will see gasoline which has kind of been the one bright spot on the inflation side that actually could start to reverse here in the first half of 2026.
>> Right? And this is an administration that is drill baby drill. They're all for adding more cheap oil. They're for deregulation. Uh why wouldn't there just be more supply? I mean the US is a swing producer. Um it can just produce more more oil. I mean I get that we could have some geopolitical uncertainties if we look at some of the activity with regards to Venezuela for one and you always have you know other hot spots like the Middle East as as question marks. But uh so far with oil has not really been responding to geopolitical flash points. um supply can seemingly be easily addressed. What would go so wrong for 50% uh upside in in oil?
>> Yeah. And this is where it's very interesting and this is more from a trader perspective knowing institutions. Institutions aren't going to care much about what's going on geopolitically. What they're looking at is we have these type of assets, silver, gold, the stock market at all-time highs, incredibly mo incredible moves to the upside. What they're going to do, and this is again talking to hedge funds and bigger players out there, what they do is they say, "Okay, well, where can we rotate some of that capital to take some profits and move it into someplace that is relatively cheap historically?" Right? And that's the oil trade. The oil trade is the no-brainer kind of idea here for institutional money to go into. And all of a sudden, watch this. As oil starts to go up, the narrative will start to shift. And again, this happens all the time. is once these institutions are long, the narrative is going to shift in terms of well all of a sudden there's not as much oil. This is going on. This is going on here and you'll see the big move in oil come in. So again, listen, in all fairness, we're only talking about a move back to about $75 to $80 a barrel. Historically, that's not that high, but it will be a big factor here in 2026.
>> Yeah, I mean, that's a fair point. that's uh not such a big move in terms of you know historical oil prices but how does uh global growth uh slowing down not accelerating impact this this trend. And and I think this is also an interesting point because you could say okay well global growth is basically stagnant. The US job market is stagnant. But we also have to look at again how are these data centers getting powered? Is it coal? Is it energy? Nuclear right nuclear is a big one. But literally there are no nuclear power plants being built right now. And the ones that are in process will be 5 to seven years out. And so if we are going to see all of these hyperscalers launch these data centers, you're going to have to get the energy from somewhere. And all of a sudden, my prediction will be the narrative is going to switch on oil miraculously to all of a sudden this is going to be one way these hyperscalers are going to power their data centers. They're going to move towards oil and natural gas.
>> But you were just using the hyperscalers not growing as robustly as a counter to silver.
>> Right. True. But this is the kicker, right? And you're 100% right. So there's there's a middle ground here, right? If you look at Nvidia, if you look at the margins of Broadcom, Broadcom had this 20% correction on the back of their earnings. Now, they blew earnings off of the I mean, totally amazing earnings, but their margins began to contract. And so, the idea here is that we're still going to get data centers. Let's not fool ourselves. The data centers are coming, but they're not the the projections for where these stocks are trading with the margin rates and all that this that is not, in my opinion, going to happen. But again, the energy needed for the data centers that are going to come online, the power is not there for them and that has to be taken from somewhere and I think the oil and natural gas trade is where it's going to come from.
>> Okay. Um where should investors and but before I get into that does that also mean equities, oil company equities that that you see away as playing this?
>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean a play uh a trade like oxy accidental petroleum would be an absolute gem here. Uh that's one that Warren Buffett is very heavily invested in and I think he's very smart to be in that. And listen, these aren't like super sexy plays, but honestly, some of them can return 50% in a year or less. And I think it's a place that where a stock market generally is very very overbought and expensive. There are places to put money here in 2026 where we could see a really solid return.
>> Okay. So, what should investors be avoiding in the next uh six months? I I would continue to shy away from the tech sector here. So again, I think that again, tech stocks, the NASDAQ, we're seeing underperformance already, rotation of capital away from these these mega players. I mean, look at almost almost none of the Magnificent Seven are at all-time highs anymore. All these trillion dollar companies have mostly pulled back and are significantly off their highs. The S&P is at all-time highs because money is rotating into other names. And I think that will continue in 2026. And so avoid tech for me. Avoid places that have really seen massive gains. The supercomputer stocks, those are other places where the PE ratios and the revenue just don't match up. Look for these safer plays, low pees, oil stocks, drug stocks that haven't run yet. I think that's the place that I'll be putting my money.
>> And gold and silver, you're waiting for well, not gold. You're not waiting for a pullback there.
>> Yeah, I think listen, gold is one of those that the momentum is still really good. The chart is really healthy. It's not ridiculously overbought. Silver near-term, I can't buy it up here. I just can't pay up here when it's gone up this much in such a short amount of time. So, I'll be a buyer of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. But for the the white metals, the the silvers, the the palladiums, the platinums, I got to see a pullback and correction first. Those still should be okay for 2026. But I wouldn't look at them as the best performing assets in 2026.
>> Best performing assets in 2026. Oil.
>> I'm looking I actually think one of the best ones will be oil. I think I think we're going to look at that and say, "Wow, oil was the trade here that kind of slipped under most people's radar, and I think it has a good chance of of being up at least 50% for the year."
>> How does oil work if we get that potential black swan of higher long-term uh interest rates?
>> Yeah. And that's going to be interesting, right? And so that's that if that does occur, that's going to be the key key that to be fair, I'm not 100% certain how that's going to play out. But again, the question will be is where do investors run to hide if we start getting a bigger stock market correction? And again, could the money rotation start to bleed into these energy stocks and oil as a place for safety? One thing to keep in mind is if you look back in in 2008, right? If we look at the chart on oil here and we go back to 2007 into 2008, we were well into the financial crisis and oil was at all-time highs. Like here in August of 2020 2008, oil was at $147 a barrel. And so don't think that when things get nasty in other areas of the market that money won't rotate into something like oil, at least for a little bit of time before the economy really falls off a cliff. And I think that could be a potential scenario this year.
>> And I will say this, Gareth, I force you into these longer term calls, but ultimately you're a short-term trader, you're a swing trader, you're a day trader, you move in and out of markets all of the time. I just like to push you to give me the
>> I love that. That's what your audience wants. And so I always encourage it. I mean, throw any question at me anytime and I'm I'm ready for it. I'll do my best.
>> But I and I appreciate that. But to be fair, your your trading services are on much much shorter time horizons which allow for a lot of uh for for a lot of um mobility and a lot of pivoting.
>> And just to give you a sense of that is if I you know I'm in the I'm in an oil long right now. I let's say it does go up 50% for the year. Um, I will probably be in and out of that trade about 15 to 20 times, going long, going short, going long, going short during that run, trying to capture the smaller moves. And so, you're right about that. Again, I'm a day trader and a swing trader, but I love looking at the bigger time frames and the macro. It is fascinating stuff,
>> right? Um, I know you're also big on market emotion and investor psychology, markets driven by fear and greed. From your vantage point, where are we in the emotional cycle right now? So we are now in the emotional cycle with retail investors, a majority of which came in after COVID or during COVID where they believe that there will never be a draw down that lasts more than a few months before all-time highs are hit. And that concerns me so much. I've been through the dot bubble collapse, the financial crisis, the these periods where the draw downs were massive. It is silly to think that won't ever happen, but I've talked to these retail investors and they literally tell me to my face that the markets will never go down or stay down again for a significant amount of time. Let's not forget after the dot collapse, the NASDAQ took 15 years to recover and make a new all-time high. I do not put it past that in the next few years when we do get a dump out that it could take that long to make new all-time highs again.
>> All right, I do want to put something on the radar for investors. You're probably aware of this, but I think that if this happens, this could be a major structural shift coming to the markets, and that is a change with how we trade. The NASDAQ is moving towards near roundthe-clock trading. The exchange has filed paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to expand weekday trading um from the current 16 hours to 23 hours a day, 5 days a week with plans to launch this in the second half of 2026. So this would effectively make US stocks tradable almost non-stop starting Sunday night running through Friday evening with just a short daily pause for clearing and system maintenance. Uh this is being driven by surgical global uh by by surging rather global demand for US equities. Foreign investors now hold roughly 17 trillion dollars worth of US stocks. Exchange has argue that investors outside the US want access on their own time zones, not just during the New York business hours. And NASDAQ isn't alone. The New York Stock Exchange, other major venues are also moving in this direction. Uh clearing houses like the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation are racing to support this non-stop settlement. Look, supporters say that this makes markets more global, more accessible, more responsive to breaking news, and the NASDAQ has filed for this. So, this is likely to happen second half of 2026. Critics, however, including major Wall Street banks, well, other than the fact that they're not going to have any time off at all, but they're also warning about thinner liquidity, wider spreads, sharper price swings during overnight hours, um, when institutional participation may be limited. What do you think? Does this, um, improve price discovery? Does it turn equity markets into something more of a casino much closer to 247 trading uh driven by emotion, momentum, reaction rather than fundamentals? If this happens, how does it effectively change things?
>> Yeah. So, there's good and bads to it, right? So, you know, number one, if money need to be made by the exchanges, the NASDAQ, that's one of the things driving it. They've been very closely watching crypto. Now, crypto is 24/7, you know, 7 days a week, right? But the idea is this is a step in that direction. And the positive is I mean there's there's negatives for investors and like you said the emotional overnight on thinner volume it's going to create these wider moves. But on a positive note for investors it gives people the ability to get in and out at any time. So, how many times do we hear something out of China, China economic news, and the futures dump overnight and the institutions are able to trade that and be in and be out, but retail investors are just sidelined until the stock market opens for pre-market trading the next day. And so now you're kind of slowly getting to this period where you're evening the playing field slightly where if something big happens overnight, retail investors can react. The negative is again is that, you know, you just have to wonder, does it create this more of a casino? I know for myself it's probably gonna mean less sleep.
>> I it will definitely mean less sleep. Um, and I don't know a more reactive market is not necessarily a better market. Um, more more inclined to sort of lean into the quants and the algorithms than the fundamentals and the rational sort of thinking that used to drive uh Wall Street. I think that this further sort of distorts markets and valuations, but um, we'll see how that shapes up in in 2026. Uh, as we wrap up here, Gareth, two final questions. The first one, highest point of conviction going into 2026.
>> Highest point of conviction, I'm going to go back to the S&P 500. I do think we get at least a 20% draw down at some point in 2026. I think it's probably in the first half of 2026 that we'll see it. And again, we'll see if it's the bond market that is the trigger for that. And then what was the second question?
>> I haven't said the second question, but it's coming up right now, Gareth. And this is more of a personal one. We're going into a new year. Um, you know, you're you're very few people understand your success beyond the markets, but you're also a very successful person in your personal life with a wonderful family and many would say h a thriving personal life. Share some words of wisdom beyond the markets with our viewers. Give us a nice nugget of advice for 2026.
>> So, this is this is something that I want people to understand is there's a lot of this work life balance stuff being thrown out there. And the key is this. When you have work life balance and you're young, number one, you have a lot of energy. Then, um, I'm so glad I put the my nose to the grindstoneone and went hard. And very frankly I didn't have a lot of you know life balance during that four four portion. But what I did was I built my investment portfolio. I built my wealth in that beginning point so that I get my life balance in the second half of my life in the later years. Right? And so the idea is I could retire in the next few years for instance and enjoy my family now as the kids are getting older and spending time with my wife. And so keep that in mind is that work life balance is the same. It's just a matter of in your early years, are you more focused on having work life balance, but then you have to work till you're 70 or 75 years old to retire or do you just grind it out early, rock it, and then enjoy your later years? And that's the one that I've chosen. But just keep that in mind, people, because I think there's a lot of weird things out there about, oh well, you can only do this and you got to make sure you relax and it's it's up to each individual, but I took the other route and I'm honestly happy I did because I had the energy when I was young.
>> Yeah. But then there's also the idea of preserving the money that you've made, you know, and and what's what's I I know you don't like to share this too much, but I know that you made a very strong call a while back in how you chose to preserve some of that capital.
>> Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you know, gold went back in 20 in the 2019 2020 period, just buying a lot of gold back then. Um, you know, it it's it's diversification, right? Yeah. Physical physical. Absolutely. And again, I'll tell you why. It's a funny story of why I bought physical metals is because because I'm a short-term investor, I can't help but when I see a big move like on silver is selling my silver, right? And if it's in my trading account, it's so easy to click a button and sell it. But by buying physical, it actually just makes me be a hodler of silver and gold. And it's great. I've been so happy that I've done that.
>> All right. Um, we'll leave it on a happy note. Happy New Year, Gareth. Always lovely to chat with you and I'm sure we'll catch up in 2026. Thank you again as always.
>> Thank you Michelle. It is such a pleasure. You have an amazing show. I do appreciate you.
>> and a quick shout out where can viewers see more of Gareth Sway.
>> Uh come to Verified Investing where we try to focus only on charts and data. No narratives, no hype, just pure data so that we get the probability trades and not let emotion take control. All right, Gareth, I'm going to be emotional now and wish you a very wonderful merry Christmas and a happy new year and we'll see you in 2026. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Thank you and same to you.
>> And thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate you spending the time with us. If you enjoyed this conversation, you found it informative, interesting, entertaining, make sure to subscribe, leave us a comment, let me know what you'd like for me to cover next. As always, feel free to praise whine or dystopine. And if you would like to learn more about building a precious metal strategy, reach out to info@ milesfranklin.com. There's a team of specialized advisors and brokers that can guide you with that. If you mention my name, they'll give you an extra special deal. Also, check out our website, mousefranklin.com. Thank you again for being here. I will see you next time on The Real Story. Happy New Year. Until then, stay sovereign.
>> This is The Real Story with Michelle McCory.