Inflation Is Hot And So Are Precious Metals

DANO WEIR: Happy 2026. I can still say that 16 days in. Have you kept your resolution yet? Are you feeling like it's a new year, new you? Because the economy is still the same them, same thing. Inflation is hot and so are precious metals.

DANO WEIR: My name is Dan Weir, the Marketing Director for Cinema Wealth Advisors or Fermata Family Of Brands. And you're about to go on the Markets this week looking at yes, inflation hotter than expected and gold and silver just don't seem to quit. Spoiler alert, one of the things I just mentioned is the best performing asset of this decade, shockingly.

DANO WEIR: The not so shocking advantage of Roths over traditionals. And we'll get Daren's thoughts on why the politicians and the market right now are a little bit like a late night jewelry commercial. Let's get started.

SPEAKER 2: The stock market, the economy, your money. What's the latest and what could be next? Find out now with Fermata On The Markets. Straightforward financial market updates for the brands of Fermata Advisors, Sonoma Wealth Advisors, Fermata 401k and Fermata Tax. On the Markets starts now.

DANO WEIR: Let's bring them on to the show. They are your managing principals of Cinnabon Wealth Advisors, the Fermata Family Of Brands, Daren Blonski, Chris Sipes. Guys, welcome to the show.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: What's going on Friday?

DANO WEIR: And now before we get into the show, I'm just going to start here because, yes, Daren, the NFL playoffs are going on. Chris's team is no longer in the playoffs of college football.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Was that Ohio State?

DANO WEIR: But my team is still playing. And, I just.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I'm watching a lot of football this weekend. I don't know, man, not for long.

DANO WEIR: It's like Seahawks, Seahawks.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Seahawks or Seahawks.

DANO WEIR: Yeah. Wrong bird.

DANO WEIR: If you've watched any football, in the, in the past year, you've seen these commercials and cause you know, betting legal now in certain States and guys, the one that I just caught my eye this past weekend was there's a couple companies out them out there. One of them is draft Kings and, They have this commercial that says, ride the upside.

DANO WEIR: Right? And also that if you spend $5 with them, you get 50. And, you know, last week we were talking about how financial services is just held to a different standard when it comes to advertising. And I saw this commercial and I was just like, could you imagine if you were trying to advertise investments, Chris, by saying, ride the upside?

DANO WEIR: Like, yeah, just shh.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Just stunning how some of these things are it just made me laugh at the juxtaposition absolutely well if you go to calci another betting site it looks like i believe Seattle is favored favored to win the super bowl right so hopefully the the niners can can rid them of that that bet Just funny.

DANO WEIR: The standards for different industries in finance, because I think betting is technically finance at this point, made me laugh. Chris, what do you got for our first meme?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: All right, we've got the Dilbert comic this week, Lessons in Investing. And it says, you should buy a stock whenever the chart looks like a squirrel sitting on a clown's shoulder. And the guy says that's called technical analysis with air quotes. And the other guy says, well, I'm not going to do that. And the guy drinks his coffee and he says, good, because it doesn't work if everyone does it.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: A little finance humor.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Scott Adams passed away this week, unfortunately, who was the creator of Dilbert. So anytime I see financial humor in the mainstream, you know, try to capture it. So that was a funny one. I found it funny.

DANO WEIR: Daren, before we jump into the deck here, did you want to talk about, the diamond center? Do you want to do that later in the show?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I can just do it later in my show. I'll do it myself.

DANO WEIR: All right. All right. All right.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: All right. So it's that time of year again, people are starting to work on their taxes, which, you know, we've, we've put out some information for clients so that you know when, to, when to look for those documents, where to look for them. I just got my. One of my emails today that some documents were ready. And it's also that time of year to consider funding a Roth.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And this from Peter Malouk at Creative Planning showing the power of tax-free compounding. He says, same contributions, same returns, but nearly $900,000 more with a Roth IRA than by age 65, time and taxes matter more than most people realize. And so that's one of the reasons why people are interested in a Roth as a tax shelter in the future.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And the limits did go up a bit this year. So if you have been contributing in the past, it's a good time to check and see what the new limits are for this year so that you can make sure to max that out if you can this by the end of April of next year. So you still have time to fund 25 up until tax time, and then 26 contributions are also open now.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: All right. So a lot of talk with AI and how this is going to be a game changer for us. I thought this was really cool. Showing GDP back in the 1700s and look at firewood as a share of U. S. Gdp 1774 to 1920 and obviously that is pretty much insignificant portion of GDP now but it's funny that back in the the nation's founding it was roughly 28 percent of the U. S.'s GDP was firewood so a little more optimistic this week.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I had a meeting with Goldman Sachs and they did some research on this, and they feel that these numbers are rough, but something like, in their view, something like 7% of jobs will be completely eliminated.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Somewhere in the 60% range is going to be a case where people are just using AI to be better at their jobs, and then they felt a little over 30%, around 30% or a little bit over was going to be kind of unaffected by, by AI, which you know, I'm sure they've got smarter folks than, than I at, at Goldman. So hopefully they're correct. And this isn't just a dystopian future for all of us.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Mind you, Chris on, do you ever watch the podcast, the diary of the CEO?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yes.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Right. Can I cut you off there? Yeah. So he interviewed Tony Robbins this week. Did you watch that clip? I said, where Tony Robbins is literally in tears about how much pain the guy is going to create for the world. Yeah. And he's in tears about the idea that it's going to destroy people's sense of meaning. I thought that was interesting that he was so.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, it is. It is interesting. And it's kind of the defining moment of this time period for sure. But if we're going to take any lessons from history, it's that things are going to change in the economy. Hopefully, the arc has been up.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I think the average person's life today is magnitudes better than they would have been in the late 1700s when firewood was a massive part of GDP. Hopefully, that is the continued upward trajectory of humanity and you know, like Goldman said, Hey, look, there's going to be jobs created that we can't even think of right now.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You know, when we met with capital group and they said something like, you know, nobody knew what a yoga instructor was 50 years ago. So, so there, there is some truth to that. And, you know, I, I think we got to hope, hope for the best, right. Plan for the plan for the worst and hope for the best when it comes to a good example.

DANO WEIR: Sorry. I think a good example to think about, if you want to try to think about it in a positive way, is a toll taker on the Golden Gate Bridge.

DANO WEIR: You know, before they before the car existed and before the bridge existed, that wasn't a job. And then for 100 years or whatever it was, 80 years, that was a job. And now it's not a job. So that was a job that was replaced by AI. Yeah, sure. That was necessarily the best job for people. Anybody.

DANO WEIR: Maybe it was for the people who had that job, maybe they enjoyed it. There was some humor and interaction, which was cool. But you know, that's, that is a job that got replaced by AI before we were even talking about AI. So yeah, you're right. There are those, there are, you know, it's the, the ball keeps bouncing down the hill.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You know, I don't know if your kids do this, but my kids video themselves doing everything like brushing their teeth. And you know, it's And again, thinking back at when I was a kid, that wasn't a thing, you know? And now millions of kids all over the planet want to be a YouTuber. So, yeah.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah so anyway sentiment indicator boo we're getting close to that 50 bullishness in the Markets so interesting increase in in bullishness over the past week bearish this seems to have faded to start off the year we it seems like investors are pretty optimistic now cnn fear and greed index is agreeing with that it's up in the 63 range which was kind of in the middle of Not in extreme greed yet, but just in the middle.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: That's up from 53 neutral one week ago. And then we've got Bitcoin at 49 neutral off its lows at 27 fear. Of course, we saw a big jump in the Bitcoin price over the last week. So that sentiment is definitely following price in all of those Markets. But overall, investors feeling pretty cheery when it comes to the sentiment.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And it looks like the corporate bullseye. Bond spreads would agree with that. Now, a spread in the bond market is simply, you know, the difference between a treasury, which is considered, you know, a lower risk because the government can just print money to pay you back so that there doesn't seem to be a credit risk on treasuries, although I'm sure some people would argue that.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: However, The spread is what an investor is willing to accept over and above the yield of treasuries to take the risk of buying a corporate bond. Now, there are some that would say, well, look, some corporations are in a much better financial position than the U. S.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Government, so that's not surprising. But spreads are very tight, meaning there's not much of a difference between buying a corporate bond and a U. S. Treasury bond. In fact, they're at lows we haven't seen since 2007. So this is an indicator of comfort in terms of investors not feeling any panic.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You can see that when there is panic, that's the spikes on this chart. And so people demand more of a premium on their bonds. And you'll notice there during the... Inflation spike that we saw, there was also a premium and that is around the inflation numbers, which is the title of this week's program is around inflation.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So if fixed income investors or bond investors are worried about inflation, they typically want a higher rate of return. Because remember, most people that buy bonds are buying them for a long term. And if inflation is going to come in and make their money worth less, they're going to require a higher return in order to take the risk of lending that money out.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So not a whole lot of worry in the bond market as illustrated by spreads at the moment. Now gold... On the flip side of that has been the best performer so far of the 2020s. This from Bank Of America and showing gold versus some of the other asset classes.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Large cap would be referring to U. S. Large companies. Then you've got the growth in value flavors within large cap. You've got copper, copper and commodities much higher on this list than I would have guessed. Along with real estate.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Now, those are all the types of assets that tend to do well, commodities tend to do well in inflationary environments and in higher growth environments. So if you get either higher growth and there's more demand for those commodities or you just get higher inflation where the price of those commodities is higher, you tend to see a higher performance.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And that's something that you know people are always concerned about in the investment world is are we going to get a return of inflation you know how much is inflation a factor in in the outlook moving forward and at least so far we're halfway through the 2020s here it's interesting to see some of the you know inflationary assets that are benefited by inflation performing and the ones that are not...

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Performing, AKA government and corporate bonds, inflation is a real kryptonite to bonds, you know, because you're getting a fixed income.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So if those prices go higher it's, it's really bad for bonds. So the way the asset classes are showing is that we've had elevated inflation. Like if somebody just showed you this chart and said, what do we have higher inflation or lower inflation? You probably would, would go with higher inflation.

DANO WEIR: Darren, you've, you've been a quote gold bug you've been into gold for a long time and so when you see this chart and you say that gold is the best performing asset class of the 2020s i think there's part of us that just goes like well of course it's gold you know when it's because it is therefore i can come up with a narrative for it can you remember a time when that would have been nonsensical and gold was a dog well i think there's always this debate going on right between.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Quote unquote synthetic assets which arguably is stocks arguably is bonds arguably is Bitcoin versus gold and silver are physical things you know and through the history of time the human race gold has been looked at as valuable because it's difficult to get out of the ground silver less so silver's had a pretty crazy run lately but i don't To me, it's not shocking considering that we have everything going on internationally that we do.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And there's certainly a shifting of world powers and things changing under our feet as it relates to power in the world. As we move to a multipolar world, it makes sense that governments, businesses, and individuals are... Acquiring more gold and silver as a way to maintain, you know, a sense of value, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Because at some point the dollar, if we've been saying this for years is not going to be worth what it is, right? It's losing value. We're printing too much of it. We can't stop. And so we have to either engineer some type of off ramp using crypto or something like that.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Or we've got to find a way to shore up the dollar.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And I think that's why you're seeing this kind of tough man mentality in around the world but then what that does is you know they had a government bond auction this week and no one showed up but the Fed to buy their own debt basically we're back in the day you know china was buying it hand over fist and so were the other countries but they're not born or buying gold hand over fist and.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Silver hand over fist okay so inflation matters for many reasons like we were just talking about with societal tensions. When you have higher inflation, that's very destabilizing.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Just like if you get deflation, that was what happened during the Great Depression, that's also very destabilizing. So that's why the Fed and economic folks really focus on inflation and trying to keep it stable and trying to keep it in a moderate range.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: We got the inflation number this week on the 13th And it came in at 2.71, which is, you know, as you can see on this five-year chart, we're just kind of going sideways on the inflation front. I wouldn't say it's going up. I wouldn't say it's going down. It's kind of sideways.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so that will play into the cost of money because going back to fixed income investors, they have to try to figure out like what is, what are those future payments worth to me? Right. I'm going to be receiving this income for 15 years, 20 years, 30 years. If I'm going to buy a long-term government bond, is that money going to be worth enough for me to, to buy that payment stream and inflation is a big part of that.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So, so the cost of money has an inflation factor built into it because investors, you know, are constantly contemplating that. So the Fed has an impact on the cost of money in the short-term interest rates, of course, but ultimately the market is who prices the cost of money and a big factor in the price of money in the public's eye is inflation. And that's why it's so important.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: If we look at some of the factors, if affect Inflation. One of the largest inputs to the CPI reading is home costs, and they measure that through owner's equivalent rent, which is kind of a weird measurement. But essentially, they're trying to capture the cost of housing.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And on the good news front, I guess if you're looking at it from an inflation standpoint, is this from Kevin Gordon at Schwab. He says, the median sale price of a new single-family home fell— to 392,300 in October, which was the lowest since July of 21. So I think looking at this chart, it looks like that it's in a downtrend.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: It's not falling off a cliff. It's not crashing, but there is a downtrend in housing costs now. Eventually that will funnel through to inflation. And given that it's roughly 30% of the CPI reading, it should have an impact on those inflation numbers.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: When we look at the two-year rates, which is the market's kind of assumption of short-term interest rates, that is the dark blue line here versus the Fed funds rate. And you can see that the Fed funds typically kind of follows that two-year treasury rate. There's not much of a spread at this point, 3.75 on the Fed versus three and a half on the two-year The two years were up today, so that spread is even tighter at this point.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so the market is saying, hey, the Fed is not that far off in terms of their price of money. Maybe they're a little bit tight when that gray line is above the blue line. That would be considered a tighter monetary policy. When it's below, the Fed would be considered too loose. So you can see the whole time that inflation...

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Was taking off in 2022, the Fed was behind the eight ball in terms of hiking. Even though they were hiking very aggressively, according to the market, they were a little bit behind and they were a little too loose during that period. Then they got too tight and caught up. So right now, though, the spreads are pretty tight.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And when you look at the expectations for the rates at the next Fed meeting at the end of January on the 28th, Right now, the probabilities are 95% that the Fed rate stays where it is today. And I think those probabilities also increased, not only from the CPI on Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever that came out, that inflation was a little sticky, but also with the indictment of the Fed chair.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Now that kind of puts Powell in a position of like, he's got to show that he's not just lowering rates just to appease the White House. You know, he's got to show that the Fed is still independent.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so, you know, to me, it was sort of like shooting yourself in the foot. If you want lower interest rates to, to kind of put, put, chairman Powell in that position, it's sort of like, well now, you know, less likely, I could be wrong about that, but that's my perception of, of what was happening with that with that whole indictment.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And then, of course, Trump came out this week and said, oh, I'm not getting rid of Powell. It's not a big deal. So who knows? Who knows what's going on there? But it looks like Kevin Warsh is going to be the next Fed chair based on the betting Markets. That probability increased quite a bit this week when Trump mentioned that he would like to keep Hassett in the White House position that he's in now.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So, Warsh is looking to be the next Fed chair the way things are lining up today. And at least so far, that has increased interest rates. So if we look at what interest rates have done really since November on the 10-year, they've been on the upward trajectory and now they're kind of above their moving averages, which I'm sure we'll get into when we look at the candlesticks.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: But, you know, the market is pricing in a little bit higher interest rates on the long end. And so that could be assuming higher inflation, it could be assuming further deterioration in the U. S. Financial position, who knows what it's factoring in, all these areas. But the 10-year is the number that affects mortgage rates, it affects credit card rates.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: It's kind of the middle... Of the curve on the treasury curve and most spreads on credit are based on the 10-year treasury roughly. And so, If you want lower interest rates, you do not wanna see that 10-year treasury rate going higher. You wanna see that going lower.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Okay, switching gears a little bit to the US dollar. When the US dollar is losing strength relative to other currencies, that happens to be good for foreign market equities. And this is a great chart from, the JP Morgan guide to the Markets. They just released the new one and it shows the cycle of developed Markets.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: That's what DM stands for here, developed Markets, XUS outperformance in the US dollar. So those periods that are in gray there are periods when the US dollar is declining relative to other currencies. And then you can see the blue or sorry, the purple is where the foreign stock's outperform. And we've been in a very, very long period of time where the U. S.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Has outperformed. You can see really since the great financial crisis, the U. S. Has outperformed consistently since then. But we just started a weaker dollar regime going into 24. And so far at least, And if this cycle continues as it has in the past, you could see continued outperformance based on currency changes.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Global equity Markets is also from the JP Morgan guide to the Markets. And the one to focus on is on the right side where it shows the share of global market capitalization, which just means what portion of, if you were to add up the value of all the stocks in the world. What portion of that is related to which country? The home country domicile.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And, this goes back to 1987 and you can see that Japan previously was a little over 40% of the global market cap while the U S was at 30, which is kind of mind blowing based on today's like assumption of how the world works. I mean, And looking back to the late 80s and thinking that Japan's stock market was worth more than the U. S.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Stock market in the global Markets is kind of hard to wrap your head around using today's perspective. And we now, the U. S. Now makes up a larger portion of the market capitalization of the world than any country in the history, financial history, known financial history has made up. Right. These things do change. Look at what happened with Japan, and I'm not saying this is definitely going to happen with the U. S.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Japan's financial valuation metrics were astronomical, almost twice what we reached in the 1999 dot com bubble. Our CAPE ratio or cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio in the U. S. During the dot com bubble was a little over 40. Well, Japan's reached around 100 in the 1980s. So they were very, very highly valued.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: But since then, they've really dropped off. They went from over 40% of the global market cap to 5% in modern day, which is really, really wild. So these things can change. They can also get very crazy. Think about it. What if the US went from a CAPE of around 40 where we're at today to 100? Can you imagine?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Anything can happen, right? People's sentiment can get twisted in all kinds of ways. And it only makes sense in hindsight. So that's why valuations are a horrible timing tool. You just never know, right? But you can look at it from a probability standpoint and go, ooh, what's the upside downside here?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You know, are we investing or are we being speculative and just assuming it's going to go up, you know, based on, based on what everybody else thinks. So when you look at the, oops sorry, there we go, returns over the last year, are we seeing a shift in the force? Is something changing? This is over the last year. You can see the emerging Markets were the top performer, then you had developed Markets second.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And then look at the Russell 2000, the small cap stocks that have gone nowhere for four and a half or five years just eking out over and above $1. The US large caps and the S&P 500 over this past week. And so far, year to date, the small caps are just trouncing everything else. What's that related to?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Who knows? But there's definitely a trend in the small caps breaking out. And now we've got a year's worth of data here to kind of back that. So we might be seeing a little shift in market trends moving forward and that's largely driven by earnings.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And you look at over the long haul, stock prices tend to follow earnings and this from Bank Of America showing the small cap earnings growth is now positive and it's expected to eclipse large cap earnings growth in 2026. So small caps being that dark blue. Mid caps being the medium blue and then large caps in orange. So it's been an all large cap story for a long period of time.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You can see the breakout of AI there in the third quarter of 2023 that really set the market off its lows and really took off. But now the small and mid-sized companies are starting to catch up when it comes to the earnings and they're projected to continue that here in 26. So possibly some opportunities in the small and medium companies moving forward.

DANO WEIR: Chris, did you say there's a disturbance in the force? Is that what I heard you say about a minute ago?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I was just trying to make sure you're still awake, Dan.

DANO WEIR: Did I hear you meant to hit me? We're going to go Star Wars. We can get going here.

DANO WEIR: Darren, I want to see some candlesticks. I want to see why the market is telling me everything is just fine. I mean. You know, sticks just fine. Just fine. What do you want? What do you want from the market? We'll give it to you.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's right. Well, so the this week is becoming very clear that the politicians are getting anxious about the up and coming midterm elections because we're seeing lots of things that are, I think, playing to, you know, the voter base.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And it feels like Today with the announcement, I don't think they've announced it yet, but supposedly they're going to announce the ability to use your 401k for first-time home buyers, which I have a lot of hesitation about. I think that's probably problematic for most people long term to be doing that. And I would argue perhaps you can't afford that home if you have to invade your 401k.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: If you're betting that the market's going to go to the moon forever in this, stock market and in the real estate market and invading your 401k to buy a house and maybe i can make the argument if you're buying a home not a house but if you're signing a house with your your 401k oh i don't know if i'm going that direction so anyway lots lots going on out there and it just feels like it's one thing after another so the thought that came to me was commercial from the 80s or is this guy in the diamond district And it was just, this commercial at the end has up our screenshot of it.

DANO WEIR: So this was, if you're from the Bay area, if you grew up here in the eighties and into the nineties and you watched any kind of local television, this commercial was everywhere. His name is Paul. The company was the diamond center. And, it's just a really funny commercial where he's, he's just sort of telling you like, well, well, you can do it.

DANO WEIR: It's very, it's very encouraging. It's like, just get in here, you know? And so Darren was telling me, he's like, that's what it feels like. You know, the politicians are doing right now because, you know, midterms are coming up.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah. I mean, so you're going to start seeing this kind of play to different populations. Right. So if Trump's running around in Minnesota locking people up, like he's got to figure out, OK, well, if I'm alienating all those people and I got to work on getting this people in bank for me for the midterms to his point.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I think earlier this week, he said, if we lose Congress, then I'm going to get beached. And then I think he also said this week that maybe we should... He made some comment in such a Trumpish way of like, maybe we shouldn't even have midterm elections. Which, okay. I guess we're at wartime like Zelensky now. We're not going to have it.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But rather interesting thoughts of Sometimes it's hard to know what to take serious and what not to take serious, like is this guy for real or not? So what I thought I would talk about first, because I did talk about this last week, and that's the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Trump tariffs and why that is such a problem.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Important thing to watch. And Chris and I had some discussion last week about whether or not we felt like the Trump tariffs being rebated back to everyone was priced into the market. And I have not had a chance to watch the Supreme Court discussion yet, but apparently there was some discussion earlier today.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And after that, you saw that the likelihood of, of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Trump-Terrors actually went up. It was down at 20%. It worked its way up. So that's interesting. And then I think Trump came out and said, yeah, they're going to be in favor of me. You can see that jump right here about 1.40 p. m. Today.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So good news, bad news. I don't know. I guess that's probably a political flavor, but interesting nonetheless, and I think important economically for us to pay attention to. So this is polymarket. For those who don't know, polymarket is a like you can go on and bet on whether or not you think things are happening.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We're actually seeing a lot of really interesting and I don't know if it's even considered insider trading, but there's some people speculating that people inside the government that have certain insights on things that are going to happen or not happen and putting massive bets on in polymarket. I don't know if the SEC and regulators are going to come after me.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Polymarket now or how that works but nonetheless since they're going to be the all engines abilities insider trade maybe they're going to start doing polymark instead yeah it's it's weird to think because it's not technically a security right but it's also a way people can make a lot of money so interesting and also i guess if you are someone who bets in in this and i personally am not I'm not interested in it, I never have been.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I don't even like any game of chance like that that's like, you know. I think I got burned, Dan, in college, you know, betting on the Buckeyes and the Browns too much.

DANO WEIR: - oh man, betting on the Browns? I'm sorry.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: - yeah, I guess I learned my lesson at an early age and I'm thankful for that.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: But yeah, it's interesting because if you are betting in there, like know that you're betting against people with insider information that are probably going to take your money.

DANO WEIR: So that's kind of what I was trying to say at the start of the episode, which is that, I mean, the betting Markets beyond just sports are now its own stock market unto itself.

DANO WEIR: So we've got all these massive regulations on and I think they're appropriate on how you can advertise and communicate what that market is. Right. Right. But then over in the betting Markets, it's like, ah, we can say whatever we want. It seems like perhaps there should be some more.

DANO WEIR: Maybe someone should look at that is what I'm saying.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Dan, just, you know, I just want to let you know that the 49Ers have a 26% chance of winning on the betting Markets right now.

DANO WEIR: Well, you know what they do? They put that purposely low because they're trying to attract bets. So actually that means they have a good chance because they're trying to move the line.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Sure. So, but anyway, it's kind of interesting. And I think those would watch a show for a long time. Know that Chris and I use these pretty religiously when it comes to trying to figure out who the next presidential winner will be.

DANO WEIR: Use them by look, use them by looking at them. Not pretty.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah. Just to be clear. But yeah, just, trying to see what the, because really at the end of the day, like the poly market is a function of like the mass brain and what the brain thinks. Right. And so all the humans with their compiled opinion, right. And the more participants in that more accurate it's going to be, or likely to be.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But what you'll see is that it will adjust in real time to different things. So whatever your flavor is, I mean, they even be a whole category on what Trump's going to do. Like, man, talk about But it is interesting to kind of inform your thoughts about what's really going on versus reading your slant and media.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Right. And what the media says to you based upon your own personalized echo chamber that we all have. Like nowadays, the way that the search engines work, the way that LLMs work with the AI, like it becomes this massive echo chamber. Which by the way, I saw a chat GBT is now going to offer.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: They're going to start doing advertising on our chat GBTs. And I guess be careful what you put in chat GBT because they're going to try and sell you something.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, I wonder if it's going to be subtle like the answer that you get back is like, well, you might try a Coca-Cola.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: The best remedy for that cut is to pour some Coca-Cola on it.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Speaking of Coca-Cola, did you see that somebody... So Coke doesn't have a patent, I think it would be, on their formula and someone figured it out like this.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: No way.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah, they figured it out. That can't be real.

DANO WEIR: They purposely don't. I do know they don't have a patent because in order to patent, that would mean that they would have to share the recipe. So the recipe is itself... Super hit.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Yeah, that's it. They ignored it. So there, there was a YouTuber. So a YouTube here it is. YouTuber lab coats has claimed to have cracked Coca-Cola is 139 year old secret, to Coca-Cola. But what was so crazy about it is the ingredients in it were like wild. I mean, it was like lemon drops and all these like oils. It, Let's see if it listed down here, but it was really pretty fascinating.

DANO WEIR: Well, it began as a medical tonic. I mean, both Coke and Pepsi began as like the 1900s equivalent of wellness at that time.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I really hope Coke doesn't come after us for this, but here is apparently the Coca-Cola recipe that this guy figured out. But I just thought it was interesting. Like, look at all these lists of oils. I had no idea that when I drank a Coke there was tea tree oil.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's pretty amazing.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You know, going back to the YouTube thing, I should also mention I do not let my kids put their videos on YouTube. They just video and take up all my Apple ICloud space with it.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: But... I just popped in my head. People are like, you let your kids put their videos of them brushing their teeth on YouTube? No, I do not.

DANO WEIR: Well, Chris will use it for the documentary. That'll be behind the scenes footage for their documentary.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yes, absolutely.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Oh gosh. Okay. So let's take a look at the S&P 500 for the week. For those who are new with us and haven't spent much time with us on the show.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So level set, the S&P 500 is the largest 500 US based stocks. It's generally what people think of when they think of the market or the Dow Jones, which is only 30 stocks, but pretty hard to think of that as the whole market nowadays. So the S&P 500, this is a what's called a cap weighted look or heat map of the S&P 500. The big squares represent bigger companies, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Last year, we talked a lot about Microsoft, NVIDIA, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Google and Meta being these big dots growing and growing and growing, and taking up huge portions of the overall index. And you can see they still are very large. I will just point out the consumer defensive boxes are getting bigger. So from a visualization standpoint, what does that mean?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And yes, Coca-Cola is considered consumer defensive. But I think I want to, I haven't seen this stock this week, but I imagine it probably impacted it some when some YouTuber hacked its recipe. But I've been watching this Walmart one box grow, which I think is interesting.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so we're starting to see these rotations happen. What do I mean by rotation? It's less the money's piling in these AI goddess stocks and it's starting to push into things like consumer defensive, industrials, energy.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So I think that's interesting. Visa getting clobbered this week because Trump last Friday says, ah, you guys all need to only charge 10% on your credit cards.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I just wonder if Trump thinks about if I piss off enough people and if he's got in his office somewhere like, okay, I've made the oil lobby mad and now I've made a financial credit card lobby mad And like at some point if you just make enough people mad, like you're going to lose. And I think that's what you're seeing with it.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You've got a friend in the diamond business where it's like, okay, I made a lot of people mad, but I'm going to tell them they can use their 401ks to buy houses they can't afford. Or how about we'll crypto on your 401k because that's a great idea.

DANO WEIR: Darren, we call that ready, fire, aim.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Ready, fire, aim. Yes. Yeah. I think there is a lot of ready fire aim, Mr. Trump.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But I thought your point earlier, Chris, was great when we were talking about it. It's like, for some reason, Trump only gets the F-A in the F-A-F-O acronym. Like, yeah. He messes around with people and nothing sticks. It's just shocking.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: He really pissed off Canada, by the way. Canada basically gave a massive nod to the Chinese this week where they're going to start letting the Chinese EVs into the country and they got rid of the tariffs on their EVs. And went as far to say two things that I think were really, really important and I think will prove to be a pain in our sides for a long time.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And that is one that something to the tune of, we have successfully negotiated a deal that aligns with our, basically with our best interest for a multipolar world. The power changes and the new world order, I think was the term already used. So basically just kissing up to the Chinese now, which is, If you don't know, Canada is the country we have the largest border with that pretty much has nothing in between us and them.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You can walk all over it back and forth all day long. So it's problematic if these people, the Canadians and us are not one because we are one. We're right next to each other. That can be not a good thing. He also said that if we go and take Greenland, which Trump keeps running his mouth about Greenland, that Canada is perfect. To go to war with the United States over the taking Greenwood.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So I'm like.

DANO WEIR: Okay, this is going to go well for lots. Sorry. I am going to laugh at that one. And I like Canada.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Well, it is from a, from a market's perspective though, it is a serious, like, Hey, all these things are going on and yet the market look at this uptrend, right? It doesn't seem to matter.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And I think a lot of people, including me, a lot of times are just looking at it and just questioning like, why is that? Why is it not mattering? Why doesn't it matter?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I don't know. It's an unanswered question at this point.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I think of it as just like it's a function of not. Right? I think everybody's just not. Right? Like what is Trump going to say? The market's closed. Oh, great. And how many calls do we get from people saying, oh, Trump said this sell my blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It doesn't really happen. Right? No one really reacts. If you look at right here in February, March of, you know, this was, this was Trump's big, like, Ooh, I'm going to mess around with tariffs right here. And market just tanks, and it's just ripped ever since.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I think a lot of people learned their lesson here. I'm just not going to bother. Trump's going to run his mouth, and probably a tenth of what he says is true. He's going to throw these grenades in the room and blow everybody up, and everyone's going to get pissed off. After a while, if somebody just creates enough emergencies in your life, you just stop having emergencies. You just don't care anymore.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's, I think what the market feels. And that's kind of my mind front anyway. But overall, you know, if we look at a weekly chart, so this is looking at the stock market from a weekly standpoint, pretty positive, right? We stayed in this green candle from last week, we tested this support level, people bought it up.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's the wicking you can see. Let's look at on the actual, we'll look at a four hour chart. So each one of these candlesticks now represents the four-hour chart. And we kind of went down, and then boom, it got back up.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's sitting there, and we're hanging on to this important trading line right now. So I think you can only read that as positive for the market. I don't think there's anything to say that, hey, you shouldn't just stay the course at this moment. That's not advised because I don't know what your portfolio is like.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But if it was my portfolio right now, I'd be like, just keep on keeping. Nothing really too important about the S&P 500. Other than that, I think we're starting to see the rotation into defensive stocks. We're starting to see money come out of these high flyers like NVIDIA.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And I think that aligns with what we're seeing in gold. Gold had a weekly, we closed an all-time weekly high in gold, just shy of $4,600 per ounce.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Pretty impressive growth for gold and also silver continuing to rip. So the silver chart right now is looking at 90. Although I heard a lot of stories from different silver producer or silver retailers, and refiners that they're really, there's a lot of dislocation in the silver business now. So I see a lot of rumors of that.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So then when I look at it, Oh, it's going to cost it. Can I buy silver at Costco? Yes, you can still buy silver at Costco or I'm not saying you should buy silver at Costco. And this is from the Inglewood warehouse. So, but, for $1,900, you can buy 20 amp bars, which are pretty popular, Swiss bars, but they're minted in the U. S.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I think a company that wants to do well during the Trump administration just slaps on minted in the USA, built in the USA, even if it's not, but whatever. And then we look at S. T. Bullion, which is a fairly low-cost one. You can see it's basically $98 for an ounce or bar of gold right now. Silver coins on silver eagles, these are kind of like one of the staples in the silver collector's world.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: They're selling for $100 north of it. Pretty incredible how fast silver has gone up and I'm hearing lots of dislocation amongst the silver dealers out there. And again because you've got nation States, companies, organizations, people grabbing it because there's some questions about whether or not the dollar is going to remain dominant.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I think in the future. So people are looking for places to preserve their wealth, looking at mortgage rates per Chris's discussion earlier. And I just checked this was the mortgage person and we are hovering right around six on a 30 year fixed mortgage. So I confirmed these numbers a few minutes ago.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But interestingly, I didn't really think about this until I was looking at this chart earlier. We're basically where we were at in September of 08.00.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Which is kind of interesting, right?

DANO WEIR: Nothing spooky about that.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: No, nothing at all. And mortgage rates are like right on this support line. So if we go lower from here, there basically has to be a good economic reason.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And that's probably bad news for all of us generally economically. I'm sure the people who are not in power would love for us to hit a recession right now. And just skid into it right around the midterms.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And I'm willing to bet that Trump's going to do everything he can to stimulate the economy. Because like Bill Clinton used to say, is the economy stupid?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But hey, all right. Well, okay, so talk about mortgage, we talked about gold, we talked about silver, let's talk about oil. Interesting little spike early on in the week. When we thought we were going to bomb Iran for like a minute, and then I'm sure someone called and kissed out to Trump. So he decided not to buy bomb Iran. I don't know.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But it looked like we're going to war with Iran earlier in the week. And apparently we're not. The chart doesn't think we are right now. Tentum is building in the Middle East. But now we're just back to letting his supplies of oil. And we did sell our first batch of oil from Venezuela. And lo and behold, Trump sold it to him.

DANO WEIR: Supporters but hey that's politics right the so it doesn't look like we are going to work which i think is probably good news maybe bad news i don't you know it's hard to say what's going on in Iran because they cut the internet off Darren you know i produced a show so i watch every single one and i think for the past three weeks you have not mentioned Bitcoin and we have I was just thinking about that, Dan.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I feel like I might have told you I was just going to talk about Bitcoin, but I didn't. But yeah, let's talk about Bitcoin. Wow, Dan.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Speaking of playing politics, Dan, nice one on that. Suck up A student, baby.

DANO WEIR: A student.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You're in luck because you're rubbing in good news, buddy. And you can see we broke out above $94,000. We held support right there at $94,000. I think we go higher Bitcoin right now. I think the odds are the upside. It's like ETH, the other largest and similar chart, but a little weaker. It didn't quite break above that area right here. Support was right in that line.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So anyway...

DANO WEIR: Could you go back to Bitcoin real quick? Because I feel like there was much headline about the drop. And then it seems like we're starting to see a pretty steady...

DANO WEIR: Support gaining, some momentum building. So what are you seeing in the chart that's showing one way or the other?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, Dan, first off, I just want to say welcome to Bitcoin investing because that is the way it always is. Anytime Bitcoin crashes, all the bros jump up on Twitter and run their mouths about those stupid Bitcoin investors. And then they just sleek into the hedge. You know that meme where Simpsons like sleeking or that GIF you use on your phone?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It sneaks back into the edge. Like that's like the Bitcoin haters. They all come out and scream and yell when it's going down, it's going to die. And then it comes back again and it does fine. And then this is, you can see this as historically and see these really fast dips, right?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Like here where it's just world's ending for Bitcoin. Wow. Look at those candles. That's brutal. And then you start seeing these like little moves where it works its way out. Works its way up, works its way up. And you can kind of see that starting to form here. The fact that we held this long-term support line of $88,000, $85,000, I think that's pretty good news.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's just doing what Bitcoin does, and that is correcting harder and going up harder than most assets because it has a higher volatility to it. But at this point, for a whole lot of reasons, there's so many people that own Bitcoin that will never probably sell Bitcoin again Yes, you can see on the margin prices go down, but I highly, highly, highly doubt that you see it come back.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So if you're waiting, we have a friend out there who recently sent a note saying, I'm waiting for it to come back here and then I'm going to buy it. And I say, you might be waiting a very long time. Good luck.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But we would have to see something like this to your point, Dan, where you have a big drop and then we go below this long term.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And then become come down that would be you know the moment where you would see a bigger correction but i don't it doesn't look like this consolidation pattern here looks like this consolidation pattern to me right very similar like refining the low and then it's going to work its way up so i feel fairly constructed about Bitcoin at the moment NVIDIA is like doing nothing, just trading sideways, which is important because it's the biggest in the S&P 500.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So all these other stocks, all these defensive stuff doing really well, whereas all these high fires are not doing as well.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: All right, well, I think we're going to leave it there. Have a wonderful weekend. It is a beautiful weekend in Northern California. So I hope you enjoyed this stuff.

DANO WEIR: Thank you so much for checking out the show this week. We appreciate it. If it's your first show, the first time you found us and you made it all the way this far. Hey, awesome. We do this every single week. It is called on the Markets. So wherever it is, whether it's Facebook, whether it's YouTube, whether it's on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, make sure to subscribe.

DANO WEIR: So that way you won't miss future episodes. And also on our YouTube channel, check out our other shows and content, including another podcast called it's all money. You can also find all of that at SonomaWealth. Com. We'll see everybody next week. Thanks for checking out the show. We truly appreciate it.

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CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Firmata Advisors, LLC is registered as an investment advisor with the SEC and only transact business in States where it is properly registered or is excluded or exempt from registration requirements. This content was produced by Firmata Advisors, LLC, DBA Sonoma Wealth Advisors, DBA Firmata 401K, DBA Firmata Tax.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: The opinions expressed by Firmata Advisors, LLC on this show are their own. Information presented on this program... Is believed to be factual and up-to-date, but we do not guarantee its accuracy, and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Discussions and answers to questions do not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice, but are limited to the dissemination of general information. A professional advisor should be consulted before implementing any of the options presented.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. "Viewers and listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal or investment advisor to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.