Will An Artificial 2025 Lead To A Tangible 2026?

DANO WEIR: If no one has said it to you yet, happy 2026. My name is Dano Weir. I'm the marketing director for Sonoma Wealth, Fermata Advisors. And we are going to go On The Markets. Holiday for some people, kind of extending New Year's Day into a bonus day here, but not for the market and not for us. You did survive the robotpocalypse of 2025, which may still be coming in 2026 and every year thereafter.

DANO WEIR: But we might be throwing it back way back to the gold standard it feels like did AI overspending lead to a knee-jerk reversion to precious metals now and perhaps this year also we're going to look at trend or not the money was spent so what was the impact on gdp from all that AI investment and Chris one of our managing principals has been digging into a great book what he's learning from the 1920s and 30s Markets That could be ringing even truer today than ever.

DANO WEIR: Oh, and Daren has thoughts on oil and bonds as we start the year. And let's start the show.

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.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Fermata 401k and Fermata tax On The Markets starts now let's get them in here for our episode will an artificial 2025 lead to a tangible 2026 they are the managing principals of Fermata Advisors Sonoma Wealth our private wealth brand Daren Blonski and Chris Sipes Daren how was your Christmas tell me one cool thing that happened one cool thing there are so many damn we won't we can't go the coolest thing that happened down in this ever seen the movie four christmases i have not but it's Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon right yeah and so it was is about Vince Vaughn Reese Witherspoon both have divorced parents and they have to travel between the four sets of parents during Christmas and early on in my life that was the way life was and it was like kids poor parents and oh man it was Christmas was just gauntlet as was thanksgiving and everybody had to you know it was wonderful to have a big family and be able to spend time with them looking back i wish i would be appreciated even more and due to unfortunate circumstances my family was just like decimated over the last few years and you know now there's like one separate to see which is tragic in its own right but You have to see the golden lining through everything in life.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And one of the greatest things I had this Christmas I just enjoyed is I didn't go anywhere. I just stayed home. It was fabulous. So that was a good thing about Christmas.

DANO WEIR: Chris, what about you?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Well, I was put in charge of cooking the tri-tip for I don't know how many people, a lot of people. It was a lot of pressure, Dan.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And it came out great so i was stoked about that did you feel like your manliness was like manifested and yeah that's a lot of entertainment Chris is a real man he can anybody that knows me loves knows that i love to grill and so that that was that was great but you know sometimes the pressure's on when you got that many people waiting for their tasty tri-tip and and so that came out great and the universe is teaching me to deal with, with defeat and loss.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Cause my, my Buckeyes lost, this week to, to Miami. So I'm, I'm enjoying the, the, the personal growth that I'm going through at the moment to, to get through this.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I wasn't going to say anything, but sure.

DANO WEIR: I didn't want your loss to like stick. To me and my Niners, so I just kind of was leaving them alone.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You've got a big one Saturday tomorrow. Yes, I do. That's going to be quite the game, Daniel.

DANO WEIR: I'm actually getting them. If the 49Ers win that game, they will potentially not leave Levi's Stadium all the way to the Super Bowl, including the Super Bowl, were they to make it that far. Because the Super Bowl is literally in Levi's this year in San Francisco. San jose so that would be amazing nice yeah well i'll share one more leave what does that mean.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Are they talking about the New York Stadium?

DANO WEIR: No, no, no. They would be a home playoff game for every round of the playoffs because they would be the highest seed should they advance that far.

DANO WEIR: And then very, very uniquely, the Super Bowl is usually played in a random city and it happens to be their city this year. So that would be quite fortuitous.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: But we shall see.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: The New York Stadium is awful, by the way. I am not a fan.

DANO WEIR: It could have been worse. I'll say that. It could have been worse.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You mean if you weren't working on a golf course when you go there or what?

DANO WEIR: It's not one of those indoor spaceships like every other stadium has now. Kansas City's building a spaceship. Vegas has a spaceship. They're all building these spaceships these days. So there you go. There's my fun thing from Christmas. My team's doing well. Chris, what do we got here? First meme up.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah. So 2026, I got to chuckle out of this. I think this is from the New Yorker. So hopefully... They're not suing us for using this. But it's got a couple guys, looks like from maybe Roman times, and it says, there I go, still writing BC on my checks.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I thought that was hilarious.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So yeah, good luck to everybody trying to remember to write down the right date for the month of January.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I did it right today. I had to do my first date. Actually, we were on a call, I did, Chris.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Nice. And I was like, I got it right. Yeah. Yeah. This is a year starting off good.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So, nerd alert, but most financial data are considered to be strong financial data. The Fama French data, et cetera, goes back to 1926. Now we can say we have 100 years of this better data. Now that we're in 2026. So that's kind of cool. But you guys know I've been reading that book, Investing in U. S. Financial History by, I think it's Mark Higgins. Excellent.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I'm really enjoying it. Got this quote that really made me laugh given we talked so much over the last few years about unprecedented times, fundamentals don't seem to matter anymore. So many relationships that economically have mattered for a long period of time don't seem to apply anymore. And this quote was referring to Charles Merrill, who was the founder of Merrill Lynch back in the 1800s.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And he says, in March of 1928, the firm, which was referring to Merrill at the time, wasn't quite Merrill Lynch yet. In March 1928, the firm was in a strong financial position. But Merrill sensed danger on the horizon. He feared that lax monetary policies had driven stock prices to dangerously high levels, and he encouraged clients to trim their exposure.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Despite his warnings, the stock market continued to rise for the remainder of 1928 and most of 1929, prompting relentless ridicule by Merrill's friends, colleagues, and journalists. The criticism was so unbearable that Merrill questioned his own sanity. It took several consultations with a psychiatrist before he was convinced that he was not losing his mind.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Despite the unpopularity of his beliefs, Merrill persuaded the partnership to substantially reduce the firm's exposure to stocks well in advance of the great crash in October 1929.

DANO WEIR: Oh man, Chris, this is right in your wheelhouse, man.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: That one cracked me up. So for those that don't know, 1929 is considered the beginning of the Great Depression. And specifically, it started around October of 1929. And so he started to feel like things were getting a little crazy in the spring of 28. So he only had to wait like a year and a half. He literally thought he was going crazy. He went to a psychiatrist. That just cracked me up. I couldn't believe it.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Then there was this other little nugget in there. And this is talking about rebuilding the global financial system after World War II. And this is actually talks towards the end of 1943 when Allies felt that they were putting together...

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: The Bretton Woods Agreement, and they figured that the Allies looked like they were going to win the war and they needed to come up with a new financial, a global financial system. And so that's the kind of the context of this.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And it says, there was urgency assigned to this task because policymakers believe that the dysfunctional trade policies of the 1930s, collectively known as beggar thy neighbor policies, had caused the war.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: The tragedy of these policies is that the leaders of each individual country genuinely believed that trade barriers would benefit their people by increasing the price of imports and reducing the price of exports. They hope to stimulate a recovery of their domestic economies.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: This in turn would create a favorable trade balance, lower unemployment and end the depression. So obviously that didn't happen and it and there were a lot of economic things that led up to World War II.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so interesting that this has happened before. And for those that might be familiar, if you're not familiar, look up The Prisoner's Dilemma, and it's part of game theory. And it kind of explains how, even though you might be doing what's best for you, like in your immediate concept of what's best for you, it can actually turn out to be a disaster because of the way that the game ends up playing out.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So look up the prisoner's dilemma if you're interested in that. And it's quite interesting. So recapping 2025, where did we end? We've got the major asset classes here. Gold, obviously the top performer by a mile, which we'll talk more about a little bit, but followed by emerging Markets. And develop stock Markets, both up in the mid 30s percent there or low 30 percent, sorry.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: We had the S&P at about 17.7. So another good year for the S&P.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And then you've got bonds and long-term bonds in there as well. So another good year for the Markets. And it seems like we've strung together quite a few of these here outside of 2022 with the brief downturn in stocks and bonds. It's really been smooth sailing for stocks when you look at it over the long term.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Now, anybody that was actually invested during those periods knows that there was some sprinkled in times of absolute panic. You know, COVID, we had the tariff tantrum earlier this year. So Markets tend to, you know, have the, what do they call it, the escalator up and then the cliff down, you know, and that tends to happen.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So there's always going to be a narrative around the way up and a narrative around the way down. And we as humans obviously get bought into those stories. So these squiggly lines, you know, they look. They look so easy in hindsight, but when you're actually going through it, it can feel quite different from an emotional perspective.

DANO WEIR: Darren, what's that blue squiggly line at the very, very top separated away from everybody else by like a double or triple margin? Is that?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I'm going to say.

DANO WEIR: Is that?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I didn't even put silver on here because I didn't want it to throw off the graph. Gold.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Gold did bad enough at that so gold that's so interesting you know too with with that financial history numbers though Chris i mean you're only showing one year time line here for but the 10-year number and the five years and the three years yeah.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah we should you know somebody i forget who who mentioned this but it's like one of the first years since Bitcoin's been tracked where it wasn't either the absolute top performer or the absolute bottom performer. It was kind of, you know, so that's interesting.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It kind of like did nothing.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, yeah. I mean, down six sounds bad, but like really, that's nothing. Okay, so. Where are we sentiment wise going into 2026? We ended the year pretty high bullish numbers 42% bullish. According to AII, CNN is at 43, just slightly in the fear zone, which was down from 52 of neutral last week.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And then you had Bitcoin at 28 fear. Last week, it was at 20 extreme fear. That one seems to follow, like all these sentiment indicators, follow price. And we got a little jump in Bitcoin this week, so a little less fearful than it was a week ago.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: All right. So fun stat from Charlie Biello. And Biello, I love his way of quoting things, sort of like sports, especially baseball. I feel like there's always stats. That the announcers are throwing out or ESPN throw out.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I'm Charlie Bello.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: I do.

DANO WEIR: You know, it's really just a tie between Charlie and Mike Sicardi.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: He can't decide. You got it, Meb Fabe. I mean, you got to be out for Meb Fabe.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, there's a few. There's a few of the greatest hits, right? So Charlie says, U. S. Large caps out And when they say large caps, that means big companies, so large market capitalization. So when you take all their shares and you add it up, the price of those shares, there's a total value of the company. And so large caps outperformed U. S.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Small caps by 5% in 2025, their fifth straight year of outperformance. That ties 1994 to 1998 for the longest streak of large cap outperformance. Ever. That prior streak was followed by six straight years of small cap outperformance. Now it's only one day, but we got quite the pop in small caps today to start the year off. So hey, maybe this is finally the year for small caps. We'll see.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Then we talk a little bit about interest rates. Here we are looking at the 10-year Treasury in dark blue. The 30-year Treasury in green, and the mortgage rates in gray. And mortgage rates did come down just a little bit during 2025. You can see we're probably right around 7% to start the year off, and now we're just hovering above 6%.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And then you look at the longer-term Treasury rates, they're down slightly, 10-year probably being the most important for a credit. Kind of benchmark. And we're talking a little bit about this before the show. The reason for this is most credit is based off of the price of Treasury rates. And that's because Treasury rates are considered the credit risk-free portion of the fixed income market.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so when investors look at the landscape, they say, I can go here and make sure I'll get my money back Or I can invest in things like mortgages. Well, if I'm going to invest in things like mortgages, I should get paid a little bit more since I'm taking on the risk that I might not get paid back.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And you're taking on prepayment risk and things like that because if interest rates go down, people tend to refinance and then you've got to figure out what to do with your money after that.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So it'll be interesting to see what happens with rates. Going into 2026, given that Fed policy is probably going to be more accommodative, meaning they're lowering interest rates. However, that only matters in the way that the Markets turn around in price, the longer term debt, because the Fed does not control the 10-year Treasury rate, the 30-year Treasury rate, at least not yet.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So Goldman Sachs, excuse me, guys, I'm dealing with a cold. I think, I think my immune system after the Buckeyes loss just gave up and gave up the fight. I got, I got cold after that.

DANO WEIR: So that's the other gift of seeing family at Christmas too, by the way, illness. Yeah.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Well, and I jinxed myself by saying, Hey, we made it through Christmas with no, no sickness and boom.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So I figured out the secret to Christmas because everybody. For a long time, I'd be so looking forward to like, hey, I'm taking a couple of weeks off. I'm just going to enjoy being, you know, whatever. And so excited. And then boom, you get sick. But don't get sick. Here's the secret. You just tell your mind you're not taking it off. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm taking it off.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yep.

DANO WEIR: That works just as well as any time Darren tries to take a vacation. There's some sort of incident. There's a tariff incident. There's a flash crash. You're not allowed to take vacation.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: This is true. This is true. Well, Goldman Sachs came out with some great research on AI, and this is part of their projections for 2026, I believe. And I was surprised to learn, given how much of the narrative is based on AI right now, that their assumption is that AI's impact on GDP is just under half a percent this year.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And that's their... That's our projection for next year as well. And so in terms of impact to GDP, at least according to Goldman Sachs, AI has not yet had that much of an impact on GDP than the U. S. Now, that would sort of make sense given that Markets are forward-looking and they're going to price in growth before it happens.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So in some ways, you wouldn't expect to see that. AI impact on GDP yet. But nonetheless, at least for me, the number was lower than I expected it to be in terms of total contribution to GDP.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Now, this was also surprising to me. When you look at the total spending on AI versus some of the other build-outs that we've done, we might just be getting started. So on... On this spectrum, you've got the railroads in the UK in 1860s and the US in the 1880s. So these are measured as a percent of GDP.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So whenever you hear a number like, we're going to spend a trillion dollars on X, you really want to know those things relative to something else to give you an idea if that's a lot or a little, because we deal with such huge numbers now that you need to know what that is relative to something.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And so in this case, it's relative to GDP. And you can see that we really are just in the beginning innings, according to Goldman Sachs. If AI is going to be as big as they say it is, in terms of the spending, we've got a long way to go, even versus what we spent in the 1990s on the internet build-out.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And they also seem to be pretty sanguine on employment in terms of AI replacing workers. And so they had did a survey of their clients. And, you know, maybe over the next three years, you'll see a little bit more of an impact on headcount. You know, they're expecting around, I guess, 11% drop.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Which would be notable if that ends up happening, but also not as much as I had thought. I think it's probably too early to tell, obviously, but these projections don't seem as dire as some that we've seen in terms of expected impact to employment.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So we talked, not last week because we missed last week, but the week before that about... The general consensus that the government, the Treasury, the federal reserve, will just come in and save Markets. And I mentioned the fact that Markets are so large that in order to do that would take a Herculean effort by the government to do that.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: This is just showing- They injected nearly eight.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Billion 80 billion dollars over the weekend in the Markets yes yes and when you look at that in the context of an 81 trillion dollar equity market 80 billion is really nothing right and even if you think about the amount that we put in during Covid which i believe in the u. s was like i don't know six or seven eight trillion something like that, just the U S equity market.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: We're not even talking about commodities. We're not talking about the fixed income market, which is much bigger than the equity market. Just the U S equity market is $52 trillion of the global equity market of 81 trillion. So do policies have an impact on these things? Of course, can, can the Fed influence them? Can the Treasury influence them in some ways? Yes. And I mean, if they were to really try to stop.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: A market that is this large, it's hard to see how you don't get another huge inflation like we did the last time we tried to stop the free fall of a massive equity market. Only now, the equity market's way bigger than it was even five years ago prior to COVID.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So I question whether they could do it. I definitely don't think they could do it without some sort of you know, downside effects that we can't foresee ahead of time, like inflation.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And obviously, that's going to lead to more civil issues, just like it did during COVID.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: All that matters is it gets him past the next election though, man.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Unfortunately, that's true.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: No long-term thinking here is like, do what I got to do to get reelected, and we'll deal with the problem later.

DANO WEIR: Chris, this chart is so mind-blowing to me, basically, that the United States, the S&P 500, is 64% of the global equity market. And so we talk all the time about how Mag7 stocks, the big ones, they have such an impact on the S&P as a whole.

DANO WEIR: Just quick math here, Apple, value of Apple is around $4 trillion. That's about 5% of this pie chart. So basically, Japan is Apple. Apple, one company. Wow. If they have a bad day, just imagine what that does to the rest of the market.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Absolutely. Yeah.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: This is the largest equity valuation of the global equity market that any one country has ever been.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So even when Great Britain was on top prior to the US, It was never this large in terms of the global equity Markets. Japan briefly had a huge run in the 80s. And but but the U. S. Today is a larger portion of the overall global equity market than than any country in history.

DANO WEIR: That's right, baby. America, huge and bloated. That's how we do it. Everything, everything across the board.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah. Now, this stat... Really blew my mind. I'd heard this before, but I guess just revisiting it, and this is from research done by Bessem Binder. And he goes back to the 1800s. And so he's got a great book, and I can't remember the name of it. Maybe I'll have to look that up. But anyway, it talks about just 3%.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: 3% of companies generated all the net wealth in the United States stock market since 1926. So that's pretty amazing. And that percentage was even lower in previous years. I think the big run of AI in these large tech companies over the last 15 years has really increased that percentage.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: But I guess the point here is for those that... Want to pick stocks and feel that they've got a better mousetrap or you feel really strongly about a certain company or whatever, just know that the odds are stacked against you.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: My brother-in-law's words are like echoing through my head because the day before the Ohio State game, he said something like, hey man, the odds for Ohio State in Vegas are are the widest they've ever been for a team in a bowl game in history. And I was like, ah, don't tell me that.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: That's like tempting the market gods, you know? And so just know that the odds are really tough. The market is a huge competitive machine, and very few of the companies survive over time, and very few of the companies provide all the wealth of the market. It's pretty amazing.

DANO WEIR: Chris is in his feels about his football team, but he's got three championships in his lifetime. So you know what, buddy? You're going to make it, okay? I'm just going to tell you. It's going to be okay.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Time heals all wounds, right?

DANO WEIR: Haven't seen a Super Bowl win in 30 years, okay? Just relax. Relax.

DANO WEIR: Darren, it is your portion of the show. We've talked about it. We've teased it. The tangible portion. Of the market gold silver precious metals are they the the new hot stock of 2026 you know it might be the case but i don't think it has.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Much to do with AI. I think the correlation is not a causation here on this one, but it sounds like a good teaser when we're doing the show, right? So what I thought we would start off today by doing is talking about the silver market. I mean, wow, silver has just been running crazy lately, and you can't help but ask, but why?

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so there's lots of discussion out there. Just pulling up my screen here for some reason. The screen I want is not coming up. So we'll do this screen. Okay, let's try and see if this works. I'm just trying to add my window, but today it's... Let's do this.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Actually, I'm just going to change it up real quick. So yeah, lots going on with the silver market. Bottom line, though, in my best estimation, because that's what it is, there's just a lot going on out there with silver. And the reality is the reason, I think they moved the settings around on this. Sorry, guys. We got it.

DANO WEIR: We got it right here.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: All right. They're always updating the technology we use to broadcast. So then when they change something, it's like, oh, we're changing. So this is a silver price. This is looking at the four-hour chart. You can see on the silver price, these are candlesticks. They represent a period of time in the market. So each one of these candlesticks here represents four hours in the market.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I like the four-hour chart sometimes. So I'm just trying to get a sense of more of the short-term pattern. And there's a really interesting, you can maybe argue this is a triple top, although I don't love it as a triple top. But you could argue it, which could be a topping formation for silver. But it's a descending triangle, which is usually not a good thing for price.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And a descending triangle, you can see how it's winding up. And then from a probability standpoint, it's going to fall below that 70 threshold. And then we'll see it go down further. The rumor is that because China is putting these controls on silver and... As of last night, apparently they blocked $50 billion in silver imports.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And the reason silver is so important right now is it's industrial material used in all solar panels. And there's a deficit of the amount of silver coming out of the ground. And so there were a bunch of big banks that had a lot of shorts on silver. And those shorts got unwound because a short squeeze started because China came out and said, hey, we're not going to let people take silver.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Whatnot out of country and then Trump apparently is meeting with the foreign ambassador today it's that big of a deal right where Trump called for an emergency meeting with the foreign ambassador to China because the pricing so the rumor on the street is that this is just a rumor right we're not trying to spread rumors that this is at least what's being told out there and that the silver price is being pushed down physically because of these short squeezes and there's a i guess two major banks and no one's saying who.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Are basically over leveraged on the silver trade. And if they let the prices keep going, it's going to bankrupt two massive banks. No one knows which ones, right? But over the weekend, oddly, a couple of banks tapped the reverse repo market where basically they went and got money from the Fed and they injected $80 billion in the economy.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So something's afoot, something's moving and they're keeping it quiet, quiet. There are definitely holes being plugged in the battleship here when it comes to silver. So it's interesting. So this is what we would call paper, the cost of the silver futures right now.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So right now the price is $72.82. Well, how far has that run? Well, you can see it looks like a stinking meme stock. And you can see back at $32 in early 2025 or call it April of 2025, we're way down. We've just run up. Considerably. The idea is that there's just not enough silver coming out of the ground for the needs.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so we're up 155% from that bottom there on April 7th. That was when the whole terror panic started. And then it just ran from there. Which makes sense when you think about it, because if all of a sudden we're going to get into terror fights and so much of our precious metals come from around the world, that would push prices up.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Why? Because we don't really let people mine that much here in the United States because of all of our environmental regulations. So it's much easier for miners around the world to go pollute streams.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Defaced forests and cut off tops and mountains in other places around the world that is to get it through and do the same here in the United States so if we're going to get in a fight with the foreign powers that be whether that makes sense that that would push up the price but there's already a shortage they say that about 82 million ounces of silver come out of the ground from all the miners around the world.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And there's about a 220 million. Deficit in the amount of silver coming out of the ground for what's being demanded just from an industrial standpoint. And a lot of miners don't make a lot of money. They don't mine silver directly. It's a byproduct of gold mining and copper mining and others where they focus their mining capabilities on.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so just to increase silver production is pretty difficult. So then that shortage of supply pushes it up, but it happened. And I guess there were a lot of banks Who are really short silver So when it pushed up above a certain threshold, that put a lot of these banks out of the money in their trades and potentially facing massive issues when it came to solvency.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: That's at least what the rumors are saying out there. That's what people are talking about. To the degree what is true, I don't know. So I did a little test early on today. I like silver and gold.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And this is not, I'm not vouching for SD Bullion. There's lots of places to buy gold and silver. I think most of them are scams. So you do your homework, do your research, but I've certainly found pricing at SD Bullion to be most consistently if you're buying online.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so this is what's called an American silver eagle coin. So an American silver eagle coin is minted by the U. S. Mint. It's largely looked at as one of the most.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Most likely to not be for for beef cake and people trust that it's accurate because it's u. s mint there's lots of places you can buy silver but the you know the the silver eagle and the gold and in the the gold eagle are kind of staples in the world of stackers of gold and silver so i was like well what the rumor on the street is is that silver price is one price so you can see it's being priced in at 72 82 an ounce And then if you go buy a silver coin, which is a one ounce silver coin, if you buy one to 19 and you use a card, Bitcoin or check or wire, one of those payment methods, you pay a different price.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And you can see like if you use a card or PayPal, it's $88 for an ounce of gold on a silver eagle. The reason a silver eagle is sold at premium, right? Premium, what do I mean? Above $72.82 an ounce. Selling at a high premium right now because there's a lot of demand. For people to buy silver because people are feeling like this is a dip right now.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I don't think that's necessarily true based upon the chart. But just for giggles, in preparation for this show, I went on SD Bullion, I bought some Silver Eagles because I had heard rumors that orders were getting backward and that you weren't able to fill your orders. Like you might go on and buy, but they're like, hey, we don't have Silver Eagles right now. We'll get them to you when you have them.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: I was able to go on and buy today at a very elevated premium. So I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. But I was just, as a way of testing, I wanted to see if I could actually buy the physical silver, how much the demand was for silver. Because some of the other YouTubers I watch that are silver suppliers, etc., they were talking about how they have no inventory.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: They've been just absolutely cleaned out the coin shops when it comes to silver. When the price ran up like it did and then went down, this brought a lot of buyers back into the market. And you can see this on the chart. You can see that anytime it gets near this $70 an ounce on the chart, the buyers are stepping in and buying this.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Now this is paper, right? This is just on paper. This isn't real. And so one of the concerns right now in the futures Markets, if you buy futures in silver, that you actually can't take delivery of it. So the way futures work, you're saying, hey, I'm going to buy a thousand ounces at the end of January, and I'll pay this much for the future.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, That future, if you don't get rid of it, you're actually going to take delivery of that silver. And that's the way that silver miners, gold miners, farmers, that's how they hedge against fluctuations in price with their goods that they're selling or producing. So when we've got silver in this state, people are saying, well, you know, China's not letting you export it now.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Apparently Trump's going to talk with the foreign minister. Paper price is different than the physical prices. You know, on paper, you can technically buy it for $72 an ounce, but if you buy the actual physical, you're paying quite a bit more for it. You can see this is another source of silver.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Right now, the bid ask, you can see it's at $73.49 on the market for an ounce of silver. But again, you can't buy it because there's a premium. So then you say, okay, well, can I buy it for even cheaper? And so these are all different types of ways in which you can buy silver.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And so let's go to something that, say, is less demanded than the Silver Eagles because they're kind of the gold staple. But if we look at just a silver round, which a silver round, anyone can mint that basically in credit. And the reason that you pay less for a silver round that's not from the U. S.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Mint is because the theory is that it would be harder to sell potentially because it's less recognized. A Buffalo is a very well-recognized mint, but you can see $83. But you're still well above the $72.80 here or the $73.49 price for buying a silver Buffalo. And then you go down and then you just start finding like generic things that you could buy.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: You're going to pay less and less because the idea is if we ever go to a world where we're, you know, exchanging silver rounds for money, for value and food and that kind of thing, that these things, these kind of more generic rounds are going to get less.

DANO WEIR: Demand and people be willing to pay less because they're less recognizable than others and there's lots of people that create these silver rounds for different you know interests that they might have so you can see anyway i'm gonna i'm gonna jump in there because hearing the idea that i need to use a solid silver coin to buy a piece of bread sounds kind of insane and yet Chris a lot of times these precious metal spikes are not random and they indicate stress.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you look historically over long periods of time, anytime you get a huge spike in the precious metals over a two-, three-, four-year time period, it's usually indicating stress under the hood. Now, I don't think you're going to be using silver to buy bread or anything. I wouldn't go that far.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: But Usually, there's a shift afoot of the monetary system in some way. And it probably is only going to be clear in hindsight what that is. But I think global sovereign debt has a lot to do with it. It's not just the U. S. Globally. Countries are in a lot of debt. And historically, when that's happened, it's led to unrest and issues.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And, and that drives up precious metals.

DANO WEIR: Yeah. I don't want to, I don't want to freak anybody out, but I just, you know, that's kind of the context of the conversation here, which is that we're trying to draw a narrative out for why you would see this type of activity. And Darren, this is, you know, one of the potential causes.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, and you know, I think we mentioned it many times on the show for those long-term listeners like Chris's dad and my mom, but.

DANO WEIR: And my mom.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And your mom.

DANO WEIR: None of our wives.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: No, they're too smart for that.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So when Russia invaded Ukraine, one of the things that the Biden administration did is they said, hey, we're going to confiscate all the dollars that Russia has on reserve with us. Us. And the reason why that was extremely problematic for the world and the dollar is that it basically told every country that, hey, if you don't play by our game, we're just going to take your dollars.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: We had never done that up until this moment in history. And it sent these shockwaves through the world where these countries started saying, you know, we better start keeping our reserve that you in gold and silver and these precious metals because if we don't play the U. S. Game, then they're going to take all of our dollars.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Well, lo and behold, look what China is doing, right? You've seen a lot of talk about Taiwan and they're like, we're going to take Taiwan. It's ours. We're the rightful heirs, blah, blah, blah. Whatever their narrative is, the reality is they're trying, I think, from just reading through the headlines here, that they're trying to...

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Grab the market of gold, grab the market of silver, and preserve as much value as possible because when the dollar goes bottom up, Because at some point it will with the way we're printing dollars. Then some of their, you know, the person who has the most gold at the table is going to have the most voice at the table.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And that's why people say that Commander Xi, dictator Xi for the Chinese government has said, you know, you're not taking any silver out of the country anymore. And that's what got Trump really upset. So one of the arguments or one of the beliefs. And one of the reasonings for why people are suggesting that gold is going up, that silver is going up, is because you have macroeconomic and geopolitical policy afoot.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: When Trump came in, he kind of came in and did his very brash kind of like, hey, forget your bricks. But if you remember, before Trump got in, there was all this talk about bricks and the brick countries, and then they were going to create their own dollar or their gold back.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Currency and Trump came in and said yeah no you're not then we're going to tear a few of the gills we're doing well one of the ways they've worked around that is they're buying gold silver and spades and that's pushing up the price and pushing up the demand and if you already have a shortage of silver because we're using it in industrial products like in solar panels and the advent of all the solar panels it just wasn't the industrial production to support that much silver use.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And like I said, it's a byproduct of mining. It's not generally something that companies mine for because it's never been worth that much. It just takes too long, especially in the United States, to get the mines up and going and the infrastructure approved and all that. So anyway, long conversation, but that's what's going on in silver and gold.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And while it is in just kind of a paradoxical way attached to This world of like AI where last year it was all about AI. And I think this year will be a lot about AI. I think it's still going to blow our socks off as a country and as a world. There, it is just kind of paradoxical that there's this return to these hard physical assets, in a world where everything is quickly becoming not physical, but digital.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Let's talk about the S and P 500. So where's the S&P 500? So the S&P 500 is the largest US-based stock. So it's often what people think about when they say, oh, the market. They're really probably just talking about the S&P, the Dow Jones. We tend to look at the S&P because it's 500 versus the Dow Jones, which is only 30.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And you can see this downward kind of trend line. It breaks above and then got rejected here, rejected right here, went up, broke out. Got rejected, came back in, and the fact that it broke out, came back in and tested this support on this downward trend line and also held this trading average here, it tells me we're probably going higher.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Probabilities are in favor of S&P 500 going higher in the next couple of weeks. Now, typically, we get these kind of bursts in January, and then we get going back to our seasonality. It's never right all the time. It certainly wasn't in September this year.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And then we kind of get this pullback that happens going into February, the doldrums that are set in. And right now, we don't have much volatility to speak of. That tells me it could also be going higher. Oil continues its downward trend along that 20-period moving average.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Still holding that 56, but it's looking like it's getting harder and harder to hold that line. So I would expect to see some movement in oil here in the very near future. Interestingly enough, we've seen the Trump administration moving on all these oil boats in these shadow fleets.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Everyone hates what Russia is doing, but we've been just letting them push oil around the world for the last four years while they were killing people in Ukraine. Or if you're in Europe, buying their oil. But I think the fact that there has been a lower oil price, there's been a glut of oil.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: It's certainly given the Trump administration room to mess with the Venezuelan government because if oil was higher and there wasn't so much supply out there, then it would create too much of a supply shock to go after Venezuela. It appears over the last week we dropped a bomb on them. The CIA did anyway, but no one's really talking about it.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But certainly Trump mentioned it once, and now Maduro, as of today, is ready to talk and give the United States— anything we want so we'll see where that leads which is interesting doing some research over the last couple weeks Chevron until just recently has been very very active in venice woodrock and pumping oil out you know so here we are like oh this Communist regime, but Chevron's in there working with them.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And then more recently, they kicked them out. I question that a little bit. So looking at our dollar, our dollar continues its downward trend. Chris, why is the dollar going down, Matt?

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Well, currency values matter for a lot of things, but for one that we saw during 2025 is that it's a tailwind for foreign stocks. One of the reasons why foreign stocks have done so well is that they are earning in other currencies, and those other currencies have strengthened versus the dollar.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: So currency values matter a lot, and typically the dollar goes up in value during times of stress. People flood money into the U. S. As a safe haven. We did not see that in April. We saw a sell-off in the dollar.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: And some are saying, you know, it's maybe a start of a new regime where interest rates don't go down in crises and the dollar doesn't go up in crises. So we'll see. But that could be another symptom of the excessive debt in the U. S. And other countries.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But you can see when you look at the chart for the dollar, it's just hovering on this $98.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: 98 cents on the dollar this is dxy so this is the u. s dollar in juxtaposition to other currencies it's actually good for our mid-cap stocks it helps us export etc but it's looking to me like it's probably getting a lower from a probability standpoint just doesn't seem to have the strength to keep pushing up and that can be beneficial i would expect we're getting close enough to the election that you know the people who are not in power are going to be doing everything they can to make things look really bad before the election.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: And the people who are in power are going to be doing everything they can to make things look really good before the election. And that cuts across the aisles, right? At the end of the day, like even the Democrats, if they're not in power, they're going to do everything they can to make things look okay, because then they can keep their seat.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Unless they can completely pit it on Trump and his admin. And vice versa, when the Democrats are in power and the Republicans are like, they will play along to some degree with the other side. But I think that's just, you know, we're getting close now.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So I would expect this year, again, not knowing, having this is just kind of a throw dart, you know, you expect a fairly positive year going into election, unless someone can figure out a way to engineer something naughty to get these politicians kicked out. We look at the bond market. The bond market is an ascending wedge, just like when we talked earlier about silver on a...

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Descending wedge which tells you it's probably going lower if you look at oil or probably looking at it or not oil excuse me at the bonds you're looking at an ascending wedge here where it's bouncing up and then looks like it's gonna go to the upside on the breakout so good news for our friend Chris the bond market looks like it's in pretty good shape for going higher bad news bond why usually stocks are struggling a little bit but we'll see when we look at the 10-year 10-year Treasury bond, U. S.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Government bond, just hovering around this long-term uptrend. But I do think if we look at kind of a shorter time distance, you can see today it traded down into this support area, found really good support, then it broke out up here. So I think our 10-year is going higher.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: Bad news for our mortgage rates, because if 10-year is going higher, mortgages will probably go a little bit higher. But I think it's interesting, though, right now. And I was looking at this earlier, as you've got kind of this support area on the mortgage, you know, this is more of a responsive chart. So I don't know how many data or signals we can take just from the mortgage chart.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: But it looks like mortgages are going lower at the moment. But with the 10-year going higher, hard to see that happening. Unless Trump just says, screw it, rates are going down, we're getting close to the election. And I think you're going to hear more and more.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: From the Trump administration, putting pressure on the Fed to lower rates even more because they want to stimulate the economy. There's about a nine-month lag, though, give or take, on moving the rates. So the Trump admin knows they've got to start lowering here pretty quick to put stimulation back into everything.

DAREN BLONSKI CFP®: So, you know, I think for today we kind of went on quite a bit of a road and journey with silver. But hopefully that was helpful to hearing about what's going on because you're certainly hearing about silver in the news. And we'll keep an eye on it. And next week, update you with what's changed.

DANO WEIR: Thank you for that, Darren. And thank you for checking out our show today. We are On The Markets, Firmata Advisors, our private wealth brand, Sonoma Wealth. Darren and Chris are the managing principals. I'm the marketing director.

DANO WEIR: Wherever you've found our show, make sure you subscribe. It's the easiest way to stay up to date with us and you won't miss future episodes. And you can learn more about Sonoma Wealth at sonomowealth.com. We will find you next week. Have a great 2026.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: You're up to date with Fermata On The Markets. Learn about how the Fermata Advisors family of brands can help your family and business in finance. Sonoma Wealth Advisors, a comprehensive, holistic finance solution offering financial planning, asset management, and tax planning.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Take our free wealth analysis now at SonomaWealth. Com. Fermata 401k. Business retirement solutions for small and large companies with a fiduciary commitment. Learn more at fermata401k.com. Fermata Tax, personalized tax services for yourself, your family, or your business with an emphasis on efficiency.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Find out how at fermatatax.com. If you haven't already, like and subscribe to Fermata On The Markets on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Firmada On The Markets features human hosts, editors, and voiceover talent. Music by Dr.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Delight on Soundstripe, voiceover by Joan Alloway Nash. Thank you for listening to the very end. We appreciate diligent viewers and listeners. Firmada Advisors LLC is registered as an investment advisor with the SEC and only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or is excluded or exempt from registration requirements.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: This content was produced by Fermata Advisors, LLC, DBA Sonoma Wealth Advisors, DBA Fermata 401K, DBA Fermata Tax. The opinions expressed by Fermata Advisors, LLC on this show are their own.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: 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. Discussions and answers to questions do not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice, but are limited to the dissemination of general information.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: A professional advisor should be consulted before implementing any of the options presented. 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.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: Investments involve risk. And unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual.

CHRIS SIPES CFP®: 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.