S4 E2: The Two-Penny Dollar

Last year was a HIGHLY profitable year for us...in my CTA performance, the results from following the recommendations in the Global-Macro Strategy Report, my market research business...and in terms of the advice I offered YOU, right here, in my podcast.

But in this business the ONLY question is...what is next? What are you going to do for me now?

Indeed, I have answers, and start 2026 with a top-down, big-picture macro-economic, global FX-Debt, currency-commodity overview, in today's episode (S4 E2) "The Two-Penny Dollar", within which I show you how today's "dollar" buys ONLY TWO-CENTS worth of goods-services, relative to the purchasing power of $1.00 in 1973...and how $58 trillion in Household-and-Public Debt...and...a renewed rise in inflation...is a MAJOR headwind going forward, as per US consumer final demand. Further, the implosion in the Japanese Government Bond market, and secular long-term bullish breakout in the Chinese Renminbi, all combine to put the USD on its heels.

What is next? A secular decline in the US Dollar, and the resultant impact on Stocks, Bonds and Commodities, globally.

I discuss and offer details as to...what is coming next, thanks to "The Two-Penny Dollar".

AND I offer the 145 Chart Pack that offers a visual, to my words, FREE. You are going to WANT TO SEE THIS, and EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THIS!

Email me directly to request it:   gregweldon@weldononline.com 

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The 2026 Macro Stage
• 1:19 Enter The Debt Black Hole
• 6:45 Global Debt And G7 Pressures
• 9:36 Twin Deficits And Trade Shift
• 14:48 China’s Surpluses And Tariff Reality
• 20:55 Rare Earths, Greenland, And The Arctic
• 26:40 Dollar’s Secular Turn And FX Plays
• 31:13 Japan’s Bond Shock And Repatriation
• 36:14 Inflation Persistence And Consumer Strain
• 41:20 AI Hype, Market Fragility, And Crypto

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, Greg Weldon back at you with another episode of Money Markets and New Age Investing Season 4, episode number two. And today we're gonna talk what we're gonna do is take a 50,000-foot view, the top-down macro view as we head into 2026. And we've already had a couple things pop off here. So let's get right into it because it all starts with the biggest, most important, most influential, dominant global macro theme right now, which is debt and the debt black hole. Hopefully, you've heard me talk about this before. The debt black hole, simply black hole, thing in science, one of the most destructive, it's the most powerful, most destructive force, potentially the most creative force, could be creating new stars at the same time, destroying to create uh forces in the universe. And uh, you know, science defines the event horizon as the point which you cross that line, you're in the black hole. Now you're not in the grips of the gravitational pull enough where it's ripping you apart and your atoms are being you know decimated, but you cannot escape it no matter how much propulsion you produce, you can't escape the gravitational pull of the black hole. It's impossible, physically, from physics, from Albert Einstein perspective, it's impossible. So if you are in a situation, and it was always thought that above 100% debt to GDP ratio, you're gonna run into problems. The history is if you're above 100% and rising in terms of debt to GDP, uh you are facing a crisis at some point in time. It's a currency crisis, a debt crisis, a monetary crisis, a political crisis, whatever kind of crisis, or all the above with a nasty economic crisis thrown in there, financial crisis. So, you know, when you were talking about the U.S., we have talked about the amount of debt there is, all right, which public debt is now 38.6 trillion. These are fresh numbers. 38.6 trillion, all right. Household debt is 20.7 trillion, and that includes nonprofit organizations. So you might hear 18 trillion, but the total household debt is 20.7. Altogether, that's$58.4 trillion in debt that we the people owe, and we owe most of that money to ourselves because of the$38.6 trillion in public debt, we the people, aka the public, hold$31 trillion of it. 80%, better than 80%. The rest of it is owed to you know banks for your credit cards or banks for your mortgages or to the Fed because they own bonds or to foreign governments. And right now, the Bank of Japan has replaced the Chinese as the number one international holder of U.S. Treasury debt. That may change, and we're gonna get to that in a minute. But what's interesting is that out of the G7 nations, six of them, six out of seven are running debt above 100% of GDP. And while the the pandemic mandated something dramatic, there's been no give back, and in fact, it's only expanded at the same, you know, pace because it's a mathematical conundrum. Because once you get to 10, all right, to get to 100, and then to get from 100 to 1,000, you're talking about well, the same percentage points are infinitely higher in nominal numbers. All right. So this is part of the problem. But G7, six out of seven nations have debt to GDP above 100%. There are 26 countries in the world uh with debt to GDP above 100%, including Japan, the UK, Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, the US, Singapore, Italy, Venezuela, Greece, Portugal, Japan. And Bahrain and Japan. So, you know, you're talking about uh a crisis dynamic, but then let's talk about the old ERM exchange rate mechanism when the EU decided to combine currencies and everyone had different debt levels and everyone had different values for the currency relative to the Deutsche Mark at the time was the benchmark. So they decided, and you know, there was great study, and I actually worked with a guy in St. Croix who was responsible for advising the ECB and the EU uh commission as to how to do this, all right. And he was one of the forefathers of the MMT monetary and modern uh modern monetary theory, where you can just print as much debt, you're never paying it back no matter what. Now, that's kind of been trash because it's not no matter what. I mean, yeah, you can print as much debt as you want and never pay it back, but it doesn't mean no matter what, all right. That's the big difference. But what's interesting is in that context, 60% was determined to be a level above which you're in kind of the danger zone versus 100%, you're in the crisis zone in terms of debt to GDP ratio. Right now, 83 countries have a debt to GDP ratio exceeding 60%. Let me run some of the countries just for fun. Thailand, Costa Rica, Belize, Colombia, Malaysia, Angola, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Nambi, Croatia, Albania, Germany, Iceland, Finland, uh, Hungary, Ukraine, Pakistan, China, Egypt, Ghana, Argentina, Brazil, Aruba, Fiji, Jordan, Cyprus, Bahamas, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, Tunisia, Mongolia, India, and Bolivia. Throw in, you know, the 26 countries above 100%. I mean, you know, it's it's out of control. It's completely out of control. So, you know, to whatever extent, that's a problem going forward. All right. Then you talk about, okay, the budget deficit, okay, which is going to be big, and you know, cutting spending and entitlements and Medicare, and we can look at all the things. And in the chart pack, I'm gonna offer you for free if you email me at Greg Weldon at Weldon Online. I have 145-page chart pack. I dig into the debt a lot more. The interest, the spending, the uh where the revenue comes from, the taxes, all of this kind of stuff is in this chart pack with detailed charts. It's like a kind of thing everyone should see. I mean, I'm not selling it. There's no you know, financial interest in me other than educating people. And this 145 pages is gonna talk about every single thing I'm gonna talk about today is in here with detailed charts. I'm gonna let the debt go because we know the debt black hole. I've talked about this before. All right. I mean, that's just to show you it's a global problem. And in fact, global debt right now just peaked above 346 trillion as of the end of the third quarter. But when you talk about the U.S., we still have Twin Towers. No disrespect intended. I'm born and originally raised in Manhattan, New York, in Greenwich Village, was where I was born, and the degree to which you know I worked in New York most of my adult life, at least the first half of it, and including the World Trade Center. For many years, I had my kids on the platform at the very top of the Trade Center in July of 2001. As I visited the last person that I knew when I worked down there, was still working on the floor just before they were gonna do away with the floor. And by then the floor had already moved across the street anyway. So we went to the World Trade Center, took my kids up there, literally two months before it collapsed. The degree to which the twin towers of deficits exist today, they do. All right, and this is the problem when you talk about the budget deficits and the trade deficit together since 2020, you're talking about three trillion dollars. All right, since July of 2020, the US trade deficit has been 80 billion a month or worse in 62 of the last 65 months. At the rate of November 86.9 billion dollar monthly trade deficit. That's 1.04 trillion on an annual rate. All right. You know, so and and what's interesting is 62 months out of the last 65, we're talking over five years of deficits, 80 billion every single month, except three out of 65. When prior to that period, July 2020, you'd never had a single month above 80 billion. Now you never have a single month below 80 billion. All right. Well, let's look at some of the dynamics around China, because we got to bring China into the mix now. All right, because China's a kind of the other side of the world. You know, my view on this OPEC, Russia, China, throw in kind of South Africa, India, and maybe even Brazil and Argentina, whatever, Peru, in terms of trade and resources and so on and so forth, all of Africa for sure. Uh, you're talking about that side of the world versus this side of the world. So moving on Venezuela was key. We need to move on to Greenland, that's key. And I'll tell you more about that when we get to the to the Arctic part of today's presentation. But back to trade, because China, people don't understand the degree to which China dominates. It's like you you talk about the de-dollarization, it's because global trade has been de-USD already. I mean, you know, it's it's that's the de-dollarization comes from the de-united today, United States of global trade. All right. So when you're talking about these deficits of 80 billion a month or more, it's over a trillion dollars a year. It's you know, China's the main beneficiary of that. Okay. China, for example, okay, has been running uh uh trade surpluses of 300 billion. Check that trade exports of 300 billion a month for 18 months in a row. Okay, in November was 330.3 billion dollars. It's the third highest ever and the highest ever for the month of November. The only other two months higher were both December, which is a seasonally high month. So we haven't even seen December data yet. It's one leg, one month lagged. And tariffs are supposed to hurt the Chinese. All right, they had the third highest monthly export total ever, 18 months in a row above 300 billion. Okay, 5.9% growth year over year in exports, despite the fact that exports to the U.S. were down 29% year over year, and they still had the third highest exports ever. Their trade surplus was$112 billion to her, third highest ever. It's a 15% for the year. In the first 11 months of 2025, 1.01 trillion. So where are these tariffs hurting China? They posted some of the highest exports, highest surpluses ever, and the record high surplus for the year going to exceed a trillion dollars easily. Easily at the same time, their current account surplus, despite an income deficit and a services deficit, is still almost 200 billion for the third quarter alone, up from 157 billion a year ago. So 26% growth and a surplus in the goods area of$726 billion for nine months. And the numbers are off the charts. And then let's break down China's movement of goods and goods. All right. Their top uh exports go to the US.$33.8 billion in November. Hong Kong was second at 31, Vietnam, third at 18. Japan, 14, uh South Korea, 12 and a half. So it's the US, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea. You don't think Hong Kong, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea is being re-exported to the US? Yeah, in large part. I'm surprised Mexico's not on the list. All right. Let's look at their uh uh top export, what they export. They export phones, integrated circuits, computers, and cars. Top four. Okay. Now, let's look at their imports. So they're pushing tech and vehicles and furniture, stuff like that still. All right, what are their imports and REEs, which we need, but it's not among the top ones because they don't really ship a lot of them. What are their top imports? Crude oil, iron ore, gold, and copper. Crude 25 billion in November alone. Iron ore, 12 billion, gold nine billion, copper 7.3 billion. Commodity imports for the month of November were above 100 billion. Okay. Pre-COVID, they averaged 40 billion. They're now above 100 billion. It's a record high, new high, new all-time high in 2025 overall, too. So, I mean, you know, you're talking about they're importing commodities like crazy and still out-exporting everyone else and collecting a trillion dollars a year just from the U.S. with record exports and record trade surpluses. Where's China hurting from tariffs? Uh, they're not. Not at all. And recently the stock market has outperformed. What's interesting again is that their exports hit records despite a 26% decline in exports to the U.S. And that, of course, is REEs, and you know, mostly. But when you're talking about a place like China, I mean, again, they hold by far the largest uh uh uh underground and uh facility in terms of mining, uh uh separating, uh creating uh concentrate and then products from REEs, rare earths and elements and oxides, REE, REO. Gold and silver controlled 67% of the market. And what have they done? They've uh you know unleashed a selling frenzy of U.S. treasuries, taking their total holdings from 1.35 trillion down to 676 billion, almost half, more than half, excuse me, just about half, and use those dollars to buy and import and take delivery of gold. And gold imports are off the charts. But what's one of the big things for 2026 that nobody's really talking about, except you know, me and some other people that you know care to know this because it's not gonna, you're not gonna find this in the media because the media doesn't want you to know, the politicians don't want you to know, the powers that be don't want you to know. The Greenland's only the tip of the iceberg, pun intended, totally. Because this is more about the Arctic and the Svalbard treaty that expires at some point in 2026. I still can't get a specific date on this. I've never been looking, so if you know, shoot me an email. But the whole thing has been around Arctic cooperation, and this treaty's been in effect for for decades, literally. And they're talking about, and the Arctic Institute is a great place for information on this. The Arctic Institute is calling this from cooperation to competition, all right. Greenland's only a small part of it. When you talk about Greenland, the rare earth elements in Greenland, they got 1.5 million tons. Well, that's a lot compared to the US with 2.3 million tons. But again, this is all stuff that's underground. We only have one mine that mines the stuff, and it doesn't even come close to mining that much. Whereas China has underground almost 50 million tons, 50 to 1.5. They're 25 to 1 in terms of you know, uh underground, and even greater in terms of you know production, mining, and then even greater in terms of separation and concentrates, and then even greater in terms of producing products. We are basically 90% plus reliant on China for rare earth elements and REOs, uh, rare earth oxides, products, because they're the only ones that produce products. All right, besides Vietnam, which holds 2.23 million, and uh Russia, no. Who's the other big holder? I forget, I'm sorry, but uh Vietnam, Russia does uh Vietnam, Russia, and China. Between them, they hold uh like 70 million tons to the US 1.5 million, to 2.3 million, excuse me. Greenland's 1.5 million, U.S. holds 2.3 million. But when you talk about the Arctic, it gets so much bigger. I mean, Musk, Arctic nickel, all right. Gates holds mineral rights in Greenland, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard all have Arctic mineral exposure, quote unquote, according to their firms in a questionnaire based on the Arctic Institute surveys. All right. Uh, in the last three years, Russia has built new 50 new military bases north of the Arctic Circle. Of course, they have you know Russia there, all right. China has declared itself, quote unquote, a near Arctic state, whatever the hell kind of rights it thinks that they think that grants them. I don't know. So Trump is right to go after Greenland. I mean, consider about one-third of the oil known in reserve on the planet is under ice, given that the ice melting already is reducing shipping distances by as much as 40% for certain things. I mean, think about that. The cost and the expense and the time for shipping, that's a big deal. So the Arctic is in play, and very much so. And this is kind of considered to be the new battleground. Now, how this plays into China is all of a sudden then Trump, and I said this in the beginning of the year to my clients, the trade of the year, and really December, the trade of the year, it's right before New Year's, the week between Christmas and New Year's. A lot of contact with my clients and to say that for number one, I think the biggest thing last year was mining shares, right? And we're gonna talk about that in a minute, too. But this year lines up to be the dollar down, and the dollar is really only just broken down on a long-term technical level, but is already down 10% year over year, and still has currencies that are making new lows against the dollar, which is thus making new highs against certain currencies, like the Indian rupee, the Vietnamese dong, the Pakistani rupee, Turkish lira, to name a few. So it's interesting to note that all of a sudden, out of the blue, and then I said that the Chinese Rambi would be the trade of the year is probably going from six to seven. And literally three weeks later, what does Donald Trump do? A month later, what is it, three and a half weeks, a month later? He says China needs to revalue their currency. Here's the statement. I'm going to read it to you exactly because it's important that you listen to the exact words, because it's really interesting and kind of ironic. Here we go. Quote unquote. Given China's extremely large and growing external surpluses, hello, and now substantially undervalued exchange rate. It is important that the Chinese authorities allow the RMB exchange rate to strengthen in a timely and orderly manner in line with macroeconomic fundamentals. Wow. Um, wow. Otherwise, you know, we're going to take action. Now, I don't know what action we're going to take. Terrorists have done nothing to crimp their trade. In fact, it has grown their trade with every other country. We push push countries away from the dollar. And now Trump's saying move away from the dollar. And it's kind of crazy talk, man, to be honest with you. I mean, he's done so many things so well. When it comes to China and it comes to global, this kind of global currency and the monetary thing, he's just not, he's just, man, he's making some missteps here. I mean, you know, this is not something you want to publicly put out there. He doesn't have to do everything in the public cloud. He doesn't need congratulations and pats on the back and attaboys for every little thing he does. And that's the ego, and that's the problem. His mouth and his ego, and they combine to get him in trouble. If he would just do the things he wants to do, which are phenomenal in their principles and ideas, and keep his mouth shut and just do them, it'd be phenomenal. And it might actually help him in terms of getting it done. Because, frankly, when you tell China where you stand, China holds the stronger hands here. They just do. I hate to say that. I really do. I hate to say that, but it's true. The truth, I tell the truth. I get paid to tell the truth and to assess the risk. The risk is China's in a better position than we are. And everything I just said to you, all the stats I just gave you, prove it. Prove it. We've already pushed our trading partners away to the point where the UK and Canada want to make deals with China instead of us. We've pushed Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, and the EU towards China. The US dollar is just now entering a secular decline. We already have central banks now selling treasuries. Japan, with the whole dynamic that we're about to talk about in terms of Japan, plays in. And I said again that the CNY would be the trade of the year. So far, it has been. All right. But this is also secular for the dollar. It's bigger picture than just even the Rim Nimbi. And the breadth of decline in currencies now is really widened dramatically. One of the things you can see in the 145-page chart pack I'm offering, you will see the Chinese trade data. You will see the currency markets charts. You will see that this is a secular bear market in the dollar to start in 1985 with the Plaza Accord, the agreement by the G7 in New York in the Plaza Hotel in November of 1985 to weaken the dollar. I was working at in the World Trade Center at the time, taking the train from Hackasack, New Jersey to Hoboken to take the Pat train over to the World Trade Center. All in, maybe a 35 minute commute, not that bad. 20 minute train ride, 15 minutes to path, and walk to the Florida Exchange. But we used to have Quartrex machines, nothing really more than glorified uh beepers that gave us prices and news. And the news was the Plaza Accord. And I knew it was gonna be a crazy day, and it was. Well, the 1985 marked the peak in the dollar, the all-time peak, and it was declining for the next literally 23 years or longer. 2008 to 2011 was a double bottom in the dollar, right around the 71 level on the USDX dollar index. Double bottom, which led to a 50% ABC rally into the 2023 high that was 50% of the distance to the 1985 peak, but also 50% of the length of time that it was from high to low. It was a perfect textbook technical analysis 101 secular correction in the dollar to the 2022-2023 high. And the next move is the next secular bear leg, which will be the largest in terms of the LA wave counts and the long-term wave dynamic. And we'll take the dollar theoretically below 70. What's interesting is the gold adjusted value of the dollar is already there. All right. And in fact, when you compare, it's even less, it's even cheaper than compared to the 1985 dollar. But if we take it back to when the dollar index started, unfortunately, two years after they delinked gold, you know, from the dollar. So the 1973$1 is now worth in purchasing power terms, just took out two cents. You gotta see that chart. All right. Not only that, but the gold adjusted value of the dollar is down over 50% in the last 12 months. The only other time that ever happened was 1981. And every time it's been 30% or more, you've had a recession or a crisis or a financial meltdown of some kind. You're there, you're in the crisis zone already. And Trump's telling China to move their currency higher. He's playing right into their hands here and playing right into our hands because right where you just took out, the dollar just took out the level, that is the 15-year uptrend line that goes back to the 2011 low. And remember, that was a double bottom. 2008 was the global financial crisis. 2011 was the EU debt sovereign debt crisis and the first debt ceiling crisis in the U.S. It was a big deal in 2011. So that was a major bottom in the dollar. 15-year uptrend line just taken out. The two-year exponential moving average just turned down and crossed below the five-year moving average, which the market the dollar just took out. 9621 was the key breakdown point, you're below it now, which means you're going to 70. And again, based on all the other correlations, you will and the wave counts and all of the secular picture, you should be below 70. What is that going to mean? Well, it's going to mean commodities. Let alone that we play the currency angle on this. All right. There's ways to play this. I play the currency angle. We're long commodity exporting currencies. All right. Chile, copper, South African Rand, Palladium, gold, Aussie dollar, gold, iron ore, Mexican peso, crude oil, silver. Brazil should be next. The Peruvian Sol is there. Kazakhstan Tenge. I always want to see tells in the case of a currency like the Kazakhstan Tenge, which has been weak, making new lows against the dollar until just the last couple of weeks. All of a sudden, it too is strengthening against the dollar because uranium, guess what? Lithium is back. They're a big natural gas dynamic in Kazakhstan. The uh emerging market uh uh ETF for currencies is the CEW, cat ewing walter. I'm I don't know why I'm picking these words. The UDN up down dollar, UDN uh is the down dollar. Dollar U down DN. All right. Uh there's not much alpha to be had there. You're better off trading the foreign exchange markets, right, directly with the currencies. The Aussie dollar has been a huge winner. African RAM, Mexican peso, also along the British pound, um, and the uh Aussie, Aussie dollar, British pound, Mexican peso, um, and oh, and the Japanese yen. So let's talk about Japan. We already have China now working against the dollar. We also have Japan working against the dollar. Why? Because their bond market imploded. I mean, this has been another thing like silver squeeze, JGB implosion. We've had these things in our back pockets for decades, and now they're playable. These cards are playable, so pull them out. All right. The 40-year uh uh it's a 20-year bubble in the JGB market. We know this. They're the most indebted country on the planet, almost 250% debt to GDP, the highest of any country. All right. We knew the market would implode, and it finally did. Why? Because you have a new prime minister that's gonna probably landslide win in the next election, which is a week from yesterday, all right, the 8th, Sunday, the 8th, who is running on a platform of expanding spending while cutting taxes, tax and reverse spend. No, tax and spend spec, tax and spend. Well, I mean, you're already the most indebted nation, all right. You have inflation, finally got inflation. It took two decades to get inflation back, you finally got it. Central bank's finally raising rates, bond yields have been, you know, rising but in control. And what happens? Now you want to unleash the purse strings and cut taxes too. Expand the fiscal dynamic dramatically. Well, that's you know, caused the implosion here in the JGB market. The 30 and 40-year bond yields up by 30 basis points in a single day, January 19th or 20th, I forget which. The 40-year, which was at 2.5% last January, is now 425. I mean, it's up 175 base points, almost doubled. It's up 68% this year alone. All right. And the loose fiscal policy with the new PM. I mean, the BOJ is likely to hike rates more. Which means considering CPI inflation in Japan because of things around subsidies already having an impact and trying to help the consumer with subsidies on energy. So, energy, okay, electricity, for example, uh went from where's the electricity? I wrote this down somewhere. I want to get this for you. Oh, I do I not have this. Electricity went from positive to negative, all right, and gasoline went from positive to negative. I thought I had these numbers. Let me just take one more look. Make sure I don't. I do not see those numbers. Okay, never mind. Um, nonetheless, what's really interesting about this is the way you see the impact with the decline in inflation and the rise in in Japanese nominal bond yields. The rise in real yields is shocking. Shocking. You're talking about the 10-year real yield was minus over 300 basis points in January of last year. It's now plus 25 basis points. It's a 325 basis point rise from deeply negative and stimulative to neutral at best. So all this could weigh on the economy, theoretically, you know, and then you'd be talking about, you know, I mean, at the very least, you're talking about repatriation. The point of all this is repatriation, all right? You're they're the single largest holder of U.S. Treasury that over a trillion dollars. You're now getting 4% on the yen. All right. So let alone the impact of potential, you know, low-funded plays that may come mature and come due and some asset liquidation around the world. Let's talk about treasury liquidation. Repatriation, potentially trillions of dollars worth of yen, a couple trillion, you could say. I mean, it's 8 trillion yen bond market, they have a trillion outstanding. You could easily say 600 billion. I mean, that would have a big impact on the yen higher. And what happens on day one? The New York Fed is asking you know banks for rates on dollar yen as if they're gonna intervene to keep the yen down that the yen's at one of its lowest levels ever. No, the yen's gonna break out on repatriation, and they're afraid of it. They're afraid that this is gonna happen. So, where does this play in then with Fed policy? Well, Fed policy is on hold. Warsh is an anti-inflation guy, and inflation remains a problem, a big time. Let's look at some of the most recent inflation numbers. Electricity, 6.7 year over year, natural gas, 10.8, food, 3.1, food away from home, 4.1, led by vending machines up 6%, and food trucks. Shelter up 3.2, medical care of 3.5. All right, and energy goes from negative to positive, which is going to flip the base effect. All right. University of Michigan consumers say they five-year inflation expectations 3.3. The consumers saying the Fed will fail in their policy objectives for the next five years, and inflation will continue going up. And for 22 months in a row, the University of Michigan consumer survey has five-year inflation expectation above three percent. But it gets even more juicy. The mean expectation, not the average, but the mean, and the median rather, is six point nine. The interquartile is above six, and the percentage of consumers expecting inflation to be double digits is the tenth highest level it's ever been. Service CPI in the meantime is through the roof. 60% of the 74 service CPI indexes are above 3%. 40%, 39% are above 4%. And then they have PPI with pipeline inflation. Core final demand up 3.5% versus 3.4% a month ago. 58 months in a row above two, 41 of those 58 months above three. There's more inflation in the pipeline. And if you think the can you know the economy's healthy and GDP numbers from third quarter, which are ancient by now, are good enough to support you know credit uh servicing. I beg to differ. All right. The U.S. economy is still underlying final demand, is still the consumer, 70%. Consumers still 70% services. Inflation and services is three to four percent, if not five. Revolving credit is now having its third year-over-year decline in history. The only other times revolving credit, which includes credit cards, were contracting on a year-over-year basis, and you're down by 35 billion over the last 12 months. Only three times in history 2008, 2020, and now. The global financial crisis, the pandemic, and now delinquency rates the highest since 2008. Income expectations from the New York Fed Survey, all right, the low levels are expecting two to three percent real income deflation. And you think they're gonna expand spending? You think that this is all gonna work in terms of the economy and how that's gonna support the stock market? No, it's not. So to me, the stock market is extremely vulnerable here. I call it the Tom Cruise market. Remember, mission impossible to hold this market up. They've been holding it up for a couple of months. I've been bearish and I've been wrong so far. I would say it's gonna turn out that I was early, but yes, we've lost money three times trying to be short the market here. I'm short again. The AI bubble, I've already been talking about the leadership rollover in the momentum, big time since November. But let's also talk about some of the roadblocks and speed bumps to actually building these data centers that everyone's all excited about. All right. The tariffs have increased the cost of several of the key materials to build these things. All of a sudden, it's a construction conundrum, let alone labor shortages of certain skills in the construction area. All right. The materials, some are on in short supply or on back order. The build-out has slowed to a crawl when the market is demanding now. They want results now, let alone the energy component and the electricity component, which is why I flipped the switch here and say, well, you get out of the AI stocks and get into the energy stocks. That's number one. Okay. And number two, if you're gonna have kind of the AI leadership run out, you have no leadership because the consumer's not there, trade is not there, Chinese demand is not there in terms of imports from the US, shut trade, shut down. The dollar down is the only good thing for stocks, and it's held the market up. But at some point, the dollar may reflect capital outflow. If the dollar's going down, the stock market gets hit. Well, we've seen Bitcoin get hit, we've seen the crypto area get hit, that tends to lead. It tends to lead both up and down for the last four years. All right, strategy, strategy is below the cost of accumulating Bitcoin. It's one of the most dumb things I've ever heard, to be honest with you. Coinbase new lows. Trump had huge buying by one particular buyer that kind of held the stock up, but it's dead to the world. The media stock. Bitcoin, you know. I said if it gets below 80, it's going to 50. I'd short it, except it's just not enough VIG. XRP is below two. You thought that one might actually be somewhat insulated. All right. So the next step is now, and as we've seen, crypto brings down the tech sector. So watch the XLK information, it's the SP Information Technology ETF. 141.60 is a key breakdown level. 139.30 and then 133.45 are key breakdown levels. You get below that last one, it's going to be toast because a lot of people that have invested in the last six months, really second half of last year, will be losing money. This is a problem. Hugely owned, a lot of it bought late in this last run up in price. The volumes dried up, the momentum is negative in the NASDAQ and the SP and has been since the middle of December. The rate of return is much less than it used to be. I've seen this movie before. It's a setup where you have a buyer's vacuum. Everyone who wants to own it owns it. You start to liquidate the stock. Someone starts to take profits or take some money off the table or whatever it might be. Boom, it's a cascade because there's no one there to buy it. We saw this was Amazon a couple years ago. For the SP, the key levels, real quick to run through them. Then 6070, 6771, 65.83. Below 65.83. It's a major bear market happening. In the Nasdaq, 25,025, and then 23,900 is huge. The Russell 2000, the big talk was let's you know broaden our horizons and invest in uh you know the broader market. This you know, this is going to spread, the money's gonna come out of the leaders and you know filter down, right? No, I said that's a bad way to go about doing this. I said it's a bad idea to follow that strategy, and the Russell has already broken down. How about gold and silver? Now it's interesting because crypto and now gold and silver, I mean, it's kind of like stocks, and AI is the last one to go. But gold and silver, based on all the things we just said, are still a buy. This was just got too frothy, too speculative, and and I said it would. I mean, we nailed this last year, man. I mean, you can't do any better than we did. I mean,$250,000 portfolio that I opened uh, you know, in a a uh uh uh uh uh on May 5th of last year. Okay, a um uh it was 250,000. At the peak on January 24th, it was it worth 867,000. Still a week later, still worth 685,000 from 250. All right, the peak return was 247 percent. All right, our current return is 175 percent, and that's just on my personal equity portfolio that I did just to track the mining shares, specifically, you know, an uh equivalent amount, so$250,000 equivalent, which I was trying to think of before. But these are still buys on the decline, man. They really are so the key levels, and you've already reached some of the key levels in silver.$73.50 was a key level. The low today was$71.22. But the fact that you got below$73.50 means you probably have lower. The bottom line is$54. I don't think you see sub-60. I'd think it'll be difficult to see sub-70, frankly. But if you do, you're looking at$66.95 as a key level. Key level. I really would be myself buying more physical silver if we got down somewhere between$63.75 and$66.95. But frankly, it's one of those things where maybe you kind of scale down. You have a ladder and start buying at you know$73.50 and then you buy some more at uh you know 71, and then you buy somewhere at 68 and somewhere at$66.95. You know, I'm not a fan of uh averaging down. I really don't like that at all. You know, if I buy something, I'm losing money. I'm usually pitching it rather than adding to it. But you know, those are the levels for gold. I mean, again, it's held really well. And I said 4355 would be the level. It got down to 4400 and then bounced back. I also said uh that 43.55 and it may just bounce from there, or that would be the A-wave, then you get the bounce and then being lower low. I still think it's that secondary thought process, and there's a lower low coming. The levels I would look at 3923 to 4083 is a big zone. 26-week moving average, 38 Fibonacci retracement in that zone,$150 wide. That zone. I think it's worth beginning to accumulate there. The 52-week moving average is 3740. I think that's a great level. If you can get 3740, you're buying the 50% Fibonacci is$34.85. If you get gold below$3,500 and silver below$65, it's one of those like back the truck up moments. And what I mean is you back the truck up and fill it up as much weight as you can carry. So keep that in mind. Now I am offering the 145-page PDF. It's a link to the PDF. It's so big I don't want to email it. It's just charts, very easy to read. All the stuff I just talked about. All right, love to send it out. Um, then the well uh follow me on uh X at Weldon Live. The podcast is on X at money underscore podcast. You can find the uh the podcast also on um uh oh Jesus, I'm I'm so bad with uh uh Instagram, okay. Um look just look us up there. Uh and I'm also on YouTube at Gregory underscore Weldon. I also have completed the 2026 on the 20 anniversary 20 year anniversary of my book, Gold Trading Bootcamp in 2006, in which I predicted QE would change everything, and it did. It's a revamp and it's a course. It's a 12 video, 12 chapter, you know, 12 chapters to the textbook basically on how to invest in gold and silver, whether you're futures, physical, etfs, the cash market, you know, whatever, the psychology of trading, the macro fundamentals, the fundamentals on supply demand of each of gold and silver. It's really phenomenal. It's over three hours of videos, almost 300 pages in the textbook, and it's only$29.95. When I did the boot camp first time was 2016, it was$29.95. In other words,$2,995. I think this is something these charts and the 145-page uh uh PDF I'm offering you now. You should get it just to look at it, man. I'm telling you, the charts in here are phenomenal. I may hip you up with some other research along the lines, but I'm not gonna abuse your email address. Check it out or go to the website uh www.weldononline.com and buy the boot camp for 30 bucks, 12 chapters, 300 pages, three hours. It's a ridiculous steal if you want to get involved or are involved. And it goes from the from the beginner all the way up to the to the highest level professional. Well, get something out of this boot camp. Check it out on my website. That's it. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time.