Enlightenment - A Herold & Lantern Investments Podcast

Riding The Wall Of Worry

• Keith Lanton • Season 7 • Episode 39

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October 20, 2025 | Season 7 | Episode 39

Fear is loud, but context is louder. We open with the classic wall of worry and show why widespread crash talk can be oddly protective, then parse what actually matters now: a Fed tilting to cuts, resilient big-bank earnings, and a stealth risk that portfolios are measured in weakening dollars, not just rising prices. Along the way, we size up tech’s towering influence—more than a quarter of the S&P 500 in four names—and the uncomfortable truth that many index investors are taking a bigger tech bet than they realize.

From there, we get practical. If you’re approaching retirement, sequence risk is the shark you can’t see. We lay out a simple plan to sleep better: calculate your net annual withdrawal need and hold roughly ten years of it in short-term and intermediate high-quality bonds. That reserve lets you ride out drawdowns without selling stocks at the worst time. We also cover liquidity tactics for illiquid portfolios—think HELOCs as a safety valve—plus how to audit a household budget after 60 and why Social Security deferral can be the highest-return decision you make, with survivor benefits that can extend the upside for a spouse.

We widen the lens with timely market currents: trade negotiations with China, a key CPI release, PMI updates, and a dense earnings week that can sway sentiment. Gold’s powerful breakout takes center stage as central bank buying, softer real yields, and currency diversification fuel new highs, while we caution against treating any hedge as a hero. For balance, we spotlight a defensive equity idea: staples like Colgate, with global brands, entrenched distribution, and steady dividends, as a counterweight to an AI-driven market. The throughline is resilience—diversify beyond mega-cap tech, reintroduce international exposure and equal-weight strategies, fund a decade of withdrawals safely, and protect your ability to choose patience over panic.

Enjoy the show, then take a moment to review your allocations, cash buffers, and income timing. If this helped, follow, share with a friend who’s rethinking risk, and leave a quick review so more investors can find us.

** For informational and educational purposes only, not intended as investment advice. Views and opinions are subject to change without notice.

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Alan Eppers:

And now introducing Mr. Keith Lanton.

Keith Lanton:

Good morning. Hope everyone had a good weekend as we approach Halloween, the end of October. And of course there is tremendous amount going on in the world and in the financial markets. We'll talk about last week and what last week may mean for the markets, what it may mean for your financial portfolio. We'll talk a little bit about some of the credit scares that took place that led to the most volatile day since 2020 and what that could look like for your portfolio going forward. We will discuss for those who are getting older, approaching retirement, or perhaps just skittish about the financial markets, how you might want to be positioning your portfolio so that you can have a more secure retirement and make sure that if there is a significant drop in financial markets, , that you have the comfort and financial wherewithal to be able to withstand that type of sell-off and volatility. keep in mind, even though financial markets frequently recover, almost always recover, at least historically in the last couple of hundred years, that does not mean they will recover in time for you if you are 60, 65 years old and you get a sell-off and there's not a recovery for 10 or 15 years. I know it sounds like something that is almost something that won't happen, but believe me, it has happened in in the last 50 years several times. So you want to be mindful of that risk and make sure that you aren't being too greedy. So to start out, we'll talk about some of the worry and the wall of worry that the markets are are climbing. And a wall of worry is something that is contrarianly good. I think I read a quote over the weekend that's been said before that a watched bubble rarely bursts, and a wall of worry is on a contrarian basis something that's very healthy when financial markets and market participants are worried that something's going to happen, then that's often priced in, making it less likely to happen. Usually when things do happen, it's something that was very much unanticipated out of left field, something that folks hadn't thought about before. So Baron's talked about if you're worried about a crash, what you should be worried about perhaps instead. lots of talk about financial market bubbles leading to crashes, which as I just mentioned is probably one of the reasons and the strongest things preventing one from happening. The 1929 crash has been getting a lot of attention lately because of a new book by New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Saulkin, who was the subject of a profile on 60 Minutes, as well as New York Times magazine. And he drew parallels from a century ago saying that the current emphasis and push into private equity and credit to individual investors has reminiscences of the aggressive marketing of new and novel financial instruments to the public in the roaring twenties, which were then wiped out by the crash in 1969. And for older investors, folks you know who are perhaps as old as 50, well they may remember that they suffered through two significant setbacks, arguably crashes in in this century, and therefore those folks have a little bit more fear regarding the current bull market run. Keep in mind that NVIDIA is up 1,600% in the last three years, so folks can feel a little bit queasy when they see tremendous runs like that. But if you're looking at this and saying, oh, that feels a lot like the dot-com bubble, well, perhaps think again the difference, stocks like NVIDIA, these aren't companies that are measuring clicks or amount of processing sold in an AI chip. But we're talking about a company that has significant profits, and we're also talking about a company that is not burning through massive amounts of cash, but is a company that is producing a massive amount of cash. And when you go back and just look at the turn of the century here in the United States, those who may remember that back in 1999, 2000, there was a book called Dow 36,000. Everybody was talking about it. We're not yet talking about a book saying Dow 100,000, but back then there was a book, Dow 36,000. It was written by James Glassman and Kevin Hassett. You may recognize that name. He's on the short list to be Federal Reserve Chair, predicting that 36,000 was around the corner. But back in 1999-2000, we didn't see 36,000 until 2021. So there was lots of lots of optimism in the air, perhaps that that we are at least not seeing to the same extent today, if you want to feel a little bit better about this recent market rise in power. Also, if you go back and look at the subprime debacle back in 2008, 2009, you may remember when folks were real worried about that. The Federal Reserve Chair at the time, Ben Bernanke, famously observed that housing prices had never declined nationally. Later, as Fed chair in May of 2007, he expected the problems of subprime would not have significant spillovers on the financial system or the rest of the economy. Sixteen months later, Lehman Brothers would fail and the financial crisis would be in full swing. So we're not seeing that sort of reassurance, that sort of cockiness that we saw back then. So what we are seeing is we are seeing bricks being added to the wall of worry that the bull market is climbing. Not to say that there is not cause for concern. Folks are looking for concern and and and areas of of trouble wherever they can find it. Most recently they did get some some talk of of further deterioration, let's call it, in the banking system, which certainly scares investors because it has lots of rhyming with 2008. And we had Jamie Diamond say just a couple of days ago that when you see one cockroach, there's probably more. And he was talking about the cockroaches of bad loans and perhaps some financial malfeasance. He was specifically talking about about tricolor and first brands, those are two companies that declared bankruptcy. JP Morgan, one of the companies that had exposure to to one of those companies. And then what happened last week, causing the sell-off midweek, was that you had two banks on Thursday, Zions Bank, regional bank based out in in the West, and Western Alliance Bank also coming out and saying that they had some some loans that were that weren't going to be paid and that they felt that there was fraud behind these loans, and that that accelerated the worries. Jamie Diamond had just said there's more, then all of a sudden there's more, and there was lots of concern that that the wheels were coming off the bus. But but so far, bank earnings by and large have been healthy. Zions Bank, in fact, is going to come out with earnings this week and perhaps give us some greater clarity on what they're seeing, and that may or may not give the market some comfort. But we did see bank earnings from major banks last week. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank America, Wells Fargo, and these companies, Citigroup as well, and we did not get any major concerns from those banks, so perhaps we can at least continue to monitor, be concerned, but recognize that perhaps things aren't crashing down. Now, of course, the phrase this time is different is something that you have to say with a great deal of caution. But if you look back at previous times when the financial markets did crack after a significant runup, all of them happened when the Federal Reserve was raising interest rates. So at the moment, and again, got to be careful about this time is different, but at the moment the Federal Reserve is talking about lowering rates further. They've already lowered rates 1% in the last year, one and a quarter, in fact, with the most recent cut. If you go back to the depression in 1928-1929, the Fed was raising rates, largely to rein in speculation back then. Ahead of the dot-com bust, the central bank had hiked its federal funds target rate by two percent, and before the financial crisis, the Fed had raised the Fed funds rate by four and a quarter percent, albeit at a measured pace. The debate right now is how much and how fast to cut further. So you can see some real significant differences. If you want another moment that you can perhaps view when we were getting lots of warnings, if you go back to 2011, for those who are old enough to remember, 60 Minutes, last time that they ran a piece about the financial markets and a sector of the markets that you should be real worried about, and that was when they had Meredith Whitney on, who was a municipal bond analyst. And she predicted that municipal bonds, the bonds that are used to finance lots of the infrastructure throughout the country on a state and city level, she said that we would be looking at the defaults in the relatively near term within the next couple of years of hundreds of billions of dollars. She said that in 2010. That never happened. So when you get these cries of concern and they reach the mainstream, again, if if you're if you're contrarian, you can view that somewhat optimistically, it means that people are focused on the concerns, that they are aware of the concerns, that they are pricing in some of those concerns. Now, that doesn't mean that there are no risks, that risks are nonexistent. We've talked about the so-called debasement trade. We've seen gold running to a record high. So we need to be mindful that despite the fact that the markets are going up, they are going up in dollars. So keep in mind that dollars are becoming less valuable. So what you are measuring your success in is becoming less valuable. And that may be the stealth concern that you've got is are your gains, are your port is your portfolio keeping up with inflation, keeping up with a weaker dollar, keeping up with others in the rest of the world who may have their assets invested differently than you, and therefore are your assets able to maintain their pricing power? That's something you gotta think about every day. Can you buy as much today as you could yesterday? So we talked a little bit about about the worries that are in the marketplace. We're talking about concerns which are out there in the banking system, and we are talking about the return of volatility. Now I said if you are getting closer to retirement, worried about your finances, that's certainly something not being dismissive of. That is something you need to be very mindful of, and one of the greatest risks that it comes to when it comes to investing is the series of returns. And the series of returns when you retire is crucially important. If you are unfortunate and you retired in 2008, and you had your portfolio predominantly in equities, and equities declined almost 50%, and you were counting on your nestate carrying you through retirement, you had a whole different trajectory than if you retired in 2011, where markets have largely been calm and upward since then. You will have experienced a whole different mindset in terms of in terms of your retirement and your ability to retire. So, Barons ran a piece saying that volatility is back in the market. How do you handle that volatility, especially amongst the news cycle that never rests? So a well-constructed portfolio can help those who are retired or thinking about retiring to sleep better at night. I mentioned the market had been remarkably calm before sharp move last week, SP down 2.7% the end of last week, ending a streak of 33 days without a move of 1% or more, longest run since 2020. What caused this shake in volatility? Well, we talked about the situation with the banks and perhaps some bad loans, and also we have continuing worries about trade tensions, the trade relationship between the U.S. and China. Talk a little bit about that this morning as well, President Trump making some comments. But with the volatility returning, it's inevitable that it will, it's a good time to take a look at your portfolio and understand if you're positioned the way that you want to be positioned. A big debate is whether the SP is hurtling towards another tech crash, similar to the dot com bust at the turn of the century. No one can predict moves in the market, but it would certainly suffer if the technology sector suffered. More than 25% of the SP's market cap is invested in just four stocks, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet. So if you're invested in the SP 500, you might be more exposed to tech than you think, and you might be more exposed to tech than you're actually comfortable with. This is different than the SP 500 of you know 10 or 15 years ago. So the goal is to create a diversified portfolio that will let you tune out the noise. Exactly what that looks like. Well, it's different for each of you. Perhaps you should be having this conversation with your financial advisor. It depends on your goals, your risk tolerance, and there are some parameters that you need to keep in mind. Now, if you go back about a year ago, you might have said to yourself, I hear all this talk about diversification, but if I'm not in the Mag 7, I'm not getting returns, so markets are up because the Mag 7's up, but the whole rest of my portfolio is down. This whole talk about diversification is something that perhaps doesn't work anymore. But this year proves that last year and the perhaps the year before, a little bit of an outlier. Diversification is is acutely important. The MSCI XUSA index, so index outside the United States, an international index that excludes U.S. stocks, is up about 26% year to date. SP is up about 13%. So you may want to think about international stocks again. Perhaps they fell off of your radar or out of your portfolio as they underperformed for several years. Another way to diversify is to own an equal weighted index. So the SP 500 is a market cap weighted index and has more than 40% of that index because it's market cap weighted in tech. You could alternatively invest in the SP 500 index, but on an equal weight basis. What does that mean? That means that each of the 500 stocks represent two-tenths of your portfolio. That portfolio has a significantly lower tech exposure because of the way it's constructed. It's up about 9% for the year, below the 13% of the SP 500, but arguably having much greater diversification and potentially a lot less volatility. The other factor to consider are bonds. Now, there may be some painful memories for some folks out there when it comes to bonds feeling burned in 2022 when bonds tank nearly as much as stocks did because of the pandemic-induced inflation that prompted the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates sharply. Now, that was a very rare circumstance outside of those rare circumstances. High quality bonds can be counted on to reduce volatility, temper risk in your portfolio. One one contributing person to this article, Christine Benz, Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning in Morningstar, her opinion is take the annual amount you'll need to withdraw from your portfolio in retirement and multiply it by 10. This is for folks, this is not for young folks, this is folks who are at or near retirement. So, how much are you gonna need in retirement? cash, this is cash after other returns that you might have. Perhaps you have an annuity that's gonna pay you, perhaps you have a pension, perhaps you have Social Security, but what you are going to need in retirement per year after the other cash flows that you have, multiply that by 10 and keep that amount in short-term and intermediate bonds. And if you have those 10 years of living expenses insulated for market movements, it'll provide lots of peace of mind and perhaps the ability to withstand some of the volatility that is inevitable. What age is it that you should start thinking about owning owning more bonds? So you should start thinking about making sure that your portfolio is more diversified, perhaps has some less volatility to it. And Morningstar ran a ran an article suggesting that for anyone who's past the age of 60, it's time to start thinking of building out some extra cash in your portfolio. If perhaps you have lots of your cash tied up in less liquid investments, perhaps you have investment properties, perhaps you have private credit or private equity that's not super liquid, what you might want to do is take out a home equity line of credit, which can serve as a backup if you perhaps are are low on on liquidity. So if there is a pinch and and you have lots of assets but they are not liquid assets, well you have the ability to tap into that during that time period, so you don't have to sell perhaps some of your other investments that may be down significantly. Once you hit 50, it's time to start thinking about maybe be adding some high quality fixed income to your portfolio. And back to you know, when you're 60 again, start thinking about your household budget. What is it that you're going to require? What are you going to be spending in retirement? Are all these expenses necessary? Perhaps some of these expenses you just accumulated as as as you as you went and didn't really reassess. This is the time to really assess and determine which expenses you you should be focusing on. And finally, if you can, if you can, it may make a lot of sense to defer taking Social Security, especially if you're relatively healthy, because every year that you defer your Social Security, your benefit goes up by 8%. And also keep in mind that perhaps let's say you're a male and you're gonna try and defer to age 70 on your social security. Perhaps your wife's a few years younger than you. Keep in mind that if you defer your social security and your wife outlives you, then she will get the benefit of that higher social security payment as well. So when you're thinking about planning and strategically planning, don't just think about your own lifetime, think about your spouses as well if that is applicable. All right, let's move on. Let's talk about financial markets and world markets this morning, because certainly a lot going on this morning. If you've logged into your favorite website and you're having some challenges or difficulties getting online, it's probably not your computer. Amazon Web Services had an outage this morning, hit major websites this morning, so lots of airlines. , Robinhood was affected, so just be mindful that if you're having trouble, it's Amazon Web Services AWS, more than likely the culprit. Okay, well this morning we are looking at futures starting the week positively. Trade negotiations with China are ongoing, markets focusing on that. And this is after last week when we saw a gain of 1.5% or more on the on the major indices here in the United States. So trade negotiations with China continue to unfold ahead of the November 10th trade truce expiration. Bloomberg reports that President Trump stated soybeans, rare earth minerals, and fentanyl are his main concerns with China that will be addressed in talks set to take place in Malaysia this week. Also, this week we will be getting a big batch of earnings reports, one-fifth, 20%. One out of every five companies in the SP 500 will be reporting earnings. No major economic data releases today. Friday, we will see the delayed release of the September Consumer Price Index, and that will be getting lots of attention on Friday ahead of the Federal Reserve meeting next week. Equity indices in the Asia Pacific region had a strong start to the week. Japan's Nike up 3.4%, record high after Japan's Liberal Democratic Party and Innovation Party agreed to form a coalition government, putting Sanei Takaichi on track to be officially elected new Prime Minister tomorrow. Remember, she is the Prime Minister who wants to keep rates low, somebody who wants to continue juicing the economy, you could say, and that giving strength to Japanese equities, almost 3.5% move to the upside. In China, the Hang Sing up 2.4%, and in China the Shanghai up six tenths of a percent, India up half a percent, Korea up one point eight percent. So seeing lots of strength overseas. Where we're seeing tremendous strength this morning is in gold. Gold is up $124 an ounce over $4,300 to $4,336. That is a rise of almost 3% in in gold this morning, so we'll talk a little bit more about that. Oil this morning up modestly up 50 cents, but natural gas is up 20 cents to 3.20. That is a significant percentage move up in in natural gas. If you're looking at bond market this morning here in the United States, the 10 year is down slightly to a 399 from about a 401 this morning. Taking a look at the major news, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says he will meet Chinese Vice Premier in Malaysia this week to discuss trade. The White House confirms that 25% tariff on imports of medium and heavy duty trucks and parts will go into effect on November first. President Trump says India tariffs will remain until they stop purchasing Russian oil. President Trump suspended payments and subsidies to Colombia. He's saying due to the country's drug production, him and Colombia's President Petro getting into war of words with respect to the attack on some boats outside of Colombian waters and President Trump ordering some cutbacks in in aid. Matter of fact, reports now that he's seeking to re eliminate aid to Colombia due to this war of words with the Colombian president. President Trump has said he decided not to give Ukraine Tomahawk missiles to strike Russia and said his priority is now diplomacy. Reports coming out this this morning that Friday, when President Trump met with President Zelensky, that there was some heated exchanges between them and reports that President Trump now is seeking, as part of the peace process, , for the Ukrainians to relinquish the Donbass, and perhaps that was behind some of the animated conversation there last week. Reuters reporting that China imported zero soybeans from the United States for the first time in seven years. In the Middle East, Israel and Hamas reaffirmed their commitment to a ceasefire following an attack that killed two Israeli Defense Force soldiers and Israel's retaliation. , Vice President Vance will lead a U.S. delegation to Israel later this week. Just crossing the wires is White House economic advisor Hassett says the shutdown could end this week, as the shutdown now is in day 20. The federal court system is running out of money due to the shutdown, but the Supreme Court will continue to hold oral arguments. CNBC reporting that the Trump administration is agreeing to provide student loan forgiveness after attempting to block it. Amazon just saying that the underlying issue was a DNS, which has to do with identifying different servers and locations, , and saying that that issue has been fully mitigated, and most AWS operations are succeeding normally now. Cryptocurrency Bitcoin this morning up about 1,850 or 1.69%, definitely moving to the plus side, but you could see that gold continuing to outpace Bitcoin. Dow futures up 140, Nasdaq futures up 130, SP futures up 30 points this morning. I mentioned oil earlier that oil was up 50 cents, it is now reversed and is down 47 cents. All right, earnings this week, tons of companies with earnings, not going to list them all, but these are things that certainly could have an impact on the market as these earnings roll out. I mentioned Friday, Bureau of Labor Statistics releasing the consumer price index for September. You may remember that because of the shutdown, this number was not being released. It wasn't released on time, but now some BLS employees were recalled to collect data for this employment report, inflation report, so the Social Security Administration could set its annual cost of living adjustment. So now CPI expected to come out this Friday. Forecasts are for a 3.1% year-over-year increase, two-tenths of a percentage point more than August. Core CPI also expected to rise 3.1% in line with the most previous reading. Also this week, SP Global releases its manufacturing and services purchasing managers indexes for October. These will get more attention, is that we are right now having a a dearth, let's call it, or a lack of reports with respect to the economy. So anything we get will will get lots of attention. Apple in the news this morning is upgraded by a Wall Street analyst saying that iPhone Series 17 sales are outpacing its predecessor by 14% in the United States and China. Also this morning, Kering, which is the luxury powerhouse behind Gucci, has agreed to sell its beauty division to L'Oreal. This division includes Creed, the perfume, as well as starting in 2028, the licenses for other perfumes like Gucci. Currently the Gucci license is owned by Cody, but that expires in 2028. I mentioned the dramatic increase in tensions between Colombian President Petro and President Trump. President Trump saying that he is an illegal drug dealer in a dramatic escalation in tensions with one of Washington's closest partners in Latin America. So I mentioned the Feds is going to be meeting next week. The expectations are the Federal Reserve, which is operating under less clarity than usual due to the government shutdown and le lacking in certain official data. The expectation is that the central bank will be cautious and cut interest rates by a quarter of one percent at the upcoming meeting next week. And the thoughts there are is that we'll preserve flexibility until the Federal Reserve has more data and the numbers begin to flow again. If you're looking for some concerns or signs of stress, I mentioned that we are seeing some stress in the in the loan market, especially loans that have come to companies that you know have , let's say, credit below investment grade. And what we are seeing is we are seeing in general not only this taking place on the corporate side of the of the world, but also with individuals. We are certainly seeing this bifurcation of the economy, a phenomena that we've addressed before, where the wealthy continue to spend and those who are impacted by inflation and don't have as much in assets pulling back in spending. And now we get a report that delinquency rates on subprime loans have hit record highs. More than 6% of subprime borrowers are at least 60 days overdue on their car payments. Interesting report out that finds that preteens, so young kids who spend more time on social media score significantly lower on reading and memory tests compared to those kids who use it little or not at all. And here's another interesting phenomena, something called kid ulting. So adults acting like kids, adults now make up 40% of Build-A-Bear's business. And seeing the same phenomena with adults purchasing Lagos, and interestingly, if if you've been following Build-A-Bay's stock, it has outpaced in the last five years NVIDIA, Palantir, and Microsoft. Nvidia stock, Palantir and Microsoft outperformed by Build-Aer over the last five years. Build-DeBay is up 2,000%. And just interesting note here before I turn to some individual s securities, the heavyweight champ of the 2025 World Championship pumpkin weighing way off tipped the scales at 2,346 pounds. I don't know how you bring that one home. That pumpkin is roughly the Size of a full grown beluga whale. Alright, individual stock, something you might want to think about in your portfolio. Barron's talking about Colgate, symbol C L. You may recognize the name of that company based on the perhaps the toothpaste in your medicine cabinet. Barron saying Colgate is an antidote to AI-dominated markets, why it's worth buying now. Colgate, a longtime leader in household products, dates back to the 1800s. They have brands like Colgate Toothpaste, Palm Olive, Ajax, and their fastest growing brand is Hills brand Pet Food. With technology names dominating the stock market, staples like Colgate have gone out of style. Colgate has suffered a rough 12 months. Shares have fallen over 20% to about $79 a share, taking the stock back where it was five years ago. Doesn't help. The growth has slowed this year, but there's a case to be made that Colgate Pomalev, the world's top toothpaste maker, which is not only one of the most popular oral care brands in the United States, but a company that gets nearly half of its sales from high growth developing markets. That is the highest percentage among U.S. consumer staples companies, and those overseas markets may pick up in 2026. Barron saying Colgate's solid business and solid dividend make it the perfect antidote if the AI trade goes wrong. It's easy to forget how ubiquitous Colgate is. They are the global leader in toothpaste, 41% market share, number one in manual toothbrushes, and number one in liquid hand soap. Oral care is about 40% of Colgate's global sales. And what's interesting if you think about it, there's very little private competition for private label competition for toothpaste. , very few of us purchase the great value Walmart toothpaste or the Target toothpaste band or the CVS brand. It's at least at the moment, it's one of those brands that we typically don't go for the private label. And the pet nutrition business, which I mentioned is dominated by the Hills brand, that makes up 22% of their sales. Colgate operates in 200 countries. They entered Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines in the 1920s. They entered India in the 1930s. Colgate's total toothpaste brand is a big seller, especially as incomes rise. It's hard to compete with Colgate because it has been entrenched in many of these markets for so long. Now, Colgate Trails Proctor and Gamble Maker Crest in the United States, which has the majority share of the toothpaste market here, but internationally, Colgate dominates. In Latin America, Colgate has 50% share. If you're curious in the U.S., they have 20% share of the toothpaste market. Colgate is also the toothpaste leader in India, where it's the number one oral care brand with three times the market share of the number two player. And if you're thinking about India and the potential growth, 80% of the people in India don't brush their teeth twice a day. In rural areas, only half brush daily. So Colgate sees a big opportunity as these folks become more successful. They will likely one of the first things they will do is perhaps brush their teeth or brush their teeth more frequently. Colgate's India Business trades publicly independently on its own, has a market value of seven billion, and Colgate owns half of that stock. Colgate offers a secure and modest dividend of 2.7%. The company has lifted its payout for 62 straight years, and it has paid dividends for 130 years. Dividend has risen at a 4% rate in the past decade. Currently, the dividends at about 2.7% yield based on the current stock price. It's expected that they will raise the dividend in 2026. If they do, that would take the dividend at current prices to about 2.8%. Colgate right now looks reasonably priced at about 20 times 2026 earnings below its 10-year average of 23 times. Tech may be sizzling, but there's always in a place in your portfolio for a staple like Colgate, so says Barron's. And finally, I will conclude talking about the asset that is up the most so far this morning, and that is gold. Barents saying what could stop the gold rally in its tracks, and they conclude not much. Gold has gained 57% so far in 2025. That was before today. We now're looking at 60%, hit closing all-time highs 21 times in the last 63 sessions. Even Jamie Diamond, who's not very positive on gold in general historically, said this is one of the few times in my life where it's semi-rational to have some in your portfolio. Historically, when gold sets new highs like it has in a three-month period, many new highs in a three-month period, it has been higher one year later 80% of the time. How did this happen? We talked some about gold last week. Didn't happen out of nowhere. Central banks have been buying gold following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. No one likes to have their dollar reserves frozen, like the Russians did. And on top of that, we've got loose financial conditions not only here in the United States where interest rates are falling, but in Japan with the election of the Liberal Democratic Party, perhaps one of the biggest catalysts to the gold rally. There, we don't see higher rates on the horizon of any magnitude in the EU. It's not looking like the Remnimbi, that currency China is going to be significantly appreciating anytime in the near term. So the catalyst that typically weighs on gold prices, ends gold rallies, that is higher interest rates. Well, that doesn't look like it's at least doesn't look like it's in the cars the any time soon. So perhaps gold even here north of 4,300, could be due for a pullback, nothing goes up in a straight line, but Baron's suggesting at least at the moment they don't see anything causing a significant drop in the near term. That's everything I've got.

Alan Eppers:

Thank you for listening to Mr. Keith Lanton. This podcast is available on most platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify. For more information, please visit our website at www.heroldlantern.com.

Sophie Cohen:

Opinions expressed herein are subject to change and not necessarily the opinion of the firm. Pest performance is no guarantee of future results. The information presented herein is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide personal investment advice. It is important that you consider your tolerance for risk and investment goals when making investment decisions. Investing in securities does involve risk and the potential of losing money. The material does not constitute research, investment advice or trade recommendations.