Commodities Surge, Currencies Slip, And A Gilded Age Rhyme

January 26, 2026 | Season 8 | Episode 3

We track a fast-moving market where gold and silver surge as currencies wobble, deficits widen, and geopolitical shocks stack up. We connect today’s macro stress to Gilded Age echoes and end with a practical take on AI agents reshaping cybersecurity risk and opportunity.

• debasement trade lifting gold, silver, and other commodities
• dollar, yen, and euro weakness alongside EM currency strength
• shutdown risk and tariff threats tilting confidence
• Japan’s fiscal push echoing Truss-era bond volatility
• equities’ upside versus bonds’ debasement drag
• Davos signals and US–Europe friction on trade and security
• Gilded Age parallels in tech disruption and inequality
• silver’s industrial demand, supply constraints, and volatility
• earnings calendar and FOMC watch for forward guidance
• identity-first cybersecurity in an agent-driven world

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

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Transcript

Markets Open Amid Winter Chaos

Alan Eppers 0:00

And now introducing Mr. Keith Lanton.

The Debasement Trade Explained

Precious Metals Smash Records

Dollar Weakness And EM Strength

Political Shocks And Shutdown Risks

Japan’s Fiscal Jolt And Bond Rout

Deficits, Fed Tensions, And Stocks vs Bonds

Tariffs, Davos, And Fraying Alliances

History Lesson: The Gilded Age Parallels

Keith Lanton 0:03

Good morning. Hope everyone had a safe weekend. much of the country suffering from a significant winter storm. Hope everyone is safe and getting themselves set up. Hopefully have power and heat. Today is Monday, January 26th, last Monday of first month of the year. We've got a lot to talk about in financial markets. Things are continuing to happen very quickly. So we're gonna be talking about some of the big factors here in financial markets this morning, what we're seeing in commodities, not just gold, but silver and platinum and palladium and oil, and we're gonna talk about the US dollar, and we're gonna talk about the geopolitical mechanisms that are taking place that are having a significant impact on the mindset of investors, and then we're gonna do a dive again into history and look back so we can hopefully learn from what's taken place in the past many things that we think are taking place today. We've said this many times before. We think that things like this have never happened before, and the more we learn, the more we understand that what we're seeing has rhymed, has happened in some way, shape, or form in a different manner, but nevertheless fairly somewhat or fairly similar to what we're seeing today, so perhaps we can learn from that. So let's start today talking about the debasement trade or the ongoing strength of commodities offset by some weakness in the US dollar and talk about why that may be happening. First off, let's take a look at what's happening in precious metals this morning. We are seeing very significant strengths after a tremendous run-up already in a lot of metals. Gold this morning is up about $90 an ounce to $5,070, smashing through the $5,000 level that was the price target of a lot of Wall Street strategists. Wall Street strategists have been raising targets on gold as their price levels have been exceeded as opposed to reigning in expectations. So we will see how these commodities continue to react. They certainly have had a tremendous run, and after such a significant run-up, at some point we may be due for , at the very least, a breather, or another word for that is some profit taking. Barron's specifically cautious on another metal up significantly today, which is silver. Silver percentage-wise is up the most, up eight and a half percent. We'll talk about perhaps why silver is the most volatile of the metals, but silver is up to almost 110, actually. It's 109.995 an ounce this morning, shattering all previous records in terms of the price of silver. getting less attention, palladium this morning is up over 5%, $111 an ounce to $2,139. Platinum up 3.5%, $95 an ounce to $28,836. Copper up very modestly, up about $3.5 to $1.98 per ounce. So what's going on? Why are we seeing this this move up in commodities? Well, what we're seeing is demand exceeding supply, quite simply. And this is question of where is the supply coming from. So where is there less demand? Well, there's less demand for currencies, the largest currency being the U.S. dollar. It's not just a US dollar phenomena, it's a Japanese yen phenomena, it's a Euro phenomena. What's also interesting is that what it is not is an emerging markets phenomena. We are seeing strength in emerging market currencies as investors seeking to diversify away from developed economies, , viewing emerging market economies perhaps as less risky as the risk profile in the minds of investors for the developed economies continues to grow. So the mindset used to be emerging markets, really risky. Those countries don't have their fiscal house in order, those countries don't have a stable political system. Perhaps the thinking today is that that perhaps the difference between the developed economies and the emerging economies isn't as wide as we thought. So we are seeing significant strength in emerging market bonds and stocks, something you might want to think about when it comes to your portfolio. So, what's contributing to this debasement trade today? Well, today we had over the weekend here in the United States the tragic killing of an American citizen in Minneapolis. This has served to create some further concern among investors, some of the events that are taking place here in the United States. At the moment, we don't have all the facts. At the moment, the video that has been released seems seems to be at odds with the government narrative, which is perhaps undermining some confidence here for investors in the United States, and is also causing Democratic senators to say that they will not not continue to extend the funding for the government. So we could have another government shutdown. That's another factor weighing on weighing on the dollar, weighing on why folks are looking at precious metals. Democrats say that there's ten billion dollars in ICE funding that that is in the budget and that they are opposed to it based on the recent events. Some Republican lawmakers also expressing reservations, at least with the actions that they have seen with ICE or at least calling for further investigation. Now keep in mind that the withholding of this $10 billion, which is certainly a tremendous amount of money, probably would not dramatically change the ability of ICE to function. In the summer of this past year, there was a passage providing $75 billion in funding to ICE, so this would be an additional $10 billion, but that funding is in place, so this is more to make a point than necessarily to result in significant changes in ICE's ability to operate. Secondly, we have events unfolding in Japan. Prime Minister there putting forth some policies that are aggressive in terms of fiscal spending. Japan already has a big deficit, and this has caused a sell-off in the Japanese currency and a sell-off in Japanese bonds, causing Japanese bond yields to rise significantly. So I'm comparing the events in Japan to what took place with Liz Truss in the UK in 2022, and she proposed a budget that included more spending. But the overall effect here is that the Japanese currency, which can be viewed as an alternative to the dollar, being viewed as not particularly a great choice given the policies in place in Japan, and this is leading to further purchases not just in the U.S. but in Japan and other places in the world of more commodities, specifically gold. And then we've got the ongoing deficit here in the United States. We have $1.7 trillion approximate deficit in 2025, and this is during one of the strongest economies that the U.S. has seen in many decades, and yet we are running a significant budget deficit, and we are just piling on to the $35 plus trillion in debt we already have, leading to concerns about our ability to pay. Therefore, what are people doing? They're buying commodities, gold and silver. And then we have recent talk from President Trump about his displeasure with Fed Chairman Powell, the criminal investigation into Fed Chairman Powell. So the attacks on the Fed, not something that's giving investors of U.S. assets comfort. And again, when you're looking at currencies and bonds that don't pay that much, a little different than stocks, so why would stocks potentially be holding up or going up and bonds and currencies going down? Well, stocks have meaningful upside. Perhaps you strongly believe in the story of Tesla or NVIDIA or Microsoft or Meta or many other companies, and therefore you have a significant upside, you are willing to risk perhaps some depreciation in currency in that environment. If you believe that Meta could go up 12, 15, 20 percent, but you're worried the currency may drop 5 or 10 percent, that may be a risk you're willing to take. But when you're looking at small potential returns on fixed income, sitting in cash, 1, 2, 3 percent, buying bonds, 3, 4%, 5% if you're looking at corporates, and you're worried about the currency and the debasement and your ability to get massive amounts of money out of a country that you're concerned about, the risk reward may not look as attractive, and that could explain some of what we're seeing. What else is going on to give some folks some pause and purchase commodities? Well, last week, of course, we had the U.S. threatening to annex Greenland, and then we had the threats from President Trump with respect to Greenland of applying more tariffs to eight of our NATO allies, including Germany, France, the UK, and Netherlands, some of the biggest economies in Europe, and despite the fact that President Trump said a deal had been worked out and he's no longer going to do that, the everlasting effects and the potential concerns about the future lead to investors suggest investors deciding, hey, you know, this dodge this bullet, perhaps I need to rethink my my a my my safe money allocation and moving assets into gold, silver, commodities. And then to add a little bit of fuel to the fire, we had a speech at Davos from Prime Minist the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, saying the world order as we know it is over. He got a standing ovation in Davos for his speech. U.S. President Trump was not happy with Mark Carney for A, that speech, and then B for what he said was the Canadians gonna potentially reach some sort of trade agreement with with China, a free trade agreement, and threatening to put 100% tariffs on Canada. So commodities, specifically gold, silver, platinum, palladium, could be argued they are a hedge. They are the inverse of confidence. So what are they hedging against? Well, they're hedging against inflation, market sell-offs, and geopolitical risk, and that's what we're seeing play out this morning. But keep in mind, this is not a call to rush in and buy more gold, more silver, you have to be judicious, intelligent. We've had a very significant run-up, and after significant run-ups, you can have significant volatility, you can have meaningful and very quick and rapid declines. So you have to ask yourself, is that something that you can tolerate if you're seeking to diversify into currencies? So as I mentioned, we've talked about history and the fact that what we are seeing today may not have exactly happened in the past, but certainly has precedence in the past. And one period that I think has some meaningful similarities to what we seeing today is the period known as the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age in America was roughly the period between 1870 and 1900, and that term was coined by Mark Twain, who suggested that the period looked glittering on the outside, but once you got past the exterior, things didn't look quite as beautiful. And what was happening in 1870 and 1900? Well, it was a period of very rapid disruption in technology. So just as we are grappling with AI today, folks back then were reeling from the telegraph and the steam engine, which moved information and people faster than the law could keep up with. So despite the fact that AI is moving super fast, imagine 1870 to 1900, when information traveled basically at the speed of horseback or ocean vessels crossing crossing the Atlantic at the at the pace of a very rapid seven to ten days. Relatively speaking, AI might in fact be slower relative to where we were before versus what was happening in 1870 to 2000, eight eighteen seventy to nineteen hundred. This period also was marked by wealth inequality. This was the era of the robber barons, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts. You know, today we've got the age of the Musks and the Gateses and the Ellisons. So, like then, today we have a big gap between the ultra-wealthy and the working class. Today we have a widest gap between the between the the ultra-rich and the working class than we've had in many decades. And 1870 to 1900 was a period marked by razor thin margins between political parties, hyperpartisanship, and swing voters as they are scarce today, they were probably even scarcer, barely existing back back then. And if you go back to the period of 1870 to 1900, in order to swing elections, because margins were super thin and every every congressional seat mattered, you know what they did? Well, they did a lot of gerrymandering. What is gerrymandering? It's when you carve up districts and you carve up the map to try and create safe districts where you can win political seats and you can potentially play the mat and win more seats in the House of Congress. This is what we saw the Republicans do initially in Texas, and now we see the Democrats responding in California. So today, prior to this action, states redistrict once every ten years. that's obviously what we're talking about changing. In the Gilded Age, parties would redistrict whenever they felt like it to protect their incumbents or wipe out the opposition. Also, what we had going on in 1870 to 1900, and this is something very different than what we have today, was in order to in order to encourage anyone who might get out of line to not vote the way that you would not like them to vote. Back then, there was not the secret ballot. Could you imagine? As recently as 1870 to 1900, when people went to vote, it was not by secret ballot. You actually put a ticket into a into a box, and that ticket was color-coded. So you actually used to get your ticket from your Republican or your Democratic tent, they called it. And the ticket was color-coded by each party because they wanted to see when you put it into a glass jar what color that ticket was. And what the ticket used to be is if you went to a Republican or a Democratic tent to get your ticket, let's say your ticket was was was pink for one party and it was blue for another party, you didn't have to vote for every candidate on the pink ticket or on the blue ticket. But if you wanted to change your votes, you actually had to you actually had to cut and paste the tickets to be able to vote for candidates that were not the candidates straight down the line, Republican or Democrat. And because most people bought didn't barter the to do that, you went to the voting booth, you put your ticket in, and everybody could see you put a pink ticket or a blue ticket. And if you were supposed to vote pink or blue because your boss or the local party boss in your neighborhood told you to act one way, or you might suffer a beating, or your family may not get preferential treatment, there was a strong incentive for you to tow the party line. So this is whether where the words towing the party line, and this is where the word ticket, the Democratic ticket, the Republican ticket, this is where this all came from. And interestingly, the ticket system was viewed as a big step up because when the country was founded, how did m how did we vote here in this country? Well, we voted by what was called viva voce, which is voting by voice. So back in the days of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, you would walk up to a platform, often at a courthouse, or in the good old days at a tavern, and announce your choices out loud to an election official in front of a crowd of your neighbors. It was believed that a man should have the courage to stand by his convictions publicly. John Stuart Mill famously argued that voting was a public duty and doing it in secret would allow people to vote for selfish interests rather than the public good. The reality is it would made it incredibly easy for landlords or employers to intimidate people into voting in a certain way. Now going back to the ticket system, I mentioned the ticket system was widely used between 1870 and 1900, but in fact the last state to hold out and stop using the ticket system and moving to a secret ballot was South Carolina. And South Carolina did not adopt a secret ballot until 1950. North Carolina 1929. Georgia and the Delawares sometime in the 1920. So you can see that just not that long ago, an act like voting was was not was not done by secret ballot, was not done by the way that you think of voting taking place today, and the system was clearly very different than what we have today, and next week we could talk about some of the ramifications of that system and the changes and what those changes have led to in our times. All right, let's take a look at the rest of the financial markets this morning. Let's see what's going on here this morning, and we have stocks finished last week, largely unchanged, but not before going on a roller coaster ride last week. The market, as measured by the SP 500, fell 2.1% Tuesday, its largest daily decline since October. This is as President Trump threatened those tariffs that we talked about on some European countries in a bid to rest control of Greenland from Denmark. Stock spent the rest of the week recouping most of those losses as President Trump backed off those threats during his speech Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Greenland. So with Greenland on the sidelines for now, investors can look ahead to a big week of earnings this week as about 20% or one-fifth of the S P 500 companies will report earnings, including four of the magnificent seven. For example, Boeing and General Motors will report tomorrow, followed by Meta, Microsoft and Tesla on Wednesday, Apple MasterCard Visa on Thursday, and oil giants Chevron and ExxonMobil on Friday. That's just the name of few. This week we will also see the Federal Open Market Committee announce its monetary policy decision on Wednesday. Anticipation is muted for this meeting as the central bank is widely expected to keep the Fed funds rate unchanged. Nevertheless, Wall Street will be eager to hear from Jerome Powell now in his final months as Fed chair for clues on how long the Federal Reserve plans to hold rates steady. In fact, Chairman Powell, who you may think of somewhat as a lame duck, tension on him will probably be amongst the highest out of any Fed meeting because of all of the machinations taking place back and forth between Chairman Powell and the Trump administration, as well as the question on whether or not Chairman Powell will stay on after he is no longer the Fed chairman, well, whether or not he will keep his seat on the board of the Fed. Typically, when a Fed chair steps down, or is in this case not renominated, they do not stay on. But they do not have to not stay on. So if Fed Chair Powell could stay on the Board of Governors, he could keep his vote at central bank decisions going forward, and given that he was previous Fed chair, the potential is that he could still have significant influence on other Fed governors, this is a scenario that President Trump is clearly not happy with. So investors and market participants will all be looking for clues as to not only what Chairman Powell has to say about the current economic environment, but what he has to say about the future because he still may potentially be a part of the future at the Federal Reserve. So last week we had a lot of global turmoil. We had the uncertainty with respect to the U.S. and how the difference of opinions between the U.S. and our NATO allies with respect to Greenland were going to be resolved, and Barron's suggesting that after a week of global turmoil and talk, that perhaps nothing was resolved. We had Mark Carney, I mentioned the speech he gave, some of the words here we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition, that the International Rules Order under American hegemony, which he said helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, and a stable financial system, collective security and support for resolving disputes, that this system that was in place is a system that he thinks no longer applies in the world. Order and therefore that a new world order is evolving, and what I think he said was nostalgia is is not a strategy, so you better recognize that things are changing and adapt appropriately. The deal, so to speak, between Greenland deal, quote unquote, despite coming to some sort of some sort of general agreement that it does not address the broader issue of the growing mutual distrust and disagreements between the U.S. and Europe over each's responsibility to the other, and this is one of the factors that the financial markets need to pay a lot of attention to because the Europeans and the Americans have tremendous amount of interrelationship between their economies and their financial systems and the amount of tremendous amount of assets that the U.S. investors have invested in Europe. U.S. companies the European market is a sizable market for lots of geo-international companies here in the United States, and Europeans, of course, are big consumers of American goods, and Europeans are big investors in America, and we talked about that last week, and any divestment, which at the moment doesn't appear to be a tremendous likelihood at the moment, but what what is potential is that European investors will, with future capital, seek to potentially diversify away from the U.S. So the marginal buying from the Europeans could be diminished as they seek to buy goods and services elsewhere. So the big stories this morning, of course, the evolving events in Minnesota. Immigration agents shot and killed Alex Paretti, 37-year-old nurse and U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, second fatal shooting by federal agents in the city since the White House sent ICE agents to the state, and there has been significant opposition from local lawmakers. We talked about the storm that many who are on this call are digging out from, sweeping across the country and prompting more than 20 states to make emergency declarations. We will see an effect in travel stocks, airlines waiving change and cancellation fees at dozens of airports, cutting thousands of flights. Another commodity that is soaring this morning, this is more due to the weather, is natural gas. Amidst tremendous demand for natural gas, hundreds of thousands of folks have lost power, especially in the South. Power prices spiked as demand in Virginia, home to the highest number of data centers in the world, came in stronger than expected. Speaking of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, he said that the country has, quote, unquote, no intention of inking a free trade deal with China one day after President Trump threatened a 100% tariff on Canada if it struck a deal with Beijing. Carney told reporters that Canada respects its obligations under the Canada-U.S. Mexico trade agreement and won't pursue a deal with China without telling the other two parties. In the Truth Post, Truth Social Post on Saturday, Trump referred to Kearney as a governor in reference to his past calls for Canada to become a U.S. state. Other companies in the news this morning, core weave up about 10% after NVIDIA said it will invest an additional $2 billion. In a major tech deal, IonQ is set to acquire Chipmaker Skywater Technology for $1.8 billion. Shares of USA Rare Earth surged 20% following reports that the U.S. government plans to inject $1.6 billion into the company for a 10% stake. And oil is dipping slightly to around $65,65 after reports that OPEC Plus plans to maintain steady output despite disruptions from winter storm here in the United States. Alright, moving on to Barons. Talk about a couple of individual stocks mentioned. First one I'm going to mention was in the Barons Roundtable. I mentioned two stocks and one theme from the round table. They mentioned many, many stocks, just picking the ones I thought were the most interesting to me. First one is Axia Energia. Symbol is Apple X-ray Ida Apple A XIA. It is a Brazilian company. Some of you may know it. It was previously called Electrobas, Electrobras in Brazil. The company was privatized a few years ago, which means there should be a continuous operational improvements now that it's public again. So it was turned into a private company and now publicly traded, and now they are improving the company as the government of the state had a significant hand in how it was run, and some would argue maybe it wasn't run super efficiently. It is a big player in hydropower. this idea is coming from Rajiv Jain in Barons. He said the stock is trading for 11 to 12 times earnings with an 8% dividend. That has changed a little bit since he said that back in early January. The stock has moved up from nine at that point, it's now at around eleven, so the PE ratio is higher and the dividend yield is somewhat lower, but nevertheless still elevated. He said that they think they can grow earnings at the AXIA Energia by double digits. This is Brazil's largest electric company, and he said it is uniquely positioned to benefit from a Brazilian power market that is increasingly volatile. It also has, he says, an underappreciated transmission business that controls 40% of the national transmission network. Much of it is aging, and he says it's positioned at the center of a multi-year regulated reinvestment cycle as grid bottlenecks become the primary constraint on the system reliability. Also, he said he likes tobacco stocks. He said they have pricing power, they generate strong cash flow, and that a significant portion of revenue is now coming from smokeless products that have shown strong volume growth. One he likes at this time is British American tobacco. The symbol is boy Tom Ida, BTI, trading around 56. That's at about 12 times earnings, and that stock has a roughly 6% dividend yield. The country theme that Baron's discussed in the round table came from Abby Joseph Cohn, formerly chief strategist at Goldman Sachs. Last year she had country recommendations in Japan and South Korea, both perform well. this year she's suggesting investors focus on India, recommending two ETFs to participate in the Indian stock market. The iShares MSCI India ETF symbol is INDA, IDA Nancy Delta Apple, and the iShares India 50 symbol INDY, like Indy, like the Indy 500, as two possibilities. Both are dominated by a few large companies, but INDY is more concentrated. She said basically she doesn't have a strong preference for either. If you want more diversification, then INDA. If you like the concentration, then INDY. Company mentioned in a separate article in Barron's positively was AIG, used to be known as the American Insurance Group, now known as AIG, large insurance company. Shares dropped in January. Barron saying the stock is a buy. The stock dropped 7% in early January as the current CEO, who's 59 years old, announced his departure. Analysts had thought highly of him and his turnaround plan, and this led to a further drop in the shares of AIG, and now as of Friday, that had led to a 14% year-to-date decline in the stock. Barron's feeling the sell-off is overdue. AIG is trading below its book value of $75 per share, and it's trading about nine times forward earnings at discount to its peer. This is at a time when AIG is aiming to boost earnings per share by 20% over the next couple of years, and recently having increased its dividend by 12.5%. Some of the competitors to AIG, like Travelers, Chubb, and Hartford, trade at 1.7 times to 2 times book value. Again, AIG roughly one time. AIG is at around 9 times forward earnings per share, which is also a discount to their competitors. Recently, AIG laid out some ambitious financial goals and new CEO suggesting that they can still reach or achieve those goals. They are looking to boost earnings per share by 20% annually over the next three years, boosting their dividend by 10% a year and cutting their expense ratio to under 30% of premium revenue. AIG's expected earnings are expected to be up 40% in 25, 12% in 2026. The stock is now yielding around 2.5%. And there's also the possibility, although not necessarily the probability, of a takeover as AIG is trading at a lower multiple than its competitors. Chubb had expressed some interest in AIG before. So we started this conversation today. We talked about the metals, and Barron specifically talked about silver, how it's gone ballistic, they call it, surging over 200% in the past year, today alone up 8%, at least at the start of this call, up 34% in January, again before today's 8% move. Industrial demand for silver is now about 20% as now about 60% of its total demand, rising due to its use in electronics, electric vehicles, and AI data centers. Silver is subject to supply shortages because silver isn't mined directly, but is created as a byproduct of mining other metals. So you're typically not mining specifically for silver, but for lead, zinc, and copper. So therefore, a rise in the price of silver doesn't immediately translate into an increase in supply. In other words, the price goes parabolically or ballistically higher. Suddenly, silver mining companies say, hey, let's mine more silver. Well, they they're not in the business necessarily of mining silver, they're in the business of mining other things and and capturing the silver as they do it. So recently, the demand for silver over the last seven or eight years has outstripped supply every year for the last eight years. In fact, last year the deficit was 18%, and another shortfall is likely this year. But these solid fundamentals, Baron says, don't come close to explaining silver's rise, and they say nor are they likely to help much when the froth fizzles. So compared with gold, silver is a volatile small cap stock, about $33 trillion of gold trades hands every day. Silver $5.3 trillion, making it more susceptible to very big price swings like we are seeing now. Another technical indicator to keep your eye on is flashing red, Baron says. In May before the start of silver's big rally, the ratio of gold to silver, it took 100 ounces of silver to buy one ounce of gold. The 50-year average is around 65, so silver was trading a lot cheaper than it historically has. But today that ratio is now below 65. It's at 51. That's the lowest ratio in more than a decade, despite gold being in a historic bull run. Now none of this means that silver won't keep rising. Investors in the U.S. tend to own the metal through ETFs, like the $50 billion iShare Silver Trust, symbol SLV, and retail and institutional investors have been have been plowing money into SLV, pushing silver holdings in the ETF to 1.33 billion ounces at the end of last year. That's up from 1.04 billion ounces in 2024. And ETFs typically don't move silver out of London, but the physical silver that they acquire becomes unavailable to other traders helping create a squeeze in pushing up prices, which is where you're seeing. So think of a huge warehouse where there's silver and a portion of it's allocated to an ETF, a portion of it's allocated to other investors. Even though the silver is moving around in the warehouse, it's typically not moving much outside of the warehouse. Many advisors are cautioning against buying at today's prices. When the market turns, prices can fall hard and fast. The big question is what is a fair value for silver? Very few are suggesting that silver will fall below 20 where it was back in November of 22. If you use the traditional ratio of silver to gold, which is 65, if you were to use that ratio, well, silver, which is pushing 100, would trade closer to 74. So while no one knows whether or not silver will pull back, if, when, where, or or ever. Nevertheless, by historical standards, it is elevated. So if you're looking at initiating a position or if you currently have a position, it's something you may want to consider. Last and final thought of the day, this is something that applies to your data security and something you may want to think of when you're thinking of investments in cybersecurity stocks, and that is that we are hearing a lot about AI agents, the agentic force out there. What are AI agents? Well, AI agents are agents that you are allowing into your world. You are letting AI, when if you want to use AI and you want AI to become personalized, you are allowing through tools, whether it's through companies like Microsoft or OpenAI or Alphabet's Gemini or countless other Salesforces, agentic products, Workdays products, ServiceNows products, all of these companies work and produce good AI because they have good access to your data. They're looking at your email, they're looking at your search and web history, they're looking at your internal corporate documents and databases in order to be able to provide you with intelligent feedback. But because you are giving them this access, bad AI, bad AI agentic agents could potentially penetrate your network and have access to these same information and tools and see how you operate and use that against you. And this is in fact what is starting to happen. The bad actors are using agentic AI just like the good actors are in order to penetrate your networks and potentially start running you or your business in a way that you do not intend. So intention has turned to cybersecurity companies that can potentially identify bad actors on your network. Some are Okta and CyberArc. these are these are products that define who each user is and what their permissions are, and to give agents permissions just like people, what they can see, what they can't see, limiting their ability to potentially wreak havoc, not allowing agents to have access to the entire system, , but limiting agents' ability to to operate with within your within your network. So this is a rapidly evolving landscape when it comes to agenic agents that will require a multifaceted approach and constant adaptation. The shift from human-centered security to agent security is an inflection point in the cybersecurity business. Inflection points are opportunities for incumbents like Okta and CyberArc and CrowdStrike, who has been very aggressive trying to meet the challenges here, Palo Alto Network as well, which recently agreed to buy CyberArc specifically for their identity identity skills. Nevertheless, these existing companies could face challenges from startups without legacy baggage and their ability to rethink information security in an agent-first world and possibly leapfrog industry mainstays, so potential significant opportunities for cybersecurity companies, also potential opportunity for cybersecurity startups to compete with existing companies. But the biggest factor here is think about your business, your security, what is it that you have allowed through some of these portals onto your network, and are you probably properly protected if somebody else were to get through those portals within your universe? And this is the new world of cybersecurity that that we are currently living in and that is developing. That's everything I've got.

Alan Eppers 38:47

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 39:05

Opinions expressed herein are subject to change and not necessarily the opinion of the firm. Past 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.