Gold and Silver Party Like It’s 1979 and the Retail Winners This Holiday Season 12/26/25

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0:51The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC. Live from the NASDAQ market site in the heart of New York City's Times Square, this is Fast Money. Here's what's on tap tonight. Ho, hi, new hi, silver. Silver soaring again. What is behind the move, and is it too late for you to get in? Also, a real-time retail roundup. How is spending so far, and which stores may be winning? And that is not all. We'll talk about NVIDIA making its biggest deal ever, the oil stocks that could benefit from crude oil moves, whether the suboptimal year for Bitcoin will turn very profitable next year, the CEO of SwanBitcoin is here, as are we.

1:41Hi, everybody. I am Brian Sullivan, in for Melissa tonight, coming to you live from Studio B at the NASDAQ. And on your desk, Tim Seymour, Bono and Eisen, as well as Fairlead Strategies co-founder and managing partner, Katie Stockton, CIBC's head of equity and portfolio strategy, Chris Harvey. A hearty thank you to all of you. And to you, young man. Yes. This is a long day for you. But you know what? And we love it. It ends on a high note. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. It will. It ends on a high note. And you know what else ended on a high note today? Silver. That was a good transition.

2:16Yes. We are not starting with stocks. Instead, Tim, for you, we're going heavy metal. Love that. Because the medal is partying like the days of jean shorts and ACDC. And Don Dockin. Don Dockin. Ronnie James Dio. Never been mentioned. 1979. Gold and silver both hitting more records. We are just days away from closing out the year. And if unless something weird happens, we'll have the best year for silver and gold in nearly 50 years. Both medals smashing the major stock averages as well this year. Gold is up more than 70%. But silver says hold my beer. It's up 160 % since January. Many of the miners are doing even more.

2:57Heckler Mining, Anglo Gold, New Gold, Newmont, many others, just some of the stocks that have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled this year. So, Tim, we start with a simple question. Yeah. Well, what's behind this move? What's going on? Yeah, and where do you think it could go from here? Well, I think it certainly could go down in terms of the volatility in the space. But I it's hard to come up with new ways to say the same thing for something that's been going on for three years. It just happens to be in crescendo right now. And it happens to be coming at a time when I think there's some some real industrial use dynamics there at work here.

3:35But more importantly, I think there's there's speculation and there is absolutely some supply disruption. So the thing that's probably more fascinating that we'll get into the conversation is to me where copper is. And, you know, Dr. Copper historically has been an economic parameter. But gold and silver are truly a function of where central bank diversification, where concern on Federal Reserve policy, where concern on today, I think, you know, most people are talking to just global geopolitical, I should say, instability as being the other dynamic that really triggered things today. Layer in exchange traded funds, retail activity and a light volume day.

4:12and you get the kind of move which feels blow off topish, except for the fact that I wouldn't run too far from these trades. And it's not about, hey, you know, I've been saying this for three years, but the things that are at work here are not changing as we go into 26. The question is, what's the fair value for gold? There's three other smart people here that could probably give you a better view than I can. But I wouldn't run far from the gold trade. I think silver is overdone. I think gold-silver ratios are things you see traders trade all the time. And I think this silver move is somewhat unexplainable.

4:43It is. So this is a really interesting point, as always, that you bring up, good sir, which is the fair value on gold, your fair lead strategies, Katie. But, by the way, when I said, how do you fairly value gold when there are no earnings? There really are, and I'm sorry to all the dentists out there, no industrial uses for gold except for the gold. Are you getting silver in your mouth? Because I'm not getting a lot of silver. No, but you use it in semiconductors. So you said dentists. Gold, well, gold teeth. People always come at me when I say that. Your grills. No, no. Well, who can afford gold teeth now?

5:13But you get my point, Bono. And how do we value gold when there are no earnings? There's no multiples to base this off of. Fair enough. I hear what you're saying in terms of there being limited fundamentals of the way that you would kind of discount cash flows from an operating company or something of that nature. But the truth of the matter is that it trades somewhat on perception. It trades so much somewhat on perception around our central bank. And I think there has been a lot of discussion. Tim mentioned it already around kind of that independence and the rhetoric that is likely to come out in the latter half of this year.

5:45I think you've also I mean, we've forgotten to mention that you've seen Bitcoin really come off. And that was supposed to be the new perhaps store of value. That hasn't proven to be the case. You've seen a lot of correlation between risk, high beta names, as well as Bitcoin. So I think gold still has its perceived store of value. Now, whether or not it has its own earnings, it still is something that has been there. And at the end of the day, people feel like they can put their hand on something tangible. You have some central banks that have kind of eschewed the U.S. Treasury, longer-dated type of bonds.

6:14You've seen some, you know, quite a bit of volatility on the back end of the curve there. So, yeah, your point is very well taken. There's no arguing. Again, it's a factual statement. It's at 25 times earnings on gold because there are no earnings on gold, Katie. That's kind of the point. I think to Bono's point, and we're going to get to more on Bitcoin later, so don't go too down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. But the move on silver and gold has felt, dare I say, Bitcoin-ish. When we're seeing 5 % and 7 % moves on a metal that may or may not have an industrial use, that's almost, it sounds a little speculative.

6:50Well, especially silver up 11 % today alone, which is really astounding. Both metals have very strong positive momentum. And sometimes, honestly, that's all it takes. It's just a sentiment story, and sentiment is obviously very, very bullish, not even just around gold and silver, platinum, palladium. They all look pretty good on the charts. We don't have any sell signals yet, and gold actually had a pretty recent breakout from a triangle formation within the context of its long-term uptrend. So it did consolidate. It did have that pause to refresh. Silver, on the other hand, has gone, I'd say, parabolic.

7:25And when that happens, it does put you on guard for some kind of pivot point or loss of momentum. So we're minding the gaps on that chart. The gap today was about 73.73. Below that, it starts to look a little toppy. But we have this really interesting breakout in the ratio of gold to silver, or silver to gold, I should say. The silver breakout, it looks like it could be even sustainable. So longer-term outperformance could be expected from silver, as we've already seen this year. The bottom chart there, the bottom chart is silver versus gold. That's right. And so what are we looking for in that chart?

8:01Pardon my density. It's effectively confirmed a breakout above a previous area of resistance. I know it's a little hard to see. I can't even see it this far, but I think I can draw it. So a nice little breakout above the resistance level. And that tends to generate upside follow through. So we're encouraged by that breakout if you're a silver bull. And it does. It gives us a new asset class. It has great momentum to take advantage of. Chris, have you noticed an uptick in your clients asking about the precious metals? So now I'm not just a head of equity strategy in the U.S., but also Canada. And I've talked more about gold in the last five weeks than I have in the last five years.

8:39Canadians, I mean, first off, almost every one of these miners is headquartered in Toronto. That's right. They trade in the TSX or Montreal or Vancouver. And there's just that love of sort of the commodity country that is Canada. That's right. And so people are really bulled up to just to go on the back of what Katie's saying. Hey, the chart looks good. If you look at retail investors, retail investors, what do they do? They're buying what works. Right. Bitcoin no longer works. So let's pile into gold. Let's pile into silver. Right. To Tim's point, there's been a crescendo. That crescendo was in really the marginal drivers.

9:14What's driving this? Well, Fed Fed funds came down 75 basis points this year. We had the big, beautiful bill passed. We had an exceptional amount of fiscal accommodation over in Europe, but also up in Canada. I don't think you're going to get the same kind of accommodation next year. And so I think it does make sense that we probably have a consolidation the first half of next year. And the one thing about momentum is it works until it doesn't. When you have a point of inflection, they're pretty, they're not pleasant. Let's put it like that. I think and so Chris is also bringing up the part of the story when people talk about gold miners in Canada and they talk about a lot of the trading that's gone on historically.

9:53It hasn't always been associated with things that have felt good to investors. And I'll just put it that I just say that a lot of the training in mining stocks that have gone on. And it's not I love Canada and I love what they're doing up there and tons of Canadian friends. But trading up in the Toronto exchanges and gold miners historically has been often fraught with a lot of, let's call them, widowmaker trades up there. I think gold's going to 6 ,000 by 28. I think it's probably going even higher. I think the dynamic around trading in gold, both because of less industrial, but because of central bank, because of asset class dynamics.

10:28Morgan Stanley at times has been out there and saying 20 percent gold. I think having a diversified PGM's portfolio, and you can do that through the GLTR. We've talked about that on the show. That's something that gives you kind of the weighting across precious metals that I think you're supposed to have. It's kind of like the dollar index of currency weightings for precious metals. But I think the reason why gold is moving higher is a combination of, first of all, the dollar, I think, is continuing weaker. Inflation continues higher. Central banks continue diversifying. diversifying. Geopolitics continue to be unsteady, if not get a little bit worse in the last couple weeks.

11:04These are all reasons why I think gold is going to continue to go higher. I have less of a view on silver and I have less of a view on the relationship between EVs and industrial and AI and silver. What's interesting is that some of the biggest AI bulls and skeptics out there who are saying this is a bubble are the ones that are saying, go buy gold. And I think that's also a little concerning. I think there's a bubblicious nature to some of this trade. But the fundamentals that have had gold moving, not for one year, not two years, but outperforming a bull market since October of 22, which has been the greatest bull market of all time, is real.

11:39And it's something we've been talking about for a long time. So I know on days like today, it's easy to get sensational on a light volume day. But I think what everyone here is saying, there's real stuff behind these moves. I'm just not sure I'm chasing silver today. Yeah, I hear you're on the gold trader. And again, no pushback there. Kind of bringing the conversation full circle back to silver. I do think the point that you make about the AI adjacent trade is very pertinent here. And I think you always have people, particularly on the retail side, but frankly, even those that have missed out on those runs, you're looking for some type of corollary in order to kind of put your hat in that AI race and that the industrial nature of silver, the semi-use.

12:17Because the conductivity, it's highly electrical. Correct. Right. And you've already seen the run-up in the chips. You've seen the run-up in cloud. You've seen the run-up in the utilities. What's the next thing where you can kind of... It's like a third derivative AI move. There you go. It's silver. There you go. Also, by the way, heavily used in solar cells. So if you're, and if you, by the way, bring up silver and first solar, the stock, I'll bet you they track because the use in solar and the connectivity and conductivity of silver. To your point, you'd rather own the opco. What's that? You'd definitely rather own first solar.

12:48I mean, playing that kind of correlation. Versus silver, the commodity? Correct. To your very first point, you actually have an opco there that is utility-grade. You can value the earnings. Absolutely. But look at industrial metals, too. I mean, look at the real industrial metals. Look at copper. I mean, copper is making all-time highs. Look at that COPEX ETF that we talk about, the gold and copper miners. And many of those miners are the same miners. Some of them have to be gold miners first, gold miners second. But if you're Freeport, for example, you're in both spaces, and Freeport's actually lagged the move in the copper miners.

13:17You said you were going to get the copper and you are a man of your word. Well, it's, you know, thank you, Brian. Someone recognizes that. So maybe, folks, you did miss the big metals trade. That's OK. We hope that you've been invested in stocks. And if you're watching or listening to Fast Money, we assume that you are. Those investments have also done very well. More record highs earlier today for the market turnaround a little bit. But to Tim's earlier point, very, very low volume. day. It's actually a federal holiday today. But we're about ready to wrap. Are we getting paid double time for this then?

13:52I hope so. Yeah. I hope so. We're about ready to end the third year of this remarkable rally with double digit gains three years in a row. That's nice. But let's focus on next year as well. Bring in Ben Emmons. He is founder and chief investment officer at FedWatch Advisors. Ben, I saw you on the other screen sort of listening intently to our industrial metals discussion, it kind of all rolls into the Fed, which I think, correct me if I'm wrong, will be a big part of the discussion in the first half of 2026. What is your expectation for, well, everything? That is right, Brian. I think that it's really the Fed will drive a lot of it initially because we're going to get a new Fed chair announced and we're going to get the Lisa Cook case, you know, some sort of resolution on that.

14:42And then we have the FOMC meeting, and we have the market price up immediately for a rate cut. So there's a lot pending up there. And I think to the discussion about gold, the one other reason why gold is up so much is the fact that the moment the Fed came out with its meeting in December, gold just took off. And that was actually also related, I think, to the real interest rate, the funds rate, the counterinflation that continues to slowly decline. That's another big power behind gold. So it is the Fed that's driving here a lot with also its liquidity that's restarted, too. Like we're going to get a report today that shows the Fed's balance sheet is continues to expand.

15:19So I think there's another big story next year, Brian, that as that balance sheet starts to expand, it will affect broader markets. We're going to get the announcement at some point on who the next Fed chair nominee, because they've got to be confirmed, will be. We've narrowed it down. Steve Leesman's done a great job. There's four or five really sort of final candidates. Do you care? Does the market care? Is there one candidate, one of the two Kevins, a Rick Reeder, maybe somebody else that would be better or worse for the equity markets? Well, I think there's an interesting take to give there, Brian, because you take Rick Reeder.

15:57I mean, he's like us. He's a portfolio manager. He's a trader. You know, someone with that type of background, when he was talking to Scott Wagner on one of his interviews, he really talked about like how to use the balance sheet in a more creative way to stimulate the economy and affect F.O. markets. So he could be a really good friend of the markets. But in the case of Kevin Walsh or Kevin Hassett, that's a very different story. Think back of April when Kevin Hassett was out there on the wire saying that the administration was looking to remove Powell. The market really gyrated on that against Kevin Walsh, who's very much against QE.

16:33He's not very sure about this balance sheet expansion. So I think the word's still out on how the market will respond to who will be announced next. I think big leaders truly a friend of the markets. Kevin, that could be a different story. Hey, Ben. So let's talk about this dynamic of also the political cycle and just where you think that the need to be politically in vogue, which means actually stimulative is something that will also push pressure on gold down in the dollar, but ultimately be limited back to the Fed, who may be at least more influenced at this point going into midterms. I saw your notes.

17:13I think it's fascinating. And I think it's part of a cycle that says some of these trades that we're just talking about are going to continue. And also a steeper yield curve. I'm curious what you think also why the curve is steepening in the way it is. I understand a bull steepening from the short end because of lower rates, but we're also not seeing the long end come down in any way. Yeah, that's right. And I think to start with that, that steeping of the curve, that's very likely to continue. One, as you mentioned, if you're getting more rate cuts and you're getting actually more than what the market's priced in, that will not only bull steepen the curve, meaning shorter rates lower, but it will push up long-term rates.

17:50because if you bring rates down faster, it stimulates the economy. Then we're going to see the investments coming into the economy next year. Japan and the U.S. announced that overnight that they're going to expedite the investment as one first step. So GDP is going to expand. So that could lead to steepening of the curve. And then against that political backdrop that you talked about, the cycle of people playing in the basement trades, they say, through the strength of gold or through silver or even through other type of ways, That, I think, will continue because there is too much uncertainty about how will this Fed share truly function within the FOMC towards the White House.

18:28It's a really different setup, I think, that we're being used to. And we can speculate on this, but I think the market is definitely wary of that. They're trying to price in this different Fed share with a steeper curve and higher gold price. And I think that will continue. Ben Emmons, FedWatch Advisors. Ben, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for coming on. Do appreciate that. Thank you, Brian. I don't want to comment on anything Ben just said. Or do you have a preference, for lack of a better term, on who the next Fed chair is? Not touching that one. Smart. Going back to what Ben said, listen, the debasement trade, I think, is something that you're likely going to see in markets.

19:11There has to be some reconciliation between the fact that we see Fed funds futures pricing in, several rate cuts, And you have Fed governors coming out and saying perhaps it's one, maybe it's two. Not verbatim, but that's what they're intimating. So I think that is what's being expressed in the commodities market right now. All right. Good stuff there. Good conversation. A lot to chew on. All right. We have got a lot more to chew on. We've got another 40-plus minutes left in the show. And coming up, NVIDIA announcing really not a full deal, but largest purchase ever. will explain exactly what they're doing for$20 billion, maybe why they're doing it, what it means for NVIDIA and the AI race.

19:49Plus, we're going off the charts for a closer look. Energy oil, they're kind of stuck in the mud, so to speak. Will it get back above that level? And if so, will we see a move in the oil stocks? Katie's got more on that. We've got a lot more to do. You're watching fast. We're back right after this. Are you as confident as you should be when it comes to growing your business? Is your strategy ready to execute today? If cash flows aren't where they need to be, growth could be at risk, especially in the eyes of your investors, board members, and the business press. But when your business is operating in top shape, you've earned the right to grow.

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21:08But some things stay with me more than others, like the impact of Alzheimer's disease. It's important to think about brain health now because there's so much we want to do. Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment. Learn more at brainhealthmatters.com. This is a paid partnership with Lilly. All right, welcome back to Fast Money. Hope you're having a great Friday wherever you may be. It's Friday, right? Yes. It feels like Monday, Friday. Let's go with the Friday, not the Monday.

21:45NVIDIA shares up a little bit today, about 1%, looking at about a 5 % gain for the week. By the way, for NVIDIA, it's fairly tame. But the latest move comes as NVIDIA puts its cash pile to work, making its largest purchase ever. CNBC's McKinsey Segalos has more on, I guess, the deal that's not quite a deal, but it's kind of a deal. What's the deal? Right. The deal is that NVIDIA just paid$20 billion for a company founded by one of the architects of Google's TPU, the chip that has become NVIDIA's most formidable rival. Grok's founder, Jonathan Ross, helped build Alphabet's in-house AI chip before starting his own company.

22:25And now he's joining NVIDIA, along with the kind of expertise that helped Google land major cloud deals with Anthropic and Meta. So NVIDIA, it is essentially hiring away talent that knows how to compete against them. NVIDIA's cash pile has ballooned to$60 billion, up from$13 billion two years ago. And it has been deploying it across the AI stack. $900 million for Infabrica's CEO in tech. $5 billion to Intel. $100 billion proposed for OpenAI. Plus, back in Crusoe, Cohere, and CoreWeave. Meta, Google, and Microsoft have all used similar structures. Call it a licensing agreement, hire the executives, avoid all the regulatory scrutiny that comes with the full acquisition.

23:05Grok's chips also solve a technical problem for NVIDIA. They keep data on the processor itself rather than relying on high bandwidth memory, a supply chain that's been one of NVIDIA's biggest bottlenecks. Brian? Mackenzie Cigalos, Mac, really appreciate that. Thank you very much. Bono, your take? Yeah, I mean, I think this is very well done. One, she's already touched on the regulatory hurdles that they've circumvented. Two, a lot of the criticism that's been kind of waged against NVIDIA as of late has been that the circular nature of the financing around some of the neoclouds and some of their partnerships.

23:39This here essentially expands their moat or builds a new moat around this TPU and inference process where they already kind of had that leading that leadership advantage when it comes to training and the. Training and the and the software stack. So I think that combined together kind of continues to kind of put them in that leadership position. And frankly, I think they're still finding innovative ways to deploy capital rather than returning a dividend or issuing some type of cash back to shareholders. So I like to see the fact that they are still finding ways to grow. And there's a real use case in terms of ROI.

24:19Well, as someone that I'm long in video and I like the valuation and I think it's interesting here. But I also like to see the price action on a day today when another one of these deals where they've used their balance sheet to whether it's and you're not, Bono. But, I mean, is this circular investing? I don't know. This is clearly an AI infrastructure play in addition to a semiconductor company. And I kind of like this move as well. I mean, it just they can do what they want. This is a rounding error. I mean, we know a 20 billion dollar deal, while largest ever. 20 billion is a rounding error for them, but not for most companies.