Wedbush's 5 AI Picks, a Bit of Precious Metal Panic, Boeing's Big Night

Good morning, gang. I have had issues with my internet service all night and am working off an old hot-spot with a less than a half-juiced battery. I tell you this in case I end up having to shorten this morning's missive or if you end up receiving something that looks incomplete. As it is, I am about an hour behind where I normally want to be as the 04-hour wounds down. Onward.

There was a bit of profit-taking evident on Monday that really did not amount to all that much, at least for equities when one considers that there was an attempted rally late in the regular session and just how low the trading volume was. While Monday's aggregate trade totals were up sharply on a day-over-day basis from the lack of activity on Friday, Monday was still the second quietest full-day session for all of 2025.

The pressure was most felt across the financials as the silver trade, along with the gold trade, experienced significant pressure at the top of their respective charts. Front-month silver futures gave up 8.7% for the session as the iShares Silver Trust ETF  (SLV)  gave back 7.2%. Front month gold futures surrendered 4.5% on Monday as the SPDR Gold Shares ETF  (GLD)  lost 4.4%. Front-month platinum and palladium futures plunged as well. The catalyst? Primarily, exchange operator CME Group  (CME)  increased margin requirements (announced over the weekend in a note to traders) across a wide range of metals contracts.

Additionally, supposed progress on peace talks in eastern Europe pressured precious metals as well as rumors that up and down Wall Street that a bank or banks, possibly a systemically important European bank or banks, had been caught on the wrong side of the silver trade. So far, no hard news there. As night melts into morning, silver futures have rallied more than 5% overnight while SLV is up 2.5%. Gold is also up small at this time.

The Broader Marketplace

The scare that ran across the universe of precious metals spread to other markets, but not to the same degree of panic. Equities traded lower, but not overwhelmingly so. U.S. Treasury debt securities found a bid as the yields for the Ten-Year and Two-Year Notes dropped two basis points and one basis point respectively.

Obviously, the KBW Banks were hit the most severely for the day, surrendering 1.1%. Among large cap banks, Deutsche Bank  (DB)  gave up 2.6%, while Citigroup  (C) , which has more international exposure than some of the other large U.S. banks, lost 1.9%. Looking at the majors, the Nasdaq composite backed up 0.5% on the day on Monday while the S&P 500 lost 0.35%. The small- and mid-cap indexes all lost between 0.44% and 0.61%.

While Energy  (XLE)  was the hot sector on Monday and led performance among the 11 S&P sector SPDR ETFs at +0.95%, it was a day for the defensive funds. Only four of those 11 funds closed out the day in the green, with three of them being defensive in nature. The Discretionaries  (XLY) , and obviously the Materials  (XLB) , were the day's losers.

Breadth was weak, but not pitiful. Losers beat winners by a five-to-three margin at the NYSE and by a rough seven to three at the Nasdaq. Advancing volume took a 40.8% share of composite Nasdaq-listed trade and a 39.8% share of composite NYSE-listed trade. As mentioned above, your trades still count, but trading volume was technically inconsequential. I see no meaningful technical damage left on the chart of the S&P 500 from Monday's activity. The Ascending Triangle pattern is still relevant, and the index is still trading well above all of its key moving averages. Both relative strength and the daily Moving Average Convergence Divergence are still in good shape.

Nice Group, According to Wedbush

Analysts at Wedbush led by Dan Ives, who is a well-known AI-bull, released its list of five stocks to play in the artificial intelligence space in addition to Nvidia  (NVDA)  in 2026. Ives, by the way, is rated at five stars out of five by TipRanks, which is a service I rely heavily upon myself. The list includes long-time Sarge faves Palantir Technologies  (PLTR)  and CrowdStrike Holdings  (CRWD)  as well as former Sarge-fave Microsoft  (MSFT) . Ives rounded out the list with Apple  (AAPL)  and Tesla  (TSLA) .

Regular readers already know that I have replaced Microsoft in my portfolios going forward with Amazon  (AMZN) . On Palantir, Wedbush wrote on the company's impressive growth in both commercial and government sales and sees the company on track to eventually reach a market cap of $1 trillion. PLTR currently trades at a rough market valuation of $439 billion. Wedbush sees TSLA trading at a market cap of $2 trillion early in 2026 and possibly $3 trillion by year's end. The current market valuation for TSLA stands a little above $1.5 trillion.

As for CrowdStrike, Ives and company wrote, "We believe the Street is underestimating the growth potential for CrowdStrike with cybersecurity remaining a second/third derivative beneficiary of the AI revolution."

Get Fired Up for CES

Santa? Better than Santa. CES 2026 is coming next week. The annual event in Las Vegas, long considered one of the premier annual tech conferences in the world, will run from Jan. 6 through Jan. 9, with a kick-off event on Monday, Jan. 5. The event, once known as the Consumer Electronics Show, is run by the Consumer Technology Association.

Word has come down that both Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Advanced Micro Devices  (AMD)  CEO Lisa Su will make presentations at the Monday event. Expect a lot of talk about robotics, data centers, GPU architecture and release schedules. Mostly boring stuff. Yeah, boring stuff that will move these stocks. Giddy up.

Big Night for Boeing

Let's go down the list:

1) Five-star rated analyst Ivan Feinseth of Tigress Finanial, whom I greatly respect, reiterated his "buy" rating on Boeing  (BA) , while initiating a $275 target price. Is Feinseth good? In my opinion, he's one of the very best that there is.

2) Boeing was awarded a ceiling $8.58 billion un-definitized contract to work on the Israeli Air Force F-15 program. The deal provides for 25 new F-15IA fighter aircraft with an option for another 25 new fighters. The work will be done in Missouri and is expected to be completed by the end of the year 2035. The U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center is the contracting agency.

3) Boeing was awarded a ceiling $4.2 billion modification to an existing contract for E-4B logistics service. The modification brings the total cumulative face value of the contract from a ceiling of $1.5 billion to a ceiling of $4.2 billion. The work is expected to be completed by the end of the year 2027. The U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center is again, the contracting agency.

Economics 

(All Times Eastern)

08:55 - Redbook (Weekly): Last 7.2% y/y.

09:00 - Case-Shiller HPI (Oct): Expecting 1.1% y/y, Last 1.4% y/y.

09:00 - FHFA HPI (Oct): Expecting 0.1% m/m, Last 0.0% m/m.

09:45 - Chicago PMI (Dec): Expecting 39.5, Last 36.3.

1:00 p.m. - Baker Hughes Total Rig Count (Weekly): Last 545.

1:00 - Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count (Weekly): Last 409.

4:30 - API Oil Inventories (Weekly, Dec 26): Last +2.4MM.

The Fed 

(All Times Eastern)

2:00 - FOMC Minutes.

Today's Earnings Highlights 

(Consensus EPS Expectations)

No significant quarterly earnings scheduled.

At the time of publication, Guilfoyle was long NVDA, PLTR, CRWD, AMZN, AMD equity.