Stocks & Markets Podcast: Silver, Gold, Oil, King Dollar, and Small-Caps

We have a jam-packed podcast this week with TheStreet Pro’s Chris Versace and Bob Lang, with almost no stone unturned.

The discussion begins with the impact of winter storm Fern and what the potential Bomb Cyclone known as winter storm Gianna could mean for several parts of the economy. Bob weighs in on oil, and that takes our conversation to Iran, geopolitical tension, and uncertainty, including what’s unfolding in the U.S. about a potential government shutdown this weekend. The two then pivot to clickbait headlines and why investors should be careful not to fall for them.

Bob shares his reaction to the S&P 500 crossing above 7000 as well as silver, gold, and King Dollar. He also gives his take on small-cap stocks, and which Big Tech earnings he’s focusing on this week and next.

And it wouldn’t be a conversation if Chris didn’t provide his thoughts along the way, including why Qorvo’s (QRVO) expected revenue drop confirms our recent exit of a particular chip stock.

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Transcript

CHRIS VERSACE: Hey, folks, Chris Versace here. And it is time once again for us to embark upon the journey known as the Stocks and Markets Podcast. And as you can see on the screen, joining me is our old friend, my good friend, your good friend, Mr. Bob Lang.

And folks, we have a lot to talk about today. We are even coming at to you the day of the Fed policy meeting. Why? Why didn't we wait till after? Well, probably because we don't expect much, but we'll talk about that and so much more in the coming minutes. Bob, as always, my good friend, thank you for joining me.

BOB LANG: Great to be with you, Chris. And of course, across the country here, we've had really poor weather. Up in the Northeast over here, I think we got about 18 to 24 inches of snow, Chris. I know where you live, you got a great deal of snow as well too, maybe a foot, foot and a half. But we got some sunshine today. We're expecting a little bit more snow this weekend. But I think we all made it out safely, most of us did, and ready for the next one.

CHRIS VERSACE: Well, thank you for the weather report, and I will segue with that, because this-- so you were talking about Winter Storm Fern. Now we have Winter Storm Gianna potentially coming at us. And it could be a bomb cyclone, which means pretty intense stuff out there.

BOB LANG: Well, I don't like the name of that, bomb cyclone. That sounds kind of violent, if you ask me.

CHRIS VERSACE: Bob, for somebody who lives in Boston, I thought you were going to pick on the Italians and Gianna.

BOB LANG: [LAUGHS] No, I would never do that. I love the names, though. And we'll see how powerful this storm is. And lately, these ones coming from the Arctic have been pretty wild, pretty widespread. I think this last one spread, Chris, all the way down to Arizona, as far west as Arizona and far east as Maine. So that's almost stretching the whole entire country.

CHRIS VERSACE: It's crazy. Well, I wasn't planning to go down that road, but I'm glad you brought it up. Because as investors, our job is to connect the dots. And when we think about these type of storms, a lot of snow, a lot of cold weather, below freezing temperatures over an extended period of time, that can be a headwind for certain things and a tailwind, of course.

For example, people getting ready. Oh, here comes the storm. I got to go to Costco. I gotta stock up. I do think this will be positive for Costco's January comp sales we'll get next week. But for construction activity, things like that, this is going to be a headwind. And I think we'll see some of that later this week when United Rentals reports. Maybe this is a bit of a headwind for their guidance. I think we'll see it with other construction related companies. And I also think that it's going to be a potential headwind for waste management, because you can't pick up the garbage, Bob, if you're busy fighting off the snow.

So with that, just full disclosure, we did lock in a pretty nice double digit gain today, taking a slice of waste management off in the Pro Portfolio with the street. Reason being they've had a good run. Stock is a little overbought, or as you like to say, Bob, an overbought condition. And we just wanted to do the prudent thing. But Bob, any other sectors that you'd be looking at as it relates to weather related concerns that I might have missed?

BOB LANG: You got to talk about energy. Energy bills are going to be extremely high for some of these residents and so forth. Heating bills. I know natural gas took a tumble yesterday, but I think that's just a result of volatility. Natural gas has been up quite a bit.

We're seeing a very slow rise, Chris, in crude oil prices. Now, that usually happens around the spring time, especially with gasoline, when some of these companies like Valero and Chevron and PSX and ConocoPhillips. What they do is they change their blends and they run down inventories and they change to a spring and summer blend. And that tends to be a natural rise in prices at the pump.

But even with crude prices moving up, Chris, crude is actually up since they talked about Venezuela and then Iran up about 12% since the lows. And that could be a result of a weaker dollar, but it's also a result of the worry and the fear that supply issues may be unaddressed right now.

CHRIS VERSACE: Well, OK, as always, Bob, you give me so many springboards to jump off of. So let's just tick these down a little bit. So rising oil prices, totally get it. But today, I do believe that the President said something on Truth Social about, hey, look out, Iran. And I think we're seeing escalating tensions again between the US and Iran. I think that might explain some of it. We'll have to see. There's some other uncertainties out there. Obviously, the shutdown, the fallout of what happened in Minneapolis, questions over whether the Department of Homeland Security no longer what has been referred to as a quote, "blank check."

I think that last part is weighing on shares of Axon today. We own that in the Pro Portfolio. There is some uncertainty around that. But I would just remind folks, step back, take a deep breath, and remember the end market exposure. Federal is, I believe, low double digits, call it 12%, of Axon's total available market. Not the biggest end market. Meanwhile, all other signs continue to point to AI adoption in public safety. We're going to talk quite a bit about this in the January monthly roundup when we discuss axons. So be on the lookout for that.

But Bob, let's talk about another comment you made, the dollar. Now, a few minutes ago, before we started rolling, you said you had something important to share with folks about the right way to look at the dollar. Let's talk about it.

BOB LANG: So in the short term, Chris and everyone, the dollar tends to have a lot of volatility around it. And that's just normal machinations of the movement of currencies back and forth. When the dollar is weak, obviously the euro and the yen are stronger and vice versa. So when the dollar peaked just a little after the election, Chris, it started to come down a little bit. And that's when we started seeing a little bit more energy coming into these precious metals. And of course, if you've been watching the metals lately, they've gone parabolic, especially silver and gold.

CHRIS VERSACE: (SINGING) Silver and gold.

BOB LANG: Silver and gold. And then right behind them, you got strong moves in platinum and nickel and copper as well too. Doctor Copper is telling you that things could be a little bit dicey down the road over here.

But I'll tell you what. With the strength in these metals, you would think that the dollar would be super weak. And if you look at the daily or the weekly chart, it's much more noisy. And that would be the case. But if you look at a monthly chart, Chris, if you look at the UUP, the dollar from 2014 to where it is today, that's 12 years or 11 years, it's up almost 53%.

So that's not telling me that the dollar currency is weak, especially on a longer time horizon. Shorter term, a lot of volatility and a lot of big movements up and down. But on the long term horizon, I think the dollar is stable. It's strong. And even since 2014, this is when Bitcoin was starting to get real exciting. People were starting to get into that one. Gold was starting to make a move. We've seen the dollar outperform those metals and also the Bitcoin over a short period of time. Lately, absolutely not, but certainly over a long period of time. The dollar is still really, really strong.

CHRIS VERSACE: But correct me if I'm wrong, Bob. Wouldn't the President want to see a bit of a weaker dollar, kind of makes the US goods more competitive in overseas markets?

BOB LANG: Sure, but over a long period of time, Chris, you don't want to see a weak currency. Tells you a lot about your economy. and the economy is weak. So a strong dollar over a long period of time is really where you want it to be. A guy that we both know and have talked with before, Larry Kudlow, has always talked about a strong dollar is--

CHRIS VERSACE: I believe his word-- I don't mean to cut you off, Bob. I believe his words are king dollar.

BOB LANG: King dollar. That's right, king dollar. He wants the currency to be the number one currency in the world. And why not? We're the reserve currency of the world. The dollar should be the strongest currency out there. And people should be jealous that we have the strongest currency out there. So I do think that over a long period of time, it tells you a lot about your economy and tells you a lot about your society. And the strength of the dollar gives us much more buying power elsewhere in the world.

In the short term, sure, I mean, it'll help companies like IBM when the dollar is weak. But it also brings in inflation. And that's the thing. A weaker dollar brings in inflation as well too. So we have to be careful about how much weakness we have in the currency.

CHRIS VERSACE: OK. I got two ways to go coming off that. Gold and silver or the dollar weakness and the Fed. Which way do you want to go?

BOB LANG: Yeah, let's go with the Fed.

CHRIS VERSACE: Let's go with the Fed. All right. So they come out later today. Policy meeting, 2 o'clock. I don't think anybody expects anything. I believe according to the CME FedWatch tool, the next expected rate cut of 25 basis points is sometime in June. I suspect Powell will say the Fed will remain data dependent. Anything you're watching that could tilt that, Bob?

BOB LANG: No, I think that Chair Powell is going to reiterate the fact that, you know what, we're still concerned about a potential rise in inflation. He's going to talk a little bit about the tariffs having some effect on inflation as well too. Core CPI and PCE, you've noted it many times, is stubbornly high and remaining above 2.8, almost 3%.

CHRIS VERSACE: Yeah, exactly. I was just going to say that that November number, the most recent one we got, core PCE on a year over year basis actually ticked higher compared to October. I think we're supposed to get the December one before too long. We'll see what that brings. But as I've shared with folks, if you read the tea leaves of the flash PMI report from S&P Global, it sure sounds like inflation perked up. In January, we'll be getting a lot more data. Next week, as a matter of fact, that might paint a closer picture on that.

OK, so we don't expect anything from the Fed. Back to silver and gold real quick. You mentioned some of the metals going parabolic. Gold and silver, a lot of uncertainty out there. We're positioned for it in the Pro Portfolio with the EPS diplomats. We've got a couple names in there. IM Gold, Pan American Silver.

BOB LANG: King Ross.

CHRIS VERSACE: King Ross. And then one Equinix. Not Equinix. That's a data center company. EGX, I believe. I might be fuzzy on the ticker. So my thought on that is that, yes, gold has been strong, but these higher prices will translate into higher earnings, higher margins for these companies. So I'm not as concerned if we see a little bit of a pullback in gold because, again, compared to where the prices were this time a year ago, still quite elevated. Am I missing anything and/or what do you think about where gold is?

BOB LANG: So as far as the names that we have in the portfolio, these are miners. These are gold miners and you've got one silver miner in there. And what you have to understand is that if these companies are hedged up with currencies versus their gold holdings, they're not going to do quite as well.

It's the companies that are unhedged that are taking advantage of this big rise in both of those precious metals here. And I think the names that we have in the portfolio, Chris, are unhedged. So that's why they're doing extremely well. And they're going to probably show some great profits when they report their earnings this next quarter.

So again, this parabolic move is historic. We haven't seen anything like this, not even back in the late '70s, Chris, when gold hit those all time highs of like $808 an ounce and came back down and spent like a decade and a half in the $200 level, $200 range. People were kept saying, it's going to hit 5,000. They've been saying that for 15 to 20 years and finally got there. And I think it surprised the heck out of everybody when it got up there this past week. But no, I could see-- I think the names that we have in the portfolio are really positioned well to report some good earnings and higher prices.

CHRIS VERSACE: Now, I'm going to make a detour here, because I want to get your view on this. Now, you mentioned that gold for years, oh, 5,000, 5,000. We're finally over that. Now, we're seeing people come out of the woodwork with 6,500, 6,600, 7,000. And I have to sit back when I see this and say, is it possible? Maybe, maybe. A lot can happen in the world.

But I get concerned for individual investors, Bob, because we get these very, and I'm just going to call it for what it is, clickbaity headlines that really try to suck people in. And it can pull people into investments that may have had significant runs. Maybe they're getting a little frothy. At the same time, we're also seeing other clickbaity headlines that I think cause worry.

And I apologize for going back to Axon, but they're right here on my browser, Bob, I have this. Is a headline. I'm not making this up. Axon's nine year winning streak just snapped. Can it get back on track in 2026, question mark? I mean, look, I understand that the nature of the digital publishing business has changed. It's very much advertising driven.

But I think the point here for investors is you need to be really careful about these clickbaity headlines and getting sucked in. Make sure you do the homework, make sure you check the sources. And more times than not, when you read these clickbaity articles, there's really nothing there.

BOB LANG: I really think, Chris, that unfortunately, in this day and age of very heavy and people paying attention to social media, there's just too much misinformation and disinformation out there and deception out there. And I think people are, to a certain extent, using AI models to try and create some interest and create some controversy and some confusion. A lot of confusion out there. You see a lot of it out there every single day.

And I think that that's a problem. You really have to go by the mantra of caveat emptor. You got to be careful what you read and what you see there and just step back a little bit and not get excited. I think it's very easy to get enthusiastic and excited when you see some of these things racing higher, like gold and silver, who everybody wants to get on board. I mean, look, you go back to the 1840s when they had the gold rush back in California. Everybody and their mother was going over there when they heard everybody was mining gold. Well, I mean, we're in 2026. It's no different today than it was 180 years ago.

CHRIS VERSACE: All right. So Bob, you're always a big fan of trivia. I know you try to stump me. I got one for you on gold. Here we go. If you were gold mining in Alaska, what was one of the most valuable items that you could bring along the trail as you were going? Do you know?

BOB LANG: Is it a compass?

CHRIS VERSACE: Eggs.

BOB LANG: Eggs. Interesting. Why is that?

CHRIS VERSACE: Because you got to eat, and they were very transportable.

BOB LANG: Ah, OK, all right.

CHRIS VERSACE: I know.

BOB LANG: Interesting. I mean, if you have a frying pan, I guess that works too.

CHRIS VERSACE: Yeah, I know. And we don't need to talk about how popular the oldest profession was back in those mining camps, but that's a whole other story. Let's move on a little bit. Government shutdown. Going to get it or not?

BOB LANG: I don't know. And if we do, it's just a partial shutdown. And I think if we look at the model from the last shutdown, Chris, that lasted. It was very, very long. And listen, I'm going to admit, I was wrong. I thought basically it would be done after 10 or 12 days, maybe 13 days, because that has been the historic average of how long these shutdowns last. What did it go, about 50 something days or something of that nature?

CHRIS VERSACE: Something like that. Yeah.

BOB LANG: Yeah. So I certainly expected it to be solved earlier. And again, did it have much of an effect on the economy and on the stock market? Not really. I think there was a lot of fear that something like that would happen. Maybe right now there's a lot of complacency in people thinking the same way and saying, oh, you know what, it's not going to be that big of a deal. They'll get a deal done eventually, and we don't have to really worry about this. But the more times that we have these shutdowns over here, Chris, I think it does a lot of damage, certainly, to the psychology and the confidence of investors.

CHRIS VERSACE: I think so. Ultimately, to me, Bob, it comes down to one word, duration. How long is the shutdown? This morning, we started this new piece that we're doing every morning for the Pro Portfolio. Eight items shaping the stock market in our holdings. Today in the Wednesday edition, I mentioned that Polymarkets, at least early this morning, showed a 75% chance of a government shutdown on Saturday.

But I did just mention to you duration. My suspicion is that given everything that's going on in the US regarding Minneapolis and everything else, I do think the Republicans are likely to blink this time around, unlike last time. I just think everything that's going on, it's not really a good look for them. And I think that Democrats could turn around and really use a shutdown on this topic against the Republicans in the midterms. But we'll see. We'll see what happens.

BOB LANG: And guess what? We have these midterms coming up in about, what, 10 months. And it's not far away. I mean, the midterms are November of later this year. And they're holding on to a very slim margin in the House. And we'll see where sentiment is at the time in about 8 or 9 months. But still, I agree with you. I think that this is just something that we need to pay attention to very, very carefully.

CHRIS VERSACE: Well, you mentioned sentiment. That consumer confidence number that we got yesterday for January--

BOB LANG: Terrible.

CHRIS VERSACE: Fell like a stone month over month. Unbelievable. And it's the lowest start of the year I think in 12 years, something like.

BOB LANG: Yeah, since 2014. That's right.

CHRIS VERSACE: So I'm going to amend, just to conclude the whole midterm conversation, I'm going to amend a little bit what Bill Clinton had to say. If you remember, famously, it's the economy, stupid. I think it's more like how are consumers feeling, stupid.

BOB LANG: You can't tell consumers they're feeling stupid.

CHRIS VERSACE: No, I'm not. I'm not. There's a verbal comma in there.

BOB LANG: I know, I know. I'm teasing you.

CHRIS VERSACE: I know. All right, let's move on. So we've covered quite a bit. We still have some more things to cover. I probably should have started this right at the top, but I didn't. S&P 500 pierces through 7,000 retreats today. Big deal, not a big deal, Bob? You tell me.

BOB LANG: Not a big deal. I think markets have been strong this week. We're heading into the end of January. We have, what, 2 and 1/2 more, 2 more trading days left to go before January is in the books. And I seem to recall last time we talked about these anecdotes for the calendar--

CHRIS VERSACE: Here we go. Here we go.

BOB LANG: Well, we had the Santa Claus rally the first five days of January as January goes. And I think I might have told you the most important one of them all is how January goes, because when January is strong, it means the rest of the year is probably going to be strong. So last year, we had a negative Santa Claus rally. In fact, the previous 2 years, '24 and '25, also were negative.

But when you look at January, overall, it was a strong month last year. And even though we had that huge dip from February into April with, what was that, liberation day in early April, we still had that dip. We still bounced back strong and had a good finish into the end of 2025. S&P 500 up about 16%. So that was real strong.

But I will tell you, Chris, the thing that's impressive to me, small caps. Small cap stakes. Look at the Russell 2000. Do you know how much they're up in 2026? Almost double digits, Chris, almost 10%. It's truly remarkable. And small cap stocks, the Russell 2000 universe, it tends to carry the rest of the market with it. Now, obviously, you've got this Mag Seven group that's basically an outlier here. But then the rest of the market seems to get carried upwards or downwards by the small cap stocks.

So with the strength of the Russell 2000 over the past several weeks, I mean, Chris, it's on a pace to go up 120% in 2026. It's obviously not going to happen, but it's at that pace to do that kind of performance. It's stunning. But there's a lot of gold stocks in there. There's a lot of silver stocks in small caps, and they're probably driving a lot of the action.

CHRIS VERSACE: Well, I would just say the EPS diplomats, Bob, also up double digits, at least as of last night's close. But you just mentioned the Mag Seven. Again, a nice springboard for me. Big week this week. We have Meta, Microsoft, and Apple reporting. Which of the three, in your opinion is the most important one to watch?

BOB LANG: I think Meta is the one to watch here. I think that they got hammered in October after their last earnings report, because Mark Zuckerberg basically opened up the company's checkbook and said, we're going to write big, fat checks and we're going to spend a lot of money. We don't care what you think. And the market didn't like it.

Now, a couple of years ago, he said the same thing and the market liked it. And then they came back and said, you know what? We're not spending very much. And the market didn't like it. So it's really hard to tell how the market is going to respond. But I can tell you this much. The stock is down about 14%, 15% from the recent highs. It is not moving to new all time highs. So I don't think that a good news, bad news scenario is even priced into the stock yet. So I think this is the one you got to watch very carefully. The option market is looking for a very, very large move in the stock.

Same with Tesla. Same with Microsoft. But I think that the average move in Microsoft is quite a bit higher than what's being priced in right now. So this one, Microsoft could surprise people to the upside and get us over $500 after earnings. But I think that the one really to watch is Meta.

CHRIS VERSACE: So I asked about three stocks. You injected one, maybe two more. But no word on Apple, Bob?

BOB LANG: Well, I think that Apple is going to produce a good number of this quarter. Holiday quarter, they always seem to do well with services, with Macs and with iPads. They always tend to sell a lot more than they expected for the holidays. Now, coming into this quarter that we're in right now, first quarter of 2026, it's generally their weakest quarter of the year. So I cannot see them guiding too much higher.

However, look the economy is strong. People are spending. We saw consumer retail sales the last couple months, very strong and robust. So there's no reason to believe that people aren't still buying phones or buying Macs or services. At least I haven't canceled any of my services, and prices went up late last year for Apple. So I don't see why they're going to poo-poo this current quarter too much. I mean, obviously I think they're going to make their numbers this particular quarter. I think it's going to be difficult for them to raise guidance in this current quarter, but you never know.

CHRIS VERSACE: Well, two things. One, I am a little concerned about these rising memory costs as Micron and others pivot their capacity more towards AI and data center. I think things that we heard from Seagate, ASML, Texas Instruments, even Corning all point to a very vibrant environment for AI and data center. I think we'll obviously hear more about that in the next couple of days.

To me, that shift kind of questions shipments, some smartphones, PCs, tablets, the bread and butter of Apple's hardware business. And then last night Qorvo, a known Apple supplier, came out and they said, Bob, their revenue is expected to fall from the December quarter to the March quarter 19%.

BOB LANG: That's huge.

CHRIS VERSACE: That's a big number. And it's more than folks were looking for. They're blaming a little bit of it on the weakness in the Android market. And I will just say this. I am glad we exited Qualcomm when we did.

BOB LANG: Yep, absolutely. Amen to that. I know you looked through the earnings report from Taiwan Semi the other day. And I didn't see anything but positives from their report. And so I have to think that that's going to trickle down into strong numbers for Apple as well too. Don't you agree?

CHRIS VERSACE: Well, I think for the quarter, the December quarter, yes. But when you parse the guidance, the strength in TSM's numbers was really HPC or AI data center. Smartphones was looking to be down sequentially. So this comment from Qorvo, though, I think carries a lot more weight. But we will see. We will see.

I do think that Apple could wow folks in a month or two when they bring out the AI enabled Siri. If it delights consumers, I think that upgrade cycle accelerates. That can make Apple a strong name in the back half of the year. Real quick, we've only got a couple minutes. Next week, Amazon or Google? Which one's more important?

BOB LANG: Boy, I think they're both equally important. For Apple, I think it's going to be Google. I know they've had an association with them recently announced with Siri and with Gemini. But for Amazon, listen, you know what? They saw some good growth in AWS last quarter. I want to see if that continues to go on. Also, I want to hear how well they did for the quarter for holiday. Don't forget, Amazon Prime Day from October is going to be contained in these numbers.

CHRIS VERSACE: That's right.

BOB LANG: They claim to have had a really good Amazon Prime in October. So we'll see if the lip service delivers. And I think that as far as the AWS is concerned, that is going to be something we'll see. They compete with Microsoft. They compete with Salesforce, some of these other companies as well too, for the storage and so forth and services. This is really where the bread and butter is for Amazon. So that's the number I'll be watching very carefully next week.

CHRIS VERSACE: Me too. And speaking of, Bob, next week, I'm going to tease something for you. You're going to be in New York making the rounds. Little CNBC action for you, which I think is great. Anything else? You're going to see our friends at Yahoo! Finance perhaps?

BOB LANG: Yeah, I'm going to be in-- Chris, I'm gonna be on Stocks in Translation with Jared Blikre. And who knows who the other partners are going to be? I did that once a couple of times last year. A lot of fun talking about stocks for a little podcast over there with Yahoo! That's on Monday. Then on Tuesday, on the 3rd, Chris, in the morning, I'll be on Schwab, probably with Diane.

CHRIS VERSACE: Diane King Hall. She's the best.

BOB LANG: Love Diane. And then later in the day, I'll be doing a market navigator segment for CNBC, roughly 2:30, 2:35 Eastern time. It'll either be with Dominic Chu or Kelly Evans, one of those two. And it's always a lot of fun to do that from the New York Stock Exchange as well too.

CHRIS VERSACE: Awesome, awesome. Well, we look forward to it. And Bob, thank you so much for spending a big chunk of this busy day. I know we got the Fed meeting coming up in a sea of earnings. Thank you so much for joining us. But you know that we love your insights, and we'll be tapping you quite a bit in 2026, Bob.

BOB LANG: Great to be with you, Chris, and great to be with all the subscribers. And have a great week, and we'll see you guys next time.

CHRIS VERSACE: And that, folks, is this episode of The Stocks & Markets Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We'll have a fresh episode before you know it.