5 Reasons 2026 Will Be A Wild Ride, Likely Catching Investors By Surprise | Michael Lebowitz

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**Michael Lebowitz** (1:00)
I get the feeling that we're going to start the year in a lower volatility environment, primarily because of QE. But as events hit the market, that the potential for spikes in volatility could be significant. We're up again 20 percent this year. What are the odds of having four 20 percent plus years in a row are not high.
So, you know, that's going to be there's probably going to be as we get into the new year, more people wanting to hedge, which will cause volatility to rise on the margin. The Supreme Court is going to rule on tariffs. We know there's a midterm election. We know that the AI bubble is causing some angst. You know, Japan, for instance, is talking about starting to prop up the yen. How does that affect the yen carry trade? So, there's events that will put, that have the potential to spike the VIX. But right now, the VIX is very subdued. It's probably not a bad place to buy some hedges, if you want, because optionality is pretty cheap here.

**Adam Taggart** (2:16)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money Founder and your host, Adam Taggart, welcoming you here at the end of another week. For another Weekly Market Recap featuring my good friend, Portfolio Manager Michael Lebowitz. Michael, how you doing, my friend? Happy holidays.

**Michael Lebowitz** (2:30)
Doing well, thank you very much, you too, and to everyone listening, watching.

**Adam Taggart** (2:34)
Thank you. I hope everybody watching had a great Christmas, or in your case, Michael, a great Hanukkah, there with your family or whatever holiday your family celebrates.
In the world, everybody, I am here probably on day one of not feeling like a total complete invalid. I've been laid low by the flu. I tested, I had the influenza A strain. Today's the first day I feel actually semi-human, so I've got a lot to celebrate for that. I'm also on the road for the holidays, and I'm joined today by a co-pilot here, a very friendly cat who kept me company for the past five days while I was in bed. He decided he wanted to come join us for the interview, so I hope it's okay, Michael, if he sticks around.

**Michael Lebowitz** (3:22)
Yeah, I'm allergic, but it shouldn't be a problem.

**Adam Taggart** (3:25)
Okay. Hopefully, that doesn't go through the inner tubes. Look, lots to talk about this week, and maybe we'll just start where I think the interests are most focused by a lot of the viewers here, which is on the silver market. You actually recently just wrote a piece about this, but silver and really the whole precious metals complex has just been on fire. In fact, it's gone vertical. I have a chart that I'll try to pull up in a moment here when I hand the baton to you. But really gold, silver, platinum, they're all going straight up at this point. Sober on the morning we're talking, I don't know where it is this second, but sober futures had crested above $76 an ounce earlier this morning.
Bananas, I don't even really believe those words as they're leaving my mouth given where silver was at the start of the year. I know a lot of long-suffering silver holders are rejoicing in this as they should. I do think there's an increasing danger that things have just moved so far, so fast. We're in this vertical phase that we talked about, Michael. These things generally don't end by going sideways, and certainly historically with silver, when it's gone vertical like this, there have been a couple of pronounced periods in history where it has, the retracement has been short, violent, and brutal, and I don't want to say that that's definitely going to happen here. I'm sensitive to some of the arguments that this is a repricing of a metal that has been both manipulated and overlooked in the past, and there's some very real supply shortages going on right now. But I think it would be a disservice not to tell people that you want to have some sort of plan in place in case history repeats here.