Gold, Silver, and Crypto: How Smart Investors Are Rethinking Retirement in 2026

If your retirement plan still relies on the same stock and bond playbook, you may be taking more risk than you realize.

In this episode of The Capitalist Investor, we break down how gold, silver, and cryptocurrency actually fit into a modern retirement portfolio and why more investors are rethinking diversification as inflation, government debt, and global uncertainty reshape the financial landscape. We discuss the real role of gold as a store of value, silver’s dual purpose as both a monetary and industrial asset, and how crypto has evolved from speculation into a legitimate alternative asset class.

You’ll also hear a practical conversation about allocation mistakes investors make, why chasing headlines can backfire, and how small, intentional exposure to alternatives can help protect long-term retirement plans without gambling on volatility. This episode is designed to help investors understand risk, stay disciplined, and think strategically about portfolio construction heading into 2026.

Transcript

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If your retirement plan for 2026 still relies on the same old stock and bond playbook, you might be taking more risk than you realize. Inflation and debt, global uncertainty. All of these things have changed the landscape, but most portfolios have not changed. That is why more investors are taking a look at alternatives like gold, silver and crypto not to be speculative, but to protect what they've already built. today we're going to break down these asset classes and see how they actually fit into your retirement plan. All right, Tony, we're back. How you doing, man? Good, man. Good good, good. What's new and exciting? I saw some Girl Scout cookie fliers this morning. Yeah. It is, tis the season. And my, six year old daughter is, involved in Girl Scouts, right? And, somehow we got wrapped into not not seen. We, my wife got wrapped in that. She will be the ultimate cookie sorter. So I was told, be prepared to have hundreds and hundreds of boxes of cookies in my house. For distributions, I got about right at the distribution center. This is my house, I guess. So wish me luck man. That's that's what's new on mine. I know my side of the world. Looks like I'll be buying some Girl Scout cookies. Absolutely. They're going to be in the break room. Yeah. There will be a hard sell around the office. Yeah, man. Hey, you know what? If anyone listening is interested in Girl Scout cookies, you know how to get in touch with me. Tony, at connect.com for your your Girl Scout cookie needs. Always be close enough. Hey. And that was, that was unplanned. Hey, thanks. No problem. No, I might I might win a trip or something from the Girl Scouts because of this. It's fantastic. Thank you. All right, all right. Today we are talking about so, you know, the I know you've gotten a lot of these kind of questions and so a vibe, about gold, silver, crypto, you know, things that are you know, just have gone I'll call it parabolic in the last year, year and a half. So it's on everyone's radar, but for different reasons. So we're going to kind of just break down everything first, and then we're going to come back at the end of this, and kind of package it up to give you our thoughts. What are we doing for our clients? What kind of advice are we giving our clients that one exposure? Do do we, you know, strategic wealth? How do we have exposure? Why and why not? And go from there. So I'm going to start off by, you know why why traditional portfolios are being questioned. So right now there's just all there's always been a heavy dependance on equities and bonds. And sometimes people would sprinkle in, you know like you know they'll sprinkle in their commodities and things like that through maybe ETFs things like that. But they're, you know, now we have a rising government debt and persistent inflation pressures, you know, because our debt is to spiraling out of control here in the United States. Interest rates uncertainty and global stability. You know, we constantly see global instability. I don't know I don't know don't know what global, issues going to pop up next. And then investors are now just looking outside the traditional financial system, not because they want to get risky, but they want to continue to diversify. And that's the key that, you know, modern portfolio theory says, is that the more you diversify, the less volatility your portfolio should take. Because if you own something that's going down, usually there's something in your portfolio that's going up there to help counteract this stuff. Right? So you're not just in one lane. So that is why we would do it. The tell us what, you know what 2026 like gold. Let's talk about gold really quick. Yeah. You know, it's, you know, I think we'll we'll kind of get into our comments, at the end. But, you know, traditionally and this is probably some of something we'll talk about at the end, you know, what does gold do? Well, you know, it's the stuff that you always hear about, right? So it's kind of just, a long term place to kind of park your cash, and keep up with inflation. Right. That's what they always say. Gold is a great inflation hedge. And also gold, you know, if, if there's down markets, instability, whatever the case is, it's a late to, safety asset historically as well. So, you know, that's why it's traditionally been used. The cons on gold, obviously you got no income. So, you know, if you have like. A you're telling me it doesn't pay a dividend. No, no, no chicken. That that gold brick that you bought from Costco is. Not not. Right. Yep. I incidentally, I think these. Men, are they still. I haven't seen them lately. Okay. You know, we talked about it when it was, I think about 2220 400 bucks for an ounce. So, so no income. And traditionally, you know, no explosive growth right? Until the last, like. 12 to 18 months. Yeah. For sure. And, you know, again, it's been a portfolio stabilizer. Right. So when we talk about modern portfolio theory, that's kind of the the study, Eddie, traditionally. Right. For silver, you know, does it have the same purpose as gold? So, it's a it has a dual role. You know, it's monetary, but it's also industrial. It actually has purpose. Gold has minimal purpose other than, you know, jewelry and putting grills in your in your, in your teeth. But I I'll go through all that. But I'm being more sarcastic but it you know and but silver is monetary industrial technology energy manufacture. It is it has a multi, multi, you know, facet to, to in today's world in general. Pros again more does it have more upside than gold because it is more purposeful. That's what I'll use the word I'll use. And can it outperform inflation. And grow and growth cycles. That could be a, that's a actually a really good thing I'm going to hit on later. Cons higher volatility and not a sleep well at night asset to own because of the volatility. Yeah. And I'll just kind of have a like a precursor. Is that like the reason it's so volatile is because if it's used for manufacturing technology, if we go through a slow cycle, you know, like, you know, recession, depression, whatever you want to call it. Guess what? We're not using we're not using silver to do anything. We're we're not building. We're not making things like that's that's the downside. And then how does it fits tactical positioning and complements gold. You know, rather than replaces it. Yeah. So you know, crypto, you know, I thought we'd throw crypto in here because, you know, like we talked about at the top, it's a, you know, a different asset class. I think, you know, over the course of the show, honestly, we've kind of seen how crypto has advanced, it's kind of evolves. Right. So more institutional participation obviously. There was a big topic during the election cycle. So Trump, you know, was was very pro crypto. There's more regulatory framework, and infrastructure, you know, again, I'd say infrastructure isn't necessarily good in the crypto space. But, you know, that's for the, for the end here. The, the main use for it is a hedge against like, real money is there's the easier way to say, you know, fiat currency. Right. So you know, that that is really the goal is that eventually that you could use crypto instead of having a centralized, government currency. Right. And then to use it, you know, like there's supposedly a, a limited amount, you just can't make more bitcoin, right? There's whoever invented it who still under the the behind the curtain somewhere. Right, is saying, hey, there's only X amount of coins. You can't make more coins. Yeah. That's the that's the real reason where a dollar, the US dollar, we can just print more. Right. Unfortunately. Right. So all right comparing all three what each role really looks like. So gold against ability preservation crisis hedge inflation hedge silver growth linked volatility you know. So again if the economy is growing people need silver for construction and materials things like that. Also an inflation industrial exposure and crypto and a innovation exposure and long term, long term vision as a alternative, asset, I guess like currency like we just talked about. So the key insight thing is, is that they're all complementary to each other. They're not competing against each other. You know, if you're going to get into it, it doesn't hurt to own up, not just to jump in one. You're like, hey, you know, I don't you know, I don't want to do gold and silver. I'm just going to do crypto, right. If you're going to do it, I mean, it is wise. Just again, based on modern portfolio theory, to own all three because they are, you know, non correlated asset classes to stocks and bonds. Yep. All right. Really quick you know the allocation mindset the mistake most investors make. So the one mistake is going all in and be like man I can't see anything better than gold or silver right now. I'm going to yeah. Push in. Right. And so that's that's interesting. Chasing headlines. This is why I get phone calls. Hey I read this and I read that and you know and there's nothing wrong with those articles. They they have some legs. But most I, I'm most social media stuff to me is just headlines to create eyeballs to read. Yeah. It comes up with a fantastic headline like every week for our podcast. Right. So, you know, just people just chasing the listen, the right side, and then, confusing diversification with speculation. So it's a, is it a speculative asset or is it a diversification asset. You know, and, and saying, oh man, I'm like, the world's coming to an end and our dollar's crashing. And so I'm just going to load up on gold and silver. What what could go wrong. All right. Better approach is smaller intentional allocation. You know, like let's dip our toe into it because maybe we're buying high. Have you seen have you seen how much gold and silver has gone up in the last 18 months? Same thing with crypto. I know crypto has been a little flat lately. But you know, it has down like 20 or 30% from its all time high. And if this is the next thing to replace the dollar, well why wouldn't you own some. Yeah. Right. I'm not pushing it. But if that's your mentality. Exactly right. Rebalance regularly. You know if this stuff starts you know if it's, if you've owned gold for over a year, man, it doesn't hurt to take some chips off the table. Yes, that's what that means. And then aligned with the time horizon and risk tolerance again owning the amount that you can handle. Because if crypto goes to zero and you put it all in, you're going to be broke. So what's the allocation? So you don't go broke? And then one last thing on, retirement planning D what do you got there? Yeah, man, I think we can just kind of take this into, into our comments, but, you know, just real quick, we talk a lot about this, pretty much every week, you know, especially as you're getting closer to retirement. You know, number one goal of the retirement plan is to not run out of money. So keeping what you've built, obviously very important, but kind of measuring what you need as a growth number is a very important thing, you know? So we talk about that a lot. And, you know, the planning, shows that we do. And, you know, these assets are, aren't meant to be like an all in type of thing. You know, I think that is the mentality that you see a lot with all these articles. And then you generate that buzz. Right? And then some, you know, celebrities get involved. Right? That's kind of, the NFTs slash crypto pathway. Right. But now you're kind of seeing the same type of hype built up for gold and silver, right. And, you know, as we kind of put a bow on this and start getting into like some of our thoughts, I'll kind of I'll start it off by saying, you know, what is an inappropriate allocation? And coming from, you know, somebody in our line of work, you know, it's like a 2 to 5% slug, right? Per, you know, alternative is what we'll call these. Right. Going 10% each. I mean, that's a large allocation on something that has been kind of speculative. So like, think about think about like gold, for example. In 2011, it was $1,700 an ounce. Yep. Okay. Nine years later it was the same price. And they actually had a dip there, went from 17, 111. In 2015, it went down to 1000, went back up to 1700 a decade later from the beginning. So it's been flat. It's supposed to be an inflationary hedge. I don't know if we had deflation in that period of time. Right. I'm pretty sure we didn't know. But then it's been 2004 has been the bull run. You know, where we're up over almost 130 to 150% on gold. That is where when people ask like, should I get it now? And I'm like, have you seen the curb? It's it's curve. It's it's it's it's parabolic man. Like, do you want to jump on something that's up 100% when it historically has been flat or on pace with inflation, that it doesn't correlate with what it has done historically. Now I can back up and say, well, you know, past performance doesn't, you know, indicate future performance, right? We can say that. But man, dude, I, I have a hard time jumping on a parabolic curve on the upside, if you've seen the backside of most parabolic curves, they're coming back down as fast as they've gone up. Yeah. For sure. So that I mean, that's my general theory and I can say that for all three of these. Right. All three of these have basically gone down this same path. Yeah I would so it's interesting kind of as we go through this kind of list and the pros and the cons, you know, would you know, would you still let, let's take them one at a time gold, you know, would you still put gold as a as we sit here today, you know, kind of what we talked about long term, you know, store of value hedge against inflation, kind of slow growth type of performance. Would you still put gold in that type of bucket when it's $4,600 an ounce? No. Silver is up 26% this year today, year to date, January 4th. Not even halfway through the month. I mean, somebody asked me early in the year for gold, and I'm like, man, have you seen it go? And then it ran up another 30%. And I'm like, man, dude, I, I don't, I don't know what to tell you. It's like it's, it's it's uncharacteristic of, you know, I think in, investing, you know, the old saying, you know, slow and steady wins the race. Yeah. For sure. You know, the, the jack rabbit type of, you know, response in, in, in, in investing is, is called gambling. Right, right. But when you take a look at gold, like, gold really doesn't have a lot of purpose. It's it's primarily used for jewelry and investments. And, you know, there are some some spots for it in aerospace and equipment, coatings. Same thing with electronics. Dentistry again. You know, fillings and, you know, grills if you're into that stuff. Silver has got a lot more purpose electronics, solar panels, used in the auto industry quite a bit medical, field quite a bit. And also art and jewelry there. But I've also had people saying I want to be invested in gold. And I'm like, okay, how how do you want to do it? I got ideas. What what are your thoughts? Well, I want to buy some bars. I'm like, okay, cool, where are you going to put them? Because if somebody robs you, they're gone. Yeah, right. But then then I can also argue saying, hey, I'm buying gold as a calamity hedge. Right? It might be awesome to have physical gold because I might need to trade it for a pig or a chicken. Right. If the power goes off. And at that point maybe just need more bullets than anything else. Who knows. I don't want to talk it that way. But reality says but the other thing is, is that, All right. So if I own it digitally and the power goes off, it's worthless. Yeah, but at that point, if the power goes off, we're all kind of in a we're all in a bad situation. Now. So are you trading gold for, you know, food. Exactly. And, pigs, chickens, grains. What are I doing here? Gold has much value. The old barter system. So, if. But it probably doesn't hurt to have some gold on hand. Veteran. Make sure you store it somewhere where no one else knows where it is and ain't going to. Ain't going to melt in a fire is not going to get stolen. You know, out of sight, out of mind. And just know that you got it somewhere. Yeah, right. Same thing with silver. But silver is, you know, less value than than gold. You need probably damn, like four times more gold or silver to equal an ounce of gold. Right. Like the comparison on the values, you know, exponentially different. Yep. And I'm trying to think, man, it's like actually six. That's six times like six ounces of silver equals one ounce of gold. Then because it's like 70 isn't silver like $70 an ounce, 700 an ounce, I'm thinking. So the way I look at this is that SLV is the ETF to own silver in your portfolio. Yep GLD is the ETF. Well GLD is like 425 an ounce. And then silver or per share right. Yeah two zero. And that's how much the ounces. I'm making an assumption that silver SLV works the same way. So is silver 700 an ounce. Didn't look that up or higher too. But I'm trying to make a correlation of you need a lot more silver to equal gold in volume. If you're going to own it physically. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the the price per ounce of silver is the price. On that ticker, I think it's only 90, 90 bucks an ounce. Right. Okay. Okay. So, again, the biggest thing and then you talk about crypto, all right. How do you want to own it? We can own it through an ETF. Or we can buy a thumb drive and slap it on there. Right. Again, same thing you have now. You have a physical asset if you do the latter. Right. I got to go buy a thumb drive. I gotta go buy it on on on Coinbase. Go put it on a ledger and then put it in a safe deposit box. I hope it doesn't melt. I don't lose the code. I don't lose that the on the you know, I mean those NFT key. Yeah it's crazy. It's crazy. So what are your thoughts D. So yeah, you know, I think, you know, I it's, I can admit when I'm wrong. You know, I, I've definitely been wrong on silver specifically. And that's really just because I've, I've watched the silver just move down and sideways basically my whole life. Yeah. You know, it was, the start of the chart I saw was 2013. It was 33, 79, an ounce. And then at the start of 2024, it was 2409 at the start of 24, and now it's 9173. I mean, if gold or silver had like a 20% year, like every year, be like, wow, what an asset class that is this year because it doesn't move. Yeah. Parable like like 30% in 15 days. It doesn't do that historically. That's why it's concerning. Exactly. And that's why we don't own it. We and actually we we owned gold for a long time. And there was a point I went, I don't know, I want to say like somewhere around the three, 3000 and ounces, I know when we exited, and went up another 50%, like, we're not perfect, but we made a lot of money on gold. And we said, man, it shouldn't be up this high. It's, it's in the stratosphere now. It's like now it's hanging out with the moon in outer space somewhere. Like it is way off the charts historically. That's why it's hard to give advice on ground. It's it's very difficult to give advice. It's one thing, you know, if you're just, you know, sending stuff out there into the internet, it's a entirely different thing when you're talking to a client, right? Who's who's depending on you, and your expertise and the firm's expert expertise. It's. I cannot imagine silver not being a wild ride in 2026. I can't imagine and not. But it's it's a frickin 26%. Yeah, I hear you, but I think the. 14 days. I think the year over year is like one 178 or something like 180% gold is like 120 or 30 or something along those lines. And that's the thing that I know somebody somebody asked me like, hey, what do you think of gold? Like, should I get in? And I'm like, I can't get it. I can't get it right because it doesn't make a lot of sense. But if you just believe that, you know, the dollar's going to continue to go down and crash and inflation is going to continue to go up and rise. I mean there's a case there. Inflation isn't going up though. It's flat. Yeah it's flat flat 3%. Right. You know it's not. And it's going up. But it's not it's not accelerating right. It's decelerating. And in that environment typically people would be selling their gold. Right. And then again if we have an economic downturn, silver is going to take it on the chin. Yeah for sure. And but that could be 1 to 5 years from now. Yeah. And then crypto man again when they can figure out how to use it on a, on an easy for a normal person to use it on an easy basis, then we can talk. Yeah. Until then I don't know. Yeah I agree. So so yeah. You know I'd say to kind of to put a bow on, on the on the conversation here. It's something we're going to be watching obviously very closely this year. But everyone I talked to, inside the business, seems a little scared of it. I'd say specifically silver, too. But, you know, hey, it's a supply and demand economy, and there's a lot more people wanting to buy gold and silver right now than than sell it. And that's what that's what happens. So, so my my theme and this is, this is my this is what I'm doing personally. This is not financial advice. This is but I am I have increased my exposure to crypto because of the dollar and things like that. But it's more of watching people gamble. And I look at what, where gold and silver are right now and and crypto has not kept up. It has been flat for several, several months right around that $90 range. And I think it just started popping in the last week. It's up 5% or something. And it was up to what, 125. Yeah. Right. Ish plus or minus. I do feel that like it's people are going to look for the new shiny object and like, oh yeah. Hey guys remember Bitcoin. Remember that. Remember that I'm old enough to remember Bitcoin that he used to perform well like people are going to look for something that hasn't kept up with everything else going up. So make me person I've added some exposure to to crypto. Just letting the full disclosure. But not too much. Again, I'm keeping it real. I'm not. I'm not going all in on it, by any means, but just, just increasing it. So. Yeah, I've, I've, I've been doing, kind of what I've been saying for a while, just like the monthly buy on crypto. Okay. You know, dollar cost averaging. You've been. Doing that for a. While. For a while. Yeah. For like the last year and a half I'd say. Oh. So you must. You must be rich then. No I'm not. But, you know, it's it's something that that's why I kind of compared it last week. The gold and silver to crypto. Because we it's it's not behaving normally. So it's very difficult to predict the future. But what I would say is that if there's any type of economic downturn, any type of slowdown, I would say silver is going to react negatively to that at the current prices. And I would say gold would probably hold steady more than the. So here, here I have I have a I have a question for you on this one. So the typical inner year correction. Is somewhere around 12% is the average top. The bottom kind of correction in a normal market. In a midterm year like this year that number increases to 16. We probably will not start seeing volatility or predicting not to see much volatility until. Yeah April ish. Right. Right. Just that's when the election stuff is going to start kicking off and get ready for all those fun commercials and stuff. On TV. But. If and when we see an entire year correction that does does silver and gold participate on the downside? Your thoughts? I would think so. I mean, that's just kind of how it's been going lately. You know, when, when, when the markets, when the markets were volatile last year and going down, crypto was usually volatile and going down. It's not behaving as it normally does. So even though we would be entering into a period of, economic correction, especially with, with the, with the midterms, I think people would want to probably start taking some profits from the gold and the silver and maybe buying back, you know, more traditional stuff at lower prices. Yeah. That's kind of what I would be doing in that situation. Yeah. I mean, his history tells me and just watching stuff is that as things go up on a parabolic curve like gold and silver has, when things get rocky, like, like the Trump tariff board day, right. The market was down eight. And then he showed that board and went down another 8 to 10. Like things, things that were inflated like a lot of the I you know, I mega tech like they went down more than the market was down 18. They went down more. They, they there's a lot more air to be sucked out of things that have gone up parabolic. Lee I agree, that's what I'm saying. Yep. Now, because they are such a different asset class. I could be wrong. Yeah, I'm going to say I'm I'm about 80% correct. But there's definitely a thing where it's like, man, maybe they just hold their ground because again, everyone. Here to stocks. What can happen to gold and silver? Top on I. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with that. But it's hard to. It's hard to recommend it now because of where the journey it's been on in the last 12 months. For both. Both of those. Yep. For sure. All right man. All right. Well, hey, thanks. Thanks for listening. This was a, a good topic. Something we'll be revisiting, am sure, through the year. Yeah. Let's see if we're scorecards, good or bad. Yeah, exactly. It's usually, it's usually impeccable. So you just don't like to brag. Brag? Impeccably bad. So, you know, thanks for for listening. If you guys have any questions, comments, ideas for the show, hit us up at info at Poop Connect. Com and we'll talk to you next week. The opinions expressed in the podcast. Are for general informational purposes only, and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any investment, legal, financial or tax strategy. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. Please consult a qualified professional about your individual needs.