Money & Megatrends

December 9, 2025

By Brian Hunt

Inside today’s issue:

The Power Grid Upgrade theme continues to be one of the world’s most rewarding uptrends.
A bullish signal for the U.S. economy: Over a dozen key financial stocks power to new highs.
Our silver trade is a huge home run. Did you benefit from one of the top trades of 2025?

The Power Grid Upgrade Theme Continues to Be One of the World’s Most Rewarding Uptrends

This week, Quanta Services (PWR) reached a new all-time high, reminding us that the Power Grid Upgrade megatrend is an area of great opportunity.

On October 7, we first detailed how the Power Grid Upgrade is one of our favorite ways to invest in the AI boom.

Given AI’s enormous promise, the world’s largest and richest companies are embarking on the biggest capex spending cycle in history. Giants like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers, AI chips, and other infrastructure components.

All that AI infrastructure is poised to consume huge amounts of electricity. Goldman Sachs forecasts global power demand from data centers will climb 50% by 2027 and by as much as 165% by the end of the decade.

This makes upgrading the U.S. power grid a huge investment opportunity.

The U.S. power grid is often called the world’s largest machine. It’s an interconnected network of power stations, transmission lines, substations, and wires. Most people barely know it’s there or how it works, but without this big machine, your lights don’t turn on, there’s nothing to watch on Netflix, and your iPhone doesn’t charge.

Industry experts say the power grid is aging and creaking under the strain of increased electricity demand. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the energy sector a D+ on its 2025 Infrastructure Report Card, citing concerns about growth in energy demand, an aging system, and a lack of transmission capacity.

Soaring electricity demand… a grid badly in need of an upgrade… AI supremacy on the line… trillion of dollars of economic output on the line…

This is a recipe for a bull market in companies that build, repair, and upgrade our power grid.

As we covered in October, Quanta Services is a market leader in this megatrend. Quanta is America’s largest publicly traded electrical contracting company. It generates much of its revenue building the transmission lines, power connections, and electrical substations that the AI spending boom requires. Thanks to the AI boom, Quanta has market-leading earnings growth and share price momentum.

This year, Quanta is up 46%… far outpacing the S&P 500. This week, the stock reached an all-time high. The Power Grid Upgrade bull market is alive and well.

Powerful stock performance: Quanta reaches an all-time high

A Bullish Signal for the U.S. Economy: Over a Dozen Key Financial Stocks Power to New Highs

Being bearish on America is a tough way to make a living right now. Folks in this camp suffered another body blow today: Financial stocks of all kinds are powering to new all-time highs.

Financial giants Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman Sachs (GS) reached new highs. More than ten regional banks, including Webster Financial (WBS) and Valley National (VLY), reached new highs. Credit card giant Capitol One (COF) reached an all-time high. Investment services giant State Street (STT) reached an all-time high.

And notably, the iShares U.S. Broker-Dealers & Securities Exchanges ETF (IAI) reached a new all-time high today.

Since the current bull market began in 2023, a whole doom-and-gloom industry has been built on bearish stock and recession forecasts. Anyone who listened to the “prophets of the apocalypse” and avoided stocks has missed a historic wave of wealth creation. The bears have sounded clever, but they’ve been very, very wrong.

Sure, the U.S. economy has imbalances and problems. But it also has tremendous forces working in favor of prosperity. Energy independence. Food independence. The world’s most dynamic system for creating and funding new businesses. The largest and most innovative technology industry. A system that rewards hard work and value creation.

These “forces for good” are manifesting themselves in the financial sector’s all-time highs. The financial sector is sort of a “catch basin” inside the economy. It receives some fees, commissions, profit shares, or capital gains from all wealth-creating activities – interest payments, dividends, rent checks, IPOs, capital gains, bonuses, etc. The financial sector eventually benefits from all of it.

The constituents of the IAI ETF are uniquely positioned to benefit from a U.S. economy that, although not booming, is doing well. Companies in this fund include stock brokerages, commodity exchanges, investment banks, credit rating agencies, and financial index managers. They benefit from business creation and free-flowing streams of investment dollars. A bull market in these stocks is a bullish sign for the economy.

Stocks and economies move in big cycles… so of course, we will see bear markets and recessions in the future. But, right now, we look at the new all-time highs across the financial industry (and IAI in particular) and ask, “Can things be all that bad?”

This is not bearish: IAI reaches an all-time high

Our Silver Trade Is a Huge Home Run. Did You Benefit From One of the Top Trades of 2025?

I expected silver to go higher this year… and I traded accordingly.

But I didn’t expect what’s happening now.

Silver is up 53% since mid-August, up 101% YTD. It may end up being the top-performing asset of 2025.

On March 13, I noted the upside breakout in silver and urged investors to see this trend as your friend. Since then, silver has skyrocketed. This week, the metal reached an all-time high, trading around $60 an ounce. The move is being attributed to investor concerns over U.S. debt and deficits. Plus, industrial demand for silver is strong.

Silver’s 100%+ gain is one of the largest one-year gains you’ll ever see in a widely traded asset. It also demonstrates a trading belief I have that you’ll rarely see publicized in financial newsletters, on X, investment bank research reports, or in the letters of money management firms. Not many people will admit it, but for some reason, I have no problem doing so.

That belief goes like this: Specific price forecasts and predictions are among the most useless, most overrated things on the planet.

These days, you can’t swing a stick without hitting an investment guru who is making a price forecast or setting a “target price” for some stock, index, or commodity.

You know what they look and sound like.

Gold to $10,000.

S&P to 8,000.

Nvidia to $10 trillion.

The world loves a specific price forecast. We love “big calls” that predict giant rallies and horrible bear markets. The bigger and bolder the prediction is, the more interest it generates. Specific predictions are what the customer wants, so that’s what the customer gets.

But here’s the thing about specific price targets and forecasts…

I’ve been reading financial research and trading for 28 years now, so I’ve seen how well investment guru forecasts pan out on average.

Study after study shows that following these forecasts is no better than flipping a coin to make investment/trading decisions.

Plus, I have a steel-trap memory. I can recall almost everything that every major investor/analyst has said over the past 28 years. Additionally, my direct experience reading and working with dozens of “gurus” suggests that their forecasts are no better than flipping a coin.

Keep in mind that many investment experts are very smart. They went to great schools. They have prestigious degrees. They have access to powerful computers and proprietary data sets. They are incentivized with big bonuses. They’ve got high connections in government and business.

And their predictions, on average, are as good as a coin flip. The big-name analysts, economists, and gurus get as many right as they get wrong. Fund managers. Investment newsletter writers. CNBC personalities. All of them.

It turns out, people, businesses, and economies are difficult to forecast. The world is chaotic, and so are its markets.

The good news is you don’t need accurate forecasts to make money in stocks, bonds, and commodities. Sizing your positions intelligently and employing intelligent exit strategies are far more important than forecast accuracy. It’s far more critical to make more money when you’re right than you lose when you are wrong.

When I sent my note on silver, I was not crazy enough to include a price forecast. All I knew was that silver was breaking out to the upside. It was possibly starting a trend. I also knew that when silver enters uptrends, those uptrends can be huge. When silver trends, it can increase by hundreds of percent. That’s all I needed to be long.

No price forecast necessary. Just an upside breakout, the knowledge that silver could go way higher, and a willingness to get out if it did not trend. Hopefully, Richard Dennis would approve. Still long silver.

A Huge Run Higher for Silver

Market Notes

Auto giant General Motors (GM) reached a new 1-year high today. It’s a bullish sign for the U.S. economy.
Optics giant Lumentum (LITE) reached a new all-time high today.
Airline giant Southwest Airlines (LUV) broke out to a new 1-year high today.
Machine sensor leader Sensata (ST) broke out to a new 1-year high today.