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All right, everybody, we are getting ready to kick off another year with geopolitics front and center. Now, keep in mind that President Trump today saying quote, there has to be a disarming of Hamas as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nett and Yahoo on this Monday. The two did me to talk about the ceasefire in Gaza, whose troubled opening months ago are stoking concern that regional
fighting could resume in the new year. We did see US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Israeli Prime Minister talking about regional security, economic co operation, and the fight against anti Semitism during that meeting today That came from the State Department.
But it sounded like there was a handful of issues.
Vannie, I known you were covering the event when President Trump made a few comments on this, but also a lot of other things. The reporters asked about a lot of things.
But it sounds like it's not quite done yet.
No, And yeah, as you say, President Trump literally said, there were five major subjects that we were discussing, and the Gaza was one of those subjects and it was a tough place. But you know, he wants to get to phase two of that deal. But it doesn't seem like Nanyao was comfortable moving off of phase one yet. But of course Venezuela came out, Brussia, Ukraine a lot around. So with that said, let's talk a little bit more about that.
Yeah, well we'll talk about you know, that is certainly on our radar. But let's get to also the war between Russian and Ukraine. This is the other geopolitical issue, if you will, that's certainly on our minds. It's getting very close to the beginning it's fifth year. President Trump held a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier today. That was according to the Light House, and that came one day after the US leader met with his Ukrainian counterpart,
President Voladimir Zolenski. They talked about efforts to bring halt to the Kremlin's war. President Zelenski said he asked President Trump for US security guarantees lasting as long as half a century to help deter any future Russian invasion.
We discussed all the aspects of the peace framework, which includes and we have great achievements to any point piece plan ninety percent degree and grade security guarantees, one hundred percent degree in the US, Europe Ukraine security guarantees almost degreed military you mensioned one hundred percent degree prosperity plan being finalized.
That, of course is Ukrainian President Voldemir Zelenski. That was yesterday after a meeting with President Trump. Hey, let's get into this and what's going on with you the United States involvement between the Russia and Ukraine war. Doctor Angelas Stent is back with us. She's senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, author of Putin's World, Russia Against the West and with the Rest, a former national intelligence officer
for Russia and Eurasia. As we said at the National Intelligence Council, she understands the situation so much.
Great to have you back with us.
Angela, I am shocked that we're going into or getting very close to going into the fifth year of this war. What are you seeing, if anything, that tells you we are getting maybe closer to an end or not.
Well, we've had very furious negotiations going on now for the past few months with Russia, between certainly a Stephen Dkoff Jared Krishna meeting with Putin, and then with a President's Landski meeting with President Trump meeting with European leaders. We have two i think competing peace plans out there. The twenty eight point peace plan which was leaked a few weeks ago and which sounded as if it had been largely written in Moscow, but it was a joint
US Russian peace plan. This would have been unacceptable to the Ukrainians and really to the Europeans.
And then we now have apparently a.
Twenty point peace plan which was agreed between Ukraine, It's European backers, and I think the United States, which cuts back on some of the compromises.
That Putin was demanding that Zelenski make.
Zelensky yesterday of course did say that ninety percent had been agreed, but I think it's the last ten percent that's very problematic. Putin called President Trump before he met President Zelenski. They've had another conversation, and I think the Russians are going to string this along. But we still have no real indication that Vladimir Putin is interesting in stopping this war.
You know, angel, I feel like we've talked about this so much, and you know it does sound like President Putin he wants land. I mean, he got it the first time that he invaded Ukraine, and he wants it again this time around. Is there any chance he backs off of it, because this is what seems to be really a major sticking point.
Well, he wants the land, but the land is a means to what he really wants, which is a subjugation of Ukraine. So when he talks about we have to get to the root causes. Yes, he would like the whole of the Donbass region and is asking Ukraine to give Russia land that Russia doesn't control, but that's just
a means to an end. It would make Ukraine more vulnerable if the war breaks out again, and he wants Ukraine to say that it's going to remain neutral, that it's not going to join any Western alliance systems that's what he really wants, and he's using the land question and in a way to distract from what the broader goals are.
How much is there a time constraint here, doctor Stener, because you know there are elections, I mean, there's elections coming up in Ukraine, and obviously at some point look at the mid terms here, and then at some point after that there may or may not be a change of leadership. Is Putin focused on things like that.
Well, Putin's demanded elections in Ukraine, but of course there can't be an elections in Ukraine unless the fighting has stopped, and you have to have a ceasefire first, and Putin has not agreed to a cease fire. Yes, we happened in terms coming up here, and a majority of Americans now and more Americans support Ukraine and are much more wary about what Putin is doing, and that includes Republicans not only in the Senate, but Republicans in the rest
of the country. So I don't think Putin feels any time constraints, but the Ukrainians do because they are running out of manpower. They do have manpower problems. They need more weapons, and the US is selling weapons to the Europeans who are then giving it to Ukraine that there's not an infinite supply of those weapons. So and we have winter coming up now it's already upon us. That
could be more difficult for the Ukrainians. The Russians are bombing all of their energy infrastructure and depriving them of heat and light and things.
That they need for the winter.
So I would say the Ukrainians under our under more time constraints than the Russians are. But they're not losing this war as the Russians claim they are, and they have taken back some territory recently that the Russians claim that they hold. But certainly Putin believes that time is on his side.
The security proposal under discussion, it's apparently for a fifteen year term. Zelenski wants that to be a lot longer, perhaps as long as fifty years.
Will he get it, Well, we're.
Not really clear what those security provisions are. I mean, Europeans are willing to provide troops to enforce any kind of peace. The US has said that there'll be some kind of backstop. They've talked about Article five type guarantees, which is what NATO countries have, which means if one NATO country is attacked, the rest of them were.
Considered that an attack on all of them.
But it's very hard to see how you get those kind of guarantees if Ukraine isn't a number of NATO. And again, you know, we could have a different government in the United States, you can have different governments clearly in Europe that from the elections coming up.
So I think a fifty year.
Guarantee is probably unrealistic, but one understands why Zelensky wants it because you know this, as long as Putin's in power, people like him, they're not going to give up on subjugating Ukraine.
That said, they could be another reinvasion in the coming.
Years, Angela, Is it clear what the US position is? Especially after President Trump was asked in the earlier press conference when Benjamin Neett Yahu and he were together, President Trump said he was very angry when he heard from Russian President Vladimir Vladimir Putin about an alleged attack on one of his residences. Again, allegations were not quite sure. I believe Ukraine has maybe denied this, but I'm just curious,
is it clear where the US stands? Or is that part of the negotiating tactic of being kind of friend and foe and it changes maybe from week to week or day to day.
Well, what's clear is that Trump wants to improve ties to Russia. He's wanted to do that since they wanted the second term. That he's offering the Russians economic incentives which he thinks may bring them round.
He does want to bring the war to an end.
I think he genuinely wants to end the war, and then he also wants to claim credit for it.
But you know, yesterday he said some things.
He equated the Russian bombing of Ukrainian civilian structures, energy infrastructures with the Ukraine, the Ukrainians sometimes hitting Russian energy installations and so. And then he also said yesterday that Putin wanted Ukraine to succeed, which is a rather extraordinary thing to say, since they've been making more on Ukraine, you know, for nearly.
Five years now.
So I'm not sure what the US position is, but I do think that Trump administration wants the war to end.
All right, ten or fifteen seconds, I'm not going to ask you about the House on this, but do you think we wrap up this war. Does it get wrapped up in twenty twenty six?
Just quicktly?
I could?
I wish it could wrap up. I'm not sure that it will.
Doctor Angelistan, thank you so much much. Doctor Anjela sent, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Putin's World, Russia Against the West and with the Rest.
Stay with us.
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Hey, we want to stay with all of the geopolitics that continue to come at us. Henrietta Trace is with us. She's Beta Partner's managing partner. She's also director of Economic Policy. She also served in the US Senate as a tax, banking and finance legislative assistant, so she understinks from the understands the private and the public sector.
She's done a lot.
Henrietta, good to have you back with us. I do want to go domestic, but first I've got to go global. The President's spending a lot of time on foreign affairs. What is is this important in terms of the US economic situation, the US business environment going forward?
You know, I think what's clear from that press conference and what we saw from Zelensky's meeting today, and then to tie it into China, as the President did earlier, even on the China front, with all the three of these instances, with the US trade deal with China, the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, and the Gaza and Hamas and Israel situation, is that there's got to be devils everywhere.
There's devil is in the.
Details, and we don't have any details.
There are no.
Hard and fast details.
The President wasn't able.
To give any of them, neither on the Abraham Accords or as you just mentioned, on the West Bank. On timing, there's daylight between net Yahoo and Trump, and I think there's a lot of daylight between Zelensky and Putin.
To say the very least, and there's a lot.
Of daylight between the US and China on just our terms of trade deal. So I think it's pretty clear that all this is going to drag into twenty twenty six, and the President is extremely occupied with these issues. The issue for the President and then therefore for the Republican Party down ballot, is that Americans are not focused and they don't even have in their top ten issues that they care about foreign policy going into next year's mad term elections. What is it to tie in the foreign
policy part? Is really interesting for the president to double down like this on these issues which are obviously important to him but are not making forward progress and don't impact the US consumer war voter.
I love that you went there, and certainly for the global investing you know audience, this can matter right in certain terms of opportunities or relationships. But having said that, when it comes to the midterms, which will also be important to financial markets, and what more of the President's agenda he can get done in the second half of this second term for him, So this focus is surprising.
Do you think he shifts in the new year. I think he tries to do both.
You know, he's tried to do both in the first year, where he did the one Big Beautiful bill which was very economically oriented three and a half trillion dollars in deficit increasing tax cuts Prince of to corporations in twenty five with some of it coming for individuals in twenty six. I think the Republican Conference and the President feels like they've done their job on the economy and now we need to wait and let it work out. That's certainly what they're hoping for going into next year.
The trade or.
Rather the tariff dividend that the President touts is four hundred and fifty billion dollars of money he's not going to get out of Congress to send home to the American public, So there's not another physical package coming from DC. He has to keep an attention on other things while touting the one big beautiful bill because there's not going to be another piece of legislation that passes.
In twenty twenty six.
In my opinion, Hey, what that's going to keep the issue a lot.
Well, And the other thing like just kind of blown away by some of the notes that you guys shared with our team. The most controversial view BETA has going into twenty twenty six is that when Scotis rules on those tariffs, that they rule against them, the President will not quickly move to replace them with new authorities, as
he and his economic advisors insist. But he would say that Scotus would be handing the president a domestic gift by breaking down the tariffs, which equate to about eighteen hundred dollars per house household at their current levels.
Do you expect Scots to strike them down?
Yes, I do, and I think I'm in a pretty good company on that one. As you know, the courts below, the Court of International Trade and the Court of Appeals have both rejected it. My odds are sixty five percent that the Supreme Court's rejected it.
I'm hopeful that they do it in the first quarter.
And get this binary event, three trillion dollars binary event off our backs. But the single best thing that could happen to this administration and again to Republicans down ballot, is for the president to get the tariffs revoked by the Supreme Court. He doesn't have to admit failure or anything along those lines.
You can to say the.
Supreme Court won't let me do it, and then just not migrate too. Three three eight or Balance of Payments Authority or two thirty twos or three zero ones. They're going to be threatened. But look at the ones that have already been threatened and aren't yet on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors. Where's the Critical Minerals investigation? It was supposed to be released on the twenty seventh. It might be on the
President's desk, but he's clearly sitting on it. And that's because he can't afford to have prices continue to rise by imposing new tariffs, especially on those items.
So I think it's the best.
Case scenario for this president for the Supreme Court to take the tarriffs down. That would clear the dominimus tariffs, that would clear all the AIPA retaliatory tariffs, and give the President the ability to take a more nuanced approach to trade instead of the blunt.
Acts that was Liberation Day.
And I go one step further if I may, and say, if he takes the opportunity to reimpose all these tariffs, it's going to be so confusing for small and large businesses alike. It will be the equivalent of Liberation Day two point zero. You can't just swap them out, so you know, prepare for equl forth again.
Well, that means it's going to be an interesting twenty twenty six, no doubt about it. Whichever way it goes. Henrietta always enjoy getting some time with you. Henrietta Trey's Vita Partners managing partner and director of Economic Policy joining us here.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Well, from the fintech sector to the commodity space, we're seeing a major pullback. Well, I would say, you know, modest pullback really in gold and silver, but the two medals did top records earlier this week.
I mean, they just went on a tear.
Here to break down the recent moves, Mike mcgillan, senior commodity strategist with Bloomberg Intelligence. So, Mike, how much of all of this was just pure speculation?
Just about all of it, I think, Vonnie, when you get to these extreme levels, particularly in thin markets, with things like gold and particularly silver.
Silver is known as the Devil's medal for a reason.
But they're up so much this year.
Silver, as we've both you mentioned, we've noted a lot it's the best year since nineteen seventy nine for both of those medals, and history has proven when you rallied this velocity. My rule as a strategist, as I take off that fundamental technical outlook, I switch over to a money manager. I say, typically new long seat. These levels
do very poorly. So give you example. Silver settled nineteen seventy nine at thirty two dollars and twenty cents an ounce, and the first end of the year to close above that level is this year, twenty twenty five.
It's been a long time, almost fifty years.
What's driving the trade and the selloff? Is it a supplied demand metric? Is it investors looking to move assets around a safe haven place.
Certainly when it comes to gold, what is it?
Because I know supply demand can often be a big factor, Mike, when it comes to various commodities and precious metals.
Well, certain hell, okay, certainly carol and silver it is. But the narratives that they're using now for pulling up silver have been around for years. We've all known about the demand from solar and everything. But to me now it's in that speculative access in stage. I think people are realizing it's much more beneficial maybe to allocates to some precious metals where there's only four versus cryptocurrencies where
there's twenty eight million. As a previous announcer frailed to mention, there's a nonlimited supply of cryptocurrencies and there's only really about ten major medals. So I still think they're going to do well. The problems they've just gone too far. So I like to compare to metals now. Was when the Hunt brothers cornered the silver market in nineteen seventy nine. We had a similar pink this year and cryptocurrencies with mister Trump tilting over from antagonists to zealot and it's to.
Look forward to next year.
I think there's a good chance things like silver can get down to fifty and up two one hundred. But basically it's the top metal that can go down because it went up too much, and even gold. Gold can easily trade down blow four thousand and above five thousand.
But I think it's a top metal.
They can also drop a little bit, just because they've gone up so much and there's so much in the mainstream now.
Mike, a quick word on copper, because we had it rallying above thirteen thousand dollars a ton in London overnight.
Now came weigh off that price.
But there are real concerns surrounding copper and its industrial uses.
Right, yeah, so copper, the main thing is the apply constraints this year, it's very rare. Is there going to be that industrial demand from places like China which is in a basically recessionary a deflation period. So I look at copper as completely dependent on the stock market going up again next year, and if US stock market drops, copper will Tribby drop about twice as much.
But Copple's also auto correlated.
So I'm very worried that it's not going to be able to sustain these realities, particularly as you look at deflationary forces in China, is indicated by its ten year out yield about one point eighty six percent.
I feel like Mike, we'd be remissed not to give you thirty seconds on crypto, having considering the conversation we just had and how it's say golf.
Did you.
I don't know, what are you thinking about when it comes to bitcoin in particular for twenty twenty six, and just got about twenty thirty seconds here.
More likely to go to fifty and maybe lower than stay higher. It's another thing that's completely dependent on stock market going up, and it's probably indicating we're going to see more volatilely next year.
All right, good to know, and I'm sure we'll be checking in with you a lot.
Mi.
Thank you so much, Happy holidays.
He has senior commodity strategist with Bloomberg Intelligence joining us here.
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I'm Carol Masser with Bonnie Quinn.
All right, Well, IPO's return kind of in a big way, maybe big with quotes, I should say ups us IPO volume excluding SPACs and closed end funds exceeding forty billion dollars. Those deals created twenty one new billionaires. However, many of them saw their wealth diminish afterward, and that plays into the share price. What happened after those new offerings. Dylan Sloan covers IPOs for us here at Bloomberg and he
joins us right now in studio. Dylan, Let's talk about the good news, because we did see finally the IPO market open up.
Were not at the record levels that we've seen in years past, but nonetheless we saw some activity.
We did.
Yeah, it started strong. Venture Global one of the first firms to debut this year. It was slated to be the biggest energy IPO for over a decade. They downsized that slightly, but again things got off to a hot start. Expectations really high. This was viewed as an administration that would be favorable to a lot of these big deals. We also closed the year with Medline just a few weeks ago, which was the biggest exactly biggest IPO worldwide
this year, one of the largest medical health IPOs in years. So, you know, start and finish were strong. But again, yeah, there was a little bit of instability there towards the middle that I'm sure we're going too, all.
Right, So we talk about it.
Minted twenty one new billionaires are there still twenty one new billionaires that not exactly less.
Exactly, we did see somewhat of a recurring pattern for a lot of these offerings. There was a lot of retail interests. For many of these, we saw a bunch of offerings and a lot of these buzzy sectors or the AI plays crypto, we would see these massive spikes in the first day or two of trading. We'd see this the you know, the economic value of insiders stake spiked to billions or multiple billions of dollars, and then often those games would you know, fall just as quickly.
Yeah, I mean, I always felt bad for the retail investor because on this they had got in beforehand, and how would you know, and you can't then they were completely I mean they would have lost a lot of money.
On these exactly. And some of these ups and downs were really big. Newsmax is one in particular that we were looking at that was back in late March early April. Those shares gained, you know, twenty two hundred percent in the first two days of trading, massive spike. Chris Ruddy, the founder former New York Post journalists who said there's no money in journalism. Right, he was a billionaire multiple times over after that offering. But then again that was
all gone just as quickly. Shares are now trading blow the IPO trading price, and like you're saying, yeah, it really was an up and down and a lot of people got burned on them.
It leaves a really bad taste in the mouth. So what the outlook for the beginning of the year, because certainly and to the end of the year.
We were did a deal.
Today we're having deals in almost every single day at the end of this year.
Yeah, a lot of the reporting that's been out there about the outlook for twenty twenty six is around some of these really big name deals for companies that have been private for a while. We're thinking SpaceX, that's one that Bloomberg has been reporting on extensively. You know, we're talking potentially about one point five trillion dollar IPO coming sometime next year, open Ai and Thropics, Stripe or some of these other really big names that have been thrown around.
So that'll be a bit of a disconnect from this year, where it was a lot of these again smaller companies, many of them sort of holdovers, crypto companies, that had kind of waited it out during the crypto winter, and we're coming back to the public markets now after a few years, So that's something to definitely look at for next year. Of course, I'll still up in the air a little bit yet to be seen if any of those going through, but certainly could be big ones.
The wrinkle I became billionaires this year. I mean, are there any among the could you guys break it down by IPO and some of those that became new billionaires, anybody who held onto their money throughout?
Yeah, relatively few companies that I will note that. You know, even though some of these companies have did have that massive spike and then down, many of them are still trading out or above the offering price. So you know, for people who got in at the very beginning, they're doing okay. But I would say in terms of themes to break it down, Crypto's one that I've said a few times. That's when we saw Bullish a crypto exchange down about half from its opening price, Weebel another exchange
down nearly ninety percent. It was a circle and Gemini to the crypto firms sort of who've lost a lot from their high water marks. The energy sector was another one where we had a few big names. Venture Global, which I mentioned at the beginning, Liquid natural Gas company, they're down a good bit from their IPO back early in the year. And then for me also this AI data center company recently down about seventy seven percent from their high water mark in October.
So those themes you got to go to core Weave. Though we talked a lot about Corey this year, how that happened.
It's been enoughing down for Chrorive, a real roller coaster, you know. Right after the offering, things were a little tepid, it wasn't entirely clear where it was going, but then we saw a really big run up later through the year as again they've become kind of increasingly more involved in that AI play and really kind of a poster child for a lot of these new neocloud companies that are popping up.
But it's amazing you look at the numbers.
So they're up changed since the opening IPO price in March twenty eighth, ap almost one hundred percent, are almost doubling, but since the high water mark they're down almost sixty percent exactly.
Yeah, it has been a really big up and down and not instant for them. It's really kind of been over the course of the whole year. But that's one that's still playing out for sure.
And then what about these stable coin companies and the you know, those those that whole area because we had Circle and that's sort of everybody's eyes popped when that went.
Public, right exactly. That was one of those that saw a massive, massive gain right at the outset, and you know, it's down about seventy percent from the high water mark on June twenty third, but overall it's not actually doing that poorly. That's one of those companies where compared to
the offering price, they're faring relatively well. You know, obviously there was a Genius Act passed over the summer which helped kind of solidify some of that the regulatory landscape around stable coins, which has been a tailwind for them. So it's one of those companies where, you know, it kind of depends which angle you're looking at it from.
It's certainly something the administration has been very, very absolutely interested.
In, and there could be some some more legislation tied to the Genius Act next year as well.
Dylan, thank you so much.
It's a fascinating beat.
Love chatting to you.
That is still on sloan covering IPOs for us right now.
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