The price of gold has increased rapidly in the months since Trump took office, surging particularly since his April 2 announcement of a baseline 10 percent tariff on all US imports. Gold has often been regarded as a safe-haven asset during times of economic uncertainty. When the economy is shaky, investors put more of their money into gold to preserve their wealth and protect their portfolios. Gold typically has an inverse relationship with interest rates. When interest rates go up, the value of gold often goes down. The reason for this is that higher interest rates make other investments, such as stocks and bonds, more attractive to investors, thereby decreasing the demand for gold and subsequently its price. Should this trend continue, lower interest rates could affect the economy in several ways. Lower interest rates make it cheaper to borrow money. This tends to encourage spending and investments. Lower interest rates will reduce the monthly costs of mortgage repayments. This will leave households with more disposable income and potentially cause a rise in consumer spending. Lower interest rates make it more attractive to buy assets, such as houses, land, vehicles and businesses. This will cause a rise in prices and therefore a rise in wealth. Gold maintains its intrinsic value better than any other commodity. It remains our best barometer of monetary trouble. A sustained rise in gold prices typically signals inflation; a price decline indicates deflation—a shortage of dollars. According to Forbes, The Federal Reserve fundamentally misunderstands inflation. Monetary inflation results from reducing a currency's value, by creating too much of it. Non-monetary inflation occurs when prices rise due to production disruptions: natural disasters, wars, pandemic lockdowns that severed supply chains, costly regulations, or certain tax increases. Gold has climbed over 60% since mid-2023, during the very period when the Fed claimed to be fighting inflation through interest rate hikes. The Fed's flawed thinking lies in its belief that prosperity causes inflation. Per the Fed’s reasoning, in order to lessen inflation, then the economy needs to be slowed. This approach fails to account for non-monetary price changes or the consequences of a weakening dollar. Stabilizing the dollar appears to be a better approach to fight inflation. The Federal Reserve should focus on returning to a “gold-backed” standard for the dollar. By focusing on dollar stability rather than manipulating interest rates, the Fed could end inflation without causing economic contraction. This addresses the monetary cause directly rather than attempting to slow growth—a strategy that inevitably causes unnecessary economic pain. The warning from the gold market cannot be ignored much longer. The question is whether the Fed will heed it before it's too late. Tickers to consider: JTAI , VNRX , ZVSA , FBRX Sylva Disclaimer: https://www.sylvacap.com/disclaimer

On Wednesday, April 2, 2025, President Donal Trump announced new tariffs on nearly all U.S. Trading partners, including 34% tax on imports from China, and 20% tax on the European Union. Responding to what he considered an economic emergency, elevated tariff rates will be placed on several countries that run trade surpluses in the United States and a 10% baseline tax will be imposed on imports from all countries. The purpose behind these tariffs is to boost domestic manufacturing here in the United States, and at the same time bring in hundreds of billions in new revenue to the U.S. government and restore fairness to global trade. Although the President campaigned on this policy, these so-called reciprocal tariffs were much more aggressive than anyone on Wall Street anticipated. The announcement triggered a plunge in the Stock Market. On Friday, April 4, 2025, the S&P 500 closed down 5.97% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 5.5%, both the biggest single-day declines since June 2020 during the COVID pandemic and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.8%. Some Trump officials acknowledge that there will be some short- term pain. How much pain before the gain has yet to be determined. According to Trump, these tariffs will force other countries to lower their import fees on U.S. goods and services. That will create a more balanced economic playing field for U.S. exports and a strong incentive for companies to manufacture goods in the United States. In retaliation, China announced on Friday, April 4, 2025, that they will be imposing a blanket 34% tariff on all American products. These tariffs are set to go into effect on April 10, 2025, the day after the Trump tariffs go into effect.  In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution introduced a national income tax. Prior to this, tariffs supplied as much as 90% of the federal government’s revenue in the mid-1800s. The U.S. moved from tariffs to income taxes to raise more money to finance an expanding government, collect more revenue from the wealthy and make the economy more efficient by reducing trade barriers and encouraging competition. In 2024, tariffs accounted for less than 2% of Federal revenue, 51 % came from income taxes and 36% came from Social Security and Medicare Taxes. Trump would like to replace income tax revenues with tariffs, allowing Americans to keep more of their hard earned money. Goldman Sachs Chief U.S. Equity Strategist, estimates that every 5 percentage point increase in the U.S. tariff rate will cut S&P 500 earnings per share by 1%-2%. This year's estimated 22.5 percentage point increase implies a potential 4.5%-9% cut in S&P 500 earnings from Trump tariffs. Despite a boost to inflation as firms pass through some portion of tariffs to customers, the economic hit will likely prompt the Fed to resume rate cuts. That would proceed tax cuts, which could give the economy a shot in the arm to start 2026. Tickers to consider: JTAI , VNRX , ZVSA , FBRX Sylva Disclaimer: https://www.sylvacap.com/disclaimer

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of a digital computer or a computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings such as learning, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making. AI, and the data centers required, demand more of one thing… Energy. Energy is essential to addressing the challenges of reducing costs on everything from groceries to housing. History proves that economic progress only comes when energy production increases. Long story short, energy fuels the growth that improves people’s lives. AI requires significant computational power primarily due to the complex algorithms and large datasets involved in training and deploying machine learning models. Many AI applications utilize deep learning, which involves networks with multiple layers. Training these networks requires extensive computations, which require large amounts of data for training to improve accuracy and performance. This data must be processed, stored, and analyzed at data centers, consuming a significant amount of computational resources. The more robust the AI workload, the more energy is consumed by the data center. As AI continues to evolve, further advancements in data centers will be necessary to keep pace with its requirements. By 2030, data centers could potentially consume the equivalent energy of New York City's annual energy use. Approximately 60% of that usage would be powered by gas. According to S&P Global, this shift could add 50 GW of gas-fired power to US grids, and increase the natural gas demand by 17%. According to McKinsey & Company, global demand for data center capacity could rise at an annual rate of between 19 and 22 percent from 2023 to 2030 to reach an annual demand of 171 to 219 gigawatts (GW). This contrasts with the current demand of 60 GW, raising the potential for a significant supply deficit. To avoid a deficit, at least twice the data center capacity built since 2000 would have to be built in less than a quarter of the time. Access to power has become a critical factor in driving new data center builds. Without ample investments in data centers and power infrastructure, the potential of AI will not be fully realized. Meeting this demand will require considerably more electricity than is currently produced in the United States. Below are some suggestions to create new solutions to power access and sources. 1 . Investors can funnel investments into utility companies to build out transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure in key markets. The demand for data centers and power show no signs of slowing, so T&D markets should respond accordingly. 2. The timeline of building out data centers and those of power infrastructure development can take years. Hyperscalers are building out capacity in new and atypical locations outside the core data center markets because these areas offer cheaper, available power and have the potential for carbon-free infrastructure . Investors have opportunities to fuel growth by accelerating the build-out of fiber or power infrastructure in these secondary locations. 3. Investors can seek to support behind-the-meter solutions to provide power in areas where utilities providers cannot keep up with pace or reliability requirements as local supply availability or transmission constraints worsen. The sites available for these opportunities are limited, but creating more competition and urgency among investors to act sooner than later can help secure the talent, connectivity, and regulatory requirements necessary to run the sites. 4. Investment in clean energy such as solar power or offshore wind. Investment in this space has a long track record, but does have mixed returns. AI has forced the pace of progress. Whether we can provide the energy to keep up with that pace is something only time will tell. Tickers to consider: KALA , EVAX , JTAI , AEON Sylva Disclaimer: https://www.sylvacap.com/disclaimer

DeepSeek is an AI development firm based in Hangzhou, China. DeepSeek focuses on developing open source Large Language Models (LLM). A large language model is a type of artificial intelligence algorithm that applies neural network techniques with lots of parameters to process and understand human languages or text using self-supervised learning techniques . The company's first model was released in November 2023. The company has repeated multiple times on its core LLM and has built out several different variations. On Jan. 20, 2025, DeepSeek released its R1 LLM at a fraction of the cost that other vendors incurred in their own developments. DeepSeek is also providing its R1 models under an open source license, making it free to use. Deep Seek’s R1 LLM will also have far-reaching impacts for the energy sector. Not only is DeepSeek far cheaper than its rivals, it also claims to be far more energy efficient. This is an important declaration, as data center energy demand growth has recently been pushed to extreme heights thanks to the enormous spread of AI. The scale of these newfound energy needs are so significant that it has single-handedly destroyed the tech sector’s hopes of meeting its own decarbonization goals, placed stress on energy grids around the world, and threatened the energy security of entire nations. The scale of the challenge posed by data center demand poses a serious money-making opportunity for energy providers. “Energy firms ranging from small reactor startups to incumbent utilities to gas producers — and plenty in between — see data centers as a critical U.S. market,” One segment of the energy industry that could potentially benefit from the expected data center boom is nuclear power. Older power plants have been closing across the country for the past decade. Yet, atomic power has seen a surge in interest and investments in the last year, as owners revive shuttered plants and tech companies seek contracts for the electricity. Nikki Hsu, Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence Utilities, said that power demand is going to climb from homes and factories that are increasingly shifting to electricity. “Demand is definitely going to rise, but by how much, we don’t know,” she said. “Nobody knows exactly what AI demand will be.” Rob Thummel, Senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital, asserts that AI will boost natural gas. He alluded that natural gas could steal some of growth from nuclear power developers, since reactors typically take longer to build and are far more expensive than gas plants. “We still think natural gas will be a winner here, primarily because it is the lowest cost from a reliability perspective,” Thummel said. DeepSeek’s efficiency could even lead to more widespread use of AI. According to Carlos Torres Diaz, head of power markets research for Rystad Energy, “if data centers become more efficient, they may end up simply processing more data — making it difficult to model their future energy use.” It is important to remember that if you download Deep Seek, then all of your data will be sent back to China. However, since Deep Seek open sourced its R1 LLM , then it is available to everyone. Venture capitalist and newly appointed AI and crypto czar for the White House, David Sacks, stated in an interview with Fox Business that Perplexity and Ollama are two American hosted companies that will allow you to have access to Deep Seek without sending all your data back to China. Tickers to consider: KALA , EVAX , JTAI , AEON Sylva Disclaimer: https://www.sylvacap.com/disclaimer

On January 20,2025, this country will inaugurate a new and previous President. This inauguration represents a change in political power in the Executive Branch. How much impact will this transition of power affect the Stock Market? Historically, the U.S. Stock Market tends to struggle a short time after inauguration day. Since the DOW Jones was created in 1896, one of its worst quarterly returns has been the first three months of a President’s term in office , producing an average return of 0.2%. This compares to an average return of 1.9% in the other quarters of the Presidential term. This pattern has been consistent whether or not the incumbent political party won or lost. In Donald Trump’s first presidency, the S&P 500 performed very well. Specifically, the S&P advanced 70% during Trump’s first term, this equates to 14.1% annually. Some analysts are anticipating strong returns in his second term driven by deregulation and tax cuts. In fact, since the creation of the S&P 500 in 1957, the index performed better under President Trump than any other president except Bill Clinton. It is important to remember that presidents do not control the stock market. However, they can influence it by shaping policies that impact the economy. As Trump prepares to be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, he is set to inherit a strong economy, characterized by robust growth opportunities, low unemployment, and positive financial markets. The agenda of a second Trump administration could have a stimulating effect on the U.S. economy in 2025 and into 2026. Many experts making stock market forecasts for 2025 are convinced that stocks should enjoy not only a rally, but broad-based prosperity. Sameer Samana, a global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, noted the importance of the Republicans capturing not only the White House, but the Senate and House of Representatives as well. According to Samana, this red sweep means “more cohesion,” supporting a strong stock market forecast for the coming year. Tickers to consider: IKT , KALA , EVAX , JTAI Sylva Disclaimer: https://www.sylvacap.com/disclaimer