China’s population is declining, Another history lesson shows why we don’t overpay for hot stocks, Gold has done well, but silver has surged! Should you buy it now? Best Accounts for Kids and Grandkids & More

China’s population is declining

Last year's birth numbers for China recently came out and it was the lowest since 1949. What was the population of China in 1949? It was only around 540 million people so percentage wise it was a much higher birth rate than the 7.9 million we saw in 2025. With over 1.4 billion people and about 11 million people dying every year in China, it will take a long time to have results of a large declining population, but he problem with a lower birth rate than death rate is that it has major changes for an economy. China has a life expectancy of 79 years old. This means that the population is getting older, and there are fewer young people working to support the older generation that generally need more medical and social services. With an aging population, there’s generally less need for housing, schools, and businesses because older people have less need for these services which can grow an economy versus the cost of higher medical demand. China also has a problem with immigration as they have over 300,000 people more leaving versus coming in. You may be wondering how the United States stacks up? In 2025 we had 3.7 million babies born and 3.2 million deaths in the country. I was surprised to learn that the mortality age is under China’s at 78.4 years. With all the illegal immigration and the heightened status of what is going on with immigration in the United States, it is hard to come up with a concrete number. However, it is obvious that more people want to come to the United States than leave, which could help support a low birth rate.

Another history lesson shows why we don’t overpay for hot stocks

We know it's exciting to be in the next hot thing on Wall Street, but that was the same way people felt just a few years ago with hot software companies like Salesforce, Adobe and ServiceNow. Looking back, many of these once hot companies now have seen very disappointing five-year returns. As an example, Salesforce is only up around one percent over the last five years, and Adobe has actually fallen around 35% during that timeframe. The reason we won’t overpay for earnings on high flying companies is because many things can change like we have seen in the software industry. Software companies were supposed to benefit from AI, but now Anthropic's Claude code, which is an AI tool, says it can shrink the time it takes to build complex software. Also, new competition can come from startup companies that can slowly take away market share of the older companies a little bit at a time. Unfortunately, some of the software companies began to borrow substantial amounts of money and now have a highly leverage balance sheet, which could cause some problems in the future. In just the last 24 months, 13 software companies have defaulted on loans. I don’t think many of these big software companies will go out of business anytime soon, but I don’t believe their stock will run up to levels seen in the past anytime soon.

Gold has done well, but silver has surged! Should you buy it now?

Silver is now up almost over 200% in the last year alone as it has become immensely popular with retail investors. Many investors are excited to point out that silver has a strong use case as an industrial metal. It’s a key component in electronics, including circuit boards, switches, and solar panels thanks to the fact that it’s an excellent conductor of electricity. Thanks to increasing demand for areas such electric vehicles and growing electricity needs, largely due to the AI push, industrial use cases now account for around 60% of demand. This compares to under 50% just a decade ago. I was also surprised to learn that silver may be subject to supply shortages as about ¾ of new silver is created as a byproduct of mining other metals like copper, zinc, and lead. This has led to silver demand outstripping supply every year since 2018. While all this sounds positive, generally markets have a way of reconfiguring the supply and demand equation. I believe this could lead to companies that have silver as an input cost will instead look for alternative sources as the price has become prohibitive after the recent surge. This would then hurt demand for silver. On the supply side since the economics of finding silver is strong at this time, you could see more mining for silver and the other metals, which would then increase the supply of silver. Declining demand and increasing supply would be problematic for the price of silver. Another way to look at the value of silver is the silver-to-gold ratio which tells you how many ounces of silver you need to buy one ounce of gold. The 50-year average is around 65, but today that ratio has fallen below 60. That is the lowest ratio in over a decade. Ultimately, your guess is as good as mine for where the top is for silver, but long term I don’t believe we will see strong results from this level. Don’t forget this is a volatile asset with other historical instances of massive rallies that were followed by large declines. We have talked about the Hunt Brothers’ attempt to corner the market in the 80s, but more recently there was a bubble that occurred in 2011. The price peaked at around $49 in April of that year but quickly tumbled about 25% in just a week and ultimately ended the year at $27 for a total decline of nearly 45% from the high.  

Financial Planning: Best Accounts for Kids and Grandkids

When saving for kids and grandkids, the “best” account depends on the tradeoff between tax benefits, flexibility, and control. 529 plans offer tax-free growth and withdrawals for qualified education expenses, but non-qualified withdrawals trigger federal and state taxes and penalties on earnings. Up to $35,000 can be rolled into a Roth IRA over time without federal taxes or penalties, though some states, including California, still impose taxes and penalties. Roth IRAs provide tax-free growth and tax- and penalty-free access to contributions at any age, but contributions require earned income, which many children do not have. Trump accounts function similarly to a retirement account. Funds generally cannot be accessed before age 18, and early withdrawal penalties apply until age 59½. Growth is tax-deferred, but earnings are taxed at ordinary income rates upon withdrawal, similar to a traditional IRA funded with after-tax contributions. Unlike other retirement accounts, contributions can be made before age 18 even without earned income, and funds may later be converted to a Roth IRA, though taxes would apply to earnings at conversion. Custodial accounts (UTMA/UGMA) do not offer tax-deferred growth but benefit from the kiddie tax rules. In most cases, the first $2,700 of long-term capital gains and qualified dividends are taxed at 0%, allowing smaller accounts to grow largely tax-free. However, assets must be turned over to the child at adulthood with no restrictions on use. Finally, taxable accounts in a parent’s or grandparent’s name offer maximum flexibility and control over timing and purpose of gifts, but investment earnings are taxable to the adult each year, though usually at the lower capital gain and dividend rates. Because of the control and simplicity, we often recommend taxable accounts as a core strategy, supplemented by other account types when specific needs justify them.

Teaching investing in school sends the wrong message

The problem with teaching investing in school is that they use stock market simulators to try to give students a portfolio to invest in. While this sounds great, a semester only lasts a few months and at the end of the semester, the winner of who had the highest return is usually the investor who took the highest risk. This is also true for stock market simulators from companies like Webull or Greenlight where people will do paper trades with no money behind it and after six months, maybe less if they do well, they think they’ve learned something and then begin trading with real money. These short-term simulators teach them nothing about long-term investing, which takes many years to learn. In my opinion, people are wasting their time and losing money because all they learned how to do was trade stocks and gamble. If they really want to learn how to invest, they need to take time to read good books written by Warren Buffett or other long-term investors like David Dreman. Both believed in investing in good public companies known as stocks at a low price and holding it for many years, not a few months. Another good option would be to take a course on how to read financial statements so people could figure out the value of a company and determine whether it is a good investment or not. There are also many good books on how to read financial statements like Financial Shenanigans written by Howard Schilit.

The housing market dilemma

Younger people who are renting want housing prices to fall so they can afford to buy a home, but current homeowners that now collectively have around $35 trillion of housing equity want housing prices to stay stable if not increase even more. It is estimated by experts that if mortgage rates were to fall to around 4 1/2% and there is no increase in the housing supply, home prices would rise about 10% over the next three years, which would not help the affordability. The addition of a 50-year mortgage or lower rates does not address the housing shortage issue, and this would likely push prices higher. If housing prices and mortgage rates stay about where they are now, the median household income would need to increase by 56% to $132,000 to get affordability back to where it was in 2019. The other option to reach 2019 affordability levels would be for mortgage rates to fall to 2.66%, but I believe if rates fell drastically, it would push housing prices higher and counteract the benefit of improving housing affordability. People that have a home feel very good economically because of the increase of their home value and have been spending and consuming because of their higher net worth. If home prices were to drop, they would lose their equity and probably curtail their spending, which would hurt the economy. In my opinion, the only real way to fix the housing situation is to build more houses to increase the supply. But if they built too many houses in a few years, we could then have an oversupply and housing prices would likely fall as demand would not meet the supply. No matter what the current administration comes up with, it will take years to correct the situation without destroying the economy.

Don’t brag about your gold investment

I’ve heard people say how great they did on gold and yes in 2025 it was up 66%. Congratulations if you did well, but to be a smart investor, you need to understand what you don’t know and I doubt very seriously many of those investors on January 1st, 2025 would have said with confidence they knew gold was going to rise 66% or anywhere close to that number. The other thing I have noticed is some people will go around bragging how well they did on gold, yet the rest of their portfolio was not invested well or not at all and maybe their total return was just 3%. Portfolio allocation is very important when it comes to earning good returns for the long-term. Buying one lucky home run like gold will not give you enhanced wealth over the long run. Be honest with yourself, how did your entire investable assets do? Let’s use $100,000 as an example if you put $3000 in gold at the beginning of the year; your gold investment would be worth $4980, which is pretty good, but if the rest of your portfolio was sitting in a money market or had a return of only 3%, the total return on your portfolio would only be $6870 or a portfolio return of 6.9%. It is important to invest in a portfolio that consists of different assets for long-term growth. At our firm, Wilsey Asset Management, we run a concentrated portfolio with about 15 to 16 different investments. SEC rules do not allow me to tell you our portfolio return, but I can tell you we did far better than a 6.9% return. I can also tell of our 15-16 investments the returns for some of the positions were 52.6%, 34.4%, 32.7% and 26.6%. Sorry I’m not allowed to tell you what they were, but we did not have gold, silver, or any other highflyer in our portfolio. Our objective is to consistently perform pretty well without trying to guess what the next hot investment will be. Will gold and silver do well in 2026? Maybe, but I believe it is more than likely they will not. If you want to build your wealth, do not try to pick the next hot investment for the short term, try to invest in assets that will grow well for you over the long-term.

The new Federal Reserve chairman will not make much of a difference for interest rates.

You may be thinking, how can that be? There’s so much talk about it and doesn’t the Federal Reserve chairman have a lot of power? The Federal Reserve chairman has the power to speak to the public and to Congress along with establishing the tone of the meeting when the Federal Reserve meets eight times a year, but the Federal Reserve is not a dictatorship, and the chairman only gets one vote just like the other 11 members voting from the Federal Open Market Committee, also known as the FOMC. It is a rather complex structure that consists of 19 total members, but just 12 of them vote at each meeting. The Board of Governors consists of seven members, and they are all permanent voters. There are then 12 Regional Fed Presidents, and the New York Fed President is the only one in this group that is a permanent voter. The New York Fed president is a permanent voter because they oversee the implementation of monetary policy and execute open market operations, which means buying and selling securities to steer interest rates. They also serve as the FOMC's Vice Chairman. The remaining four votes come from other Regional Fed Presidents, and they rotate annually from the remaining 11 reserve Banks. The rotation comes from Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond, Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis, Dallas, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and San Francisco. The design of the entire system was set up to remain independent, but yet make sure no one person has full control. As much as someone would like to believe the Federal Reserve chairman has a lot of power, they really cannot set interest rates by themselves.

Don’t look now, but your health insurance premiums could be going up soon

If you’re a middle-income earner and you buy health insurance through the marketplace that was set up by the government’s Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, you may want to brace yourself for some large increases. The people who will be most affected are those that earn over 400% of the poverty level. This would be people that earn more than $62,600 a year and file as single or $128,600 for a family of four. It is estimated that roughly 2 1/2 million people who use the ACA and have an annual income above the 400% poverty level could see as much as a 114% rise in their premium bills if they stay on the program. For many people that is not an option and for some they’d be paying more for their health insurance than they are for the mortgage on their home. This also means that many people will just have to drop health insurance and hope that they or someone in their family does not get sick. Unfortunately, if they were to have an illness in the family or someone got injured, many times this can wipe out a person's or a family's entire net worth to pay for those medical bills. There’s no talk at this time about the government renewing the subsidies that expired December 31st, but something will have to be done and be done soon about the high cost of medical insurance. The main problem I see is the excessively high increase in medical costs that stems from an aging population, higher administrative costs, and the addition of new drugs like the GLP1 diet drugs. Often times it seems all of this money for medical expenses just goes into a black hole and something needs to be done soon about the ridiculous costs for medical attention.

The secret formula for WD-40 still remains a mystery

It is amazing to me after all these years it is still unknown what the special formula for WD-40 is. The product is helpful when it comes to loosening bolts, coaxing a boa constrictor out of a car engine compartment, and removing gum from turtle shells. If you google the list of things that it does, it is a miracle formula. The formula has been around for 73 years, and it was invented by Norm Larson in 1953 who worked for the Rocket Chemical Company in San Diego. The product name WD-40 was created because WD stands for water displacement and 40 because it took 40 times to develop the formula after failing 39 times. Many have tried to break down the formula, including Wired magazine, who about 10 years ago came up with a list of the components. A spokeswoman for WD-40 did say they got some of the components right, but it’s the same as the secret to Coca-Cola. You know its carbonated water, sugar, and caramel color, but yet when you add those together, you will not get the taste of Coca-Cola. To date only a handful of people at the company have actually seen the handwritten formula, which is kept in a lockbox at an undisclosed Bank of America somewhere in San Diego. In the last three years, it has only been out of the vault three times. This product is so amazing that I believe it should be in in a museum somewhere along with the story of how well they’ve kept this secret all this time.