Thursday Financial news

Hello dear friends. My name is Clive

Thompson. Today is Thursday, March 26th,

2026. We're going to do a quick rundown

of the markets and where precious metals

are going and where the stocks are going

today. Um, first of all, it's uh after

300 p.m. The US stock markets are open

already. 3 p.m. in Europe, I mean. Um,

so everything I say today is not

investment advice. Um, please beware of

any scammers imitating me in the

comments. Uh, they might be using my

photograph and my name or something very

similar to my name, not exactly my name,

and inviting you to contact them by

WhatsApp. Or you might see some scammers

uh promoting some investment advisors

being very clever with investments.

Don't contact them. Whatever you do, if

you contact someone via WhatsApp through

the comments, you'll absolutely

certainly have an attempt to scam you or

cheat you or steal your money in some

way. Uh also, please be aware of the

many many videos I've seen on internet

showing my image with some crazy comment

about uh some price prediction which I

haven't made. Um people are using my

image uh and in one or two cases they're

also imitating my voice to make uh

predictions which I didn't make. Um, if

it's not on my channel, treat it with

suspicion.

Um, of course, some of these videos are

actually things I did actually did

actually get interviewed by third

parties, but uh there's a lot of scam uh

fake videos of me out there.

Um, so let's talk about the markets.

Now, we're on day 27 of Operation Epic

Fury. uh that uh uh war which was

supposed to be over in a few days and

supposedly has been over for many days

uh is still going on. Uh both sides

continue to attack each other in various

ways. Um what we are seeing is something

very interesting. The markets appear to

be manipulated. we see very large

movements in the prices of things like

oil or gold or uh the currencies

immediately before uh some announcement

comes out which kind of implies that

someone knows what's coming. Um so this

is not a a time to be um trading or

gambling if you like. Uh you know if

you're making long-term investments you

should be fine but again don't go all in

on anything. go in very very gradually

um over a number of days, weeks or even

months uh so you don't get caught by

these large price swings which we're

seeing uh just before news comes out. Um

so trade small. Now as far as the traits

of horm are concerned um they're almost

closed. I mean there's about 10% of the

traffic is getting through and mostly

it's um Chinese uh ships or ships

carrying oil to China or even Iranian

oil is getting through. Um but most

allied forces and western uh ships don't

quite dare to go through yet. Um we'll

see if that changes down the line. Um

but as far as negotiations are

concerned, the two sides are miles

apart. Um, America says they've got some

uh, you know, negotiations going very

well and Iran says we're not negotiating

at all. So, uh, there's clearly no

agreement. Whatever whatever's happening

and you can't really tell which side is

telling the truth here. Um, as far as

the continuation of the war is

concerned. We see that US troops are

being de deployed in the region. Um,

does that mean there's going to be an

invasion? Uh, well, Mr. Trump has said

there won't be, but uh why are they

putting the troops there, we'll see. Um

oil has been swinging around wildly in

the last few weeks. We've seen oil uh go

up from about $70 to $119 and then all

the way back to $80. Let's have a quick

look at that. Uh now we're looking at

that. So this is the West Texas

Intermediate Crude. You see here it was

trading uh before the war uh around $59,

$60, that sort of level. then it shot up

in the war um uh to in this case on WTI

to $98 uh and then it's trading at $93

at the moment. And if I look at um Brent

crude, which is here again, it was

trading around $60 $663 before, went all

the way up to $107.

Uh back again to $97 and is currently at

one just over just over $100 at $10087.

Um gold is, let's have a look at gold

and see how that's doing. It's uh and

silver have both had very very wild

swings. Uh so here's the gold price

currently $4,448.

Uh you can see uh gold there's a message

here. Gold declines as Trump threatens

Iran with military escalation. That's

news just came out at 1504.

So, gold was up at five 5,400

and then it collapsed down to 4,400

roughly. So, $1,000 down. That's uh 20%

down if you like. Uh and it's now just

above that level at $4,444.

So, gold is in a bare market. A bare

market means that it has fallen by more

than 20% since its peak.

We'll talk about why it's gone down as

well. Um obviously there's been a lot of

margin call selling and also um people

are selling their best performing asset

because we mustn't forget that gold did

have an absolutely amazing performance

last year. Um it was up I think uh 66%

in 2025. Um that's in 2025 and it's now

back more or less to the start of the

year start of the year level. Where did

it start the year? Let's have a look.

I'll just do a year to date here on

this. There we are. So year to date,

it's slightly above the start of the

year, slightly above the start of 2026.

So you know, gold had this 66% positive

return in 2025. Then it continued on

upwards, and now people are making

losses on other investments cuz stocks

are falling, bonds are falling. Um, and

so they're selling a bit of their gold

to cover their losses, I think. Um,

having said that, it's still above where

it was at the start of the year. Um,

let's see if silver's doing the same

thing. Well, silver also since the start

of the year. There we are. That's Let's

just I'll just bring that up actually.

Um, auto fit.

Uh, so silver, that's one year. Let's go

to the start of this year. Slightly

below the start of the year. It started

around $72. It's now $68.90.

But it did have this rush up at the

start of the year all the way to the end

of January right up to about $117. Then

it fell very sharply down to about 67

and we're trading at 6868 $68.68 at the

moment. Um virtually at the bottom of

the range for this year. So yeah, it is

the bottom of the range as near makes no

difference.

Um, as far as stocks are concerned,

we've had quite a a fall in stocks too.

If we go to we'll go to look at the Dow

Jones now.

Right, I brought the Dow Jones up here.

Um, it says, just reading this headline

which has popped up, Wall Street slides

on M East

deescalation uncertainty. So obviously

we've had some predictions that there's

going to be some deescalation and now

there's uncertainty that that de those

predictions will ever come true. It's uh

bit all over the place isn't it? Um

anyway you can see the Dow Jones since

the start of the year is well down. It's

down about 10%. Start of the year very

roughly at 48 thou well it's 10% from

the peak. I guess it was above 50,000

50,198.

Now it's 46,411.

Um, let's just look at that as a

percentage just to see how much it's

down. There we are. It's uh

as a percentage, it's down 4% it says

since the start of the year. Uh, but if

I was to take that to the peak,

it's currently 7 and a half% down and at

the bottom was down about 9%. So, not

too bad at the moment. Um,

let's just we'll do look at year to date

there and we'll bring up the S&P 500

which is down 3.7% year year to date and

the uh let's get the NASDAQ that's down

five just a bit more than 5% this year.

One market which has been suffering