I’ve spent my career studying the gold cycles…

For the past 20 years I've buried myself in my research...

And what’s unfolding right now in the Persian Gulf is the end of a cycle that will affect the price of gold like nothing before it.

Because Saudi Arabia just abruptly terminated a deal it made with the U.S. back in 1974...

This deal single-handedly controlled the global financial system for the last 50 years.

It was an agreement that Saudi Arabia would sell oil exclusively in U.S. dollars – forcing every country on Earth to hold U.S. Treasuries.

That system has been the foundation of American financial dominance over the past five decades.

There was virtually nothing reported about the end of this agreement...

And at first, nothing changed.

But now the consequences are becoming undeniable...

Saudi Arabia signed a $7 billion currency swap with China… Began settling oil in digital yuan… And joined mBridge, China’s cross-border payment system.

The war in Iran is driving Gulf nations to settle oil deals in yuan...

And tankers are being forced to pay tolls for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz in yuan, cryptocurrency, or basically any denomination that's not the U.S. dollar...

At both ends of the Persian Gulf the dollar system is being dismantled... even replaced.

This removal of massive global demand for dollars will rewrite the rules of global finance.

Because if oil doesn’t require dollars, the world doesn’t need to hold them.

And when demand for dollars falls… Demand for Treasuries falls with it.

Yields on the US ten-year Treasury are pushing toward the 4.4% danger line — where the system starts to break down.

Falling treasury demand → rising yields → Fed intervention → money printing → the loss of your purchasing power.

That’s the sequence playing out today.

As the dollar pulls back and countries step back from buying more US debt, gold has to reprice higher.

A declining dollar is the single strongest driver of the gold price.

But the best way to play the decline of the US dollar is not to buy physical gold…

There's an alternative way to leverage gold's continued rise...

Using an asset that still trades at an extreme discount relative to gold's current price.

It's like buying gold for pennies on the dollar...

Click here to learn more.

To your wealth,

Garrett Goggin, CFA, CMT
Chief Analyst and Founder, Golden Portfolio

Hershey Stock May Be Near a Sweet Spot as Cocoa Pressure Eases

Reported by Peter Frank. Article Posted: 7/1/2026.

After a strong run-up in February, Hershey (NYSE: HSY) is now trading 3.8% below its year-start price.

But while the share price has been stuck, the company’s outlook has changed. Hershey has overcome soaring cocoa costs with impressive pricing power, easing commodity pressures, and the strength of its brands, putting it in position for a potential margin recovery.

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Most analysts rate it a Hold, with roughly 20% upside as pricing and demand remain balanced. Still, with customer loyalty and a lineup of new products working in its favor, the company appears well-positioned if current trends continue.

Hershey's Pricing Power Is Paying Off

What hurt the company recently was a familiar challenge. Cocoa prices surged to historic highs in late 2024 and 2025, squeezing the margins of chocolate makers around the world. Hershey saw its net income fall from $797 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 to $224 million in the next quarter of 2025, and then to $63 million in the following quarter.

For Hershey, which generated annual sales of $11.7 billion last year and has a market capitalization of around $36 billion, the shock also arrived at an awkward moment. The company was already pursuing a broader portfolio reorganization, with a heavier push into salty snacks, including Dot's Homestyle Pretzels, LesserEvil, and SkinnyPop, as well as protein products such as Fulfil bars in North America.

Sales and Earnings Rebound Despite Higher Costs

When cocoa prices soared, the story for Hershey shifted from long-term growth to short-term damage control. As a result, the company leaned into its pricing power. By the end of last year, organic price realization, or the benefit from price increases, rose 6% in the fourth quarter of 2025, then accelerated to 10% in the first quarter of 2026. Consumers may have complained, but they kept buying.

The first-quarter 2026 results told the broader story. Consolidated net sales reached $3.1 billion, up 10.6% from $2.8 billion a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $2.35, an increase of 12.4% and well above analyst estimates, compared with $2.09 in the prior-year period. Reported net income was $435 million, or $2.13 per share, up from $1.10 a year earlier.

Operating results were also sharply higher. First-quarter reported operating profit rose 73.5% to $640.7 million, while the profit margin reached 20.6%, up 7.4 percentage points from last year. The company said higher sales and prices helped offset increased commodity and tariff-related costs.

Looking ahead, management reaffirmed its full-year guidance of 4% to 5% net sales growth and 30% to 35% adjusted earnings per share (EPS) growth. Full-year adjusted EPS is projected to come in between $8.20 and $8.52, compared with $6.31 in 2025.

Lower Cocoa Prices Could Boost Margins

The success of its salty snacks was evident in North America, which reported $2.5 billion in net sales. That segment recorded an acquisition-led 26% year-over-year increase, while North American confectionery products rose 8.3%.

The cost picture is improving, but it is not yet resolved. In the previous quarter, the gross margin fell 17 percentage points to 37% as cocoa prices remained high. Even in the first three months of 2026, adjusted gross margin rose to 40.4%, but it was still down 80 basis points year over year because of elevated commodity and tariff-related costs.

The encouraging development is that cocoa prices have fallen dramatically from their late-2024 and early-2025 highs, which were well above $10,000 per metric ton. After falling below $4,000 earlier this year, the commodity is currently trading at nearly $5,000.

ONE Hershey Aims to Drive Long-Term Growth

Beyond cocoa, the company is making other structural changes.

In March, the company announced the unification of its sweet, salty, and protein brand portfolios under an integrated operating model called ONE Hershey. The company hopes that putting its products under a single umbrella will better align strategy, cross-selling, brand messaging, in-store performance, and innovation.

The initiative also comes amid top management changes. A new president and CEO took over last August, and more recently, a new president of U.S. operations was appointed to oversee the integrated businesses.

Analysts See Upside But Remain Cautious

The financial picture around the stock reflects the tension between business quality and the cost environment.

Over the past 52 weeks, Hershey has traded between $160 and nearly $240 per share. At current levels around $175 per share, its price-to-earnings ratio of over 33 is not cheap, and the consensus among 23 analysts is that the stock is currently a Hold. Sixteen analysts recommend a Hold, and seven recommend a Buy.

With an average 12-month price target of $217.50, the implied upside is above 20%. The highest price target is $260 and the lowest is $185, suggesting genuine uncertainty about the pace of margin recovery.

Hershey also carries a sizable quarterly dividend of $1.45 per share, for a yield above 3%. The company has raised its dividend for 15 consecutive years.

The Next Few Quarters Could Be Critical

Whether the momentum Hershey has built continues will soon be seen in its second-quarter earnings.

The key questions are whether its pricing power has held and how much lower cocoa costs will help. New management will also help set the direction.

For investors, Hershey presents a choice between patience and precision. It is a category-leading company with a storied brand in the consumer staples sector. It has proven pricing power, a 15-year dividend growth streak, and a commodity headwind that appears to be easing. The next quarter or two should show whether the trajectory continues.

Broadcom and OpenAI Unveil Jalapeño: An Early Step to Massive AI Growth Potential

Reported by Leo Miller. Article Posted: 7/4/2026.

Shares of semiconductor giant Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) got pummeled after the company’s latest earnings report, dropping nearly 20% in two days. One of the biggest reasons for the stock’s sharp post-earnings decline was the company’s decision not to raise its AI semiconductor revenue guidance.

In fiscal 2027, Broadcom continues to forecast this segment’s sales at more than $100 billion. However, many investors believe Broadcom’s AI semiconductor sales will ultimately be much higher than that. CEO Hock Tan alluded to that possibility himself, saying on the company’s latest earnings call, “2027 will exceed very easily $100 billion.”

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One customer that is likely to play a significant role in Broadcom reaching, and potentially surpassing, this milestone is ChatGPT maker OpenAI. In 2025, the two companies announced a massive 10-gigawatt (GW) partnership, under which Broadcom will develop chips for OpenAI. Notably, the two firms just took a key step forward in that partnership by unveiling Jalapeño, OpenAI’s first Intelligence Processor. For Broadcom, Jalapeño is more than a new chip; it could be the key to unlocking a major revenue opportunity over the coming years.

Jalapeño: Unlocking the Door to $200 Billion in Revenue?

Approximately nine months ago, Broadcom and OpenAI announced their 10 GW partnership. At the time, Broadcom said it would not begin deploying AI chips and systems for the partnership until the second half of 2026. With the firms now unveiling Jalapeño, the partnership appears to be progressing on schedule. In turn, Broadcom’s plan to convert its 10 GW collaboration into a sizable revenue stream remains on track.

GWs are a standard unit of measurement for evaluating the size of data center deployments, and each one can translate into billions of dollars in revenue. In a Broadcom earnings call, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon estimated that Broadcom’s revenue opportunity was in the range of $20 billion per GW. While the revenue opportunity per GW can vary significantly, Hock Tan said the reality was “not far from” Rasgon’s estimate.

So while these estimates are not exact, Jalapeño could represent an early step toward Broadcom unlocking a $200 billion opportunity. Even though the 10 GW deployment is not expected to be fully completed until the end of 2029, that would still be a massive revenue driver. For perspective, Broadcom’s total revenue over the last 12 months was only about $75.5 billion.

OpenAI: A Testament to Broadcom’s Long-Term Partnerships

The potential size of this opportunity highlights the value of Broadcom’s long-term partnerships. The two firms announced their collaboration nine months ago, but investors are only now getting a meaningful update. Moreover, significant revenue from the deal will not begin until 2027, as revenue will remain limited through the rest of 2026. That means investors may wait well over a year between the deal announcement and substantial sales. While that timeline may seem long, it is exactly what investors should expect from Broadcom.

This is due to the nature of Broadcom’s AI chips. Broadcom designs application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which are fundamentally different from NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) graphics processing units (GPUs). GPUs are highly flexible and can perform many different tasks well. As a result, they can serve a broad range of customers right out of the box.

By contrast, as their name implies, ASICs are application-specific. They perform a specific set of tasks extremely well, depending on each customer’s needs. As a result, Broadcom must work closely with its customers to design a customized chip from the start.

In the case of Jalapeño, the companies designed it specifically for large language model (LLM) inference. Inference refers to the process of generating answers with an LLM, while training is when the model learns to improve its performance.

Importantly, the vast majority of revenue is generated only after the design phase, when the chips are actually deployed in data centers. With that in mind, investors should not expect an immediate sales impact when Broadcom announces a new custom chip design partnership. Instead, they should recognize that it takes time for revenue to ramp, and the OpenAI partnership is another reason to have confidence in Broadcom’s long-term growth prospects.

Broadcom’s Valuation Sinks as OpenAI Opportunity Nears Closer

Broadcom shares now trade at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of around 62x. That is well below its average P/E of nearly 80x over the past three years.

Meanwhile, with Jalapeño, Broadcom’s large opportunity with OpenAI is one step closer to becoming a reality. With its valuation lower and a major growth driver approaching, Broadcom shares appear well positioned going forward.