Silver Spikes | Record Imports | Uber Fights Waymo | Copper Pivot

By 4 p.m., it was clear this wasn’t about fear. It was about higher standards.

The S&P eased. The Dow slipped. The Nasdaq gave ground. 

Oil held firm all day. Not explosive. Just steady. And when energy stays elevated, rates don’t really relax. 

The 10-year hovered north of 4.10%, which meant equity buyers couldn’t just spray money at growth and hope.

Under the surface, the sorting picked up.

• Trade data reminded us imports aren’t rolling over.
• Solar makers leaned harder into copper to defend margins.
• Accenture tied promotions to AI usage. That’s enforcement, not experimentation.
• Uber swung with every robotaxi headline, even as ride demand holds.

The same pattern is showing up everywhere. Costs move. Management adjusts. The market is listening more closely than it did a month ago.

This isn’t a growth scare. It’s a quality check.

Oil holds above $70. The 10-year won’t break lower. Guidance leans careful. In that backdrop, multiple expansion can’t do the heavy lifting.

Returns have to come from execution.

Demand hasn’t disappeared. But turning demand into durable earnings now requires pricing power, cost control, and proof that AI spend translates into output, not just headlines.

The bar didn’t collapse. It moved higher.

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Walmart didn’t disappoint. It also didn’t lean forward.

Sales rose 5.6%. U.S. comps gained 4.6%. Online jumped 27%. Advertising climbed 46%. Higher-income households kept showing up. Grocery traffic stayed firm.

That confirms something important. The consumer is active.

But general merchandise slowed. Lower-income shoppers pulled back. And full-year guidance came in below where analysts were sitting.

What Shifted

• Grocery drives traffic; discretionary lags.
• Higher earners widen the spending gap.
• Advertising and membership lift margins.
• Price increases on imports creep higher.
• Management frames the year with “flexibility.”

Strong revenue paired with conservative guidance tells you growth is getting harder to forecast. Not because demand collapsed. Because it’s uneven.

And when the largest retailer in the country chooses restraint, it resets expectations for the rest of the sector.

If Walmart is managing carefully, smaller consumer names will need sharper execution. Margin mix, not volume surges, becomes the lever.

This isn’t about demand holding up. It’s about how growth is earned.

Walmart showed that volume is stable, but margin quality is the battleground. Ads, membership, mix... that’s where the lift is coming from.

In this environment, consumer names won’t get paid for traffic alone. They’ll get paid for monetization skill.

You would think higher tariffs would shrink imports. They didn’t.

Even after tariffs and policy shifts, America kept buying from abroad at nearly the same pace. December didn’t cool things down either. Imports kept flowing.

So what happened?

Companies rushed shipments earlier in the year to beat tariff deadlines. Then they slowed down once policy landed. The swings were big. The dependence wasn’t.

Import Shuffle

• Businesses pulled electronics and components forward before new tariffs.
• Goods imports rose to $3.44 trillion despite higher duties.
• December imports climbed again, led by digital equipment.
• Gold trading distorted export numbers month to month.
• The goods deficit hit a new record.

Here’s the key. Tariffs changed the calendar. They didn’t change behavior.

When firms accelerate orders, monthly data jumps. But the underlying demand stays in place. That means pricing pressure can still show up in goods like electronics and telecom gear.

Trade data isn’t signaling a deficit problem. It’s showing timing shifts.

When companies pull imports forward, reported inflation can jump before it fades. That creates short-term noise in goods pricing.

Investors who treat every spike as structural may misread the cycle.

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Silver didn’t just rise. It exploded.

Prices ran up last year and briefly touched $120 an ounce. That hit solar makers right where it hurts, because silver paste makes up roughly 30% of a cell’s cost.

Margins were already thin. This changed the math.

And when the math changes, engineers get busy.

Cost Shock

• Silver paste per panel jumped from about $5 to nearly $18.
• Panel costs rose 7–15% over the year.
• Producers, especially in China, felt the squeeze first.
• Copper trades at a fraction of silver’s price.
• Major manufacturers are moving toward copper or hybrid mixes.

So the story shifts. It stops being “silver is expensive.” It becomes “how fast can we redesign?”

Copper isn’t perfect. It conducts less efficiently. But at these prices, the savings are too big to ignore. Industry estimates say a full switch could save $15 billion a year.

Commodity spikes don’t always stick. 

Silver surged. Engineers responded. Now copper is stepping in.

This is how industries defend margins: through substitution. If redesign works, cost pressure reverses faster than headline inflation suggests. Technology can mute commodity shocks.

This isn’t a feel-good memo about innovation. It’s a performance order.

To sum it up, Accenture told senior managers: use the firm’s AI tools regularly, or don’t expect to move up. 

That’s not culture. That’s cost and output discipline. Once promotions are tied to tools, behavior changes quickly.

Mandate Shift

• Senior staff must show regular AI use to advance.
• Leadership reviews now include tool adoption.
• 550,000 employees already retrained on AI basics.
• Reskilling is expected. Exit is the alternative.
• Partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic expand access.

Here’s what’s happening: AI stops being optional. It becomes part of the job description.

That means faster delivery cycles. More standardized work. Less reliance on simply adding headcount to grow revenue.

When consulting firms move from testing AI to enforcing it, productivity gains can show up in margins sooner.

The risk is that enforced usage pulls gains forward. 

If output rises without hiring at the same pace, margins widen. In services, workflow discipline is becoming a measurable driver of earnings.

Waymo is adding cities. Tesla is talking scale. And Uber’s stock has been hit.

At first glance, it looks simple. Driverless cars show up. But the economics are more complicated.

Robotaxis still need riders. They need routing. They need pricing. Most of all, they need to stay busy.

And that’s where this gets interesting.

Scale Check

• Waymo runs about one million paid rides a month in California.
• Uber and Lyft will handle roughly five billion U.S. rides this year.
• Waymo cars cost six figures each. Idle time kills returns.
• Uber already manages peak and off-peak demand in real time.
• In Austin and Atlanta, AV trips ran tighter through Uber’s app.

Here’s the chain.

If robotaxi fleets are expensive, they must run constantly. To run constantly, they need demand matching. Demand matching is what Uber already does all day.

The market is currently pricing a future where autonomy wins quickly. The risk is confusing short timelines with permanent disruption.

Robotaxis may drive themselves.

But someone still owns the customer, the dispatch, and the pricing engine. Until autonomy scales everywhere, utilization math stays king.

That swing between fear and cash flow is where the opportunity sits.

Gold plunged from $5,608 to below $4,700 in 48 hours. Silver collapsed 31%, its worst day since 1980.

The media called it “profit-taking.”

I call it what it is: a coordinated ambush.

After a known Fed hawk was named Chair, paper sell orders flooded the market. The dollar spiked. Retail panicked.

But while paper gold was dumped in the West, buyers lined up in China to grab physical metal.

Paper says sell. Physical says buy.
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Today wasn’t about fear. It was about adjustment.

Walmart showed the consumer is steady, but guidance is tighter. The trade data reminded us that tariffs change timing more than behavior. 

Solar manufacturers proved that when inputs surge, redesign follows. Accenture made AI usage part of performance, not experimentation. 

Uber’s debate showed that demand control still matters even as technology evolves.

The common thread is simple. Companies that can pass costs through, redesign around them, or automate labor are holding ground. Those that depend on a perfect backdrop are not.

This market isn’t retreating. It’s selecting.