The Two Most Unpopular Trades in the Market Right Now: Bitcoin/Gold and the AI Barbell

The Two Most Unpopular Trades in the Market Right Now: Bitcoin/Gold and the AI Barbell

To investors,

Every great allocator knows you want to counter-trade the consensus narrative. Buy assets when they are unpopular, then sell them when your barber or cab driver is talking about them. This is a timeless investing principle that is easy to discuss, yet difficult to execute.

It requires emotional discipline and clarity of thought. In the modern social media-driven society, it also means you have the courage to be socially mocked and ridiculed for a period of time.

Right now is one of those moments where we find out who has the ability to counter-trade the narrative and who is a pretender. Let me give you two examples.

First, bitcoin and gold are having a horrible year. Charlie Bilello writes “bitcoin and gold are the two worst performing major assets so far in 2026. This is something we haven’t seen before in any calendar year.”

The lack of performance from these hard assets is occurring while the US government is printing more money than ever before. Our national debt interest expense is over $1 trillion annually. And cumulative inflation since 2020 is now over 30%, which continues to destroy the purchasing power of the US dollar.

The mainstream narrative is that bitcoin and gold are not that attractive because of the recent lack of performance. Why own hard assets when you can buy AI stocks that have been white hot for months? Why allocate to non-productive assets like bitcoin and gold when AI companies are producing more revenue and profits than ever before?

The fact that everyone hates these sound money assets is why I like them right now. The unpopular decision will likely be handsomely rewarded over the next 24 months. Investors can’t fight math and the math is telling us the government is going to print trillions of dollars, which will drive hard assets significantly higher during the medium-term.

But bitcoin and gold are not the only counter-trade available right now. My second example is the hardcore AI trade.

Friday was a bloodbath in the market for these companies. Fears related to AI spending continue to apply pressure to public companies, while equally causing issues for private unicorns.

For context, the Nasdaq was down 3.5%. Bitcoin fell even more to below $76,000. Intel and Reddit both dropped like a rock in the ocean. They were down 28% and 29% respectively. Anthropic’s IPO valuation fell from a rumored $2 trillion to about $1.5 trillion and OpenAI cut their fundraising goal from $30 billion to $20 billion.

These are not the headlines you expect to read during an economic boom driven by world-changing technology like AI. People are nervous about the enormous expenses associated with bringing this technology to global adoption. They continue ask whether the ROI will be large enough to have warranted trillions of dollars in spending.

Those are the wrong questions though. You don’t hear the founders of the largest companies in the world talking about AI spending that way. They are discussing it from the exact opposite perspective.

These leaders are instead asking “How much money can we lose if we don’t win the AI race?”

I think that is a much more relevant question. If you lose the AI race for your industry or vertical, you may not be able to catch up in the future. The technology is that distributive. So the analysis shouldn’t center around “what is the ROI?,” but rather “how much are we willing to spend to ensure our business doesn’t go to zero?”

I personally believe the answer for most companies will be “whatever it takes.”

If my assumption and analysis is correct, then the current mainstream narrative around AI spending is completely wrong. The lack of enthusiasm in recent weeks is misplaced and the investors who have the courage to allocate into the weakness will be big beneficiaries in 2027.

Some of you may think the AI trade is over. If that is your view, then you should sell your assets and sit in cash. But almost no one is going to do that because the pain of missing out will be worse than the pain of financial loss.

With that nuance understood, the question becomes “what assets do I allocate to in the AI trade?”

My belief is that a barbell approach will be best suited for most portfolios. First, you want to own as much compute as possible. The world won’t be able to build enough compute, so there is a generational supply/demand imbalance that will drive prices higher over time. At the same time, applied AI and/or physical AI will be one of the largest winners in the next decade.

I am least excited about the general intelligence model labs. Those feel like they are caught in the middle. They don’t own a significant compute business and they don’t own the consumer relationship outside of their monthly subscription fee. This doesn’t mean that the model labs will do poorly, but rather there are significantly better opportunities in compute or applied AI that provide more asymmetry.

So regardless of how you look at the market right now, the two themes I am most excited about for the next decade (AI and bitcoin) are very unpopular right now. This is when fortunes are made by those who can ignore the noise and continue to accumulate ownership of great assets.

Which assets you buy is a deeply personal exercise. You can use Silvia to get personalized insights into your portfolio using cutting-edge AI, including how midterms will affect you, what the optimal tax loss harvesting plan looks like, and where you are getting ripped off by fund fees or other non-obvious expenses.

I will leave you with a clear takeaway: open your eyes, close your ears, and let it rip.

The numbers are the only story that matter. The narratives are wrong. And the market will prove this out in the coming 24 months.

Hope you all have a great start to your week. I will talk to everyone tomorrow.

- Anthony J. Pompliano

Founder & CEO, Silvia, Inc (Nasdaq: SVIA)

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