The Big 3Monday, January 5, 2026 A quick look at the top stories we’re following this week.Energy stocks surge following U.S. operations in Venezuela.Oil, gold and silver rise, alongside all three major indices, in response to the capture of deposed President Nicolás Maduro.U.S. manufacturing carries its slump into a new year. According to the Institute for Supply Management, December marked the 10th straight month of contraction for American factories. Employment report scheduled for January 9th release. The latest labor figures may offer clues on upcoming Fed interest rate moves. This week’s Company Earnings Announcements at a glanceAAR Corp. (AIR)--Tuesday, 1/6Penguin Solutions, Inc. (PENG)--Tuesday, 1/6Constellation Brands, Inc. (STZ)--Wednesday, 1/7RPM International, Inc. (RPM)--Thursday, 1/8TD SYNNEX Corporation (SNX)--Thursday, 1/8

Cheers to you! It’s been a great year here at Urvin, and we have you to thank for it. Our mission continues to evolve, but everything we do is rooted in our highest guiding principle. An educated investor is an empowered investor. To every one of you who dropped by for an investor Town Hall, who tuned in for our podcast, who perused this weekly newsletter, who engaged on the Urvin platform – we extend our sincerest gratitude for your continued support. And of course, we wish you the happiest of holidays however you celebrate.If you’re partying with friends, eat, drink and be merry.If you’re traveling, be safe out there. As for us, we’ve already locked in some pretty solid plans. Then once the New Year hits, it’s back to business. We’re celebrating by uncorking all kinds of new products, new podcasts, and new capabilities. Until then… ***Want a sneak peak of what we’re building right now? Check out our new super-smart Ask Urvin chatbot. Here’s a glimpse… Download our brand new mobile app and find out what Urvin knows!

Is the air coming out of the AI bubble? On Wednesday, we streamed the final episode of Let’s Talk Markets Live for 2025. We’ll try not to get emotional. Who better to help us wrap up the year than our good friend Erik Smolinski from Outlier Trading? After all, Erik was our first guest this year too. Way back on January 8th, we were discussing Nvidia’s massive growth and whether AI is a bubble destined to burst. On Wednesday, Nvidia was down 3.5% and Palantir was down almost 5%, so this week’s show began on the same topic, but by week’s end both ended flat to positive. So, is the AI-glass half-full, or half-empty? Fortunately we’ve got both perspectives to share. “I'm a pretty big believer in the tech,” Dave said, “but not so much the valuations. We're so far ahead of our skis. I think it's got a ways to go to come back to Earth.”“It depends what Earth is defined as,” Erik noted. Hmmm.‘We're hovering near highs. Last earnings season was good. We're in the middle of a big technological change, one way or the other,” Erik pointed out. “AI is going to continue being a massively disruptive accelerator.” “But,” Erik conceded, “as all of that is happening, we still have a series of wild cards that I think keep the market on edge. “ Perhaps the biggest wild card of them all is human behavior. As Dave noted, “The market is made up of animal forces. There is irrational exuberance in the market. There are manias.” These manias give way to sustained spikes in pricing that fly in the face of rational valuation. We call them bubbles. Dave pulled out a pretty handy chart to illustrate the point. The chart suggests parallels between the AI bubble and previous market meltdowns. Of course, we all remember how Railway Mania came crashing down in 1848. “There are bubbles. And this idea that there is a rational valuation in order to appropriately allocate capital – that idea is foundational to capitalism,” Dave explained.As Dave’s chart shows, bubbles tend to burst when the markets disobey this foundational idea. So is Erik convinced that we’re in the middle of an AI bubble? Erik agreed that the actual valuations for AI stocks like Palantir probably are “wildly overvalued.”“But,” he said, “somebody wants it here, and somebody keeps buying it here. So I guess this is the big difference between a value investor lens and a trader lens.” Through a value lens, Palantir is too expensive. Through a trader lens, Palantir is up 134% over the last 12 months. “Regardless of how good the dollar is compared to the forward expectations, there are a lot of people trading it who don't give a flying crap about that,” Erik points out. “They're just saying, ‘I think other people are going to buy this thing and it's going to go up.’” Erik also thinks that we haven’t yet seen how high this thing can go. “In a very short-term – using the time frame of a month – we’re in a downtrend,” says Erik. “But I still view us as being in a long-term uptrend.Ultimately, Erik did not think much of Dave’s chart. “This is absolutely a sampling error,” he said. “This is absolutely picking random-ass time frames and saying, ‘This one fits my thesis.’”From there, things got pretty heated. Just kidding. But Dave and Erik do express some fundamentally different views about where the AI market is headed. And that really underscores just how much uncertainty lay ahead as we venture into the new year. We can’t tell you what comes next, but we did invent something that can tell you exactly what’s happening in real time – the brand new, AI-powered Ask Urvin chatbot. How smart is Ask Urvin? Observe… Wanna see what else Ask Urvin can do? Download the Urvin mobile app and start chatting!