Host:Hi, everyone! Thank you for joining WisdomTree's timely market event, Venezuela, Global Ripples, and the 2026 Macro Outlook, where you'll hear from Professor Jeremy Siegel, WisdomTree's Senior Economist, Jeremy Schwartz, our Global Chief Investment Officer, and Sam Rines, Macro Strategist of Model Portfolios.

Jeremy Schwartz:Well, thank you, everyone, for joining. There's just a few things happening around the world. There's a lot happening, so I can't imagine two better guests to join me with Professor on the macro. We just got a sleigh of reports. I would love to get his first reaction, and Sam on the geopolitics, which are ever-moving from Venezuela to Iran, all sorts of things happening. But, Professor, I'll let you kick us off. We'll talk about some of the top ideas we're seeing of how to position for all these scenarios, but Professor, kick us off with your read of the latest macro.

Jeremy Siegel:Yeah, so the latest macro—15 minutes ago, God, we got the jobs report. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.4; it was expected to drop to 4.5, although the last one, which was 4.6, was revised down to 4.5, so we still had that tenth drop. We had that U6 unemployment rate drop three-tenths, which is good, so it's not a tightening labor market, but it's not a worsening labor market, which is good. As far as the numbers on the payroll, a little bit on the light side, a little bit of downward revisions there. Again, we're—you know—what is it, the new normals: 30,000 to 60,000 on the payroll, no longer 150,000 to 200,000. I mean, so, and, you know, we are basically in that range.

I did notice that the work week did drop one-tenth. I have to look at the more detail. Participation rate remains stable. That work rate… you know, when we talk about total input of labor, you have to multiply the work week by the number of workers, and a one-tenth difference, if it is a full one-tenth, is actually a couple—over 100,000 workers. So, you know, the input into the labor is on the light side. However, so far, no deleterious effects on the GDP. The market, you know—at least early on—barely reacted to this. The 10-year [yield] kind of pushed up to 4.20, which is a little bit of a resistance level, and then just bounced right down over there.Let's couple this with the unemployment claims that came in on Thursday. Again, on the low side of the 200 to 240 range, we see no deterioration in the labor market. We see no extreme tightening of the labor market, either. I mean, we would be concerned if job claims fell below 200 for a sustained period of time, or rose above 240, and we've talked about that as being the timely indicator to look at.I'm gonna get to GDP, which is the big surprise, and certainly in terms of the Atlanta GDPNow in just a second. I looked at all the questions that you people submitted, and there was a tremendous amount of questions on Venezuela. Let me talk about that in general.Actually, I support the removal of Maduro. I think, you know, he caused the death of over 10,000 to 20,000 Venezuelans, the most massive out-migration since World War II, decimated the population, impoverished the country. Here's a quick question of what comes next. We have an elected president that got a majority of the votes. You know, Machado is head of the party, and Gonzalez is the presidential candidate.

I'm a little disturbed that Trump is not saying, “Alright, let's work towards installing him.” He did have a majority over there. So we need to make this about the Venezuelan people liberating the Venezuelan people. We need to give them the choice that they democratically made.I mean, I would even hold another election under, you know, tight procedures, and he would win again. So there's a legitimate government that can take the place of the Maduro regime, and we should be moving towards that. I do not like Trump's emphasis on oil, oil, oil. Listen, we all know there's not gonna be more oil overnight. It's gonna take years. And emphasizing oil resources—like you're stealing the oil, which was the reason Chavez actually came in to begin with—wrong tones, then following it up with Denmark immediately, wrong tones, as far as that's concerned. But the basic act is something that can really open up Latin America. I mean, Venezuela and all of Latin America.

Latin America, as we all know, has been turning right after a left turn. We know what's happened in Argentina, we see what happened in Ecuador. There's gonna be elections in Colombia where now it looks like perhaps the right wing will win there, so there's a turning towards free markets. That could be very, very positive, I think, for the region, but I think it's very important that Trump follows through on this with legitimizing the president and making it for the Venezuelan people, not just looking at the oil.

Now, as far as oil is concerned, what's happening in Iran is far more important right now. Those demonstrations have gotten to be probably the most ever—could it topple the regime? And I think there's three million barrels a day or more coming out of Iran. So if you really want to talk about oil, and restrictions or disruptions to the oil market, what's going on in Iran is 50 times more important than what's going on in Venezuela right now, in terms of oil. We'll see what happens there, and I think that's one of the reasons why we've had a little bit of tightness and firmness in the oil over there.You know, as far as the long run on oil, Trump has mentioned $50 is his desired level. You know, what it's going to be—it’s going to be years before a lot of those reserves. And by the way, there's a lot of question about whether it's the biggest world reserves. There's been a lot of downgrading of that, and will it make a difference as we move slowly but surely towards alternatives when we talk about timeframes of 10, 20, 30 years. So, you know, it's not really gonna affect a lot of things in the near term. It does send some geopolitical tones that we could talk about.One thing that is very important today—which we don't know about, we don't know for sure it's today—but you all know that today is widely expected to be a decision on tariffs by the Supreme Court. The betting markets are saying 3 to 1 that they will nix the tariffs as they now stand, but we do not know whether it's all nixed. We will not know whether they're gonna give Trump time. My recommendation has always been that they give him six months to get congressional approval of whatever tariffs he still wants to maintain there.

This idea of sudden refunds—and that it'd be very disruptive if suddenly there'd be no tariffs; people have resourced their suppliers, they've adapted here, and all of a sudden, “Oh my God, is that off?” I hope the Supreme Court is sensitive to the economic implications of that and gives them six months. I don't like the tariffs; they're definitely not an emergency. They never were an emergency. It was a ridiculous statement by Trump. He will go some other routes, but they are more temporary. However, if the Supreme Court says six months, he may not go—whether, you know—then give him six months and then he gets asked to get congressional approval, which is about how much the temporary other acts that he could do. That would be the best, in my sense, solution. We are waiting for what the Roberts Court's decision on that is gonna be.Now, let's go to trade, GDP. When I saw yesterday the trade numbers came across, my jaw just dropped. Whoa! One of the biggest reductions in trade that we've seen. In and of itself, it would have boosted GDP by 10 percentage points. However, the reason why is a lot of that reduction in trade deficit is gold flows. Gold flows do not—are subtracted from the GDP. Some of it is pharmaceutical flows that do go into the GDP. Bottom line: the Atlanta Fed doubled their fourth quarter GDP estimate from about 2.8% to 5.6—5.6! Remember, we're at a 4-handle on the third quarter, and that's pretty final.If we get a 5-handle on the fourth quarter—whoa. Now, think about this: five on the third, fourth… fourth… third and fourth quarter—four and five handles—with employment going up minimally. What does this mean for productivity? One of the biggest productivity surges we've had.Now, you know, there's a lot of volatility in these short-term productivity surges. Some people say, “Is it AI kicking in?” One of the factors is that when we had 150,000 and 200,000 every month, a lot of them were migrant workers—new workers, immigration. And they didn't have the skills, so they were in low-skilled jobs and low productivity jobs. Now that they're not entering into those jobs, the remaining people that are hired and working are generally of higher productivity levels. So an immigration thing would increase the productivity of that.It also would spur the productivity of firms that say, “Alright, I don't have these low-cost people to do this work. I'm just gonna have to improve the productivity of those with me and use technology, AI, or—as some people say—even the cloud and other factors,” because I don't have that source. That's also operative here, but we are really having a productivity surge—certainly the fourth quarter data. We need a little bit more data, obviously, coming out. We just finished that quarter, so data is coming out. But GDP at a 5-handle is something that is really remarkable.What is that set up for 2026? I mean, good earnings, to say the least. Now, at what rate are these earnings gonna be capitalized? So let's go to the Fed a little bit. Trump has said he's made up his mind, but has not released it yet. What's interesting is, in the betting markets, Warsh has now edged out Hassett, who was the big favorite about six weeks ago.As those who are following our podcast have said, Warsh has been my favorite from the beginning of the viable candidates. He's just edged him out. We don't really know what it is; it seems to be between those two. Let me say that if it does turn out to be Hassett, I think you're gonna see a little bit of weakness in the 10-year bond price—and therefore a higher yield—because there would be the feeling that rates would go down more, that would stimulate the economy more. There'll be a little bit more inflation, perhaps a little bit more growth. I mean, you know, I'm all for the rates going down. You all know that I basically want the rates to go down to the low threes on the Fed funds, which is two more cuts. I think that's appropriate with a 4.17 10-year.

Steve Mirren wants it to go down another 150 basis points. Trump wants it to go down 350 basis points to 1-point-something. That's not gonna happen. We still have money supply that I think is sluggish, although not terribly restrictive. So we do want to lower that rate a little bit. With this growth of GDP and strong, and a slightly lower rate, I think we could get enough liquidity for surviving on that.What does this mean for the stock market? You know, could we have double-digit again for the S&P? Absolutely. I wouldn't be surprised, though—AI has… AI is subject to a lot of competition from all sources. I mean, take a look at what happened to Tesla. All of a sudden, you know, we have NVIDIA doing driving—oh my god, does it have a chip that can do self-driving? I mean, there's competition from everywhere. You know, Gemini starts attacking ChatGPT. The rate of technological innovation is so high that anyone can suddenly push off the leader as the race goes on. All this is great for the American public, but it ain't always going to be great for the margins of the MAG7.So if I were to guess here in January, I would guess I wouldn't be surprised to have a very modest increase in MAG7 overall—5–10—but the non-MAG7, or non-tech related, to be up 10 to 15 this year. Small stocks will be up 10 to 15 this year as AI sinks in, as the short rate goes down. And of course, you know, anything can happen—any geopolitical thing can happen. I remember a year ago, January, remember the announcement of DeepSeek, the Chinese large language model, and all of a sudden we had, like, a 15% drop in NVIDIA.So, I mean, could that happen again? Could something come out of China? Could something come out of anywhere? Any of those things can happen to threaten the profitability of the large margins that they see on this. So I think that churn is going to keep caution and maybe a little bit of compression of P/Es in that area.

But I see, you know, the strong economy pushing the earnings up. I think that earnings of the S&P could easily be 15% to 20% this year, and perhaps even higher for the non-MAG7. So, I covered a lot of ground. Jeremy, do we have some more questions?

Jeremy Schwartz:Well, yeah, I want to turn it to Sam to let him weigh in on a few of these things. You know, we're going to come… I want to come back to some of the AI stories. You made a lot of comments I want to comment on, also follow up on, but Sam, since you cover the geopolitics so closely, the professor gave some of his ideas and read of the situations. What are you watching? What are you seeing?

Sam Rines:Certainly. So, we've been talking a lot on the podcast about Venezuela, Guyana, etc., and what I think is really interesting is Guyana, which is the next-door neighbor and has been threatened quite a bit by Venezuela over the past couple of years, went from producing approximately zero barrels of oil in 2020 to now about a million barrels. CNUX there, the Chinese National Oil Company.

Then you have Chevron, you have Hess, now part of Chevron, you have ExxonMobil—you have the bigs sitting offshore Guyana. Where you haven't really seen the big oil companies explore a whole lot is offshore Venezuela recently. You had very large discoveries offshore Guyana. It's actually much better crude than what we hear about coming out of Venezuela, right? We hear Venezuela onshore and close shore is very heavy—it's very similar to the Canadian oil sands oil. But the offshore oil could be much, much different, and it's a little easier to develop at a little bit of a lower oil price.

So it is interesting. You can probably think of it as 500,000 to 750,000 barrels can be developed with some rapidity, and then by 2028, 2029, you're probably an additional between Guyana and Venezuela 1.5 to 2 million barrels of incremental global supply. That's not nothing, but to the professor's point, it's not huge. You're not bringing on, by any stretch.

And it's also notable that this is not oil that is priced near WTI. WTI sitting between $55 and $60, depending on the day—it's not priced there. It's priced at a significant discount to it. Again, very similar to that Canadian heavy oil on the pricing side, and that's trading at about $42 to $45 a barrel—very, very deep discount to WTI. That's part of the reason why the refiners like it. It's part of the reason why you do have some movement on the gasoline price.

You've seen refiners do better than the majors in some cases, and the majors that have significant refining capacity on the Gulf Coast have done a little bit better, because their spreads on taking oil and turning it into gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel, etc., are going to go up. That's just the kind of the positive side of it. But it's not necessarily that bad for WTI.

I think a lot of the angst about the potential for WTI to continue to go lower is a little misplaced here, and part of that is you have to mix the heavier crude—the Canadian heavy crude, whichever it is—you have to mix it with lighter, sweeter crude, and that's WTI. You mix the two of them together, and you end up with what we can actually process on the Gulf Coast.

Generally speaking, I would say you're going to continue to see the refiners do well here. MLPs—we had a question about that—it's an interesting one. MLPs here are probably not as affected as people think. A lot of the larger ones, particularly the Kinder Morgans of the world, the much more sophisticated, larger MLPs in particular, they have a lot of exposure to natural gas, right? The demand for natural gas is not going to be significantly changed over time. You need a lot of it for AI, you need a lot of it to power the incremental demand, so you're really not going to have much of a change there. And a lot of them are on take-or-pay contracts. So it’s a much different type of effect there.

But generally speaking, for countries that have to import a tremendous amount of their oil—the Japans of the world, South Koreas of the world—it's probably a tailwind. Particularly when you take into account Iran and some of the other happenings globally, you could have some incremental barrels of oil coming onto the non-sanctioned market very, very quickly. That takes off a headwind for a country like Japan, country like South Korea, and others that are heavily reliant on those imports over time. That's not necessarily a tomorrow thing, but it is something to think about down the line. You've reduced the risk of an oil shock, potentially going forward.

Jeremy Schwartz:In terms of the predominance of questions coming in, there's a lot on this sort of rotation. The professor talked about some of the potential threats in the big tech stocks and sort of small caps. I was looking at one of our earnings tools, and it's kind of interesting—part of the reason why small caps have lagged so much over the last few years is that earnings have really not kept up with the large caps. But I'm starting to see estimates on small caps actually outpace the S&P 500, so it'll be interesting to see if that continues to hold as we get through earnings season.

Alright, now, let's go into… One of the big reasons, let's face it, for the outperformance last year was the drop of the dollar. And not the only reason, but the currency helped it. How much would you say—five percentage points, Jeremy? I don't know if you have the data.

Jeremy Schwartz: Maybe even more. I mean, it could be as much as 10 in some places.

Jeremy Siegel:Oh, yeah. So, in some places… so, a lot of it is. So, let's talk about the dollar. I know Jeff Gundlach said, oh, the dollar's gonna fall—or, you know, his commentary on the Fed and everything like that—and I said, no, I don't see what strong growth… you know, yeah, so even, I mean, you know, 150 basis points more Fed funds is not—especially if the long rate stays in the same range—I don't think that that interest rate difference is really gonna be a major reason. The strong growth, I think, is gonna keep the dollar stable to slightly stronger.

So you're not necessarily gonna get that tremendous tailwind that you got on international from the dollar last time. So, the thing about international—I mean, certainly you talk about defense, those companies, and infrastructure, and when you sell at 15, 16 times earnings, you don't need much growth to have a really good return—a double-digit nominal return.

Jeremy Schwartz:Well, in some baskets, Professor, I'm gonna… this is where I'll bring… I also want to talk about some of the specific ideas, like what, you know, in Sam's background, we show a few different tickers for European opportunities, Japan opportunities, and sort of a flagship Geo Alpha fund that Sam can talk about—how he thinks about the allocation around the world.

We do think, you know, if you think about this geopolitical evolvement, a lot of it's the same. We haven't talked China yet. A lot of these actions with Iran, with Venezuela, are negative for China longer run, but Japan and India are two of our top ideas. But from the valuation perspective, both the Europe and Japan opportunities are even more attractive than the 15 P/E for broad. These are like 12 to 13 P/E baskets. But Sam, maybe talk about the defense overall.

Jeremy Siegel:Well, first of all, let me say, I mean, you know, oil is sort of fungible. We talk about Venezuela selling to Iran, and this country's selling to that country—it's really a pot. Now, I mean, it becomes more individual when countries are sanctioned and cannot sell oil or buy oil one way or the other. But, you know, right now, China is not sanctioned not to buy oil from the world pot.

So Venezuela sells it to the U.S., the U.S. doesn't need it, the U.S. will put it on the world market, and China will get it. I mean, some people, I think, think too much of a bilateral where they go. If there's sanctions, that becomes important, and if there's no sanction, that doesn't.

I mean, obviously, we're still waiting for the resolution in Ukraine and Russia. You know, I hope that Trump continues, as he has, to move away from Putin. He should have from the beginning, and they're working at that. As I said, that resolution would be very, very positive. But what's going on in Iran—again, if there's a revolution, and who takes over, and then who heads their oil company, or is it stop or not—is, I think, much more immediate than what's going on in Venezuela in terms of what could affect the oil market this year.

That being said, I completely agree with what Jeremy's saying about the promising stocks in Japan. We have a very pro-growth prime minister that is welcoming innovation into the country, and with these P/Es, again, it sort of heads you win, tails okay—you get a normal rate of return—rather than, of course, AI where you have to have super heads to win. Heads you stay even, and anything less than perfect is down.

I'm not staying against AI—absolutely. Let me tell you, they are amazing, and that transformation is there. But in terms of if you worry about how expectations affect one market versus the other…

Jeremy Schwartz:Sam, anything you want to add on just sort of allocating around the world, and sort of how you put in some of your geopolitical models?

Sam Rines:Sure. It's really intriguing to me, because one of the kind of killer aspects of the sanctioning power that the U.S. and Europe and Japan and others have put in place, particularly against Russian oil, has been… it's been a tremendous tailwind to China. China gets very cheap oil because of that price cap, and so does India.

It's intriguing to me just how much that could change very, very quickly if it were to become unsanctioned. That oil's decent oil. Urals is fairly easy to refine, you don't have to mix it, and that makes it highly profitable in a lot of circumstances. That changing could be one of those accidental headwinds to an economy that's highly reliant—particularly China—on imported crude. They only have about 5 million barrels a day, a little less than that, of domestic production.When it comes to Japan in particular, they kind of sit at this very interesting intersection of… and by the way, in Europe, they sit at this interesting place. You talked about the defense contractors in Europe doing extremely well this year, partly because of the potential for more of a fallout between the U.S. and Denmark, etc. But also, those companies are getting tremendous backlogs. All of a sudden, those have gone from very, very boring industrial-type companies to companies that are growing their revenues and earnings almost like a U.S. tech company in a lot of cases.

So you have Thales, you have Leonardo—you have a lot of these companies nobody heard about until 2024 doing extraordinarily well, and really beginning to drop some of that money to the bottom line, expand margins, etc.

When it comes to Japan, you have a lot of those intermediate companies in AI that kind of get overlooked in a lot of ways. Tokyo Electron, for example, heavily levered to AI as they sell some of the equipment and tech expertise to TSMC. TSMC can't do what it does without a Japanese company.

You have things like Fast Retailing, which is using AI to be able to really do interesting things with its supply chain, continue to have very, very tight inventory controls, and they had a spectacular quarter because of that—by being able to really take that top line, drop it to the bottom line. It's a company that sells clothes, and we all know how difficult that's been, particularly if you had China exposure. They grew their earnings year-over-year at 30%, called out European and U.S. strength, and a bottom in China—and a little bit of a turnaround there. The only place, oddly, that they struggled was in Japan because of some of the changes that they made. But overall, a pretty interesting way of getting exposure to some of these themes that you and the professor have been talking about at extremely reasonable multiples.

Jeremy Schwartz: Professor, we probably had 10 questions come in on commodities and gold, and gold has been one of the long-term things. It was a very, very hot year. You mentioned the dollar… What’s your general thoughts on the commodities move, and gold in particular?

Jeremy Siegel:Yeah, I mean, it is surprising—the strength. Again, in a bigger context, it was very surprising to me when inflation really struck in 2021 with the pandemic. In two days, gold hardly moved. And all of the people would say, “Oh no, that's my hedge against inflation,” when inflation is much lower now, it's like, “Oh yeah, let's wake up to that.”

Now, you know, geopolitical risk? Well, why isn't it affecting the stock market? A lot of it is momentum play. A lot of it is catch-up that it did not do during the pandemic. Some of it may be related to, as I said, there might be tokenization of gold as medium of exchange, and companies are buying it to eventually get a token on it and use it as a stable coin—the coin now being a gold coin rather than a dollar bill.

There’s a lot of replenishment of gold by some of the central banks that decided not to lower their allocation of dollars as a result of the poor dollar performance and maybe a resentment to Trump's tariff policies. All those are one-time effects, though. So when you take a look at gold, it has these runs that go 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years, and then it kind of stagnates for a long time. Gold has huge runs, stagnation, run, stagnation.

And I'm just worried at these… I mean, I'm not saying that the momentum players that are skillful as traders can't continue to go, but I'm questioning what kind of five-year returns you're gonna get on gold or silver now.

Because I just don't see a lot of inflation. I don't see deflation or anything like that, but I don't see anything where I say, “Oh my god, you gotta really hedge, the dollar's gonna be worthless.” If you're thinking that’s gonna be the case, I think you're gonna be disappointed in gold.

Nonetheless, even something that moves in spurts like gold is something that, for diversification, I have no quibble. People say, “I want 5% in gold”—portfolio, fine. They want 5% in Bitcoin—fine. Although Bitcoin has shown some fundamental weakness over the last four or five months, and we could talk about whether it's really going to be the blockchain coin of choice or not for what is now going on in that world. Let me say, I'm no expert in that world—I'm just talking about being a market observer. I just don't see that accumulation that I saw over the last 18 months earlier than that right now. So there might be some rotation even in the Bitcoin space. So, yes, I'm giving you warnings, although I, myself, think it might have disappointing five-year returns going forward.

Jeremy Schwartz:I'm gonna give people a few ideas on, if they're thinking of commodities, what to look at. When I look at the broad-based commodity funds out there, there's not much actually allocated to commodity ETFs in the U.S. I looked at the total categories—around $17 billion in an ETF market that's $13 trillion—so it's really a tiny drop in the bucket.

People have been, you know, almost like the U.S. exception, and commodities were very disappointing post-’08 for a long time. But then they started popping up in the 2020s, so there is an element of geopolitical diversification that it gets. Now, most of the big commodity funds have a huge part in oil. So when we were looking at this a few years ago, some of them were 50–60% oil. Now, because gold and silver and copper and others have popped up, maybe they're now 30% to 40% oil—but oil is still very much overweighted in the big broad-based commodity funds.

You know, we have a few different strategies to look at. GCCis our more diversified Broad-Based Commodity Fund. It has done very, very well the last three years, let's say. This year, year-to-date, as energy has struggled, it being much more diversified is one. So GCC, for those interested in commodities, I think is interesting.

But in gold, I think that when Professor Siegel shows his 200-year chart and that gold has done about 1%, approximately, as we update the data after inflation, the struggle is: what are you going to sell to buy it? I think that has always been your main critique—stocks have done 6 to 7, maybe they do 5 to 6 on higher P/Es, but you really don't want to sell stocks to add gold because stocks have had this superior return.

But if you could do it with capital efficiency and not have to give up your core stocks, that might be better. And we do do a few strategies with that, whether we combine stocks and bonds that creates more room to add gold. Something like NTSXis an ETF that has capital efficiency to add bonds. I think where bonds are today—the yields today—they're not great returns, but they're not going to be the bad diversifiers bonds were back when you had negative TIPS yields.

So, capital efficiency with gold—GDE—where we add gold futures on top of a core equity position—I think that would be my preferred way of always doing it. You can make it strategic. You don't have to sell your stocks to add gold, and you get to that long-term inflation protection. But Professor, are bonds going to be a better hedge at 4.2 versus, you know, where they were…?

Jeremy Siegel: I mean, obviously, you're not getting something pretty much, you know, fair value for a bond. You got the 10-year TIPS at 1.8–1.9. When it was negative—very negative—I think it even got to minus 1.5%. Well, listen, the 10-year nominal got to 57 basis points. I mean, these were crazy yields low, and now they're more in line with…

One of the questions that I saw was someone said, “Well, why isn't the 10-year going down? Because the Fed's lowering rates,” and I said, listen, what you're really doing is restoring a normal term structure. The 10-year should be 100 basis points or so above the Fed funds, and we're approaching that, but we're not quite there. So it doesn't mean—people think lockstep, the 10-year should move down with the Fed. No. What we're really doing is correcting a misshapen term structure when we move down that short rate.

And we're also giving relief to small businesses who borrow so much more on short than they do on long. And that is a relief that I think is part of the reason that spurs some of the earnings estimates. They borrow a lot. And if the Fed funds was up in the 5-handle and now is headed to the low 3-handle, that's a huge savings of interest expense for a small business.

So bonds, you know, I've been saying 4 to 4.5 seems to be a fair range with—if Fed funds goes 3 to 3.5—this is very, very normal, with a real return basically close to 2% in the growing economy. So you're in a much better shape than you were five years ago.

Jeremy Schwartz: As we're sort of wrapping up, somebody wrote in that my tickers weren't that clear, so I'm gonna just repeat those tickers for Rob. The tickers for the Commodity fund was GCC—so broad-based commodities is GCC. The gold overlay was GDE for gold on top of equities—those were the two ideas.

I think for the international ideas we mentioned early on, Japan and European opportunities, OPPEand OPPJ, are two ideas for international that we like if you're thinking about diversifying outside the U.S. Maybe, Sam, any closing thoughts from you on the trade dynamics—what you expect to see from the tariffs?

Sam Rines:It's interesting. I would expect if the tariffs are struck down—and regardless of whether there's any sort of repayment or commentary there—you would expect to see some of the consumer staples names move somewhat significantly on the news if the tariffs are either suspended, struck down, etc. Those have, like, 7%—that earnings could move, give or take.

And then the industrial side. Both of those have been the two most affected, with a little bit of consumer discretionary as well. Those are the main ones that should move, both in the U.S. and some of the European and Japanese names, as well as some of the Indian names. India's also been hit heavily with those tariffs, so you could see names moving both in the U.S., but also abroad.

Jeremy Schwartz: Well, Professor, thanks for starting our day early, giving us the read of the macro fresh off the tape. And Sam, always interesting to get your takes on all this geopolitics stuff—very timely and relevant. So thanks, everybody, for dialing in. We'll talk to you all again soon.

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There are risks associated with investing including possible loss of principal. Please read the Fund’s prospectus for specific details regarding the Fund’s risk profile.

WisdomTree Enhanced Commodity Strategy Fund (GCC): There are risks associated with investing including possible loss of principal. An investment in this Fund is speculative, involves a substantial degree of risk, and should not constitute an investor's entire portfolio. One of the risks associated with the Fund is the complexity of the different factors which contribute to the Fund's performance. These factors include use of commodity futures contracts. In addition, bitcoin and bitcoin futures are a relatively new asset class. They are subject to unique and substantial risks, and historically, have been subject to significant price volatility. While the bitcoin futures market has grown substantially since bitcoin futures commenced trading, there can be no assurance that this growth will continue. In addition, derivatives can be volatile and may be less liquid than other securities and more sensitive to the effects of varied economic conditions. The value of the shares of the Fund relate directly to the value of the futures contracts and other assets held by the Fund and any fluctuation in the value of these assets could adversely affect an investment in the Fund's shares. Because of the frequency with which the Fund expects to roll futures contracts, the price of futures contracts further from expiration may be higher (a condition known as “contango”) or lower (a condition known as “backwardation”) and the impact of such contango or backwardation may be greater than the impact would be if the Fund experienced less portfolio turnover.

WisdomTree Efficient Gold Plus Equity Strategy Fund (GDE): The Fund is actively managed and invests in U.S. listed gold futures and U.S. equity securities. The Fund’s use of U.S. listed gold futures contracts will give rise to leverage, magnifying gains and losses and causing the Fund to be more volatile than if it had not been leveraged. Moreover, the price movements in gold and gold futures contracts may fluctuate quickly and dramatically, and have a historically low correlation with the returns of the stock and bond markets. While the Fund is actively managed, the Fund's investment process is heavily dependent on quantitative models and the models may not perform as intended.

WisdomTree U.S. Efficient Core Fund (NTSX): While the Fund is actively managed, the Fund’s investment process is heavily dependent on quantitative models and the models may not perform as intended. The Fund invests in derivatives to gain exposure to U.S. Treasuries. The return on a derivative instrument may not correlate with the return of its underlying reference asset. The Fund’s use of derivatives will give rise to leverage and derivatives can be volatile and may be less liquid than other securities. As a result, the value of an investment in the Fund may change quickly and without warning and you may lose money. Interest rate risk is the risk that fixed income securities, and financial instruments related to fixed income securities, will decline in value because of an increase in interest rates and changes to other factors, such as perception of an issuer’s creditworthiness.

WisdomTree European Opportunities Fund (OPPE): Foreign investing involves special risks, such as risk of loss from currency fluctuation or political or economic uncertainty. This Fund focuses its investments in Europe, thereby the impact of events and developments associated with the region can adversely affect performance. The Fund invests in derivatives in seeking to obtain a dynamic currency hedge exposure. Derivative investments can be volatile, and these investments may be less liquid than other securities, and more sensitive to the effects of varied economic conditions. Derivatives used by the Fund may not perform as intended. The Fund invests in the securities included in, or representative of, its Index regardless of their investment merit and the Fund does not attempt to outperform its Index. The composition of the Index is governed by an Index Committee and the Index may not perform as intended. Due to the investment strategy of this Fund, it may make higher capital gain distributions than other ETFs.

WisdomTree Japan Opportunities Fund (OPPJ): Foreign investing involves special risks, such as risk of loss from currency fluctuation or political or economic uncertainty. The Fund focuses its investments in Japan, thereby increasing the impact of events and developments in Japan that can adversely affect performance. Derivative investments can be volatile and these investments may be less liquid than other securities, and more sensitive to the effect of varied economic conditions. As this Fund can have a high concentration in some issuers, the Fund can be adversely impacted by changes affecting those issuers. Due to the investment strategy of this Fund, it may make higher capital gain distributions than other ETFs. Dividends are not guaranteed, and a company currently paying dividends may cease paying dividends at any time. The Fund invests in the securities included in, or representative of, its Index regardless of their investment merit and the Fund does not attempt to outperform its Index. The composition of the Index is governed by an Index Committee and the Index may not perform as intended.

This material contains the opinions of the speakers, which are subject to change, and should not be considered or interpreted as a recommendation to participate in any particular trading strategy, or deemed to be an offer or sale of any investment product, and it should not be relied on as such. There is no guarantee that any strategies discussed will work under all market conditions. This material represents an assessment of the market environment at a specific time and is not intended to be a forecast of future events or a guarantee of future results. This material should not be relied upon as research or investment advice regarding any security in particular. The user of this information assumes the entire risk of any use made of the information provided herein. Unless expressly stated otherwise, the opinions, interpretations or findings expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of WisdomTree or any of its affiliates.

Professor Jeremy Siegel is Senior Economist to WisdomTree, Inc. and WisdomTree Asset Management, Inc. This material contains the current research and opinions of Professor Siegel, which are subject to change, and should not be consid­ered or interpreted as a recommendation to participate in any particular trading strategy, or deemed to be an offer or sale of any investment product and it should not be relied on as such. The user of this information assumes the entire risk of any use made of the information provided herein. Unless expressly stated otherwise the opinions, interpreta­tions or findings expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of WisdomTree or any of its affiliates.

Jeremy Schwartz is a registered representative of Foreside Fund Services, LLC.

WisdomTree Funds are distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC.