Jan van Eck: Q4 Macro & Market Outlook
What's really going on with private credit, AI and gold
BUY THE REPLAY of yesterday’s Thoughtful Money’s Fall online conference:
When market uncertainty is as high as it is now, I often emphasize that the most useful people to interview are asset managers.
Because they don’t have the luxury of merely having an opinion on the road ahead -- they have to commit capital to their convictions, and be judged upon the results.
Today we have the great fortune of having the return appearance of one of the most respected capital allocators in the business: Jan van Eck Jan is CEO of vanEck, an asset management firm with over $100 billion in assets under management invested across its wide family of ETFs and funds, spanning equity, bond, commodity, digital and regional asset classes.
As we’ve done the past several quarters now, Jan and I spend an hour discussing his Q4 macro and market outlooks, as well as where he sees the biggest opportunities for investors right now.
If you want to know what’s really going on with AI, private credit and gold, click here or on the video below:
GOT GOLD?: Read our free Guide To Buying and Storing Gold & Silver:
I’m so grateful to everyone who has kindly supported me by becoming a premium subscriber to this Substack. It makes an important difference in helping me fund the substantial operating costs of running Thoughtful Money.
Premium supporters receive my “Adam’s Notes” summaries to the interviews I do, the wildly-popular MacroPass™ rotation of reports from esteemed experts, VIP discounts, plus periodic advance-viewing/exclusive content. My Adam’s Notes for this discussion with Jan are available to them below.
If you, too, would like to become a premium subscriber to this Substack (it’s only $0.52/day), then sign up now below:
Adam’s Notes: Jan van Eck (recorded 10.13.25)
Overall Macro Outlook: Jan van Eck describes the current environment as “happy with eyes wide open,” driven by improving fiscal deficits (projected at 4.5-5.5% of GDP for FY2026), AI-fueled mega-cap profitability, and multi-year trends like de-dollarization and India’s growth, though tempered by potential growth scares from employment shifts and tariffs.
AI Market Dynamics: Explosive token demand (up 38x YoY) meets plummeting costs via Nvidia hardware (90% annual efficiency gains) and LLM software improvements, creating a compute shortage that





