Ren Zeping on the Stock Market, Real Estate Market, and Gold and Silver: Everything Follows Cycles—Cycles Are Destiny
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Ren Zeping on the Stock Market, Real Estate Market, and Gold and Silver: Everything Follows Cycles—Cycles Are Destiny
AI is not a trend—it’s a tsunami.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Ren Zeping
Since 2024, the stock market has surged with remarkable momentum, while gold and silver have entered an epic bull market—what’s behind this? How much higher can they go?
In 2021, I proposed “Gold in Turbulent Times”; in September 2024, “Confidence-Driven Bull Market”; and in 2025, “Embrace the Kondratiev Cycle—the Dawn of the Commodities Era.” All these calls have since been validated.
These judgments stem from a macroeconomic cycle analytical framework refined over more than two decades. Unlike short-term or technical noise analysis, macro-cycle analysis operates at a higher, more fundamental level—focused on the long term and the essence—and reflects a commitment to long-termism and rational thinking.
1. Views on the Stock and Real Estate Markets
Embrace the Kondratiev Cycle—don’t become an “old-timer.”
A “slow bull” means “old-timers” handle the slowness, while “young-timers” drive the bullishness.
With a clear view of the Kondratiev Cycle, everything happening in today’s world falls into place: the tech revolution, AI’s explosive growth, the commodities era, geopolitical turbulence, and global monetary easing.
A significant rebound in the real estate market still requires time; for now, the priority is stabilizing prices and preventing further declines. Focus lies on developing new infrastructure and new-quality productive forces to build fresh engines of growth.
Don’t miss the Kondratiev Cycle—it’s our generation’s dividend. Embrace the confidence-driven bull market, the tech-driven bull market, and the commodities bull market.
Real estate markets follow three timelines: long-term driven by demographics, medium-term by land supply, and short-term by financial conditions. Over a decade ago, I established this industry analytical framework. In 2015, I forecasted “first-tier city home prices would double”; in 2020, I predicted “real estate would hit a historic peak.” Some students followed my advice, selling properties in recent years and reallocating into gold and tech stocks.
My analysis of the real estate market consistently prioritizes professionalism, rationality, and responsibility.
2. How High Will This Bull Market Go? My Thoughts on Its Ultimate Outcome
As one of the earliest whistle-blowers and standard-bearers of this bull market, I introduced the concept of the “Confidence-Driven Bull Market” in September 2024, grounded in the convergence of policy-driven, tech-driven, and liquidity-driven bulls.
Since the start of 2026, markets have repeatedly hit new highs, and consensus around the bull market has grown ever stronger—even triggering short-covering rallies in certain phases.
How high will this bull market go? According to my analytical framework, market divergence and volatility will intensify going forward; being wrong on direction means no profits. Equities always revive from despair, rise amid controversy, and collapse amid euphoria. Bottoms are built on faith; tops require rationality.
Yet all good things must end. Does the bull market’s underlying logic still hold? If that logic collapses, the bull market ends—and its collapse could be terrifying. So what signals indicate whether the bull market continues—or ends?
Seeing the trend clearly is critical. A fuzzy truth is better than a precise error. Maintain equanimity; focus on fundamentals, simplicity, and the long term.
3. The Epic Gold and Silver Bull Market—How Much Higher Can It Go?
Gold and silver are undergoing an epic bull market—soaring sharply even at year-end and triggering short squeezes. In 2025, gold rose over 60%, silver nearly 150%, marking their strongest annual performance on record. Since the start of 2026, gold has surged over 15% to breach the $5,100/oz mark, while silver has rocketed over 40%, surpassing the $100/oz threshold.
Three key drivers underpin this rally:
First, escalating geopolitical turmoil and the late stage of a major economic cycle have maximized safe-haven demand. The world stands at the tail end of a grand cycle: old orders are disintegrating, and new ones are being forged—a new era defined by transformation, adjustment, turbulence, and transition. Events like Venezuela’s political upheaval, the Greenland sovereignty dispute, and U.S.-EU tariff wars have occurred frequently, dramatically elevating gold and silver’s strategic role as safe-haven assets.
Second, deglobalization and dedollarization are reshaping gold and silver’s pricing logic. U.S.-initiated tariff wars have ignited global trade friction and fueled deglobalization sentiment. Simultaneously, dedollarization is accelerating: soaring U.S. fiscal deficits and erosion of the Federal Reserve’s independence have prompted central banks worldwide to dump dollars and aggressively accumulate gold. The dollar’s share of global foreign exchange reserves has dropped from 71.2% to 56.9%—a 14-percentage-point decline—with 5 percentage points shaved off in just the past six years.
Third, the Fed’s massive monetary easing and persistent dollar overissuance. Whether responding to the 2008 subprime crisis or the 2020 pandemic, the Fed has unleashed quantitative easing (QE), “QQE,” unlimited QQE, and helicopter money drops. U.S. national debt now exceeds $38 trillion; the Fed has monetized Treasury debt at scale, causing its balance sheet to balloon and the dollar’s purchasing power to plunge sharply. Gold’s epic rally is, in essence, the dollar’s external depreciation.
2026 marks the Fed’s easing cycle. The U.S. economy currently exhibits a “dual reality”: structural stagnation in traditional sectors coexists with structural prosperity driven by a new wave of technological revolution. To revitalize traditional industries, support emerging sectors, and bolster Trump’s mid-term election prospects, the Fed has entered a monetary and fiscal easing cycle—even compromising its own policy independence.
Additionally, silver benefits uniquely from surging industrial demand, especially in new energy applications. Silver boasts the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of all metals—and is extremely difficult to substitute. It plays irreplaceable roles in photovoltaic (PV) panels, new-energy vehicles, and communications equipment. As global new-energy and AI adoption accelerates, PV installations surge, transforming silver from a conventional industrial metal and precious metal into a strategic resource tightly interwoven with high-tech industries. Global silver supply deficits in 2026 are projected to exceed 100 million ounces, with industrial demand and financial attributes jointly amplifying its upside potential.
4. Economist Ren Zeping Warns: AI Is Not a Trend—It’s a Tsunami
Just back from the U.S., I finally grasped what Musk meant by “supersonic tsunami.” After attending CES and touring Silicon Valley, only one word comes to mind: awe. A truly new era has arrived.
1) CES Has Become an AI Expo—Robots Are “Unrecognizable”
This year’s CES had one unifying theme: AI. The entire event was unimaginably vibrant. Booths for robotics and autonomous driving were packed wall-to-wall.
Robotics progress is astonishingly rapid. Watching them flip, box, carry trays, and even fold origami silently—last year people mocked their clumsiness; this year, everyone worries about being replaced. Musk boldly claims Optimus robots will outperform the world’s top surgeons in surgery within three years.
Waymo’s driverless taxis cruise smoothly through San Francisco streets. AI represents the greatest opportunity of our time—potentially dwarfing the IT/internet revolution of thirty years ago.
2) Driving FSD Gave Me Chills—Musk Wasn’t Exaggerating
I test-drove Tesla’s latest Full Self-Driving (FSD) system. One word: seamless. No driver intervention required—traffic lights, U-turns, merging onto highways—all handled more steadily than by veteran drivers. Musk’s pure-vision approach relies on massive datasets and immense computing power.
I shared this experience with domestic entrepreneurs. Yu Chengdong noted China’s more complex road conditions and suggested LiDAR-enhanced solutions for greater safety.
Yet consensus holds that large-scale deployment of autonomous driving will arrive far sooner than expected. Musk, Yu Chengdong, and He Xiaopeng all believe we can leap directly to Level 4/5 autonomy. Duan Yongping even joked he fell asleep twice driving his Tesla home.
2026 may well be that inflection point—ushering in a complete auto-industry overhaul.
3) Behind Computing Power Lies Energy—the True “Achilles’ Heel” of the U.S.-China Race
Jensen Huang of NVIDIA stated global AI compute demand will grow 100-fold—implying astronomical requirements for GPUs, electricity, and energy. The AI race is, fundamentally, an energy war.
Musk bluntly declared chip shortages were last year’s problem; next year’s crisis is electricity. China’s energy infrastructure development is staggering—leaving us far behind, unable even to see its taillights.
In the second half of the compute race, electricity is currency.
This trip, Las Vegas was plastered with ads from Chinese firms like TCL and Lenovo. As a Chinese citizen, I felt genuine pride. The AI revolution will widen the gap between nations—and the protagonists, without question, are China and the U.S.
Musk predicts cheap labor advantages will vanish entirely, while robots and AI deliver material abundance. Schools will devolve into social hubs; “exam-cramming” parenting will be pointless; “test-taking specialists” will have no future.
Beneath this lies a deeper question. Oppenheimer, who helped build the atomic bomb, later reflected on whether humanity had unleashed a demon.
Today, AI is already surpassing humans across nearly every domain. On my flight home, I pondered deeply: Have we unleashed an uncontrollable demon—or created a god beyond our control?
5. Ten Key Future Trends—Pathways to Wealth Creation
Embrace the Kondratiev Cycle—don’t become an “old-timer.” Here are the ten defining new trends:
Trend #1: Autonomous Driving Will Be the Ultimate Solution to Urban Congestion, Air Pollution, and Safety Issues
Autonomous driving will explode within the next 1–2 years. Large language models (LLMs) will unify driving standards, enabling millions of vehicles to match—or exceed—the skill of veteran drivers. Safer and congestion-free cities represent a $10-trillion market.
Trend #2: Humanoid Robots Will Explode
Phase One: Replacing dangerous, repetitive tasks in factories—logistics, material handling, quality inspection. Phase Two: Entering homes as “family companions”—handling chores and providing emotional support. Phase Three: Silicon-based life—seamless fusion of AI brains and mechanical bodies, deep understanding of human society, and true human-robot collaboration.
Trend #3: Major Breakthroughs in Life Sciences
AI will accelerate drug discovery beyond human experts, curing cancer, ALS, and other terminal illnesses within 5–10 years—extending lifespans to 120 years, with age 60 becoming the “silver youth.”
Trend #4: Explosion of AI Super-Applications
AI assistants will explode within the next 1–2 years, serving as personalized secretaries covering food, travel, entertainment, and more. Over 90% of existing apps will be replaced.
Trend #5: China’s AI Power Will Rise Fully
China has leapfrogged in solar PV, new-energy vehicles, and battery technology—“1-to-N” scaling is China’s advantage. With robust supply chains and a 1.4-billion-person domestic market, commercialization will accelerate rapidly. Domestic large models, GPUs, and super-apps will break through quickly—offering massive opportunities in self-reliance and import substitution.
Trend #6: Embracing the New Energy System—Green Electricity + Energy Storage
China’s installed green-power capacity (solar and wind) has already surpassed coal-fired power, driving surging storage demand. Solid-state batteries—due to high energy density, extended range, and superior safety—will become mainstream, spurring explosive demand for new-energy minerals like copper and lithium.
Trend #7: Intensifying Great-Power Competition and Global Arms Race
Against the backdrop of geopolitical turbulence and the late-stage grand cycle, modern warfare is evolving toward space, cyberspace, and intelligent domains. Defense industries will focus on aerospace, communications satellites, and high-end equipment. “Gold in turbulent times” also applies to defense.
Trend #8: Biotech-Driven Industrial Revolution in Food
Human material needs will be abundantly met: proteins, starches, fruits, and vitamins will be mass-produced in factories—replacing traditional agriculture, drastically cutting land use and air pollution, and advancing carbon neutrality and ecological restoration.
Trend #9: The Post-Real-Estate Era Has Arrived—Markets Will Polarize 20/80
Long-term real estate trends hinge on population flows: home prices in core areas attracting 20% of the population may bottom—or even reach new highs mid-term—while prices in the 80% of regions losing population face prolonged, slow declines.
Trend #10: Accelerating Aging and Declining Fertility
The 1962–1976 baby-boom cohort is rapidly entering retirement—making silver-economy and healthcare industries definitive mega-trends. Falling fertility rates are fueling pet economies, single-person economies, emotional-wellness economies, and value-for-money economies.
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