Compiled & translated by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Guest: Jan van Eck (VanEck CEO)

Host: Wilfred Frost

Original title: Memory Is A Bubble, But Nvidia Protected – Jan Van Eck On Semis Surge

Podcast source: The Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost

Broadcast date: May 27, 2026

Editor's Note

This podcast episode features VanEck CEO Jan van Eck, whose core assessment is that Nvidia has transformed from a single GPU manufacturer into a "host" of AI infrastructure, possessing moats in software ecosystem, scale, and power efficiency; however, the surge in memory chip stocks is more like a bubble driven by a temporary supply-demand mismatch.

VanEck, who manages approximately $225 billion in assets and was among the first to promote the Bitcoin ETF, has condensed the main themes of the next decade into three things: the development of AI computing power, the rise of India, and the excessive fiscal borrowing of developed economies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

Even more impactful is his calling 2026 the year of "corporate control chains," arguing that Wall Street will absorb the advantages of blockchain, stablecoins, and programmable currencies, but most crypto projects and software will become meaningless in 5 to 10 years; Bitcoin, stablecoins, and blockchain will remain, while many token ecosystems will disappear.

Essential Quotes

AI, semiconductor and memory chip stocks

• "From an AI perspective, the problem is simple. The demand for computing power is here, but the supply is below. Semiconductors are clearly at the core of this structure."

• “Nvidia is no longer just a GPU manufacturer; it’s more like a host for AI. The cyclical nature and high competitiveness of being a single chip manufacturer in the past are no longer its whole story today.”

• “Nvidia’s advantage comes not only from its production capacity, but also from the fact that it can produce more efficient chips for every dollar of electricity; with a forward earnings multiple of just over 20 times, I believe it remains a solid asset in the portfolio.”

• "The surge in profits for memory chip stocks is not primarily due to selling more products, but rather to rising prices; this means that companies using memory chips will start looking for ways to reduce their usage."

• “I don’t like to call the top lightly, but I’m cautious about memory chip stocks because, in the medium to long term, they don’t have a competitive moat as deep as Nvidia’s.”

ETFs, Active Management and Asset Allocation

• "VanEck's investment philosophy is to look back at today from a ten-year perspective: By 2036, what major themes will truly change the world and financial markets?"

• “ETFs are a scale game; the larger the assets, the wider the range of clients you can serve. Many actively managed funds, especially private equity and hedge funds, may actually not have economies of scale.”

• "Even though ETFs are passive instruments, deciding which ETFs you own, how to allocate them, and when to increase or decrease your holdings is still a very active decision in essence."

Macro debt, gold and hard assets

• "If the market really loses confidence in the US government's ability to fulfill its obligations, I don't know where to hide; even if gold is a medium- to long-term hedging tool, it may be sold off in the short term."

• “I believe gold is regaining its position as the world’s number one currency because I don’t think China or India would become the international reserve currency if it weren’t for the US dollar.”

• “Government bond markets are among the strangest and most inefficient markets in the world; they get locked into a certain mentality and become detached from reality.”

• "The nuclear energy ETF has grown from less than $20 million to $4.7 billion, which reflects a very dramatic policy shift; both parties in the United States, as well as countries such as Japan, are embracing nuclear energy again."

Cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and corporate control chains

• “I call 2026 the year of ‘corporate control chains,’ where banks, trading firms, and financial institutions want to absorb the best parts of blockchain but still maintain control of their own ecosystem.”

• “I think we are experiencing a crypto winter, and it’s not going to end. Many projects and software will not be interesting or alive in five to ten years.”

• "The concept of blockchain will remain, stablecoins will remain, Bitcoin will remain; but many other parts of the ecosystem, in my opinion, will disappear."

• "The stablecoin bill is the first time that technology companies have been able to compete with the banking system, but banks have also faced competition from money market funds in the past, and they have survived."

India and SpaceX IPO

• “Population trends are irreversible; India has continued to push forward pro-business reforms during Modi’s tenure, and there is no reason why such a country should not grow at an even faster rate.”
• “SpaceX is a massive company, and as the issuer of the ETF, we are excited to see it go public; the liquidity flowing into the economy will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Frenzy for memory chip stocks

Wilfred Frost: Today's guest is Jan van Eck, President and CEO of VanEck and its affiliates. VanEck is an asset management company founded by his father, now a major player in the ETF industry, managing approximately $225 billion in assets. Jan is a frequent podcast guest, and his views are very direct and clear, which is why we are so happy to have him. Jan, welcome to the show.

Jan van Eck: Wilfred, it's great to do this show with you for the first time.

Wilfred Frost: I'd like to start with one ETF. To be fair, it's driven a lot of your performance over the past few years and is currently at the heart of the market: the SMH, or VanEck Semiconductor ETF (which tracks major global semiconductor companies). It's been performing exceptionally well lately. I understand it has around $65 billion in AUM right now, is that right?

Jan van Eck: That's about the size.

Wilfred Frost: It has become a primary entry point for investors seeking semiconductor exposure. Up 58% year-to-date and 135% over the past 12 months. Even more impressively, it boasts an annualized return of approximately 29% since inception.

Jan van Eck: That's crazy, isn't it?

Wilfred Frost: That's unbelievable. It's incredibly difficult to do that with compound interest. You could retire right now.

Jan van Eck: Yes, we should stop now.

Wilfred Frost: But I believe you won't, which is why you're here on this podcast. Over the past year or so, the SMH has grown to $65 billion. How much of that came from price performance and how much from capital inflows?

Jan van Eck: A large part is price action. I find it hard to imagine that inflows have accounted for more than 10% to 20% over the past 12 months.

Wilfred Frost: That's interesting. I initially thought the inflow rate would be higher. What do you think is driving it up? Perhaps it's a simple question, purely the AI ​​theme?

Jan van Eck: Yes. Van Eck's investment philosophy is to look at issues from a macro perspective, like a big picture. I call it a "10-year macro." It means, looking back in 2036, which themes will we say have most profoundly impacted the world and, consequently, financial markets? This perspective aims to filter out a lot of noise.

I believe at least three things will remain: AI, the rise of India, and the excessive borrowing led by the US, UK, and Japan. From an AI perspective, the logic is simple: the demand for computing power is very high, and supply cannot keep up. Semiconductors are clearly at the core of this.

If you look further down, you'll come to Nvidia (the world's leading AI GPU and accelerated computing company). One reason our ETF outperformed other semiconductor ETFs is that it only focuses on the top 25 stocks and allows a maximum holding of 20%. So it essentially benefited greatly from the Nvidia trend.

Nvidia could easily be a topic for its own. Are we still comfortable with semiconductors, with Nvidia, today? My own answer is yes. No one can guarantee a company won't lose its competitive moat, but I believe Nvidia will certainly still be one of the leaders ten years from now. Part of the reason is that it has become more like the host of AI, rather than just a single chip or GPU manufacturer. That kind of business was not only highly cyclical but also extremely competitive.

Nvidia currently possesses advantages in software, cost, and production scale, as well as higher power efficiency. In other words, every dollar or pound of electricity translates into more efficient chips. Its forward earnings multiple is only slightly over twenty times. Therefore, although Nvidia hasn't been the hottest stock in the SMH over the past nine months, I still consider it a very solid part of my portfolio.

Wilfred Frost: According to your recent disclosures, Nvidia accounts for approximately 17% of SMH, and TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's largest semiconductor foundry) accounts for about 9%. I'd like to discuss them in more detail later. You mentioned earlier that you have significant exposure to Nvidia, which is important; but it's also interesting that, at least this year, or as you said, the past nine months, performance hasn't been driven solely by large companies like Nvidia. Many semiconductor companies actually lagged behind on the AI ​​theme for the past few years, only recently catching up.

Jan van Eck: Absolutely. Some of SMH's methodology comes from thought, and some from luck. When you only select the top 25 names, what has happened in the past 15 to 20 years of investing is that large-cap stocks have truly led the market. There are certainly more than 100 semiconductor companies, and filtering out those at the bottom in more competitive spaces is equivalent to eliminating the drags.

Of course, this doesn't apply to all investment phases. But during this period, it certainly amplified the impact of these big winners.

Wilfred Frost: In the short term, the market has risen 58% year-to-date, indicating a significant broad-based rally. Memory chip stocks have seen a particularly strong surge. Can this upward trend continue?

Jan van Eck: I doubt this performance is sustainable. We just saw historic performance in May, so I don't think it will continue at this pace. But I also don't think market pricing is necessarily irrational. Returning to a macro perspective, if demand is high and supply is low, the capital market is essentially telling entrepreneurs and business owners: come here, we need your capital, we're willing to value your capital because we need to build AI compute centers. This isn't surprising.

I believe this ten-year perspective is effective because humans naturally tend to look backward. When a major trend emerges, whether it's the rise of a nation or the rise of a major technology, we cannot try to understand its scale by simply looking back at the company's profits in the previous few quarters or how the technology was used in the past.

Of course, not all technological trends will materialize. There are many false trends and fake technologies in the world. But AI is clearly seizing the global market by the neck and shaking it awake.

Wilfred Frost: Another short-term question. The KOSPI (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) hit a new all-time high today. It has tripled in the past 18 months, which is astonishing for a national index, primarily driven by Samsung and SK Hynix. The Korean index jumped 12% in one day last week. Does this remind you of the opposite? Like, at the end of 2021, some meme stocks surged, then saw a significant correction in 2022. I know these memory chip stocks, especially those two companies, have incredibly strong earnings per share expectations, so it's different from the meme stock frenzy. But are there any similarities that would raise red flags for you?

Jan van Eck: Within the AI ​​ecosystem, I would say there is definitely some bubble. Going back to the end of last year, the question was how financially sustainable the OpenAI ecosystem was. OpenAI was one of the leading modeling companies with ChatGPT; would Claude (Anthropic's AI assistant) surpass it? Among the companies I call the OpenAI ecosystem, Oracle (an enterprise software and cloud computing company) had leveraged its resources to build computing power for OpenAI, and CoreWeave (an AI cloud computing company) was also in the mix. Both were down 50% at the time.

So even within the larger AI trend, you'll find localized bubbles, or company-specific bubbles. Returning to your question, I do believe the memory chip segment is at a cyclical point. People are reluctant to call a market top at times like these, but I personally remain cautious about memory chip stocks because, in the medium to long term, they don't possess the competitive moat that I believe is deep enough for them to thrive.

New entrants will emerge in this field. There is indeed a shortage right now, and this shortage gives them pricing power. The main reason for their soaring profits isn't increased sales volume, as they have capacity constraints; the real reason is that they've raised prices. This also means that companies using this storage will start looking for ways to reduce their usage.

So I agree with your assessment; it feels very much like a bubble. In our actively managed funds, we are reducing our exposure to the storage sector.

Wilfred Frost: Nvidia accounts for about 17% of SMH, followed by TSMC, then major US companies like Intel, Broadcom, AMD, Micron, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm, each with approximately 6% or 7%. Does TSMC also possess a defensive moat similar to Nvidia's? Although the types are different, are their defensive capabilities comparable?

Jan van Eck: I think so. TSMC not only has manufacturing capabilities but also capital to build extremely expensive chip manufacturing facilities. I guess one of the common advantages of Nvidia and TSMC is that they both work with a wide range of players within their ecosystems and have access to almost all customers. Therefore, they can see where technology is headed and how customer needs will change. Most people would say that TSMC will still be there in ten years; it will be a survivor.

Wilfred Frost: You just mentioned that Oracle and CoreWeave saw a significant pullback from their highs in late October last year to the "Iran war lows" in March, with Oracle almost halving in value, which is remarkable for its size. I heard you say in another podcast that there's no need to worry too much about the overall AI bubble because it has already burst once to some extent. The question is, how can you be confident in re-buying the right companies at these times? Especially since a large portion of the companies we're discussing are not yet publicly listed, and investors can only participate through proxy listings.

Jan van Eck: This sounds like an ETF issuer's response, but from a company perspective, diversification is definitely more sensible. In terms of timing, if you're in this kind of trend, it's better to buy on pullbacks than to chase it now. We talked about SMH's fund flows earlier; I think a lot of the fund's assets come from investors who bought in years ago and let the appreciation happen naturally. This is healthy to some extent because there isn't much quick money chasing it.

Of course, funds are chasing memory chip stocks and the hottest sectors in the ecosystem. But overall, we remain overweight in semiconductors in our broad portfolio model, though we're now looking to take some profits here.

ETFs and Asset Management

Wilfred Frost: Let's talk more broadly about VanEck. We were just talking about SMH. I only realized while preparing the show that although the company was founded in the 1950s, you guys really got into the ETF game in the early 2000s.

Jan van Eck: It was 2006. We've been in the ETF space for 20 years.

Wilfred Frost: I didn't realize that before. ETFs are now clearly the largest part of your business.

Jan van Eck: Yes, far the largest. ETF assets should account for over 95%. While we still have active business, primarily focused on gold mining, resources, and emerging markets, that's also important to us. I'll sit down with active fund managers to discuss it.

Wilfred Frost: We recently had Jeremy Grantham with us; listeners can go back and listen to that episode. He was one of the earliest advocates of ETFs and greatly admired the impact of Vanguard founder Jack Bogle on the industry. Bogle's mission was to reward employees if they could reduce costs for clients; this was something Vanguard pioneered about 50 years ago. Is this also a core theme when you're developing your ETF business? In other words, does delivering value to clients and reducing costs reward the company in the long run?

Jan van Eck: It's definitely a scale game. I think in the private equity and hedge fund space, active management is probably a non-economies-of-scale game. If you have too much money, you can't manage an early-stage venture fund or a small-cap fund. These strategies have capacity limitations. You can't manage too much money.

ETFs, on the other hand, are a scale game. The larger the AUM, the wider the range of clients you can serve. We don't compete with Vanguard in the core of our client portfolio; however, in the areas of expertise where we do compete, we strive to make our fees very competitive.

The reason I create these podcasts is to align our clients' interests through research sharing. In private equity or active business, fund managers can align their interests with clients' through co-investment; however, we have many segmented ETFs, and it's impossible to hold them all simultaneously. Therefore, our way of aligning with clients is by sharing our research, clearly explaining what we like and dislike at a given point in time. This is also why we do quarterly outlooks. Sometimes we're optimistic about many things, and sometimes we aren't.

Wilfred Frost: You've mentioned the word "active." Many people think of ETFs as passive tools, believing they either invest in passive ETFs or entrust their money to traditional active fund managers who build portfolios stock by stock. How quickly can you create a new ETF, such as one focusing on a new theme? How do you adjust existing ETFs? Would you explicitly define yourselves as active ETFs?

Jan van Eck: There are two types of active decision-making in ETFs. The first is which ETFs you own. There are many specialized ETFs like Van Eck's, and we also have some broader products. Do you hold semiconductors? That question itself is an active decision. Even though ETFs may be a passive tool, how they are weighted and when to invest are all very active decisions.

In VanEck's view, this is almost the most important decision. Our perspective on the world is that asset allocation and asset class selection are extremely important to investors. Our history begins with the first gold fund in the US, and we believe that gold has been a very powerful diversification tool in portfolios at certain times. While I'm not always as extremely bullish on gold as my father, it is certainly an active decision.

The second question is whether actively managed ETFs are necessary? This is more prevalent in the US than in Europe. We do have some actively managed ETFs. Let me give you two examples. One is an investment selection ETF targeting the cryptocurrency or digital assets space. After we launched the Ethereum ETF, I started talking to clients and found that many people had no idea what Ethereum (a smart contract and decentralized application platform) was, why it performed well, or what the risks were.

As asset managers, our job is to describe both opportunities and risks. So I said, let's shift gears and offer an actively managed fund in this space. Investors don't have to chase Ethereum's volatility, a particular Bitcoin miner, or the changes at payment fintech companies like Revolut; let's track the entire industry and actively adjust our allocations. This is an actively managed equity ETF.

Another example is actively managed real assets or commodities ETFs. You can use these types of actively managed ETFs if you don't want to choose between gold and oil, or between oil and oil stocks.

Wilfred Frost: What are the tickers (stock codes) for these two ETFs?

Jan van Eck: The digital asset stock picker ETF is NODE. My colleague Matthew Sigel is very active on X/Twitter; you can read his daily commentary on the stock pool if you want to see it. The real asset allocation ETF is RAX.

Wilfred Frost: To emphasize to our listeners, Jan clearly has a vested interest in these ETFs, and this podcast does not constitute direct financial advice. Finally, let's talk about the ETF industry. I'd like to know your perspective on the risks that increased ETF concentration poses to the overall market. This question is more relevant to large S&P 500 ETFs than the actively managed or specialized ETFs you mentioned earlier. When bears list this as one of the major risks, do you think this concern is justified?

Jan van Eck: We may not have enough time to discuss all the market structure implications. I'll mention two areas of particular concern, and more so in the fixed income sector. The first is the illiquidity of the fixed income market. If we have a bond ETF, the bonds that are actually traded daily in the portfolio might only be 5% to 10%. This means that there must be someone behind the scenes, such as a broker, making the market for these bonds.

During market crises, people tend to reduce risk, which can decrease the trading efficiency of bond ETFs. Some might argue that they reflect prices more accurately, and I might even agree, but regardless, bid-ask spreads widen, transaction costs increase, and prices may fall. My second concern isn't related to the ETF industry itself, but rather to my biggest worry about financial markets: the spending of some developed market governments. If we're only talking about ETFs, my biggest concern is fixed income.

The impact of macro debt

Wilfred Frost: Over the past week or so, except for the beginning of this week, we have indeed seen a significant rise in bond yields. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note has risen above 4.6%, after previously being relatively calm around 4.3%. Does seeing this change remind you of that biggest macroeconomic fear?

Jan van Eck: As you might guess, I really like charts with a span of more than ten years. I always say that any chart with a span of less than ten years is "chart crime." Of course, this assumes you have the data; if not, at least find an analogy with a longer historical period.

Jan van Eck: The yields on 30-year government bonds in the UK and Japan hit multi-year highs last year, and this trend is continuing this year. I think the reasons are slightly different in each country. In the UK, there may be some political turmoil, or at least greater uncertainty at the top than in the US.

In my view, government bond markets are among the strangest and most inefficient markets in the world because they tend to be locked into a certain mindset and detached from reality. For example, before the European financial crisis, Spanish and Greek bond yields were lower than German bond yields, which never made sense. Then at some point, prices were suddenly and drastically revalued.

So what's really interesting and telling is that bond investors are demanding higher long-term yields from the UK and Japan. I'm also very worried about the US, but timing is everything. I'm watching the US 10-year yield, and I'm usually one of the most worried; but I also know we're at a point where others aren't so concerned.

The US 10-year yield hasn't really broken through multi-year highs yet; it's still trading within a range. But it's something I'm watching very closely. For some background, the US budget deficit peaked at around 6.5% two years ago. Due to factors like Trump's tariff revenue, the deficit had been declining, and I had predicted this year it would fall to the low 5% range—still high, theoretically not exceeding 3%, but the direction was correct.

If the US spends $500 billion on this war with Iran, it will suddenly push the deficit back to around 6.5% or 6.9%. I don't see the market not worrying about that.

Wilfred Frost: Interestingly, we've also seen a very strong correlation over the past two weeks. Even if the trigger point might be the UK or Japan, everyone is moving in tandem due to deteriorating debt dynamics. Even if the US isn't as dangerous as the UK or Japan, it seems likely to be dragged down if 10-year or 30-year yields continue to rise. Do you think this will have a direct negative correlation with assets like SMH? Even if SMH is betting on themes you've long believed in, will the P/E multiples for growth sectors be suppressed?

Jan van Eck: 100%. I haven't discussed with enough clients what would happen if the market really lost confidence in the US government's ability to fulfill its obligations. But I don't think there's anywhere to hide. Wilfred, I often say that gold is a medium- to long-term hedge, but if everyone flees the financial markets, gold could also be sold off.

Therefore, I don't see why semiconductors are immune. To some extent, you could say the tech sector isn't as reliant on debt, so the direct correlation isn't strong. But if everyone's rushing towards the exit, I don't think anyone can run in the other direction.

Wilfred Frost: Let's talk about opportunities. If we enter a more inflationary decade, that could be a significant reason for higher yields. Do you think gold might be sold off in the short term, but remains attractive in the medium to long term? Also, please talk about GDX (VanEck Gold Miners ETF). At current gold price levels, even if gold doesn't rise further, aren't these mining companies making a lot of money?

Jan van Eck: Yes, they have very strong cash flow. For the past 15 years, gold mining companies have been in hell. First, gold prices weren't high. Authorities like the Bank of England sold gold for around $250 an ounce in the late 1990s.

Wilfred Frost: Thank you, Gordon Brown.

Jan van Eck: Yes, thank you. In that era, gold wasn't a significant part of people's portfolios. Later, gold started to be included in portfolios again, but gold mining companies themselves had too much debt and couldn't control production costs. Investors became disappointed with these companies year after year, and valuations, or P/E ratios, kept declining. I think the bottom was around 2016. In fact, gold mining stocks fell 90% from 2011 to 2016.

In 2011, people assumed that gold would benefit from the massive government injections into the market following the financial crisis; however, this did not materialize. Consequently, gold mining companies faced numerous headwinds, and their stock prices collapsed significantly.

However, they have now rebuilt their balance sheets, borrowed less, paid off a lot of debt, and have very strong cash flow. For me, gold represents a very long-term trend. Even if you're not as concerned about US government spending as I am, you're likely to marginally reduce your purchases of US Treasury bonds. Therefore, in my view, gold is regaining its position as the world's premier currency.

If it weren't for the US dollar, I don't think it would be China, or even India. They have capital controls to some extent and don't want to be international reserve currencies. At the same time, these countries also culturally purchase large amounts of gold. Therefore, I believe gold will regain its position as the primary currency. This will be a multi-year process. It might also trade sideways for a while, given how much it rose last year.

Wilfred Frost: Do you think gold will be correlated with the S&P 500 in the short term, but not in the long term?

Jan van Eck: Gold exhibits different characteristics at different times. Sometimes it trades with the dollar, sometimes with inflation concerns. But if you accept my argument that gold is a global currency, then many recent price movements actually make sense. For example, last year, even with low inflation in the US, global demand for gold as an alternative currency remained strong. Therefore, what happens in the US isn't that important.

Similarly, if Middle Eastern Gulf states suddenly lose their source of income and need cash to pay bills, they will sell whatever they can, and gold is a deep and large market. Therefore, the sell-off of gold after the start of the conflict in Iran is reasonable. This aligns with my view on global drivers.

Wilfred Frost: I looked at your ETF list, and quite a few products are related to hard assets and inflation exposure. For example, the Nuclear and Uranium ETF (NLR) has nearly $5 billion in assets; the Rare Earths and Strategic Metals ETF has about $3 billion; and the OIH (Oil Services ETF) has about $2.5 billion, which Larry McDonald has mentioned several times on his show. Have you intentionally created these ETFs in recent years? Or have they always existed, but have only recently gained market attention?

Jan van Eck: They've always been there. When we first entered the ETF business, we leveraged our strengths in global resources, gold, and emerging markets. Those were our first ETFs. There weren't as many ETFs on the market then as there are now, so these products were typically first-to-market.

We thought people would want to trade oil services, and they would also want to trade nuclear energy. The nuclear energy theme had been waiting a long time. I remember NLR was launched probably in our second or third year of ETFs, around 2007 or 2008. But it was so unpopular that five years ago the ETF had less than $20 million in assets.

Wilfred Frost: From less than $20 million to $4.7 billion in just five years.

Jan van Eck: Because the policy shift was so drastic. I rarely see something like this. It wasn't discussed much by politicians, but in the US, the Biden administration was largely supportive of nuclear energy, and some key Democratic governors also supported it. Therefore, nuclear energy became a bipartisan consensus in the US. Internationally, Japan and many other countries that had previously distanced themselves from nuclear energy have revived active nuclear programs, and of course, China has been pushing forward. That's why money is flowing in. For the past few years, this has primarily been driven by capital inflows.

Emerging Markets and Crypto Assets

Wilfred Frost: I didn't realize the scale of growth was this large. Let's talk about EM (emerging markets). Is this an assessment of all emerging markets, or is it specifically about India?

Jan van Eck: Sometimes when I say "10-year macro," it sounds like futurism or uncertainty. But I actually believe that some trends become more certain the further into the future. Take demographics, for example. You can't fight population. Whatever is happening now, you can generally know what will be like in ten years, whether it's population decline or some other trend.

India, under Modi's leadership, has implemented numerous pro-business reforms, and these reforms are ongoing. Even though these reforms don't make headlines in the US—for example, bankruptcy law, labor law, and a series of deregulation and pro-business reforms were implemented last year—no country that has undertaken so many pro-business reforms will not experience even faster growth. Forecasts suggest that India's economy could reach the size of continental Europe within a decade.

For investors, the more important question is: can you profit from it? GDP growth doesn't necessarily translate into profit growth or stock market returns. Coincidentally, India also shifted to a more pro-equity culture decades ago. Vast wealth was created when Infosys (an Indian IT services company) and some early-stage tech companies went public. There seems to be a social consensus in India that being wealthy, even very wealthy, is acceptable. Therefore, I combine these two points, which is why I am strongly bullish on India in the long term.

Wilfred Frost: As you said, India's demographics are very attractive, with its working-age population still growing, unlike countries like China. I'm also interested in another ETF you have. You mentioned earlier that Nvidia and some other companies have wide moats, which is clearly a concept you're interested in. You also have a Wide Moat ETF.

Jan van Eck: If I asked you which company in the financial services sector has the most equity research analysts, you probably wouldn't think of Morningstar (a fund rating and investment research company). But that's the reality. I don't think they're very good at advertising it, but they have indeed built such a research capability.

Their stock research methodology is exactly what you call a "moat." The premise is that market competition is extremely fierce, and unless a company is fortunate enough to possess some kind of competitive moat, it's difficult to maintain excess profits in the long run. A moat can come from technology, economies of scale, or other factors. Morningstar's approach is to filter all companies down to the few they believe possess a competitive moat. I guess only about 5% of companies make it into that range; I should calculate the exact number later.

Then they will use valuation formulas because they will predict future earnings and include the cheapest stocks among these companies with competitive moats in ETFs.

Wilfred Frost: This ETF has grown to $11 billion in AUM. Is this steady growth, or has it suddenly surged recently?

Jan van Eck: Strictly speaking, comparing it to the S&P 500 isn't fair, but investors certainly do. For many years, it not only outperformed the S&P in single years but also in cumulative performance, so most of the AUM growth occurred during that period. To achieve this in 2023 is remarkable, because after the tech stock decline in 2022, 2023 was a rebound year.

This approach has had some good years. Recently it has fallen behind somewhat because it missed some of the explosive growth in semiconductors. So, it has lost some assets over the past few years.

Wilfred Frost: Talk about your current thoughts on crypto (crypto assets). When did you feel the pull, or when did you think the rationale for offering crypto ETFs became valid? I'm also curious about the adoption of these products, such as whether there are still many marginal buyers in the market who are first-time crypto asset purchasers.

Jan van Eck: We were the first ETF issuer to file for a Bitcoin ETF in 2017. The reason was simple: I saw Bitcoin as a competitor to gold. At that time, Bitcoin was rising much faster than it is now. Some clients shared this view. So, we believed that, like platinum and silver to gold, Bitcoin would become an alternative. It might not replace gold, but it could complement it.

Fast forward to today, and I think Wall Street has basically absorbed the best of crypto over the past year or so: blockchain's decentralization, visibility, 24/7 operation, and money programmability, among other things. It's a bit technical.

Wilfred Frost: We like tech.

Jan van Eck: I call 2026 the year of the “Corporate Control Chain.” Institutions like Bank of New York Mellon, JPMorgan, and Cumberland Trading are trying to create what I call the Corporate Control Chain, absorbing the best parts of existing blockchains but still controlling the ecosystem.

They'll think, "This still has to be the Wilfred chain, or some other chain we control, because I want to keep customers in my own network." That's where we are now. Almost every financial company in the US is using stablecoins or some part of crypto and trying to capture an ecosystem. I don't think many of them will succeed. But this is how technology adoption will evolve in 2026.

As for the rest of the cryptocurrency landscape, there will be relatively few winners. I believe we are experiencing a crypto winter, and it's not going to end. Many projects and software will be uninteresting or even nonexistent in five to ten years.

The concept of blockchain will certainly exist, stablecoins will exist, Bitcoin will exist, but in my opinion, many other parts of the ecosystem will disappear.

Wilfred Frost: So, are Bitcoin and Ethereum, these two largest assets, still in the early stages, or are they already in the middle or even later stages of their lifecycle? By the way, I really like the ticker symbol for your Bitcoin ETF: HODL; it makes me laugh.

Jan van Eck: Who knows? My view is that Bitcoin will eventually reach about half the market capitalization of gold. Since gold has also risen, Bitcoin's target price is still several times its current price. I also reminded many American investors that they seem to have forgotten that Bitcoin hit an all-time high last year, and this year is the fourth year of the halving cycle (Bitcoin's block reward is halved approximately every four years). Every four years, Bitcoin experiences a significant drop. Therefore, its drop this year is not surprising. In fact, we largely predicted it.

Wilfred Frost: You're very frank. As the CEO of a financial company, how important do you think this legislation is? The US has already taken two major legislative steps in this area. Is it very damaging to traditional banks, a huge opportunity for companies like yours, or just a marginal impact?

Jan van Eck: I think it's a marginal effect. We design a tie theme every year, and this year, in addition to commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we also talked about the three most important events in American financial history: Alexander Hamilton (the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury), FDR (Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. President who promoted the New Deal and reshaped the banking system), and last year's stablecoin bill.

The stablecoin bill is important because it, for the first time, empowers tech companies to compete with the banking system. Otherwise, our financial lives always begin with a bank account. You don't have a financial life without a bank account; everything flows through bank accounts. Now, tech giants can compete with banks.

But banks have faced competition in the past. In the late 1970s, money market funds offered higher interest rates that banks couldn't provide, causing banks to lose a lot of money. But banks certainly survived. Their customer base is sticky, and I don't think that stickiness will disappear.

Opinions on SpaceX's IPO

Wilfred Frost: Before I wrap this up, I have a few questions. One is the short-term outlook. There are some big IPOs coming up in the next few months, with SpaceX being the most anticipated in the short term. There are some details in this process that people may not yet be aware of: how quickly it will allow insider selling, and how quickly it will be included in indices, especially the S&P 500. This will create an automatic buying frenzy, which isn't traditionally the case. To you, are these red flags, or at least amber lights? Or do you think this makes sense?

Jan van Eck: I'm not dogmatic about this. SpaceX is so big that, as the ETF issuer, we're happy it's going public. I think the steps it's taking make a lot of sense. Its initial publicly traded percentage is very small, only about 3% to 4%. Normally, if a company has that few shares outstanding, it might not qualify for inclusion in an index. Therefore, they have to be released gradually over time.

As you said, the scale of the funds here is absolutely staggering. You're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in total. For comparison, how much was our tariff revenue last year? About $300 billion. So it's like waves of liquidity hitting the economy. In the short term, I think they will have a positive effect on economic growth and will be absorbed by the market.

One argument for why more companies don't go public is that active fund managers can buy IPOs in their funds, but ETFs can't. I don't entirely agree with this, but it's a plausible point: fewer companies go public because they can't be included in indices.

I think all the assumptions need to be re-examined. When you're dealing with a large, established company like this, it's not some startup with no revenue that's being traded at a trillion-dollar valuation. It's a very mature company that's included in these indices.

Wilfred Frost: This is going to be very exciting. The roadshows, the interviews with Elon and others on CNBC will be very interesting. I think there will probably be some big AI companies going public later. The next few months are going to be very interesting, and I look forward to seeing how it unfolds. Jan, finally, we have a simple question for each guest: What is the most important investment advice you would give to the audience?

Jan van Eck: Take a macro, big-picture perspective. I think what VanEck has been doing since my father founded it in 1955 is bringing in the perspective that Dutch and British investors developed four or five hundred years ago: look at political risk, whether a country is pro-business, whether it is likely to reward equity and financial market participation, and then discuss it around asset classes.

When China is rising, how much should you allocate to it? India is rising today, how much should you allocate to it? Should you simply use historical weightings, or perhaps I want to hold more? I hope everyone participates in AI trading (AI trading/AI-themed investment). What about gold? Are you participating in gold? Should you participate? Why? These are all important questions to ask from a long-term perspective.

We often say that we are not the only source of knowledge. Discussions like this are valuable, and it's necessary to communicate with others in the market to test our assumptions.

Wilfred Frost: I really liked that answer. And your praise of the British people's original financial wisdom is certainly to my liking. Jan van Eck, thank you for joining The Master Investor Podcast.

Jan van Eck: Thank you, Wilfred.