1. Gold Largest Monthly Decline Since 2013
Bespoke Gold’s double-digit percentage decline this month is on pace for the largest monthly decline in the commodity since June 2013 and, if it holds, would rank as the eighth largest one-month decline in gold since at least 1975. What’s even more interesting is that this month’s decline follows a double-digit percentage gain in February.
Bespoke’s
2. Non-Software Private Loans Not Showing Distress
Apollo
3. Silver SLV Chart –Blue Support Line Goes Back to 2022 ..Huge Level Held
StockCharts
4. Gold GLD Same Blue Support Line—Nowhere Near It
StockCharts
5. GDX Gold Miners -30% from Highs….Right on 200-Day
StockCharts
6. Drone deals fueled VC’s 139% surge into defense robotics
Pitchbook By Jacob Robbins, Technology Reporter
Defense and security robotics attracted $8 billion in VC across 234 deals in 2025, a 139% year-over-year increase, according to our debut Robotics & Physical AI VC Trends report. The subsector also surpassed all of its peers.
Much of defense robotics’ rise is coming at the expense of logistics and warehousing, which historically has captured the lion’s share of investor attention. The latter shed 28.5% of its deal value in 2025 compared to 2024.
The shift may reflect more than just a brief reallocation.
“Warehousing and logistics has moved out of the hype phase and into a tougher environment where investors want clearer differentiation, better margins and proof that these companies are not just selling into a slower industrial CapEx cycle,” said Ali Javaheri, PitchBook’s senior emerging spaces research analyst and the author of the report.
“Robotics capital is no longer just chasing automation in the abstract—it is flowing toward segments where buyers need capability now and are willing to pay for it,” he said. “Defense fits that perfectly.”
PitchBook
Autonomous drones were the main driver of the surge in funding in defense robotics, raking in $6.2 billion across 169 deals on a trailing-12-month basis as investors pour capital into a market reshaped in real time by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Overall, the robotics and physical AI sector raised a record $27.6 billion across 1,009 deals in 2025, more than double the $13.7 billion invested in 2024 from 851 pacts.
Some of the biggest deals in Q4 were for defense and security robotics startups.
German autonomous-drone specialist Quantum Systems—which has deployed its drones for the Ukrainian army—raised $208.6 million in new funding and tripled its valuation to $3.5 billion in November.
And Forterra, a startup developing autonomous robotic military vehicles, raised a $238 million Series C in November as well.
Defense robotics’ boom is part of a broader investment wave for autonomous systems. Last year, VC investments into the sector were up 143%.
7. Market History Fact—1989 Japan was 45% of Global Market Cap
8. China Doubles Down on Crypto Ban-China Document 42
Perplexity
9. Medicaid and Autism
WSJ The bet paid off. In 2023, the state paid Mitchell’s company, Piece by Piece Autism Centers, $29 million to provide therapy to just 84 patients—about $340,000 a child—according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicaid billing records.
That amount surpassed what Indiana Medicaid typically spends in a year treating a newly diagnosed lung-cancer patient or covering a year of nursing-home care.
Piece by Piece became one of Medicaid’s most expensive providers in part by raising its prices, triggering reimbursements as high as $640 an hour for routine therapy that can be administered by workers with little more than a high-school diploma. Its highest payments were more than 10 times higher than the nation’s average.
Mitchell said her company complied with Indiana’s rules and the state never objected to her prices.
“I don’t think Indiana really had any oversight, or not much,” said Mitchell, who bought a series of properties, including a $2.5 million home on Florida’s Sanibel Island and a $600,000 waterfront house on the Tippecanoe River in Indiana, while her company’s Medicaid billings soared.
WSJ
10. How Toxic People Make Us Age Faster
Psychology Today A new study shows how unpleasant people lead to accelerated biological aging. Sebastian Ocklenburg, Ph.D.
Key points
- Toxic people can cause a lot of stress with their behavior
- Studies have shown that stress can accelerate biological aging
- A new study investigated the effect of toxic people on biological aging
- Having a toxic person in the social network accelerated aging by 1.5%.
How bad are toxic people for physical health?
Supportive and positive social relationships with friends and family members can have many positive effects on health and mental well-being. In contrast, toxic friends or family members that are overly hostile, permanently passive-aggressive, or purposefully difficult can become huge stressors. Chronic stress has all sorts of negative effects on both mental and physical health. For example, stress research has shown that chronic stress can accelerate ageing and increase inflammation.
This implies an intriguing research question: Do toxic people not only worsen our mental health, but do they maybe also have a very real effect on biological age and accelerate the ageing process due to all the stress they cause?
A new study on toxic social ties and accelerated aging, and inflammation
A new study, just published in the prestigious scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America” (or in short: PNAS), was focused on finding out whether toxic people accelerate biological aging (Lee and co-workers, 2026). In the study entitled “Negative social ties as emerging risk factors for accelerated aging, inflammation, and multimorbidity”, the research team led by scientist Byungkyu Lee from New York University used an advanced biological method called DNA methylation-based biological aging clocks. This method allowed them to determine the biological age of the volunteers in their study. Overall, data from more than 2300 volunteers from Indiana were analysed in the study. For each volunteer, the scientists determined their social networks and whether they had one or more “hasslers” In their social network. “Hasslers” were people who caused the person too much stress and difficulty. Moreover, saliva samples were collected from the volunteers to perform the advanced DNA methylation-based determination of their biological age. Moreover, the volunteers filled out further questionnaires on health and mental health.
Results of the study: Toxic people accelerate aging
Overall, the volunteers identified 8.1 percent of the overall number of people in their social networks as toxic “hasslers.” Overall, 28.8 percent of volunteers reported having one or more toxic people in the social network. 10 percent of volunteers had two or more toxic people in their social network. Women were more likely than men to have at least one toxic person in their social network. Moreover, people who felt like others depended on them a lot were more likely to have toxic people in their network.
The analysis showed that each toxic person led to a 1.5 percent faster ageing process. On average, the biological age of volunteers with toxic people in their social networks was 9 months higher than that of people of the same birth age without toxic friends or family members. Interestingly, toxic family members or toxic friends had stronger effects on ageing than toxic spouses. This may be the case because the positive effects of marriage, such as reduced loneliness, may buffer some of the negative effects of toxic social contacts. Last but not least, having a toxic person in the social network also affected multiple further biological parameters beyond biological ageing, such as inflammation levels.
Take-Away: Stay away from toxic people
The study clearly showed that toxic friends or family members have very real biological effects. They not only cause reduced mental well-being and frustration but also accelerate ageing and increase inflammation in the body. This suggests that for healthy ageing and general wellbeing, reducing contact with toxic people is highly important.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-asymmetric-brain/202602/toxic-people-makes-us-age-faster
