Before the events happen, it’s very difficult to understand what’s going to happen and when and then predict what will be the result of those events. The three — or actually you asked four specific questions and I will go what I think is chronologically, although I guess we could debate whether it’s a direct — directly chronological. I believe that the war between Russia and the Ukraine had a very positive effect on our customer base and commodities and precious metals in general. You had, a country that was a big producer of oil, of silver, of platinum, of a lot of commodities. That had basically unlimited capabilities as it relates to, going to war, become involved with an ally of the United States that was very important to us from a trading perspective, as well as a geographic perspective.
And I believe that the world reacted to that and hadn’t really expected or seen something like that, before. And for 4 to 5 months A-Mark, was the beneficiary of a great deal of uncertainty and how it would affect, the US. Economy. I think that the Silicon Valley bank crisis was unique amongst it. It was unique to anything I had ever really seen before where you had, you know, a top 15 bank in the country go under in a matter of days. You had, panic that came about in all financial institutions, and you had a flight to quality and a withdrawal of assets from a number of very large financial institutions. And that withdrawal of assets a good percentage of it in our world flowed into our products. So that event, again, was a little more short lived, but it was, it was, it was extreme.
And as I’ve talked about before, all of these, what I call earthquakes and the aftershocks that follow, are all, you know, they all affect how we do business and what results we can hope to accomplish. The congressional shutdown the interest rate environment, which has taken a number of people by surprise, the what appears to be backtracking and re trading by the Fed on what they’re actually going to do and what how they view inflation and how they view, what they’re going to do about and interest rates. To me, that’s just that’s a huge macro issue. That affects huge markets way bigger than A-Mark’s markets. And It’s not, in my mind, going away anytime soon. And I think it paints a very positive picture for alternative currencies, as well as commodities and precious metals in particular.
I believe that issue is more long-term and ongoing. And it’s, it’s not doesn’t have the same exact effect as what I would call a Silicon Valley Bank earthquake that is a big deal and then kind of wanes over time. We’ll see how a government shutdown affects our business. I think that right now, it seems to me that, the markets are very skittish. And I think that is it’s instilling a little bit of uncertainty in all investors. I think it’s a very difficult time right now to really predict, you know, how this is going to play out. I love the business we’re in. I think we are positioned tremendously to take advantage of whatever happens. We’re going into an election cycle, which, historically has created increased activity in our markets. So I look at that as something to keep an eye on.
And then lastly, the Israeli Palestinian conflict or the Israeli Hamas conflict is just a horrible situation. It’s just it’s very difficult to watch. It’s very difficult for me to keep wrap my arms around. And I think that our customers and probably shareholders are somewhat frozen. And I see that event as a situation where people are just not really focused so much on what’s going on at the price of silver or gold. And they’re focused on things that are unimaginable 60 days ago. And so I think that this particular conflict has probably slowed down. Just a lot of decision making as it relates to, hedging your equities protecting against a deflation of the dollar or different reasons why people look at our business and our products. So, I think it has it has been a little bit of a kind of sit on your hands and do nothing the last since October 7th, I believe it was.
So I think that’s — that’s natural. And I think it’s understandable. And I think the next few months are going to be very interesting how this plays out. But you know, it’s hard for me to speculate on how it’s going to affect the economics of A-Mark.
Tom Forte: Thank you, Greg. Very thoughtful. Appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Andrew Scutt of ROTH MKM. Andrew, your line is live.
Andrew Scutt: Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. So my first one kind of piggybacks off the previous question. When you look at your DTC business now, there are multiple avenues in store funds you guys have and a broadening demographics of a customer base. I was just wondering if you could kind of dig deeper into the activity you saw there, maybe were there some pockets of customers that were weaker, were there others that may have provided some, countercyclical boost just anything you could provide there would be great.
