Gold & Silver Are Going Vertical… That’s the Problem | Adam Taggart
Summary
Market Outlook: The guest expects a volatile year with potential upside in the economy but possible downside in markets, noting capital rotation away from mega-cap tech.
Policy Backdrop: Election-year measures, tax cuts, deregulation, tariffs, and large tax refunds could provide stimulus, even as debt service burdens rise.
Inflation Dynamics: Disinflation is supported by softening shelter costs and falling rents, with weaker oil potentially helping keep CPI contained.
Precious Metals: Gold and silver’s sharp rally is attributed to tight supply and strong demand, but the guest warns vertical price action often corrects sharply and advocates prudent profit-taking.
Silver Focus: Silver’s breakout sparked momentum and enthusiasm, yet late-stage mania signals suggest heightened pullback risk; holding core physical for wealth preservation remains a priority.
Oil and Gas: A constructive multi-year thesis highlights persistent global demand, underinvestment, and cyclical shortages, with investors “paid to wait” via attractive dividends from majors.
Opportunities and Risks: Dividend-rich energy names provide lower opportunity cost while waiting for a turn, whereas precious metals holders should manage gains and volatility using disciplined strategies.
Transcript
Hello and welcome back to Soore Financially here from the floor of the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. My name is Kai Hoffen. I'm the JR Mining guy over on X and of course your host of this channel. And I'm looking forward to this conversation. I've been waiting for this one for a while actually to happen. It's with Adam Tagert, formerly of now thoughtful money, very very successful podcast host and somebody I take a lot of inspiration from admittedly and uh who's done a great job hosting macro interviews. You're doing a phenomenal job, Adam. It's great to have you here now. Welcome. >> Thank you, Kai. Um, wow. I'm a little afraid you may have uh built me up a little bit too much for the audience here, but but thank you. And yes, Kai and I have known each other for a good while, and I've seen you develop uh you know, as a a podcast host, and I think you do a phenomenal job. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. Now, I'm blushing. So, let's stop that now. Let's uh let's get more real. >> Mutual admiration over. >> Exactly. Right. So, let's done with that. Special coverage from the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference is brought to you by First Majestic Silver. There's no substitute for silver. Um, let's talk markets. I love opening with your question, your standard question. >> Some like the status of the market, the economy and the financial markets today. Like what's your general assessment? That's the term you always use. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, um I I think this is uh a year where um a lot of trends that that investors have gotten uh acclimated to. Um, I think it's going to be a rocky year. I don't necessarily, uh, forecast that it's going to be a down year in the markets, but completely open to that. Um, uh, and it's for a bunch of reasons. One, one, literally just statistically, right, is we've had 3 years back to back to back of about 20 plus% returns on average in the markets. That is very rare. to expect a fourth year of that is just statistically uh extremely low probability. So I think you need to start from there. Right. Um now there's uh there are a lot of fundamental uh challenges that the market still has. We've got this K-shaped economy. We got the bottom 80 plus% of the K that that appears to be continuing to to you know sink further down. Uh we're seeing uh delinquencies rise. um you know we're see which will lead to debt defaults. Um we just passed uh on a government standpoint. We just had um uh what is it? Uh we're spending more on uh our the interest on our debt than we are for defense now at this point in time. Uh so the debt is really starting to become problematic in a way that that's really beginning to bite the economy. Um we definitely have some sectors that are still struggling. So, you know, I could I could spend the next half hour with you, Kai, basically just painting the picture for why the economy is going to slow and next year's going to be a really uh down year. That being said, I actually think there are a lot of potential tailwinds that are starting to kick in now. Um, I'm not I'm not blindly accepting what they're saying, but if you listen to the administration, you know, particularly the the the the the people who are in the positions of driving uh the administration's agenda, I'm talking about people like uh Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant or Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, they have very clear uh road maps for what they've been trying to do and they've gotten a lot of it done in 2025 and they're saying, "Look, uh the the benefits of everything that we've been laying for the past year in 2025 with uh you know renewing the the um uh the the the tax cuts and then adding additional tax cuts on top of that. Um the deregulation um everything in the one big beautiful bill. Uh the revenues that are coming in from the tariffs which are now pretty substantial at this point in time. Um the capital that is being brought in to America from uh foreign countries. the construction of a lot of factories which will then lead to the creation of a bunch of new jobs. Um they're saying that we're we're just about now beginning to start to get the benefits of that. Um Bessant who the IRS reports up to uh is saying that uh tax uh refunds this year should be the highest in history around $150 billion worth. Trump is still saying he's going to give tariff checks to people and we'll see if that happens or not. But my point is is if that stuff actually gets affected in the way that the administration is saying it's going to, that will be stimulative to the economy. Um, so it very may start to counter some of these headwinds that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, kind of where I'm going with this is it it's just it's going to be a year where um there's going to be volatility, there's going to be surprises, and um again, a lot of these sort of long-standing trends, you know, the the inexurable um uh trend of of the hyperscalers just pulling everything else up with them, you know, if you look at their price action, they've pretty much gone nowhere since October, right? And it does look like the market may be tapping out. We're certainly seeing capital rotation into other sectors now. >> We're seeing it here as well. >> And and we're seeing it here, right? I mean, it's going, you know, capital's starting to come out of the the the big tech and it's going into commodities. It's going into consumer staples. It's going into energy. Um, so, uh, again, I just I I I think it's going to be a year that's going to look and feel different from the past couple years. And just one point I'll make as well is, you know, if you listen to guys like Besson and and and Lutnik, hey, first off, folks, I mean, they're going to be cheerleaders for this administration. So, they're going to be telling you the good story, but these are real pe like they're serious people with with serious brands to protect. You know, Scott Scott Besson's not going to say something, Howard Leick's not going to say something that they know is falsibly untrue in a way that's going to come back and and injure their respectability. Um, and they're saying, "Look, we think 5% GDP growth is baked in the cake." And Lutnik is saying, "I could easily see six and maybe even more under certain circumstances." I don't know if that's really going to take place or not. Um, but I think you can't give a 0% probability to the economy growing versus uh shrinking this year. My point though is is we could have a year where the economy surprises to the upside, but the market surprises to the downside. And that's one of the things I'm trying to get people's eyes open to. No, it's it's interesting like I'm not sure if you listen to Trump's speech in Davos like his one hour long monologue. I listen to as much of it as I can get through. Yeah. >> One thing nobody's really picked up on and maybe I'm you know picking on the wrong thing but he said markets at 50,000. >> So like and we we will figure out how to get there, right? But if the president says I want markets at 50,000 cuz he's got an election to win in the November as well. So he wants positive momentum, >> right? So we need to dissect now like how inflationary is it? you you touched on maybe tariff checks, things like that, like how is it going to be deficit sp like the deficit spending is going to cover that as well. So, and maybe on the topic of inflation there. Um, how do you factor that in? >> Sure. And and I'm glad you mentioned that cuz that's another thing that I I should have added to my list of things that could could move the economy to the upside. So, yes, surprise to nobody, we've got the midterm elections coming up. Historically, the administration that's in place usually loses Congress during those or or underperforms. Um, and uh Trump uh I mean, like him or hate him, he he is quite transparent. Um, and he's been out there saying, "Look, we lose Congress, I get impeached in in the back half of my term." So, it it seems increasingly clear to me that the administration is going to do whatever it feels it has to do to try to goose the economy in such a way that people feel more optimistic about their financial prospects heading into pulling that lever in the voter booth than they do now. I think if elections are held today, administration probably loses Congress, right? So, he's got to do something between now and then to make people feel better enough about the momentum of where things are headed that they decide they want to kind of keep things as they are, right? And he's already shown, you know, whether it's um you know what, we're going to cap credit card interest at 10%. Or we're going to, you know, find a way to buy $200 billion worth of mortgage back securities. Like, he's literally just saying like, what are the things I need to make sure people aren't angry about when they walk into that voting booth? And I think that those tactics are going to get more extreme over the next 6 months. Yeah, volatility and that'll be volatility. To your point about inflation, I don't know. I I I I know that I I got to believe that the administration is keyed into the fact that unaffordability is probably the dominant issue right now for people heading into the voter booth. Right. So, I don't think they're going to do anything um that is going to cause a notable spike in cost of living before uh before the election. And one thing I think that's working in their favor is things are definitely disinflating. So the trends are are their friend right now, right? Um but I think I mean at the end of the day it depends how people feel. We know less than what the numbers are. But but just the headline CPI number I think it's going to be very hard for that number not to continue disinflating and that's just because of not just the momentum but um of the housing shelter. So shelter is 40% of the CPI calculation and the inputs that go into the CPI calculation are extremely lagging for for shelter and so much more real time data has been showing that you know rents have been coming down. >> Can can I jump in real quick because the last CPI data showed rising shelter prices. >> Did it show up but how but how much of one? I mean it was a little blip 3%. >> Okay. >> So it wasn't that much. That's why I'm jumping in cuz I'm curious like and I agree with you. We're seeing a lot more housing like fluctuation. I talked to Melody, right? And others prices are coming down, right? So, >> so, so no, rents are definitely disinflating. And really, at the end of the day, um, I mean, there's lots and lots of reasons, um, why home prices could continue to disinflate, but kind of empirically, um, it's a function of how much the the house can be rented for, >> right? That's why they use owner's equivalent rent, right, in the calculation. Um, and so if rents are disinflating, then in theory, you know, home prices need to come down over time. And that makes sense, right? You know, >> we're definitely seeing that in many markets. >> Yeah. If it's cheaper to rent than buy and more people are going to choose to rent, and that's going to be less demand for housing. Um, what's also interesting, too, driving this is uh the deportations. And again, love them, hate them, it's just math, right? So, we've had over 2 million people leave who weren't here a year ago, right? and and that doesn't necessarily impact home prices from a a home buying demand standpoint, but it does really impact rents. You know, a lot of those people were renting, right? And so that's a 2 million plus renters that aren't here now while rents were already starting to soften anyways. So that's going to disinflate rents even further, maybe even deflate rents. Um, and that's going to then have a concurrent impact in housing prices. So my point simply being it's going to be really hard for CPI to rise if shelter continues to deflate during this year. And I don't see anything that's going to reverse uh shelter costs beyond maybe like a onemon bump. >> Absolutely. No, I was surprised to see the 3% rise as well. So, because oil was oil and gas was setting up offsetting its offsetting it. Um some experts saying, well, oil might go to $45 a barrel, >> right? It it it could look and uh that might be something we can talk about in a bit. Um, I I think the fundamentals for investing in the oil and gas industry are one of the more attractive investment industries, investment opportunities right now. That said, wouldn't surprise me to see oil go into the low 50s or 40s before it actually hits a bottom. >> Absolutely. It's a different sector. We we'll talk about it in a second cuz but that does help the administration what we're talking about here, which is as oil prices continue to stay weak or weaken further, again, that also keeps cost of inflation from rising. >> Exactly. And outside of California, gas is actually affordable. >> Yeah. And and I can tell you that having just moved out of California, uh it is. And California gas, different topic for a different day. Uh but is is likely going to ex gas prices are likely going to explode higher this uh this year alone because you've got Chevron leaving the state after 140 years and some other refineries that are shutting down there. I mean, California literally is digging its own grave right now. >> Yeah, they're working hard at it. Absolutely. Um let's talk about what's priced in the markets right now. Like we're sitting here at a mining investment conference of course we got to talk gold and silver but um I'm I'm looking at the S&P 500 you mentioned it as well fairly stagnant the dollar Dixie flat as well bond yields are finally starting to move >> right a little bit but yeah still there's still rangebound now right >> yeah but still like we've seen an uptick in yields at least so the question is I'm trying to interpret the move in gold and silver right now with everything else somewhat flat >> right what what do you make of it what's your takeaway >> I mean it's a great it's the question right which is what is really driving this um you know you talk to people like Andy Shechman who just spoke here um I mean Andy has a has a sort of 360 view u of why it's what's driving things here but a big part of it is um that supply is just getting tighter while demand is going through the roof right so it's kind of a perfect storm right um you know there's a lot of people that are talking about um you know the monetary side of things and look this is part of the great re reset it's started it's underway Hey, you know, it's it's it's only going higher from here, maybe, right? Um, and I'll preface all this by saying I've been a precious metal investor for a long time, for over 15 years. Um, I am not selling any of my ounces at this point in time. Um, but I respect price action. And I think you know the the the thing you have to ask yourself right now honestly which is um whatever is driving the exponential price movement that we're seeing here right now how long is it going to be able to sustain right um and I think yes there there there are forces like are exponentially increasing debt and you know a whole bunch of other things that will continue to go on for years but a lot of them have been going on for years and the metal prices didn't move at all right so will will the metal has, you know, continue to react the way they're reacting now for the next couple years. Probably not. And and just as a student of markets, when you see vertical price action in any asset, right? Doesn't matter what the reasons for what's driving it, it doesn't last forever, right? And it usually it almost never resolves by then just going sideways, right? So I think the big question in the here and now is you know are we in the point where we are in a a short-term mania that could have a pretty substantial price pullback in it. And you know, if we look at the previous charts of gold and silver, when it's moved vertical like this, the pullbacks have been vicious, right? I'm not saying that that's going to be true this time, but I think the odds of a pullback occurring in the relatively near term, you know, a couple weeks, couple months, probably uncomfortably high at this point. Um, I can make a lot of a lot of arguments for why it shouldn't pull back on the magnitude that it has previously. Um maybe it pulls back 20 30% versus 50 70%. Um uh but I don't know for sure. So I think right now what you got to ask yourself as a as a precious metal investor who's sitting on a lot of gains right now is okay what am I willing to live with here, right? And one of the things I'm going to be talking about in my presentation a little bit later is prospect theory >> which uh helped win a Nobel Prize in economics and and and part of prospect theory this is uh developed by Daniel Canaman the guy who wrote the book uh thinking fast and slow people might know him from that >> um is that psychologically we as as just human mammals right we experience the the pain of a loss >> about twice as much as we experience the joy of a game >> and so I really try to encourage investors to keep that in mind which is all right you know we're at a point here where where experience and wisdom suggest prudence and you probably heard Rick Rule's uh panel yesterday with the old grizzled veterans right Ross Bey and Bob Cordain >> they were quite negative >> they were they were like look we've seen this before like we're big fans of precious metals but we've seen this price action before in commodities and in precious metals specifically it tends to end you know painfully and so you know we think taking some gains now is prudent they're not saying sell everything. They're not predicting it's going to the ind commodity is going to go into a nuclear winter from here. >> They're just saying you've been gifted from the universe years worth of returns in a very short period of time. When this happens in the past, there tends to be a pretty big pullback. So, you need to ask yourself, are you just going to, if it does happen, are you just going to eat it all yourself and then have to wait however long it's going to be to get back to where the the high was, or are you going to take some chips off the table? and their long-term experience has said taken some chips off his is material. And Rick actually did a really, you know, I think interesting uh way of doing that where he sold, I think, 80% of his physical silver. >> Then he took half of the proceeds and he diversified. He put them into classic Rick rule other uh resources that are kind of hated right now that he thinks will do better in the future, but he's just pure diversification, right? He's lowering his risk by doing that. He then took the remaining 50% put that into silver miners. So he still has quite a lot of upside exposure, but it's levered upside. So if silver takes off from here, great. He's still capturing a good deal of that. But if silver corrects hard from here, he's actually materially derisked. So you know, that may not be the right way for every investor to do this. You've got to, you know, evaluate your own needs and goals and personal situation. But there are lots of ways to take some of these gains off the table while still maintaining substantial upside. >> Absolutely. You're you're Mr. Silver Eyes on on X, right? >> I was Mr. You were you took him off you took the silver laser eyes off at $100. I believe >> I did. Y >> right. Um what prompted you to do it in the first place? >> So okay and it's a great question. So I've been a silver investor for a long time. Um being really honest for you know more years than I would have liked. Kind of a frustrated silver investor, right? It just I saw all the trends that I thought silver should be rising for and it just the metal just kind of didn't care. Right. And uh you know like you I interview a lot of experts and um both my precious metals experts and my technical analysis experts were converging on a consensus that you know silver was forming this cup and handle and and if it had a price breakout above 35 bucks an ounce there was not there did not look to be much price resistance up until about 50. Right? So when silver broke through 35, you know, I thought, okay, look, this it looks like we got some good room to run here. How can I kind of get the word out about that in a fun way that'll catch people's attention? I thought, "Oh, I'll give myself silver eyes." >> So I I put, you know, I I'm not a big Photoshop guru, but I I put some silver eagles on my eyes on my profile photo and kind of cheekily let, you know, the world know I was doing this. And one of my followers very immediately said, "Wow, we got to put laser eyes on top of the silver." Right? So I had silver laser eyes, which was awesome. And I got to tell you, Kai, uh, this is sort of like Jed Clampet shooting at the pheasant and then hitting a gusher, right? I mean, I I I had hoped I was going to be right, but I had no idea how right I was going to be, how quickly, right? >> And then when silver, you hit 50 and then just tore right through it. Um, it was great, but I started realizing like, how much longer is this going to last? and how much longer do I want to be sending a signal that now is a really good time to get into silver because it has a lot of short-term potential price appreciation ahead of it. And I kept in there until 100. And at 100, I said, "Look, kind of like what Rick and the other guys are saying, which is >> to expect more out of this at this point in time is is kind of not it's beginning to become, you know, statistically less likely." And it's starting to really feel gluttonous, right? When when the universe answers all of your prayers and then some and you still demand more. Right. That's that's starting to kind of spit in the eye of fate. Exactly. So I didn't want to give people the sense that I thought right now was the right time to get in expecting dramatic price appreciation in the short term. >> Kai, I would love to be wrong. >> I I and >> we all hope you were wrong. >> And since I took it off, silver's up another 20 bucks or whatever, right? So um I would love nothing more than for the people who have been pushing back on me um saying, "Hey, you know, you're I I I thought you were our spiritual leader. Now you're an apostate, right? I'm like, and it's funny because I haven't said anything negative about about the precious metals or silver specifically, but people just don't want the party to end, which to me in itself is again another sign of a late stage mania, right? It's just nobody wants to hear. It's just like a party, right? Nobody wants the party to end and it gets to its wildest wildest right before the cops show up, right? And I'm just trying to, you know, at this point tell people, you know what, >> maybe we're hearing sirens in the May, maybe it's time to actually start, you know, just winding things down a little bit. Yeah. And again, I would love to be wrong. >> Oh, no. I think I think you you hit the nail on the head. Like, don't be too greedy, >> right? And nobody's gotten poor at taking profits off the table either. >> Exactly. And just to be clear, so right now I am not selling any of my physical ounces. I I I still >> Why do you own them, if I may ask? Like what's your investment purpose? or is there like hold in invest is it investing trading or is it just really wealth preservation? >> Yeah, so it it's largely wealth preservation. I feel you know like you talk to a lot of really smart people and there's a lot of thesis out there that make a lot of sense to me. Some of which I feel like I intellectually understand more than others. The one that has been the clearest to me for the longest, the ones that I personally have the most confidence in is that uh the pursing power of fiat currency will continue to go down from here and it has the potential at some point to go down at an increasing rate. Right? So that's why I own precious metals. It's their hard assets that will hopefully at a minimum preserve their purchasing power or potentially increase their purchasing power uh in real terms over time. Um, so that's the main reason why I own it, right? And that's why uh I I I really I want to always make sure that at least part of my portfolio is in tangible assets like that that literally I can put my hot little hands on if I want to. There's also part of it too that's a little bit of a legacy, which is um given this confidence I have, um I don't know if this whole grand story is necessarily going to fully play out over my lifetime. And I want to have something to be able to pass on to my kids that could be a protective shield for them as well. Absolutely. It's like a watch, you know, you just pass it on, right? So, um, Adam, fantastic conversation. I want to talk about your channel for a second as well and what your plans are for 2026. >> Um, what what do you think is going to be the topic that you're going to talk about most this year? >> I I definitely think one that's going to be on the rise is oil and gas. >> Yeah. Yeah. That seems to be um again, this is sort of one of those conflicts. This is kind of one of the reasons why I got in to do what I was doing. Um uh whole bunch of reasons for it. at the top of it was to try to help democratize financial literacy and and educate other people and help them make better decisions. But part of it was, well, if I if I get access to the thinking of a lot of experts, a, it'll make me smarter, but b, what I look for, Kai, is I look for when people who have different methodologies, um, like maybe a a macro guy versus a technical analyst or, you know, a a guy like some of the people here who are literally out in the trenches, you know, dirty boots, right? seeing how these companies are are, you know, really operating. When they sit down with me and they explain their methodology and it comes to the same conclusion as another guy using a very different methodology, that usually gives me higher confidence that hey, there's probably some real there there if if we're still getting to the same destination from different pathways, right? And I've been increasingly seeing that over the past quarter or two around oil and gas where people are saying, "All right, look, there's a critically important sector. World's still absolutely addicted to it, not getting off it. Demand for it keeps growing every year." Um, and uh, it has been in a bus cycle for a prolonged period of time. And especially in commodities, but especially in industries like oil, the cure for low prices is low prices. Right? As prices drop below a certain threshold, companies stop investing in capex. they stop exploring, they stop developing and eventually that then creates the shortage which then >> you know sets off the next boom. Uh and one of the things that is I don't want to say unique but one of the things that's really attractive about this space here is I don't know when it's going to turn you know it could turn in a quarter it could turn in 2 3 years from now but you get paid you know at least in the the major companies in the space really attractively while you're waiting which is totally different than a lot of other commodities right and I was sitting there >> what are the dividend yields these days >> uh I mean it depends on the company but I mean you can get you know anywhere between four 5 to 11 to 12. I mean, you can get really nice returns on this stuff. Um, and these are big companies that are not, you know, Exxon is not does not have a high default risk by any stretch, right? >> Um, so, uh, it it just seems like one of those areas where the industry itself seems poised for for pretty dramatic growth and the downside of of putting your capital here and maybe having to wait a little bit longer than you want is much lower than normal. it it's actually financing the the opportunity cost of capital for you. And so I uh I interviewed Rick Rule uh a couple days ago. The interview actually launched yesterday um right as Rick was kicking off this conference, but it was a deep dive in oil and gas. And so I'll just encourage um if you want to learn, you know, a little bit more about this and uh want to want to get, you know, Rick's freshest thinking about that, you can go watch that. And Rick Rick is very generous. He actually goes through probably about 10 different specific companies to say, "Look, these are ones that are particularly on my watch list." So, not not personal financial advice folks, but these are these are great compan anyway. So, >> I I am, but I still have to have that that that caveat out there. But yeah, so I think oil and gas is actually going to be a big win. >> Where do they find it? Maybe to wrap it up. Adam, where can we send our audience? >> You're very kind. Uh thoughtfuloney.com. Just go there. You'll you'll find >> Just in case they don't know where to find, right? So, Adam, tremendously appreciate the the the conversation. It was long overdue that we sit down. Tremendously appreciate. Thanks so much for stopping by. >> Hey, it was it was such an honor to be asked, Ken. It's always fun to talk with you. >> Good to see you, man. Thanks so much. >> All right. And uh everybody else, thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this conversation here with Adam Tagert of thoughtful money. I tremendously did. I love chatting with Adam. We often meet at conferences or so and get to exchange ideas and I appreciate it a lot. So I hope you enjoyed this. Hit that like and subscribe button. Helps us out tremendously cuz I'm trying to catch Adam here at some point. Maybe, you know, one's got to have hopes and dreams. >> Hey, I love I love the compet break 100,000 subscribers first. So uh really appreciate it. Thanks so much and take care out there.
Gold & Silver Are Going Vertical… That’s the Problem | Adam Taggart
Summary
Transcript
Hello and welcome back to Soore Financially here from the floor of the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. My name is Kai Hoffen. I'm the JR Mining guy over on X and of course your host of this channel. And I'm looking forward to this conversation. I've been waiting for this one for a while actually to happen. It's with Adam Tagert, formerly of now thoughtful money, very very successful podcast host and somebody I take a lot of inspiration from admittedly and uh who's done a great job hosting macro interviews. You're doing a phenomenal job, Adam. It's great to have you here now. Welcome. >> Thank you, Kai. Um, wow. I'm a little afraid you may have uh built me up a little bit too much for the audience here, but but thank you. And yes, Kai and I have known each other for a good while, and I've seen you develop uh you know, as a a podcast host, and I think you do a phenomenal job. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. Now, I'm blushing. So, let's stop that now. Let's uh let's get more real. >> Mutual admiration over. >> Exactly. Right. So, let's done with that. Special coverage from the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference is brought to you by First Majestic Silver. There's no substitute for silver. Um, let's talk markets. I love opening with your question, your standard question. >> Some like the status of the market, the economy and the financial markets today. Like what's your general assessment? That's the term you always use. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, um I I think this is uh a year where um a lot of trends that that investors have gotten uh acclimated to. Um, I think it's going to be a rocky year. I don't necessarily, uh, forecast that it's going to be a down year in the markets, but completely open to that. Um, uh, and it's for a bunch of reasons. One, one, literally just statistically, right, is we've had 3 years back to back to back of about 20 plus% returns on average in the markets. That is very rare. to expect a fourth year of that is just statistically uh extremely low probability. So I think you need to start from there. Right. Um now there's uh there are a lot of fundamental uh challenges that the market still has. We've got this K-shaped economy. We got the bottom 80 plus% of the K that that appears to be continuing to to you know sink further down. Uh we're seeing uh delinquencies rise. um you know we're see which will lead to debt defaults. Um we just passed uh on a government standpoint. We just had um uh what is it? Uh we're spending more on uh our the interest on our debt than we are for defense now at this point in time. Uh so the debt is really starting to become problematic in a way that that's really beginning to bite the economy. Um we definitely have some sectors that are still struggling. So, you know, I could I could spend the next half hour with you, Kai, basically just painting the picture for why the economy is going to slow and next year's going to be a really uh down year. That being said, I actually think there are a lot of potential tailwinds that are starting to kick in now. Um, I'm not I'm not blindly accepting what they're saying, but if you listen to the administration, you know, particularly the the the the the people who are in the positions of driving uh the administration's agenda, I'm talking about people like uh Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant or Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, they have very clear uh road maps for what they've been trying to do and they've gotten a lot of it done in 2025 and they're saying, "Look, uh the the benefits of everything that we've been laying for the past year in 2025 with uh you know renewing the the um uh the the the tax cuts and then adding additional tax cuts on top of that. Um the deregulation um everything in the one big beautiful bill. Uh the revenues that are coming in from the tariffs which are now pretty substantial at this point in time. Um the capital that is being brought in to America from uh foreign countries. the construction of a lot of factories which will then lead to the creation of a bunch of new jobs. Um they're saying that we're we're just about now beginning to start to get the benefits of that. Um Bessant who the IRS reports up to uh is saying that uh tax uh refunds this year should be the highest in history around $150 billion worth. Trump is still saying he's going to give tariff checks to people and we'll see if that happens or not. But my point is is if that stuff actually gets affected in the way that the administration is saying it's going to, that will be stimulative to the economy. Um, so it very may start to counter some of these headwinds that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, kind of where I'm going with this is it it's just it's going to be a year where um there's going to be volatility, there's going to be surprises, and um again, a lot of these sort of long-standing trends, you know, the the inexurable um uh trend of of the hyperscalers just pulling everything else up with them, you know, if you look at their price action, they've pretty much gone nowhere since October, right? And it does look like the market may be tapping out. We're certainly seeing capital rotation into other sectors now. >> We're seeing it here as well. >> And and we're seeing it here, right? I mean, it's going, you know, capital's starting to come out of the the the big tech and it's going into commodities. It's going into consumer staples. It's going into energy. Um, so, uh, again, I just I I I think it's going to be a year that's going to look and feel different from the past couple years. And just one point I'll make as well is, you know, if you listen to guys like Besson and and and Lutnik, hey, first off, folks, I mean, they're going to be cheerleaders for this administration. So, they're going to be telling you the good story, but these are real pe like they're serious people with with serious brands to protect. You know, Scott Scott Besson's not going to say something, Howard Leick's not going to say something that they know is falsibly untrue in a way that's going to come back and and injure their respectability. Um, and they're saying, "Look, we think 5% GDP growth is baked in the cake." And Lutnik is saying, "I could easily see six and maybe even more under certain circumstances." I don't know if that's really going to take place or not. Um, but I think you can't give a 0% probability to the economy growing versus uh shrinking this year. My point though is is we could have a year where the economy surprises to the upside, but the market surprises to the downside. And that's one of the things I'm trying to get people's eyes open to. No, it's it's interesting like I'm not sure if you listen to Trump's speech in Davos like his one hour long monologue. I listen to as much of it as I can get through. Yeah. >> One thing nobody's really picked up on and maybe I'm you know picking on the wrong thing but he said markets at 50,000. >> So like and we we will figure out how to get there, right? But if the president says I want markets at 50,000 cuz he's got an election to win in the November as well. So he wants positive momentum, >> right? So we need to dissect now like how inflationary is it? you you touched on maybe tariff checks, things like that, like how is it going to be deficit sp like the deficit spending is going to cover that as well. So, and maybe on the topic of inflation there. Um, how do you factor that in? >> Sure. And and I'm glad you mentioned that cuz that's another thing that I I should have added to my list of things that could could move the economy to the upside. So, yes, surprise to nobody, we've got the midterm elections coming up. Historically, the administration that's in place usually loses Congress during those or or underperforms. Um, and uh Trump uh I mean, like him or hate him, he he is quite transparent. Um, and he's been out there saying, "Look, we lose Congress, I get impeached in in the back half of my term." So, it it seems increasingly clear to me that the administration is going to do whatever it feels it has to do to try to goose the economy in such a way that people feel more optimistic about their financial prospects heading into pulling that lever in the voter booth than they do now. I think if elections are held today, administration probably loses Congress, right? So, he's got to do something between now and then to make people feel better enough about the momentum of where things are headed that they decide they want to kind of keep things as they are, right? And he's already shown, you know, whether it's um you know what, we're going to cap credit card interest at 10%. Or we're going to, you know, find a way to buy $200 billion worth of mortgage back securities. Like, he's literally just saying like, what are the things I need to make sure people aren't angry about when they walk into that voting booth? And I think that those tactics are going to get more extreme over the next 6 months. Yeah, volatility and that'll be volatility. To your point about inflation, I don't know. I I I I know that I I got to believe that the administration is keyed into the fact that unaffordability is probably the dominant issue right now for people heading into the voter booth. Right. So, I don't think they're going to do anything um that is going to cause a notable spike in cost of living before uh before the election. And one thing I think that's working in their favor is things are definitely disinflating. So the trends are are their friend right now, right? Um but I think I mean at the end of the day it depends how people feel. We know less than what the numbers are. But but just the headline CPI number I think it's going to be very hard for that number not to continue disinflating and that's just because of not just the momentum but um of the housing shelter. So shelter is 40% of the CPI calculation and the inputs that go into the CPI calculation are extremely lagging for for shelter and so much more real time data has been showing that you know rents have been coming down. >> Can can I jump in real quick because the last CPI data showed rising shelter prices. >> Did it show up but how but how much of one? I mean it was a little blip 3%. >> Okay. >> So it wasn't that much. That's why I'm jumping in cuz I'm curious like and I agree with you. We're seeing a lot more housing like fluctuation. I talked to Melody, right? And others prices are coming down, right? So, >> so, so no, rents are definitely disinflating. And really, at the end of the day, um, I mean, there's lots and lots of reasons, um, why home prices could continue to disinflate, but kind of empirically, um, it's a function of how much the the house can be rented for, >> right? That's why they use owner's equivalent rent, right, in the calculation. Um, and so if rents are disinflating, then in theory, you know, home prices need to come down over time. And that makes sense, right? You know, >> we're definitely seeing that in many markets. >> Yeah. If it's cheaper to rent than buy and more people are going to choose to rent, and that's going to be less demand for housing. Um, what's also interesting, too, driving this is uh the deportations. And again, love them, hate them, it's just math, right? So, we've had over 2 million people leave who weren't here a year ago, right? and and that doesn't necessarily impact home prices from a a home buying demand standpoint, but it does really impact rents. You know, a lot of those people were renting, right? And so that's a 2 million plus renters that aren't here now while rents were already starting to soften anyways. So that's going to disinflate rents even further, maybe even deflate rents. Um, and that's going to then have a concurrent impact in housing prices. So my point simply being it's going to be really hard for CPI to rise if shelter continues to deflate during this year. And I don't see anything that's going to reverse uh shelter costs beyond maybe like a onemon bump. >> Absolutely. No, I was surprised to see the 3% rise as well. So, because oil was oil and gas was setting up offsetting its offsetting it. Um some experts saying, well, oil might go to $45 a barrel, >> right? It it it could look and uh that might be something we can talk about in a bit. Um, I I think the fundamentals for investing in the oil and gas industry are one of the more attractive investment industries, investment opportunities right now. That said, wouldn't surprise me to see oil go into the low 50s or 40s before it actually hits a bottom. >> Absolutely. It's a different sector. We we'll talk about it in a second cuz but that does help the administration what we're talking about here, which is as oil prices continue to stay weak or weaken further, again, that also keeps cost of inflation from rising. >> Exactly. And outside of California, gas is actually affordable. >> Yeah. And and I can tell you that having just moved out of California, uh it is. And California gas, different topic for a different day. Uh but is is likely going to ex gas prices are likely going to explode higher this uh this year alone because you've got Chevron leaving the state after 140 years and some other refineries that are shutting down there. I mean, California literally is digging its own grave right now. >> Yeah, they're working hard at it. Absolutely. Um let's talk about what's priced in the markets right now. Like we're sitting here at a mining investment conference of course we got to talk gold and silver but um I'm I'm looking at the S&P 500 you mentioned it as well fairly stagnant the dollar Dixie flat as well bond yields are finally starting to move >> right a little bit but yeah still there's still rangebound now right >> yeah but still like we've seen an uptick in yields at least so the question is I'm trying to interpret the move in gold and silver right now with everything else somewhat flat >> right what what do you make of it what's your takeaway >> I mean it's a great it's the question right which is what is really driving this um you know you talk to people like Andy Shechman who just spoke here um I mean Andy has a has a sort of 360 view u of why it's what's driving things here but a big part of it is um that supply is just getting tighter while demand is going through the roof right so it's kind of a perfect storm right um you know there's a lot of people that are talking about um you know the monetary side of things and look this is part of the great re reset it's started it's underway Hey, you know, it's it's it's only going higher from here, maybe, right? Um, and I'll preface all this by saying I've been a precious metal investor for a long time, for over 15 years. Um, I am not selling any of my ounces at this point in time. Um, but I respect price action. And I think you know the the the thing you have to ask yourself right now honestly which is um whatever is driving the exponential price movement that we're seeing here right now how long is it going to be able to sustain right um and I think yes there there there are forces like are exponentially increasing debt and you know a whole bunch of other things that will continue to go on for years but a lot of them have been going on for years and the metal prices didn't move at all right so will will the metal has, you know, continue to react the way they're reacting now for the next couple years. Probably not. And and just as a student of markets, when you see vertical price action in any asset, right? Doesn't matter what the reasons for what's driving it, it doesn't last forever, right? And it usually it almost never resolves by then just going sideways, right? So I think the big question in the here and now is you know are we in the point where we are in a a short-term mania that could have a pretty substantial price pullback in it. And you know, if we look at the previous charts of gold and silver, when it's moved vertical like this, the pullbacks have been vicious, right? I'm not saying that that's going to be true this time, but I think the odds of a pullback occurring in the relatively near term, you know, a couple weeks, couple months, probably uncomfortably high at this point. Um, I can make a lot of a lot of arguments for why it shouldn't pull back on the magnitude that it has previously. Um maybe it pulls back 20 30% versus 50 70%. Um uh but I don't know for sure. So I think right now what you got to ask yourself as a as a precious metal investor who's sitting on a lot of gains right now is okay what am I willing to live with here, right? And one of the things I'm going to be talking about in my presentation a little bit later is prospect theory >> which uh helped win a Nobel Prize in economics and and and part of prospect theory this is uh developed by Daniel Canaman the guy who wrote the book uh thinking fast and slow people might know him from that >> um is that psychologically we as as just human mammals right we experience the the pain of a loss >> about twice as much as we experience the joy of a game >> and so I really try to encourage investors to keep that in mind which is all right you know we're at a point here where where experience and wisdom suggest prudence and you probably heard Rick Rule's uh panel yesterday with the old grizzled veterans right Ross Bey and Bob Cordain >> they were quite negative >> they were they were like look we've seen this before like we're big fans of precious metals but we've seen this price action before in commodities and in precious metals specifically it tends to end you know painfully and so you know we think taking some gains now is prudent they're not saying sell everything. They're not predicting it's going to the ind commodity is going to go into a nuclear winter from here. >> They're just saying you've been gifted from the universe years worth of returns in a very short period of time. When this happens in the past, there tends to be a pretty big pullback. So, you need to ask yourself, are you just going to, if it does happen, are you just going to eat it all yourself and then have to wait however long it's going to be to get back to where the the high was, or are you going to take some chips off the table? and their long-term experience has said taken some chips off his is material. And Rick actually did a really, you know, I think interesting uh way of doing that where he sold, I think, 80% of his physical silver. >> Then he took half of the proceeds and he diversified. He put them into classic Rick rule other uh resources that are kind of hated right now that he thinks will do better in the future, but he's just pure diversification, right? He's lowering his risk by doing that. He then took the remaining 50% put that into silver miners. So he still has quite a lot of upside exposure, but it's levered upside. So if silver takes off from here, great. He's still capturing a good deal of that. But if silver corrects hard from here, he's actually materially derisked. So you know, that may not be the right way for every investor to do this. You've got to, you know, evaluate your own needs and goals and personal situation. But there are lots of ways to take some of these gains off the table while still maintaining substantial upside. >> Absolutely. You're you're Mr. Silver Eyes on on X, right? >> I was Mr. You were you took him off you took the silver laser eyes off at $100. I believe >> I did. Y >> right. Um what prompted you to do it in the first place? >> So okay and it's a great question. So I've been a silver investor for a long time. Um being really honest for you know more years than I would have liked. Kind of a frustrated silver investor, right? It just I saw all the trends that I thought silver should be rising for and it just the metal just kind of didn't care. Right. And uh you know like you I interview a lot of experts and um both my precious metals experts and my technical analysis experts were converging on a consensus that you know silver was forming this cup and handle and and if it had a price breakout above 35 bucks an ounce there was not there did not look to be much price resistance up until about 50. Right? So when silver broke through 35, you know, I thought, okay, look, this it looks like we got some good room to run here. How can I kind of get the word out about that in a fun way that'll catch people's attention? I thought, "Oh, I'll give myself silver eyes." >> So I I put, you know, I I'm not a big Photoshop guru, but I I put some silver eagles on my eyes on my profile photo and kind of cheekily let, you know, the world know I was doing this. And one of my followers very immediately said, "Wow, we got to put laser eyes on top of the silver." Right? So I had silver laser eyes, which was awesome. And I got to tell you, Kai, uh, this is sort of like Jed Clampet shooting at the pheasant and then hitting a gusher, right? I mean, I I I had hoped I was going to be right, but I had no idea how right I was going to be, how quickly, right? >> And then when silver, you hit 50 and then just tore right through it. Um, it was great, but I started realizing like, how much longer is this going to last? and how much longer do I want to be sending a signal that now is a really good time to get into silver because it has a lot of short-term potential price appreciation ahead of it. And I kept in there until 100. And at 100, I said, "Look, kind of like what Rick and the other guys are saying, which is >> to expect more out of this at this point in time is is kind of not it's beginning to become, you know, statistically less likely." And it's starting to really feel gluttonous, right? When when the universe answers all of your prayers and then some and you still demand more. Right. That's that's starting to kind of spit in the eye of fate. Exactly. So I didn't want to give people the sense that I thought right now was the right time to get in expecting dramatic price appreciation in the short term. >> Kai, I would love to be wrong. >> I I and >> we all hope you were wrong. >> And since I took it off, silver's up another 20 bucks or whatever, right? So um I would love nothing more than for the people who have been pushing back on me um saying, "Hey, you know, you're I I I thought you were our spiritual leader. Now you're an apostate, right? I'm like, and it's funny because I haven't said anything negative about about the precious metals or silver specifically, but people just don't want the party to end, which to me in itself is again another sign of a late stage mania, right? It's just nobody wants to hear. It's just like a party, right? Nobody wants the party to end and it gets to its wildest wildest right before the cops show up, right? And I'm just trying to, you know, at this point tell people, you know what, >> maybe we're hearing sirens in the May, maybe it's time to actually start, you know, just winding things down a little bit. Yeah. And again, I would love to be wrong. >> Oh, no. I think I think you you hit the nail on the head. Like, don't be too greedy, >> right? And nobody's gotten poor at taking profits off the table either. >> Exactly. And just to be clear, so right now I am not selling any of my physical ounces. I I I still >> Why do you own them, if I may ask? Like what's your investment purpose? or is there like hold in invest is it investing trading or is it just really wealth preservation? >> Yeah, so it it's largely wealth preservation. I feel you know like you talk to a lot of really smart people and there's a lot of thesis out there that make a lot of sense to me. Some of which I feel like I intellectually understand more than others. The one that has been the clearest to me for the longest, the ones that I personally have the most confidence in is that uh the pursing power of fiat currency will continue to go down from here and it has the potential at some point to go down at an increasing rate. Right? So that's why I own precious metals. It's their hard assets that will hopefully at a minimum preserve their purchasing power or potentially increase their purchasing power uh in real terms over time. Um, so that's the main reason why I own it, right? And that's why uh I I I really I want to always make sure that at least part of my portfolio is in tangible assets like that that literally I can put my hot little hands on if I want to. There's also part of it too that's a little bit of a legacy, which is um given this confidence I have, um I don't know if this whole grand story is necessarily going to fully play out over my lifetime. And I want to have something to be able to pass on to my kids that could be a protective shield for them as well. Absolutely. It's like a watch, you know, you just pass it on, right? So, um, Adam, fantastic conversation. I want to talk about your channel for a second as well and what your plans are for 2026. >> Um, what what do you think is going to be the topic that you're going to talk about most this year? >> I I definitely think one that's going to be on the rise is oil and gas. >> Yeah. Yeah. That seems to be um again, this is sort of one of those conflicts. This is kind of one of the reasons why I got in to do what I was doing. Um uh whole bunch of reasons for it. at the top of it was to try to help democratize financial literacy and and educate other people and help them make better decisions. But part of it was, well, if I if I get access to the thinking of a lot of experts, a, it'll make me smarter, but b, what I look for, Kai, is I look for when people who have different methodologies, um, like maybe a a macro guy versus a technical analyst or, you know, a a guy like some of the people here who are literally out in the trenches, you know, dirty boots, right? seeing how these companies are are, you know, really operating. When they sit down with me and they explain their methodology and it comes to the same conclusion as another guy using a very different methodology, that usually gives me higher confidence that hey, there's probably some real there there if if we're still getting to the same destination from different pathways, right? And I've been increasingly seeing that over the past quarter or two around oil and gas where people are saying, "All right, look, there's a critically important sector. World's still absolutely addicted to it, not getting off it. Demand for it keeps growing every year." Um, and uh, it has been in a bus cycle for a prolonged period of time. And especially in commodities, but especially in industries like oil, the cure for low prices is low prices. Right? As prices drop below a certain threshold, companies stop investing in capex. they stop exploring, they stop developing and eventually that then creates the shortage which then >> you know sets off the next boom. Uh and one of the things that is I don't want to say unique but one of the things that's really attractive about this space here is I don't know when it's going to turn you know it could turn in a quarter it could turn in 2 3 years from now but you get paid you know at least in the the major companies in the space really attractively while you're waiting which is totally different than a lot of other commodities right and I was sitting there >> what are the dividend yields these days >> uh I mean it depends on the company but I mean you can get you know anywhere between four 5 to 11 to 12. I mean, you can get really nice returns on this stuff. Um, and these are big companies that are not, you know, Exxon is not does not have a high default risk by any stretch, right? >> Um, so, uh, it it just seems like one of those areas where the industry itself seems poised for for pretty dramatic growth and the downside of of putting your capital here and maybe having to wait a little bit longer than you want is much lower than normal. it it's actually financing the the opportunity cost of capital for you. And so I uh I interviewed Rick Rule uh a couple days ago. The interview actually launched yesterday um right as Rick was kicking off this conference, but it was a deep dive in oil and gas. And so I'll just encourage um if you want to learn, you know, a little bit more about this and uh want to want to get, you know, Rick's freshest thinking about that, you can go watch that. And Rick Rick is very generous. He actually goes through probably about 10 different specific companies to say, "Look, these are ones that are particularly on my watch list." So, not not personal financial advice folks, but these are these are great compan anyway. So, >> I I am, but I still have to have that that that caveat out there. But yeah, so I think oil and gas is actually going to be a big win. >> Where do they find it? Maybe to wrap it up. Adam, where can we send our audience? >> You're very kind. Uh thoughtfuloney.com. Just go there. You'll you'll find >> Just in case they don't know where to find, right? So, Adam, tremendously appreciate the the the conversation. It was long overdue that we sit down. Tremendously appreciate. Thanks so much for stopping by. >> Hey, it was it was such an honor to be asked, Ken. It's always fun to talk with you. >> Good to see you, man. Thanks so much. >> All right. And uh everybody else, thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this conversation here with Adam Tagert of thoughtful money. I tremendously did. I love chatting with Adam. We often meet at conferences or so and get to exchange ideas and I appreciate it a lot. So I hope you enjoyed this. Hit that like and subscribe button. Helps us out tremendously cuz I'm trying to catch Adam here at some point. Maybe, you know, one's got to have hopes and dreams. >> Hey, I love I love the compet break 100,000 subscribers first. So uh really appreciate it. Thanks so much and take care out there.