Michael Oliver on What to Do Now with Gold, Silver, Oil, Uranium | Michael Oliver and Jimmy Connor
Summary
Silver: Strongly bullish view with the recent pullback framed as a buying opportunity and an aggressive target into the hundreds by summer, with silver expected to outperform gold.
Gold: Positive long-term trajectory with historical 8x cycle context and potential toward $8,500, while acknowledging increased volatility and monetary metal status.
Gold Miners: Preference for gold and silver miners over bullion due to depressed valuations and a pending breakout that could trigger outsized upside.
Bitcoin: Bearish outlook after breakdowns through key levels; rallies toward 75–76k seen as sells, with spillover risk to crypto-exposed firms such as MicroStrategy (MSTR) and broader sentiment damage.
Oil: Momentum-based breakout above ~$63 suggests a move into the mid-$90s without needing a headline, with the asset viewed as historically cheap; both speakers bought oil-related ETFs.
Commodities: Bloomberg Commodity Index turn signals a new multi-year upcycle; base metals and commodity-related stocks (including agriculture and fertilizers) are seen as low-risk, attractive investments.
Macro Risks: Rising concern over government bonds and constrained Fed support underpin the case for precious metals, while copper could reach $7–$9 and uranium remains in a bull trend but less compelling than oil.
Transcript
Well, these markets are really coming undone, and we've seen some crazy volatility in both the gold and the silver markets in the last couple of weeks with silver dropping 30% one day alone, the single biggest drop since 1980. So, what do we do? Do we sell and move on, or do we see this pullback in gold, silver as a buying opportunity? To help answer these questions, we've organized a virtual silver conference, which will go live on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. There's a registration link in the show notes below. Speakers include John Chapalia and Maria Smnova from Sprout Asset Management, Michael Oliver from Momentum Structural Analysis, Mike D. Rienzo from the Silver Institute. Companies include AA Golden Silver, Dolly Varden Silver, Abra Silver, Skina Golden Silver, Wheat and Precious Metals, and we have more to come. Once again, a free virtual silver conference on February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. And if you can't join us live, not a problem. You'll get a replay link at the conclusion of the event. There's a link below in the show notes. I hope you can join us. Good luck in the markets. Michael, thank you very much for joining us today. I want to jump right into it. We have seen some incredible volatility in the markets here in the last few weeks. These software companies have gotten pounded just because of AI replacement. Bitcoin is down 50% from its October high. Looks like it wants to go lower. And silver had its biggest one day drop since 1980. And I want to talk about all of these sectors, but the first one I want to dig into is the silver sector. >> And I've been long gold for the last two years. So that's worked out well. But I've had very little exposure to silver. And I think it just ran away got away on me. It just went too far too fast. >> And now we've had this nice pullback here. What are your thoughts? Is this a buying opportunity? >> Yeah, I think so. Uh, all of our work from various vantage points, not just momentum structural analysis, but relative performance analysis of silver versus gold, gold versus the S&P. Uh, in other words, what's the macro trend of the monetary metals? Okay, thumbs up across the board. Gold miners, gold, silver. Okay, then within that asset category, silver is outperforming gold. Oh yes, it got shen kicked in 1 and a half days. That's how long that drop lasted by the one and a half days. Now we spiked that out last week on I think on Friday or so we spiked out that low, but it quickly came back up. But most of the drops literally within hours. Okay, now people thought that's it. It's over. Done. You know, you don't have that kind of drop without a top. Our work says no. you did not break anything except sentiment. Uh long-term momentum trend factors are not even near points of structural breakage. Whereas in the past when we made tops 2011 for example or the low in 2015 there was ample structure on momentum where you could look at a momentum chart say oh boy you break that line you're going down. Oh boy break that line you're going up. We don't have any structure nearby. And whenever you do not have clear bridge over the river quai type structure to blow up, to break down through, you probably aren't at a top. Uh almost all tops, I'd say 95% of them have clear momentum structures that when broken, then you later find out price joins in. Anyway, so the answer to that question, yes, silver got trounced. However, I think it is a buying opportunity for those who might not have been in the first move and uh I think that we're still going to uh probably $3 to $500 silver this year and probably much of that occurring by summer. Uh as crazy as that sounds, it is not crazy. There's many examples of other markets doing similar type repricing to a new reality type events. Silver has all kinds of arguments for it, both technical and fundamental, that favor that sort of rapid readjustment. So, our assessment says yes, full thumbs up. This is a buying opportunity. In our weekend report, we put out some defining numbers where if we get above certain numbers this week, for example, in silver or gold, it says, "Yeah, you better get back on board if you got out." Uh, so yeah, I think that's the prime event of the year right there coming up. >> So once again, your target, your new target on silver is 3 to $500 by sometime in the summer. Just a heads up, we have a virtual silver conference coming up on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. There's a link below in the show notes so you can sign up. The speakers include John Chapalian, Maria Smnova from Sprat Asset Management, Michael Oliver of Momentum Structural Analysis, Mike D. Rienzo of the Silver Institute, Randy Smallwood of Wheaten Precious Metals, Benois Lal of Golden Silver, Sean Kungun of Dolly Varden, John Miniotus of Abber Silver, and we have a lot more to come. Once again, our virtual silver conference on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. You can sign up. There's a link below in the show notes. >> I cannot be any more precise. Unfortunately, um the tantrum type move that that is having lived in a half a century range between four bucks and 50 back and forth for a half a century while nothing else did hardly. Copper didn't live in a range that long. It lived in a similar range as silver did for 50 years. It remained in a range from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000 into about late 2005. Copper said, "Oh, I'm no longer going to live in a 50 cent to$1.50 a pound range, which is where he lived." Instead, in a couple of quarters, it went to four and a half bucks. Bam. Okay. no particular nuclear reason for it. Uh it wasn't in sync with gold or silver at that point. It wasn't even in sync with other base metals. It just said, "I'm going to a new reality." Couple years later in 2007, lead did the precise thing. Lived in a range for decades and decades said, "Oh, I'm out of here." Boom. Quadrupled to nearly a couple quarters. Uh and if you look at gold going back to when it was legalized 75 50 years ago uh it never stopped at its old highs. Made a high at 200 bucks and went down made high at 850 went down made a high at 1,200 almost went down and now we're you know etc. So it wasn't confined in a 50-year box. Why was silver? Okay. Well there's you know explanations for that. Um anyway, I think that not just the actions prior archival actions of copper and lead for example or um well look at the price relationship of silver to gold for example. It's ridiculously low historically. In fact last year it was down 1% of the price of gold. Divide an ounce of silver into an ounce of gold. 1%. Okay, if you go back and look at the bull market surge that peaked in 1980, in fact, for a period of time there, not just a spike, it was at 6.5% of the price of gold. Okay? Then in the 2011 bull market, 2010 to 11, the latter part of that bull market, silver was over 3% the price of gold. So last year it was 1%. What do you think? It's going to free. Okay, so it's popped up over two recently breaking out over a massive clear technical structure on the relative performance chart, meaning an ounce of silver divided in an ounce of gold plotted each month and you had a very clear ceiling and it broke through that. So that's yet more evidence that silver is waking up even relative to gold. And yes, we had a sharper pullback than gold just recently, but it's still outperforming gold when you go back a year, 6 months, etc. So, we favor silver over gold, and we think this is a buying opportunity. >> And I'm sorry, your 3 to500 uh dollar target, that's quite a wide range, but that's based on a percentage. >> Lots of things. Uh first off, let's look at gold, the mama. It's had two big bull markets since well it got legalized in 75 but it was already a 200 and then it dropped dropped down to near 100 by 76. Okay. From the 76 low to the 1980 high it had an 8fold gain. There was if you bought gold at the low you made eight times your money by 1980. Then it dropped and plateaued at a much higher level than it had been before. And in 2001, it made lows around $260. And it had an 8fold gain to get to its 2011 peak. Different span of time, 10 years, as opposed to about three, but same dimension move, eight-fold. Okay, we made a bare low at 1,50 in 2015. We're now only five-fold above that level. And yet, everybody says gold's overbought. Heck, it hasn't even matched the performance it provided in the prior two bull markets under far less monstrous fundamental factors in play. Uh so even if it just matched the multiple gain of those two bull markets, it' be $8,500. And by the way, we've been saying that for a year, not as a target, but just as a get back to what we've done before type thing. JP Morgan has now come out just recently and come up with the same number. Isn't that cute? Uh anyway, but if gold went to the 8,500, okay, let's just say, okay, let's say that's all it does match the prior bull markets and silver went to 3%. I mean, that's where it was in 2011. Okay. Whoa. What's that? 240 bucks, 250 bucks, something like that. Okay. I I don't have my calculator. Uh if silver went to the levels it was relative to gold in 1979 1980 it would be sixfold above that level. You know now here's another and that projects up toward the 500 level. Two other factors to look at. One is just simply monetary degradation. Look at an M2 chart. Go back to 1980 or 2011. see where the M2 was, then see where it is now. What's the gain? If silver were to match that gain, it'd be in the several hundred just to be where it was in real buying terms in 1980 or 2011. And uh there's another thing to look at, a stupid simple price chart. There's two charts you can look at. One's arithmetic, meaning dollars on the left side. And you've got that 50-year range. And the thickness of that range is like a box. Okay? It's a it's a four bucks to 50. Let's call it 5 to 50. So, it's a $45 thick range. Added to the top of the range, 50 bucks. So, when it broke out, your quote swing objective orthodox method would be 95 bucks. Look what happened when silver got up to 93 to 95 a couple weeks ago. There was a fight. There were a lot of sellers there saying, "Ah, swing objective met." Okay, boy. And they got a little bit of sell off and then blew their head off went to 121. So obviously the arithmetic scale swing objective is invalid because we went way beyond it. Okay. But if you put it on a logarithmic ratio scale, just like I was talking about with gold, if you'd put that gold on a log scale, you'd see the eight-fold moons of equal dimension on a log scale chart. If you put silver on a logarithmic scale and add it to the top, it says $500. Why? Because the low of that range was four five bucks. The high was 50. That's a t-fold dimension gain from bottom of range to top. Add 10fold to 50. Okay, enough reasons, right? Okay. Uh, and usually these changes in reality where a market says, "I did something wrong for a long time. I'm going to adjust it." You have a tantrum. You don't do it incrementally, crawling all your way up. You suddenly burst to correct for the error before you often will overdo what might be justified. So if let's say 250 or 300 is fully justified, then maybe they overshoot it. It's typical of markets that are correcting for excess. Anyway, those are some multiple reasons why we still assess that nope. Our assessment months ago, silver going into the hundreds, it's probably going to do it within a couple quarters. This correction occurred when? at the end of the second month of the surge. Surge defined by when silver broke out versus gold on a spread basis. That was the close of November. Okay, January, February, and then it has this correction earlier than we expected. We thought we might get one about midway into that six-month period, but we still think you're by summer you'll likely be at very high levels. Now, one of the reasons why I've always had a larger waiting toward gold is because it's a lot more stable and it's a lot more, you know, the market itself is much larger and it's much more mature. And, you know, to see gold move 10% in either direction is very rare. >> Uh whereas silver, I mean, we saw it rip from it was up 70% in the first few weeks of this year and then it dropped 30% in one day. >> And to me, that's kind of concerning. Um >> yeah are >> are you not concerned by that kind of volatility? >> Well yeah sure but it's from an investment grade point of view and I'm even talking investment grade like 6 months. Okay silver is the place to be by every metric we can measure against gold and it will likely outperform gold as it has. In fact if you go back a year it was 1% now it's two. That means in relative value to gold over a year. So while gold's gone up over the last year since early 25 to the present, silver's more than doubled despite the pullback than what gold has done. Yes, with more volatility here. But again, the the key issue for investors is what was your point of entry? If your point of entry was finally, oh gosh, I believe it now. I'm going to buy it at 120. Okay, well, you got bagged and maybe you should have been. uh our buy levels were last June coming up toward 35 and at the close of November in the 50s. Those were our last two major buy signal levels. So yeah, we gave back some profits but on the other hand nothing alters our assessment. We shall see. Now I want to play devil's advocate and as I mentioned u silver dropped 30% in one day and the last time we saw a move like this was in 1980 >> and in on March >> in the range in the range. Yeah. Yeah. >> On March the 27th of 1980 it dropped 63% in one day and then in the ensuing months we saw a lot of chop back and forth but >> long story short it lost 70% of its value. You don't see that happening now? >> No I don't. Um, if this were 6 months into the move and if silver had reached 4 or 500 bucks or something like that, I think you would have a sharp correction from there, but not back to 50 bucks. The old reality is gone. The question now is where is silver going to define the extreme upper end of the new reality. And I think it's going to do it very rapidly, meaning in a handful of months, not 3 years. Uh, and I think once it does, it'll probably overshoot and probably collapse from there if you got in at at 400 bucks or 500. Uh, the issue is did you get in at proper time? And I think happens to be right now is a proper time. You've got a pullback, use the opportunity. And we also we our most of our measurements are fairly long-term. When we analyze markets, we're looking for the big moves. But even when we get down to the micro stuff like daily momentum or weekly momentum which we included in our weekend report when we analyze that we can even see buy trigger levels of which like daily momentum today is already crossing a buy trigger level short-term momentum saying hey I'm out of the hole now. Okay the weekly offers a number um about six bucks above today's high if you get there this week next week that'll adjust down some. So even the short-term stuff is saying, "Hey, I'm out of the hole." Okay. So, um, at that point, I would say if you're not in silver, uh, join in. Yeah, you're buying it off the low, recent low, but you're buying it well below the recent high. So, view as an opportunity. Nothing has broken other than public sentiment. And I argue that the drop you saw then in 1980, for example, yes, that was top of the old range. silver just gone from like what five bucks to 50 and it did it had a fourfold move in the last five months of that explosion I'm talking two quarters roughly in 2010 and 11 it was a 7month explosion which doubled in a half the price of silver in seven months both of those surge events still caught in that old range were triggered by the spread breakout of silver versus gold where you could plot the relative performance chart and you could draw a line with a crayon and say if you get above that line you're breaking out over a multi-year base and when it did it had a tantrum. We did the same thing except even a bigger and clearer base silver relative to gold at the close of November. So, it's only two months and two weeks now into a likely couple quarter surge. >> And Michael, the move that you expect in gold, is is it going to be a lot more measured or do you think it will also be explosive? >> It's going to be just a heads up, we have a virtual silver conference coming up on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. There's a link below in the show notes so you can sign up. The speakers include John Chapalian, Maria Smnova from Sprat Asset Management, Michael Oliver of Momentum Structural Analysis, Mike Drienzo of the Silver Institute, Randy Smallwood of Wheaten Precious Metals, Benois Lal of Ayat Gold and Silver, Sean Kungun of Dolly Varden, John Miniotus of Abber Silver, and we have a lot more to come. Once again, our virtual silver conference on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. You can sign up. There's a link below in the show notes. >> Well, relative to what it's done over the last 10 years, it will be it already has become far more volatile. I mean, we we've covered $100 days here. Day, one day, 100 bucks, sometimes 200. Okay? So, its volatility is is off the page now, too, relative to its normal behavior. And it'll stay that way, though it will lag what silver does in terms of upward dynamics. Um, and I do think that, you know, while gold has a 3,000-year tradition as money, so does silver. Okay? And even India is remonetized silver allowed for in bank transactions and all kinds of things. So, it's not like it's uh a lost idea. Most people see silver as the industrial monetary the industrial quote precious metal. It is in fact a monetary metal has been for thousands of years and uh it's being reborn because it's vastly underpriced relative to the mama monetary metal. Now I want to change uh seeing how we're talking about gold. I want to get your thoughts on Bitcoin because to me it looks like it's breaking down big time here and a lot of uh these crypto bros they like to refer to uh Bitcoin as digital gold or new gold. >> Yeah. >> I want to get your thoughts on the price action we've seen in the last couple of months because it once again it peaked out in October at call it 120,000 now we're trading >> 127 127 >> 127 now we're trading in the call it 70s. Yeah. >> Okay. We've been we had been anticipating a collapse in Bitcoin months ago and after that November or I think it was October or November high, it started to drop and at a price we had two sell triggers arguing for massive collapse. These were not minor sell triggers. One was at 107, one was at uh 102 area. Okay, 102,000. When we hit those, we dropped immediately down to the low 80,000s. spent a couple months trying to hold there, which we had we'd expected as well. A midpoint pause, we called it uh with not a buy, but just a pause, you know, up and down, futile, futile rallies. Uh and then we broke through that 82,000 what, week or so ago, and our target stated months ago was 60,000. No, excuse me. Let me define that better. Our minimum target was stated is 60,000. We were saying that when Bitcoin was well above 100. Well, the low the other day was 60,000 and $5. Okay. So, we hit our minimum target and we did it in a crash like mode. Actually, two crash type events. U any rally right now, I think up to the 75 76,000 zone is probably a sale. the rally will not hold and I don't think ultimately 60,000 will hold. Uh in Ethereum which a lot of people thought well that's different from Bitcoin. We argued nope this little crypto beast compared to Bitcoin in terms of size of the crypto market. We said Ethereum will follow Bitcoin and it not only followed it but did worse on the downside. In fact, Ethereum price levels we saw low last week were basically at the lows of the last five years. So, anybody got an Ethereum over the past decade is wiped out. Okay. Um I would not be surprised to see much much lower prices and I wouldn't even be surprised to see it become almost non-existent. Uh already sentiment has been crushed. For some reason people are surprised by it. The technical our momentum technicals told us nope, it's got crash potential. When we looked at a price chart of Bitcoin over the last couple years, it was a layered advance with a pullback and then another surge and then finally that third surge. When you looked at momentum, long-term momentum, you didn't see this upside. You saw a floor. same level hit, hit hit where price was ascending, momentum was building a floor like the bridge over the river quai. Okay. And it went through at 107 and 10 just below 102,000 back a couple months ago and that's when the crash started. So anyway, I think the the vision that it is the alternative money and a competitor to gold and silver is now been crushed. And I would not be surprised to see some financial consequences. Meaning companies that weren't 5 years ago anything to do with crypto suddenly got up to their hips in crypto one way or another and therefore they're vulnerable. meaning you could get some headlines out of companies that you don't even correlate to crypto having problems or losses that they wouldn't have otherwise had. So anyway, I think it's a bubble burst and I don't know where it's going to go. >> And so I was going to ask you that. So it's definitely going to test $60,000 again and I was if it goes through 60, you have no idea where it goes like >> No, I don't have any. Uh I really don't. There's no more targets. I think it is a busted bubble. I think it is a tulip bulb. And uh I don't know what's on the other side of it. Uh I don't know that it lives if there's more on the other side of it. >> This is this is one of the big concerns to me if if it does because it looks like there's liquidation going on within that sector. And um I think there's 150 these Bitcoin treasury companies, the biggest being Micro Strategy. They're sitting on 80 billion worth of or not 80 but 8 billion worth of debt that they used to buy >> Bitcoin. Their average price is at 78,000 and here we are trading in >> you know 70,000 give or take. >> Yeah. >> Off the low of last week at 60,000. Yeah. Yeah. Now it's the consequence is not just for cryp for cryptoreated companies but non-cryptoreated uh because of their acceptance of the notion that oh well maybe it is viable money. Well this event it's not just technical and it's not just a quote bare market in an existing asset. It could be sufficient to bust the notional bubble of what crypto is or was and to the point where it's no longer considered viable. >> I want to get your thoughts on oil now. Uh WTI and to me it looks very constructive in spite of all the news that you see on what's going on. It feels to me like the price wants to move higher. Mhm. >> I've gotten long some uh ETFs. >> What are your thoughts on oil here? >> Yeah, I bought some oil related ETFs a week or so ago, too. U crude oil has was back in the 2000 the late 2020 to the 2022 explosion in commodities, which really was not an explosion. It was a doubling plus in price of the Bloomberg Commodity Index. Back then, oil energy was one of the leading components. But even that price surge in the Bloomberg, for example, got up to 140 at a peak. Um, that was still a little more than half the price level it saw in 2008. So, it really wasn't, you know, off the page high for commodities. Well, oil had a big surge. Went up to 130. Okay. Then it backed off hard with the Bloomberg commodity index in 2000 late 22 23 and 23 to 24 to 25 like three years there it just laid in the sewer. Okay 60 70 80 bucks 60 even got down in the mid-50s. During that same time the Bloomberg commodity index which is what oil tends to move with by the way uh was either side of 100. So it dropped from 140 back under 100. Just dead as hell. You know, like I'm just not going lower, but I'm also not going up. Last October, we got a major momentumbased buy signal out of the Bloomberg at just above 106. Right now, we're trading like 118, 119. Okay, no big deal. It's been a quiet advance, but during that time, oil was weak over the last handful of months. Oil was the weak component. We broke out using long-term momentum metrics on crude oil, not price chart. Last month's close, which is above was above 63 bucks. We're above there now. No big deal. Not a lot of excitement. All the fundamental guys are saying ah going to 40, etc. They've never been more certain. And all I can say is don't be shocked after that momentbased breakout of crude last month just above 63 that it goes up about 50% meaning up into the mid 90s again which is no big deal given that we were 130 in March of 2022. Okay. So, it's not even halfway back to that high, but that's a 50% increase just in the first surge post that breakout. And I kind of think that could occur in the next quarter or so. And I don't think it needs a headline to do it. I think it's simply a factor of absolute cheapness of oil relative to its own history, relative to other assets. And is even pointed out that silver or oil is the lowest it's ever been in relation to silver. partly due to oil's weakness and silver strength. But no matter how you want to measure oil, it's off the page dirt cheap. Now, you know, there's there's an underlying reality in the pricing of all assets that is the degradation of the money unit that we use to measure them by. And if the money supply increases like 80 to 90% every decade which it does especially now uh that is in the long run ultimately reflected in assets bloating the price of the assets simply because the real buying power of the money is degrading. Well oil hasn't reflected that. If oil were reflected that it probably be back at the mid hundreds or something you know. Uh but anyway, I think oil's turned and I think that you could get some drama and I don't even think you need a headline. It's just a pricing issue. >> Interesting comments. And and I I always like to look at stocks because I think quite often stocks lead and many of them are very strong in spite of the fact that oil is so cheap. >> Oh yeah. a couple of other uh commodities I want to ask you about because they've also showing strength and the first one being lithium and just to provide a little bit of context. Uh it peaked in 2022 at $80,000 a ton. It bottomed at $9,000 a ton in 2025. Now it's trading around $20,000 a ton. >> And uh do you have any thoughts on lithium? >> No, I don't. >> Stocks have had big moves too. I examine the commodity markets, the the essential commodities, but that is I don't include that in our monthly commodity report. We include platinum and palladium, but not not lithium. My son does cover stocks that are related to metals such as rare earth ETFs, copper related uh corporate companies that are related to copper and lithium. Uh and I forgot I don't know what he just said about it. He put out a report just recently. I know it was positive. I think he got bullish some months ago and I I can't offer any specifics, but we do cover it. He covers at least the stock. There's an ETF related to lithium. So, >> and what about uranium? It's also shown some very positive action. >> We we've called it very well back when it was under 20 bucks back when was it 2017 18. He said bull market starting cuz annual momentum not price of uh uranium 308 the very illlquid futures contract by the way in Chicago broke out and said I'm in a bull trend and it moved up through 20 and ultimately went over 100 you know uh two Augusts ago we said there's a correction coming. I think it was I think it was 24 maybe maybe it was 25. Uh and sure enough it was in the mid 80s then and we thought it might collapse down to about 70 give or take and it actually got down in the 60s. But our assessment of uranium is while it is reasserted itself back into a full bull trend I don't know about the dynamics of it meaning yes up but I don't know that it's quote the place to be in terms of multiple gains. Um, I think there's better places to be. Probably oil related would be better than uranium now. Not that uranium's going down, just that it had a monster rebirth from under 20 to, you know, now we're trading what the upper 70s or 80s. So even after the recent highs, we're still at very high levels versus the lows. So I don't have a confident sense that uranium upside will be one of the more the better places to be. >> Good. insight. So, you touched on copper. Should we also have a discussion on that? What are your thoughts on copper? >> Yeah, copper, I'm not sure where it's going, but seven or eight, nine bucks wouldn't surprise me whatsoever. Uh, it's the base metal miners are acting very good because it's not just copper. Uh, so they're a good place to be. And broadly speaking, we made this point a few months ago with the Bloomberg turning up. And by the way, the commodities don't always follow gold. like between 2015 and 20 while gold doubled from a,50 to over 2,000 the bloomberg kept going down not collapsing but just kept going down while gold was doubling but then in 2020 after gold had already made its last peak at 2000 still was stuck Bloomberg double plus no correlation to gold but now it looks like Bloomberg is now latching on to the tail of gold and is going to be coincident with what's further in gold. The commodities are going to join it. And when we do our long-term trend analysis of the Bloomberg Commodity Index and most of its components tend to behave with it, by the way, some will lead it, some will lag it, but they all tend to be a pretty good little crowd. They they tend to stay with it. Um I think over the next couple years being in commodity related stocks, oil related, base metal related, agriculture related, fertilizer companies, things like that um will be a great place to be because I think one it's a very low risk. Prices have been mashed off the page in terms of the relationship to the decaying money unit, in relationship to the stock market, in relationship to gold. very depressed, risk is low, and I think the upside is good potential, but not a trade. I'm talking investment quality, something that could last several years at least. I think it's a good category to be looking at, >> right? So, your message to investors is you see that wave coming, you got to jump on that wave and just ride it. >> Yeah. Don't wait for the Bloomberg to explode. Okay. and take out for example the price high it made in 2022 at 140. Yeah, everybody will wake up then and say, "Oh, it took out the last high." Uh, our momentum and even price analysis lag to momentum. Price has usually sort of laggered to its own momentum. Uh, say thumbs up and no, it's not explosive yet. No, there's not any headlines, but the primary thing is it's dirt cheap historically, even to its own price history. It's dirt cheap in relation to other assets. And sometimes even though the Fed keeps printing, it doesn't always go where they want it to go. Uh we know this in bare markets in the stock market. They may print like crazy, but the stock bears continue and the money goes elsewhere. Uh and I think this is one of the categories where it's going to go because of the riskreward potential. >> Yeah. Yeah, and you rais a good point about money printing because I always like to throw out this stat, but just to give investors a better sense of what's happening because we all know what's going on with inflation and loss of purchasing power >> and it's measured by M2 in the US. In January of 2020, it was 154 trillion. Here we are five years later going into the six year, it's well over 22 trillion. That's an increase of 42%. And another way of looking at that is just a loss of purchasing power. Our dollars are worth less. >> Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. And every decade it's like 80%. And given what's going on with the government bond markets, Japan, here, UK, etc. You got, it's not like mortgages. You've got the key platform asset category that people have always trusted. No, it may not yield that much, but boy, it's safe. If all of a sudden the perception is no, it's no longer safe. And what are you left with? It's far bigger than the stock market. So that's why the Fed started jumping in last November, mid November, President Williams of the New York Fed, so we could start buying bonds. His reason was, oh, provide liquidity. Nice excuse. Just need to provide some liquidity for that market, not support it. But look at what happened to bonds and T-bond futures since then. And the price was 117. We dropped down on the 115 area. And if you look at the last like nine weeks, it's like comeos. Never in the history of T-bond futures prices or yields at high levels narrow. Very high levels, not backing off. Price not rallying have I seen such confined abnormal activity where yeah, it looks like they're keeping it from collapsing, but they can't get a rally going. Even when we get weakness in the stock market, it tries to rally and can't get going. So, no wonder, was it Morgan Stanley, I think, or Yeah. that said, okay, we need a a new portfolio orthodoxy. Instead of 6040, it should be 60 stocks, 40 b 20 bonds, and 20 gold. Uh, huge admission. Uh, I mean, some they're admitting something's wrong with the government bond market. Uh, that's a crisis waiting. And when that that crisis is already causing them to print print. >> So that's going. >> Yeah. >> That was Mike Wilson, the chief investment officer, Morgan Stanley. So very interesting call. So I want to ask you about something else just because we're talking about bonds. Bloomberg recently reported that it's been the first time I think since the 1990s where uh gold reserves have overtaken US treasury reserves. >> What are your thoughts on that? >> I I don't have no fundamental thought on that. No, we look at things technically and yes I I >> but it really speaks to your point about people are selling bonds. >> Yeah. >> And then they're buying gold. foreign foreign governments are and also when the public get begins to doubt it and anybody who's intelligent and looks over across the oceans at Japan and realizes that their bond market is in total jeopardy. In fact, the new prime minister, you know, who got boosted by this recent election over there as well, uh one of her phrases were going to print print. Oh, lovely. you know, well, uh, maybe that'll save your bonds or maybe it won't. Uh, but also, it's not just Japan, it's us. The only difference is we're not in that crisis mode yet. And that's probably why the Fed came in in November onward to provide quote liquidity for their piece of paper. Because if there's any doubt that ever hits that market, you talk about psychological wipeout and emotion, that's bigger than anything. Okay? You can't have that even approach the edge. And our technicals say they better keep buying because right now either side of 114 for the last couple months, three months now almost. Uh you better not drop about two to three points from here like down into the 112s on the T-bond futures price meaning yield crowd up toward the highs again because if you do you're likely to puke. We've got technical reason to think that not only could it drop but it could create a panic. Uh, and that's the kind of event that they can't afford to happen cuz then we enter the Japan club. >> Well, if that does happen, I mean, the price of gold is just going to explode. It's could reach an $8,000. >> Gold already knows this. I think gold already knows this. It's known it. That's part of why it's been going up for a decade. It knew this. You Jamie Diamond said months ago, you can't keep playing this game forever, pushing this debt problem off and off. pretty soon you're actually going to have to confront it. And the problem is it's not being confronted. Even Trump isn't. Uh you know, the debt is still Well, anyway, you get the point. We're dealing now with not just a mortgage problem or a dot bubble. We're dealing with a government bond bubble. Japan, here, UK, elsewhere, in the West. And once that gets into doubt, even the least bit of doubt, you know, that's That's a crisis in itself. >> Well, that's as always, Michael. This is uh has been an interesting discussion. I want to thank you very much for spending time with us today. And I guess your message that you really want to convey to investors is that get long gold and get long silver >> and they're minors. I would my preference right now personal investments are I favor silver over gold vastly despite the recent drop and I favor the gold and silver miners over gold as well. They have not broken out yet versus gold. They have firmed nicely over the last couple years. The miners have beat gold but they've been still stuck in a range of performance readings that they've been in for 11 years at very very low valuation levels. They're challenging the upper end of that range. if they break out, you're going to get a gusher in the miners, and I suspect we're going to see it this year. >> Well, Michael, that was a great discussion. And if someone would like to learn more about you and about your services, where can they go? >> It's olivers for momentum structural analysis.com. OliverMsa.com >> and I will make sure I have a link below in the show notes. James, Michael, once again, thank you and good luck in the markets.
Michael Oliver on What to Do Now with Gold, Silver, Oil, Uranium | Michael Oliver and Jimmy Connor
Summary
Transcript
Well, these markets are really coming undone, and we've seen some crazy volatility in both the gold and the silver markets in the last couple of weeks with silver dropping 30% one day alone, the single biggest drop since 1980. So, what do we do? Do we sell and move on, or do we see this pullback in gold, silver as a buying opportunity? To help answer these questions, we've organized a virtual silver conference, which will go live on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. There's a registration link in the show notes below. Speakers include John Chapalia and Maria Smnova from Sprout Asset Management, Michael Oliver from Momentum Structural Analysis, Mike D. Rienzo from the Silver Institute. Companies include AA Golden Silver, Dolly Varden Silver, Abra Silver, Skina Golden Silver, Wheat and Precious Metals, and we have more to come. Once again, a free virtual silver conference on February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. And if you can't join us live, not a problem. You'll get a replay link at the conclusion of the event. There's a link below in the show notes. I hope you can join us. Good luck in the markets. Michael, thank you very much for joining us today. I want to jump right into it. We have seen some incredible volatility in the markets here in the last few weeks. These software companies have gotten pounded just because of AI replacement. Bitcoin is down 50% from its October high. Looks like it wants to go lower. And silver had its biggest one day drop since 1980. And I want to talk about all of these sectors, but the first one I want to dig into is the silver sector. >> And I've been long gold for the last two years. So that's worked out well. But I've had very little exposure to silver. And I think it just ran away got away on me. It just went too far too fast. >> And now we've had this nice pullback here. What are your thoughts? Is this a buying opportunity? >> Yeah, I think so. Uh, all of our work from various vantage points, not just momentum structural analysis, but relative performance analysis of silver versus gold, gold versus the S&P. Uh, in other words, what's the macro trend of the monetary metals? Okay, thumbs up across the board. Gold miners, gold, silver. Okay, then within that asset category, silver is outperforming gold. Oh yes, it got shen kicked in 1 and a half days. That's how long that drop lasted by the one and a half days. Now we spiked that out last week on I think on Friday or so we spiked out that low, but it quickly came back up. But most of the drops literally within hours. Okay, now people thought that's it. It's over. Done. You know, you don't have that kind of drop without a top. Our work says no. you did not break anything except sentiment. Uh long-term momentum trend factors are not even near points of structural breakage. Whereas in the past when we made tops 2011 for example or the low in 2015 there was ample structure on momentum where you could look at a momentum chart say oh boy you break that line you're going down. Oh boy break that line you're going up. We don't have any structure nearby. And whenever you do not have clear bridge over the river quai type structure to blow up, to break down through, you probably aren't at a top. Uh almost all tops, I'd say 95% of them have clear momentum structures that when broken, then you later find out price joins in. Anyway, so the answer to that question, yes, silver got trounced. However, I think it is a buying opportunity for those who might not have been in the first move and uh I think that we're still going to uh probably $3 to $500 silver this year and probably much of that occurring by summer. Uh as crazy as that sounds, it is not crazy. There's many examples of other markets doing similar type repricing to a new reality type events. Silver has all kinds of arguments for it, both technical and fundamental, that favor that sort of rapid readjustment. So, our assessment says yes, full thumbs up. This is a buying opportunity. In our weekend report, we put out some defining numbers where if we get above certain numbers this week, for example, in silver or gold, it says, "Yeah, you better get back on board if you got out." Uh, so yeah, I think that's the prime event of the year right there coming up. >> So once again, your target, your new target on silver is 3 to $500 by sometime in the summer. Just a heads up, we have a virtual silver conference coming up on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. There's a link below in the show notes so you can sign up. The speakers include John Chapalian, Maria Smnova from Sprat Asset Management, Michael Oliver of Momentum Structural Analysis, Mike D. Rienzo of the Silver Institute, Randy Smallwood of Wheaten Precious Metals, Benois Lal of Golden Silver, Sean Kungun of Dolly Varden, John Miniotus of Abber Silver, and we have a lot more to come. Once again, our virtual silver conference on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. You can sign up. There's a link below in the show notes. >> I cannot be any more precise. Unfortunately, um the tantrum type move that that is having lived in a half a century range between four bucks and 50 back and forth for a half a century while nothing else did hardly. Copper didn't live in a range that long. It lived in a similar range as silver did for 50 years. It remained in a range from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000 into about late 2005. Copper said, "Oh, I'm no longer going to live in a 50 cent to$1.50 a pound range, which is where he lived." Instead, in a couple of quarters, it went to four and a half bucks. Bam. Okay. no particular nuclear reason for it. Uh it wasn't in sync with gold or silver at that point. It wasn't even in sync with other base metals. It just said, "I'm going to a new reality." Couple years later in 2007, lead did the precise thing. Lived in a range for decades and decades said, "Oh, I'm out of here." Boom. Quadrupled to nearly a couple quarters. Uh and if you look at gold going back to when it was legalized 75 50 years ago uh it never stopped at its old highs. Made a high at 200 bucks and went down made high at 850 went down made a high at 1,200 almost went down and now we're you know etc. So it wasn't confined in a 50-year box. Why was silver? Okay. Well there's you know explanations for that. Um anyway, I think that not just the actions prior archival actions of copper and lead for example or um well look at the price relationship of silver to gold for example. It's ridiculously low historically. In fact last year it was down 1% of the price of gold. Divide an ounce of silver into an ounce of gold. 1%. Okay, if you go back and look at the bull market surge that peaked in 1980, in fact, for a period of time there, not just a spike, it was at 6.5% of the price of gold. Okay? Then in the 2011 bull market, 2010 to 11, the latter part of that bull market, silver was over 3% the price of gold. So last year it was 1%. What do you think? It's going to free. Okay, so it's popped up over two recently breaking out over a massive clear technical structure on the relative performance chart, meaning an ounce of silver divided in an ounce of gold plotted each month and you had a very clear ceiling and it broke through that. So that's yet more evidence that silver is waking up even relative to gold. And yes, we had a sharper pullback than gold just recently, but it's still outperforming gold when you go back a year, 6 months, etc. So, we favor silver over gold, and we think this is a buying opportunity. >> And I'm sorry, your 3 to500 uh dollar target, that's quite a wide range, but that's based on a percentage. >> Lots of things. Uh first off, let's look at gold, the mama. It's had two big bull markets since well it got legalized in 75 but it was already a 200 and then it dropped dropped down to near 100 by 76. Okay. From the 76 low to the 1980 high it had an 8fold gain. There was if you bought gold at the low you made eight times your money by 1980. Then it dropped and plateaued at a much higher level than it had been before. And in 2001, it made lows around $260. And it had an 8fold gain to get to its 2011 peak. Different span of time, 10 years, as opposed to about three, but same dimension move, eight-fold. Okay, we made a bare low at 1,50 in 2015. We're now only five-fold above that level. And yet, everybody says gold's overbought. Heck, it hasn't even matched the performance it provided in the prior two bull markets under far less monstrous fundamental factors in play. Uh so even if it just matched the multiple gain of those two bull markets, it' be $8,500. And by the way, we've been saying that for a year, not as a target, but just as a get back to what we've done before type thing. JP Morgan has now come out just recently and come up with the same number. Isn't that cute? Uh anyway, but if gold went to the 8,500, okay, let's just say, okay, let's say that's all it does match the prior bull markets and silver went to 3%. I mean, that's where it was in 2011. Okay. Whoa. What's that? 240 bucks, 250 bucks, something like that. Okay. I I don't have my calculator. Uh if silver went to the levels it was relative to gold in 1979 1980 it would be sixfold above that level. You know now here's another and that projects up toward the 500 level. Two other factors to look at. One is just simply monetary degradation. Look at an M2 chart. Go back to 1980 or 2011. see where the M2 was, then see where it is now. What's the gain? If silver were to match that gain, it'd be in the several hundred just to be where it was in real buying terms in 1980 or 2011. And uh there's another thing to look at, a stupid simple price chart. There's two charts you can look at. One's arithmetic, meaning dollars on the left side. And you've got that 50-year range. And the thickness of that range is like a box. Okay? It's a it's a four bucks to 50. Let's call it 5 to 50. So, it's a $45 thick range. Added to the top of the range, 50 bucks. So, when it broke out, your quote swing objective orthodox method would be 95 bucks. Look what happened when silver got up to 93 to 95 a couple weeks ago. There was a fight. There were a lot of sellers there saying, "Ah, swing objective met." Okay, boy. And they got a little bit of sell off and then blew their head off went to 121. So obviously the arithmetic scale swing objective is invalid because we went way beyond it. Okay. But if you put it on a logarithmic ratio scale, just like I was talking about with gold, if you'd put that gold on a log scale, you'd see the eight-fold moons of equal dimension on a log scale chart. If you put silver on a logarithmic scale and add it to the top, it says $500. Why? Because the low of that range was four five bucks. The high was 50. That's a t-fold dimension gain from bottom of range to top. Add 10fold to 50. Okay, enough reasons, right? Okay. Uh, and usually these changes in reality where a market says, "I did something wrong for a long time. I'm going to adjust it." You have a tantrum. You don't do it incrementally, crawling all your way up. You suddenly burst to correct for the error before you often will overdo what might be justified. So if let's say 250 or 300 is fully justified, then maybe they overshoot it. It's typical of markets that are correcting for excess. Anyway, those are some multiple reasons why we still assess that nope. Our assessment months ago, silver going into the hundreds, it's probably going to do it within a couple quarters. This correction occurred when? at the end of the second month of the surge. Surge defined by when silver broke out versus gold on a spread basis. That was the close of November. Okay, January, February, and then it has this correction earlier than we expected. We thought we might get one about midway into that six-month period, but we still think you're by summer you'll likely be at very high levels. Now, one of the reasons why I've always had a larger waiting toward gold is because it's a lot more stable and it's a lot more, you know, the market itself is much larger and it's much more mature. And, you know, to see gold move 10% in either direction is very rare. >> Uh whereas silver, I mean, we saw it rip from it was up 70% in the first few weeks of this year and then it dropped 30% in one day. >> And to me, that's kind of concerning. Um >> yeah are >> are you not concerned by that kind of volatility? >> Well yeah sure but it's from an investment grade point of view and I'm even talking investment grade like 6 months. Okay silver is the place to be by every metric we can measure against gold and it will likely outperform gold as it has. In fact if you go back a year it was 1% now it's two. That means in relative value to gold over a year. So while gold's gone up over the last year since early 25 to the present, silver's more than doubled despite the pullback than what gold has done. Yes, with more volatility here. But again, the the key issue for investors is what was your point of entry? If your point of entry was finally, oh gosh, I believe it now. I'm going to buy it at 120. Okay, well, you got bagged and maybe you should have been. uh our buy levels were last June coming up toward 35 and at the close of November in the 50s. Those were our last two major buy signal levels. So yeah, we gave back some profits but on the other hand nothing alters our assessment. We shall see. Now I want to play devil's advocate and as I mentioned u silver dropped 30% in one day and the last time we saw a move like this was in 1980 >> and in on March >> in the range in the range. Yeah. Yeah. >> On March the 27th of 1980 it dropped 63% in one day and then in the ensuing months we saw a lot of chop back and forth but >> long story short it lost 70% of its value. You don't see that happening now? >> No I don't. Um, if this were 6 months into the move and if silver had reached 4 or 500 bucks or something like that, I think you would have a sharp correction from there, but not back to 50 bucks. The old reality is gone. The question now is where is silver going to define the extreme upper end of the new reality. And I think it's going to do it very rapidly, meaning in a handful of months, not 3 years. Uh, and I think once it does, it'll probably overshoot and probably collapse from there if you got in at at 400 bucks or 500. Uh, the issue is did you get in at proper time? And I think happens to be right now is a proper time. You've got a pullback, use the opportunity. And we also we our most of our measurements are fairly long-term. When we analyze markets, we're looking for the big moves. But even when we get down to the micro stuff like daily momentum or weekly momentum which we included in our weekend report when we analyze that we can even see buy trigger levels of which like daily momentum today is already crossing a buy trigger level short-term momentum saying hey I'm out of the hole now. Okay the weekly offers a number um about six bucks above today's high if you get there this week next week that'll adjust down some. So even the short-term stuff is saying, "Hey, I'm out of the hole." Okay. So, um, at that point, I would say if you're not in silver, uh, join in. Yeah, you're buying it off the low, recent low, but you're buying it well below the recent high. So, view as an opportunity. Nothing has broken other than public sentiment. And I argue that the drop you saw then in 1980, for example, yes, that was top of the old range. silver just gone from like what five bucks to 50 and it did it had a fourfold move in the last five months of that explosion I'm talking two quarters roughly in 2010 and 11 it was a 7month explosion which doubled in a half the price of silver in seven months both of those surge events still caught in that old range were triggered by the spread breakout of silver versus gold where you could plot the relative performance chart and you could draw a line with a crayon and say if you get above that line you're breaking out over a multi-year base and when it did it had a tantrum. We did the same thing except even a bigger and clearer base silver relative to gold at the close of November. So, it's only two months and two weeks now into a likely couple quarter surge. >> And Michael, the move that you expect in gold, is is it going to be a lot more measured or do you think it will also be explosive? >> It's going to be just a heads up, we have a virtual silver conference coming up on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. There's a link below in the show notes so you can sign up. The speakers include John Chapalian, Maria Smnova from Sprat Asset Management, Michael Oliver of Momentum Structural Analysis, Mike Drienzo of the Silver Institute, Randy Smallwood of Wheaten Precious Metals, Benois Lal of Ayat Gold and Silver, Sean Kungun of Dolly Varden, John Miniotus of Abber Silver, and we have a lot more to come. Once again, our virtual silver conference on Saturday, February the 14th at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. You can sign up. There's a link below in the show notes. >> Well, relative to what it's done over the last 10 years, it will be it already has become far more volatile. I mean, we we've covered $100 days here. Day, one day, 100 bucks, sometimes 200. Okay? So, its volatility is is off the page now, too, relative to its normal behavior. And it'll stay that way, though it will lag what silver does in terms of upward dynamics. Um, and I do think that, you know, while gold has a 3,000-year tradition as money, so does silver. Okay? And even India is remonetized silver allowed for in bank transactions and all kinds of things. So, it's not like it's uh a lost idea. Most people see silver as the industrial monetary the industrial quote precious metal. It is in fact a monetary metal has been for thousands of years and uh it's being reborn because it's vastly underpriced relative to the mama monetary metal. Now I want to change uh seeing how we're talking about gold. I want to get your thoughts on Bitcoin because to me it looks like it's breaking down big time here and a lot of uh these crypto bros they like to refer to uh Bitcoin as digital gold or new gold. >> Yeah. >> I want to get your thoughts on the price action we've seen in the last couple of months because it once again it peaked out in October at call it 120,000 now we're trading >> 127 127 >> 127 now we're trading in the call it 70s. Yeah. >> Okay. We've been we had been anticipating a collapse in Bitcoin months ago and after that November or I think it was October or November high, it started to drop and at a price we had two sell triggers arguing for massive collapse. These were not minor sell triggers. One was at 107, one was at uh 102 area. Okay, 102,000. When we hit those, we dropped immediately down to the low 80,000s. spent a couple months trying to hold there, which we had we'd expected as well. A midpoint pause, we called it uh with not a buy, but just a pause, you know, up and down, futile, futile rallies. Uh and then we broke through that 82,000 what, week or so ago, and our target stated months ago was 60,000. No, excuse me. Let me define that better. Our minimum target was stated is 60,000. We were saying that when Bitcoin was well above 100. Well, the low the other day was 60,000 and $5. Okay. So, we hit our minimum target and we did it in a crash like mode. Actually, two crash type events. U any rally right now, I think up to the 75 76,000 zone is probably a sale. the rally will not hold and I don't think ultimately 60,000 will hold. Uh in Ethereum which a lot of people thought well that's different from Bitcoin. We argued nope this little crypto beast compared to Bitcoin in terms of size of the crypto market. We said Ethereum will follow Bitcoin and it not only followed it but did worse on the downside. In fact, Ethereum price levels we saw low last week were basically at the lows of the last five years. So, anybody got an Ethereum over the past decade is wiped out. Okay. Um I would not be surprised to see much much lower prices and I wouldn't even be surprised to see it become almost non-existent. Uh already sentiment has been crushed. For some reason people are surprised by it. The technical our momentum technicals told us nope, it's got crash potential. When we looked at a price chart of Bitcoin over the last couple years, it was a layered advance with a pullback and then another surge and then finally that third surge. When you looked at momentum, long-term momentum, you didn't see this upside. You saw a floor. same level hit, hit hit where price was ascending, momentum was building a floor like the bridge over the river quai. Okay. And it went through at 107 and 10 just below 102,000 back a couple months ago and that's when the crash started. So anyway, I think the the vision that it is the alternative money and a competitor to gold and silver is now been crushed. And I would not be surprised to see some financial consequences. Meaning companies that weren't 5 years ago anything to do with crypto suddenly got up to their hips in crypto one way or another and therefore they're vulnerable. meaning you could get some headlines out of companies that you don't even correlate to crypto having problems or losses that they wouldn't have otherwise had. So anyway, I think it's a bubble burst and I don't know where it's going to go. >> And so I was going to ask you that. So it's definitely going to test $60,000 again and I was if it goes through 60, you have no idea where it goes like >> No, I don't have any. Uh I really don't. There's no more targets. I think it is a busted bubble. I think it is a tulip bulb. And uh I don't know what's on the other side of it. Uh I don't know that it lives if there's more on the other side of it. >> This is this is one of the big concerns to me if if it does because it looks like there's liquidation going on within that sector. And um I think there's 150 these Bitcoin treasury companies, the biggest being Micro Strategy. They're sitting on 80 billion worth of or not 80 but 8 billion worth of debt that they used to buy >> Bitcoin. Their average price is at 78,000 and here we are trading in >> you know 70,000 give or take. >> Yeah. >> Off the low of last week at 60,000. Yeah. Yeah. Now it's the consequence is not just for cryp for cryptoreated companies but non-cryptoreated uh because of their acceptance of the notion that oh well maybe it is viable money. Well this event it's not just technical and it's not just a quote bare market in an existing asset. It could be sufficient to bust the notional bubble of what crypto is or was and to the point where it's no longer considered viable. >> I want to get your thoughts on oil now. Uh WTI and to me it looks very constructive in spite of all the news that you see on what's going on. It feels to me like the price wants to move higher. Mhm. >> I've gotten long some uh ETFs. >> What are your thoughts on oil here? >> Yeah, I bought some oil related ETFs a week or so ago, too. U crude oil has was back in the 2000 the late 2020 to the 2022 explosion in commodities, which really was not an explosion. It was a doubling plus in price of the Bloomberg Commodity Index. Back then, oil energy was one of the leading components. But even that price surge in the Bloomberg, for example, got up to 140 at a peak. Um, that was still a little more than half the price level it saw in 2008. So, it really wasn't, you know, off the page high for commodities. Well, oil had a big surge. Went up to 130. Okay. Then it backed off hard with the Bloomberg commodity index in 2000 late 22 23 and 23 to 24 to 25 like three years there it just laid in the sewer. Okay 60 70 80 bucks 60 even got down in the mid-50s. During that same time the Bloomberg commodity index which is what oil tends to move with by the way uh was either side of 100. So it dropped from 140 back under 100. Just dead as hell. You know, like I'm just not going lower, but I'm also not going up. Last October, we got a major momentumbased buy signal out of the Bloomberg at just above 106. Right now, we're trading like 118, 119. Okay, no big deal. It's been a quiet advance, but during that time, oil was weak over the last handful of months. Oil was the weak component. We broke out using long-term momentum metrics on crude oil, not price chart. Last month's close, which is above was above 63 bucks. We're above there now. No big deal. Not a lot of excitement. All the fundamental guys are saying ah going to 40, etc. They've never been more certain. And all I can say is don't be shocked after that momentbased breakout of crude last month just above 63 that it goes up about 50% meaning up into the mid 90s again which is no big deal given that we were 130 in March of 2022. Okay. So, it's not even halfway back to that high, but that's a 50% increase just in the first surge post that breakout. And I kind of think that could occur in the next quarter or so. And I don't think it needs a headline to do it. I think it's simply a factor of absolute cheapness of oil relative to its own history, relative to other assets. And is even pointed out that silver or oil is the lowest it's ever been in relation to silver. partly due to oil's weakness and silver strength. But no matter how you want to measure oil, it's off the page dirt cheap. Now, you know, there's there's an underlying reality in the pricing of all assets that is the degradation of the money unit that we use to measure them by. And if the money supply increases like 80 to 90% every decade which it does especially now uh that is in the long run ultimately reflected in assets bloating the price of the assets simply because the real buying power of the money is degrading. Well oil hasn't reflected that. If oil were reflected that it probably be back at the mid hundreds or something you know. Uh but anyway, I think oil's turned and I think that you could get some drama and I don't even think you need a headline. It's just a pricing issue. >> Interesting comments. And and I I always like to look at stocks because I think quite often stocks lead and many of them are very strong in spite of the fact that oil is so cheap. >> Oh yeah. a couple of other uh commodities I want to ask you about because they've also showing strength and the first one being lithium and just to provide a little bit of context. Uh it peaked in 2022 at $80,000 a ton. It bottomed at $9,000 a ton in 2025. Now it's trading around $20,000 a ton. >> And uh do you have any thoughts on lithium? >> No, I don't. >> Stocks have had big moves too. I examine the commodity markets, the the essential commodities, but that is I don't include that in our monthly commodity report. We include platinum and palladium, but not not lithium. My son does cover stocks that are related to metals such as rare earth ETFs, copper related uh corporate companies that are related to copper and lithium. Uh and I forgot I don't know what he just said about it. He put out a report just recently. I know it was positive. I think he got bullish some months ago and I I can't offer any specifics, but we do cover it. He covers at least the stock. There's an ETF related to lithium. So, >> and what about uranium? It's also shown some very positive action. >> We we've called it very well back when it was under 20 bucks back when was it 2017 18. He said bull market starting cuz annual momentum not price of uh uranium 308 the very illlquid futures contract by the way in Chicago broke out and said I'm in a bull trend and it moved up through 20 and ultimately went over 100 you know uh two Augusts ago we said there's a correction coming. I think it was I think it was 24 maybe maybe it was 25. Uh and sure enough it was in the mid 80s then and we thought it might collapse down to about 70 give or take and it actually got down in the 60s. But our assessment of uranium is while it is reasserted itself back into a full bull trend I don't know about the dynamics of it meaning yes up but I don't know that it's quote the place to be in terms of multiple gains. Um, I think there's better places to be. Probably oil related would be better than uranium now. Not that uranium's going down, just that it had a monster rebirth from under 20 to, you know, now we're trading what the upper 70s or 80s. So even after the recent highs, we're still at very high levels versus the lows. So I don't have a confident sense that uranium upside will be one of the more the better places to be. >> Good. insight. So, you touched on copper. Should we also have a discussion on that? What are your thoughts on copper? >> Yeah, copper, I'm not sure where it's going, but seven or eight, nine bucks wouldn't surprise me whatsoever. Uh, it's the base metal miners are acting very good because it's not just copper. Uh, so they're a good place to be. And broadly speaking, we made this point a few months ago with the Bloomberg turning up. And by the way, the commodities don't always follow gold. like between 2015 and 20 while gold doubled from a,50 to over 2,000 the bloomberg kept going down not collapsing but just kept going down while gold was doubling but then in 2020 after gold had already made its last peak at 2000 still was stuck Bloomberg double plus no correlation to gold but now it looks like Bloomberg is now latching on to the tail of gold and is going to be coincident with what's further in gold. The commodities are going to join it. And when we do our long-term trend analysis of the Bloomberg Commodity Index and most of its components tend to behave with it, by the way, some will lead it, some will lag it, but they all tend to be a pretty good little crowd. They they tend to stay with it. Um I think over the next couple years being in commodity related stocks, oil related, base metal related, agriculture related, fertilizer companies, things like that um will be a great place to be because I think one it's a very low risk. Prices have been mashed off the page in terms of the relationship to the decaying money unit, in relationship to the stock market, in relationship to gold. very depressed, risk is low, and I think the upside is good potential, but not a trade. I'm talking investment quality, something that could last several years at least. I think it's a good category to be looking at, >> right? So, your message to investors is you see that wave coming, you got to jump on that wave and just ride it. >> Yeah. Don't wait for the Bloomberg to explode. Okay. and take out for example the price high it made in 2022 at 140. Yeah, everybody will wake up then and say, "Oh, it took out the last high." Uh, our momentum and even price analysis lag to momentum. Price has usually sort of laggered to its own momentum. Uh, say thumbs up and no, it's not explosive yet. No, there's not any headlines, but the primary thing is it's dirt cheap historically, even to its own price history. It's dirt cheap in relation to other assets. And sometimes even though the Fed keeps printing, it doesn't always go where they want it to go. Uh we know this in bare markets in the stock market. They may print like crazy, but the stock bears continue and the money goes elsewhere. Uh and I think this is one of the categories where it's going to go because of the riskreward potential. >> Yeah. Yeah, and you rais a good point about money printing because I always like to throw out this stat, but just to give investors a better sense of what's happening because we all know what's going on with inflation and loss of purchasing power >> and it's measured by M2 in the US. In January of 2020, it was 154 trillion. Here we are five years later going into the six year, it's well over 22 trillion. That's an increase of 42%. And another way of looking at that is just a loss of purchasing power. Our dollars are worth less. >> Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. And every decade it's like 80%. And given what's going on with the government bond markets, Japan, here, UK, etc. You got, it's not like mortgages. You've got the key platform asset category that people have always trusted. No, it may not yield that much, but boy, it's safe. If all of a sudden the perception is no, it's no longer safe. And what are you left with? It's far bigger than the stock market. So that's why the Fed started jumping in last November, mid November, President Williams of the New York Fed, so we could start buying bonds. His reason was, oh, provide liquidity. Nice excuse. Just need to provide some liquidity for that market, not support it. But look at what happened to bonds and T-bond futures since then. And the price was 117. We dropped down on the 115 area. And if you look at the last like nine weeks, it's like comeos. Never in the history of T-bond futures prices or yields at high levels narrow. Very high levels, not backing off. Price not rallying have I seen such confined abnormal activity where yeah, it looks like they're keeping it from collapsing, but they can't get a rally going. Even when we get weakness in the stock market, it tries to rally and can't get going. So, no wonder, was it Morgan Stanley, I think, or Yeah. that said, okay, we need a a new portfolio orthodoxy. Instead of 6040, it should be 60 stocks, 40 b 20 bonds, and 20 gold. Uh, huge admission. Uh, I mean, some they're admitting something's wrong with the government bond market. Uh, that's a crisis waiting. And when that that crisis is already causing them to print print. >> So that's going. >> Yeah. >> That was Mike Wilson, the chief investment officer, Morgan Stanley. So very interesting call. So I want to ask you about something else just because we're talking about bonds. Bloomberg recently reported that it's been the first time I think since the 1990s where uh gold reserves have overtaken US treasury reserves. >> What are your thoughts on that? >> I I don't have no fundamental thought on that. No, we look at things technically and yes I I >> but it really speaks to your point about people are selling bonds. >> Yeah. >> And then they're buying gold. foreign foreign governments are and also when the public get begins to doubt it and anybody who's intelligent and looks over across the oceans at Japan and realizes that their bond market is in total jeopardy. In fact, the new prime minister, you know, who got boosted by this recent election over there as well, uh one of her phrases were going to print print. Oh, lovely. you know, well, uh, maybe that'll save your bonds or maybe it won't. Uh, but also, it's not just Japan, it's us. The only difference is we're not in that crisis mode yet. And that's probably why the Fed came in in November onward to provide quote liquidity for their piece of paper. Because if there's any doubt that ever hits that market, you talk about psychological wipeout and emotion, that's bigger than anything. Okay? You can't have that even approach the edge. And our technicals say they better keep buying because right now either side of 114 for the last couple months, three months now almost. Uh you better not drop about two to three points from here like down into the 112s on the T-bond futures price meaning yield crowd up toward the highs again because if you do you're likely to puke. We've got technical reason to think that not only could it drop but it could create a panic. Uh, and that's the kind of event that they can't afford to happen cuz then we enter the Japan club. >> Well, if that does happen, I mean, the price of gold is just going to explode. It's could reach an $8,000. >> Gold already knows this. I think gold already knows this. It's known it. That's part of why it's been going up for a decade. It knew this. You Jamie Diamond said months ago, you can't keep playing this game forever, pushing this debt problem off and off. pretty soon you're actually going to have to confront it. And the problem is it's not being confronted. Even Trump isn't. Uh you know, the debt is still Well, anyway, you get the point. We're dealing now with not just a mortgage problem or a dot bubble. We're dealing with a government bond bubble. Japan, here, UK, elsewhere, in the West. And once that gets into doubt, even the least bit of doubt, you know, that's That's a crisis in itself. >> Well, that's as always, Michael. This is uh has been an interesting discussion. I want to thank you very much for spending time with us today. And I guess your message that you really want to convey to investors is that get long gold and get long silver >> and they're minors. I would my preference right now personal investments are I favor silver over gold vastly despite the recent drop and I favor the gold and silver miners over gold as well. They have not broken out yet versus gold. They have firmed nicely over the last couple years. The miners have beat gold but they've been still stuck in a range of performance readings that they've been in for 11 years at very very low valuation levels. They're challenging the upper end of that range. if they break out, you're going to get a gusher in the miners, and I suspect we're going to see it this year. >> Well, Michael, that was a great discussion. And if someone would like to learn more about you and about your services, where can they go? >> It's olivers for momentum structural analysis.com. OliverMsa.com >> and I will make sure I have a link below in the show notes. James, Michael, once again, thank you and good luck in the markets.