Inflation Is Unstoppable: Gold & Silver Are Your Only Protection | Michael Howell Interview
Summary
Gold: The guest argues gold is a premier hedge against monetary inflation as central banks expand balance sheets, with a long-term uptrend outweighing cyclical rate-driven headwinds.
Rates & Liquidity: He sees persistent fiscal expansion and monetary financing pushing inflation, implying higher bond yields and a Fed that should hike even if it struggles to reach consensus.
AI Demand: AI-driven data centers are pressuring power grids (e.g., Microsoft-linked Three Mile Island restart) while copper demand impacts remain uncertain due to grid and equipment bottlenecks.
Nuclear Energy: He expects nuclear to be a key winner in the real asset cycle, calling uranium a fuel of the future amid growing electricity needs and policy pragmatism.
Oil Prices: With refining capacity cuts and geopolitical constraints, he expects oil to remain elevated, citing a long-term gold-to-oil ratio that could imply much higher crude prices.
Energy Security: Policy moves (e.g., US coal support) underscore reliability needs that may override transition timelines, with Europe seen as particularly vulnerable on energy and resources.
Geopolitics & Minerals: Industrial policy is steering capital into critical minerals and reshoring (e.g., rare earths), with jurisdictional risk rising across producer nations.
Portfolio Move: He would shift $100,000 from a broad global equity ETF into an agricultural ETF, expecting late-cycle leadership from food commodities in the commodity sequence.
Transcript
This video is sponsored by Terra Hutton, who make the invisible investable. My name is Mark and you're watching Resource Talks weekly news roundup for the week ending June the 7th, 2026. This week, US regulators granted a waiver to speed up the restart of the 3mile Island nuclear power plant for Microsoft data centers. Markets began pricing the possibility that the Fed's next move could be a hike. and gold bar and coin demand was forecast to overtake jewelry demand for the first time. And joining us to make sense of it all is Michael Howell, founder of Crossber Capital. His work focuses on global liquidity and how the movement of money through the financial system helps shape market cycles. He spent decades tracking the forces that sit behind asset prices from central bank policy to the plumbing of global finance. And at the end of the conversation, I'll ask him how he'd invest $100,000 in this environment. So, Michael, thanks for being here. >> Well, Mark, hi. Great pleasure to be here. >> Metal's focus says physical gold investment is set to overtake jewelry as the biggest source of gold demand this year for the first time in its data. They expects bar and demand to rise 15% led by China. Al jewelry demand falls 11% and central bank buying drops 15%. So Michael, I want to get your insights as to what this shift from luxury buying to investment buying tells you about gold and more importantly from your unique focus about where we are in the liquidity cycle as well. >> Well, I think what it says above all is that um investors are getting pretty uncertain and maybe pretty scared about the prospects of inflation. Um you know gold is a brilliant monetary inflation hedge. It basically hedges um the uh actions or the nefarious actions of central banks imprinting money and destroying the value of their currencies and that has been proved time and time again over the centuries and um we're it's happening again before our eyes. Uh the Federal Reserve has got the money printer out. Um the Europeans have got the money printer out. um the Chinese have got the money printer out and uh basically that's the that's the risk looking forward. So it feels to me that we're in an environment pretty much like the 1970s where it's um you know you're seeing obviously or people are feeling inflation pressures in the high street but actually behind that uh the rate of monetary inflation which is a slightly different and maybe higher level concept is actually growing at a much faster rate and we're beginning to see the high street or main street prices catch up and you can see that through the sort of the sequence of increasing commodity prices. I mean, if you just ask the question, which is always a good question to ask, what is my personal inflation rate? I tell you, it definitely isn't definitely isn't the 2% the central banks uh uh try and kid us about. Uh it's way way higher and you need protection. Gold is a great protection. >> Another story in precious metals this week came out of India where they tightened silver import rules requiring prior approval for some forms of the metal. And that comes just weeks after the country doubled import tariffs on gold and silver to ease pressure on the rupee. So I suppose my question is if investors and and households around the world are looking towards precious metals like you say for protection against the nefarious actions of the governments with the printing press. Do you think that then that leads to a reaction in the sense of fairly draconian methods in this case of import taxes, outright restrictions and and maybe even bans on buying precious metals without questions anything they can. U the simple reason is that uh they need to get themselves funded. Um the biggest challenge that central banks and finance ministries have is basically selling their debt. Uh they're going to go to any lengths they can to make sure they sell it. uh you know just look what happened in in America in 1933 34 uh they basically confiscated gold um you know it's probably difficult to do that exercise again but um I mean that was clearly robbery from the private sector and as soon as the government stole the gold they revalued it higher um so they got a windfall got a double windfall if you like uh in terms of that uh that exercise but you see what the Indians are doing is well I'm say more or less the same thing it goes down the same track. I mean, they're just trying to effectively attempt at least uh to demonetize gold, but you can't demonetize gold. You know, governments have tried many, many times to do that, but um it never happens. You can't demonetize gold in the private sector because people realize its true worth. >> Um I want to turn to the topic of rates, which is uh more in your your wheelhouse than Indian import taxes. um particularly in terms of how it could affect gold though because we've got a piece from Reuters this week that said um markets are starting to price in the possibility that the Fed's next move is a hike maybe by year end. And uh and the oped made the case that inflation still above target. Um AI spending is booming, energy prices have been pushed around by the Iran war and uh US financial conditions are the loosest that they've been in in years. So if rates do go up and you know in in that sense does gold is gold able to keep pulling in investment demand as a safe haven asset because then you got treasuries starting to look more and more attractive and serving the same function in that sense. >> Well I think there there's a number of ways to answer that Mark. I think the first thing to say is you've got to you got to think about trends as well as cycles. And what we're looking at is a trend towards much much greater uh fiscal expansion. Um not just in the US, not just in the UK, but globally. And debt GDP ratios are rising. Um and there's no way that they can be pulled back under sort of current um uh current political thinking because basically governments would have to dismantle welfare states and rene uh on many promises for social security or welfare payments. And that's not an easy thing to do. And I can't even think of any political party that even suggesting doing that. So, u what we're looking at is a trend increase in debt GDP. Now, what we know is that um it's very difficult to sell debt without pushing interest rates up higher. So, what central banks are going to have to do and what they've done many many times in recent years is to start funding that at the very short end effectively by printing money. Now whether they actually go through the exercise of using the printing press deliberately itself or more subtly to issue bills and get the banks to buy those bills, it comes to very much the same thing. And that particular process is one where they can actually uh you know they can cut back on uh or they can reduce their interest bill because they're effectively in control of the short end of the market. And that's really what we've seen. I mean just look at um you know what happened during COVID uh as one great example. um you know what you saw was any additional expenditure uh or any emergency spending was basically printed or it was it was QED if you like uh that was uh that was when that moniker really came in really came alive uh QE was active for a long time it took a long time for them to turn it off in the US they've just restarted QE as of December so there's certainly u you know a desire or to do that u whenever push comes to shove so you know they're they're printing money and printing money and expanding the deficit, expanding government debt is all about what happens as we label monetary inflation. So you've got monetary inflation going on um over the period and let's take the US as an example because I'm pretty familiar with that. Uh if you look at the period since uh year 2000, I think I'm correct in saying that US debt has increased in absolute size by about 10 times or that sort of magnitude. Uh gold has gone up by about 12 13 times in value. uh the S&P has gone up by about five times, five to six times. So you can see there that gold is easily uh the best hedge against fiscal profleacy and we've got a trend towards fiscal profleacy. So that's why you need to have gold in a portfolio particularly looking forward. Uh but it was certainly made a lot of sense in the last 20 years. It will make even more sense in the next 20 years. As regards the cycle, that's a very different issue. And as regards the cycle, interest rates can matter, but they're cyclical. So if interest rates do rise significantly and we're talking about rises not just at the short end but potentially at the long end. Uh the long end the government is not really in control of. Uh that's the private sector. The private sector will start to price in higher interest rates if it fears inflation and that's what we're beginning to see as well now. But that particular process will raise the attractions of treasuries uh or guilds. There's no question about that. Uh it will clearly dent some of the uh you know luster of uh of of gold u without question. Will it destroy the trend? Very unlikely. It will slow the trend, but it won't uh it won't destroy it. And um you know, at some stage interest rates will have to come down because economies need to grow. So you know the fact is it's the trend that's more important. But you've got to pay some attention to cycles. >> I do want to know more about that. But people listening should also know more about Terra Hutton who made the invisible investable. Terra Hutton is built for the people who are tired of going through boring PowerPoint decks and geological jargon when they're analyzing mining companies. It's a digital platform where the data, the story, and the context sit together so mining investors can understand the why without needing a geology degree or a week off work. And if you're on the company side, it's a way to present your project like a serious operator with everything investors keep asking for in one place. And do you agree with that oped that I just cited that it's most likely that from here the Fed are going to be raising rates? >> Well, I think the uh I mean the answer is that they certainly should be. I mean the US economy is on a roll. Uh there's strong growth evident in the US. uh that's coming because of capex and because of the federal deficit. The federal deficit itself is what 6 to 7% of GDP. Uh capex is enormous. The AI spend and what we know is that that AI spend or any capex spending is inflationary. Um I mean we can debate and dance around the head of a pin to say whether or not AI ultimately is deflationary. It may be. I mean I've got no particular strong view on that but it's certainly inflationary in the short term. And I suppose the one thing we do know in specific products uh it tends to be very deflationary uh for that particular te tech episode. I mean just look a great example and probably this is appropriate in the light of um these big IPOs that are coming in the US in the next well next few weeks uh starting next week uh with SpaceX is that um there was a similar episode back in I think it was 1999 when Global Crossing was a mega IPO deal. Global Crossing was a f a c fiber a fi fiber optic company uh laying transatlantic cables they had fat margins they came with a huge offering um they I mean at the time 1998 we're talking you know 25 years plus ago uh the size of that reached about $55 billion um so at the time it was it was big and obviously not the trillions of dollars we're talking about now but you know nominal values have gone up since uh it was big but within 5 years global crossing had filed for chapter 11 because the price of fiber optic had collapsed by 90%. Now uh never say never and let's put AI in that same in that same bucket. Could it do the same thing? So I think that what you're looking at is a lot of inflationary pressures but um uh AI is fueling that but the AI boom is probably fragile in itself but that may take some years to actually unwind but notwithstanding there's an inflation backdrop. the Fed has to raise interest rates or put it another way, the Fed should be raising interest rates. Will the Fed do that? I think practically it's difficult because you need a majority in the FOMC. They probably got out of 12 voting members, they probably got five uh who could vote for a uh for a rate hike. Uh could it could or maybe lean that way uh but seven probably don't. And actually getting the extra two votes uh may be a tricky thing in the next few months. Um so you know the odds are that rates stay where they are but they should be going up and probably if you take a longerterm perspective let's take 12 months they almost certainly will be going up uh because of this inflation backdrop. Um and you just got to you know put it in context. I mean nominal GDP in the US is probably growing something like 6 to 7% at least at an annual rate. Um how does that square with bond yields that are under 5%. It doesn't and there's an anomaly. Uh yields have got to rise. Um and um that means rates ultimately have to go up. Um the Federal Reserve follows the bond market. It doesn't lead it. Um and bond markets know best. They're pointing the way already. >> Turning to AI, which you mentioned, there's a headline about Hitachi Energy um saying that Texas power demand grew 9% in recent months, which was nearly five times the US average. and they're saying that that was driven in part by data centers. Um but then on the other hand uh also related to the resource demands from this AI technology, we've got a Reuters commentary piece that warned that um AI won't automatically mean a boom in copper demand, which is something that lots of uh copper bulls have been expecting because they say that grid delays, power shortages, transformer bottlenecks, and changes in data center design could all affect how much copper's used. Um, so what I wanted to ask you is when investors say that AI is bullish for commodities, how do they work out which resources will actually see demand rise and uh and which ones might end up disappointing? [clears throat] >> Well, I think I mean my answer was have to ask them that. I think that um those that make the claims um I'm not making those claims. I just what I'm saying in general is that uh what you have in uh in inflation when you look at main street inflation you have two moving parts. One of those moving parts is monetary inflation the destruction in the value of paper money u by overprinting or over issuance of both debt and uh government debt and uh uh and currency. And you've got another element which is the underlying costs um that go into prices. Uh things like oil prices, things like technology, things like productivity, things like taxes, those elements. Now, I'm absolutely uh 100% assured um that monetary inflation is going to propel main street prices higher because we know and we can hear the wear of the printing presses. Um, as regards the cost background, I'm not entirely sure, but I would suggest that um, the pace of demand that you're getting at the moment is already lifting commodity prices up and commodity prices are a pretty decent indicator of the sort of cost rising cost background. Will you get an offsetting productivity miracle through uh, from AI? I I just simply don't know. I don't think anyone knows. Um, we may um, but I don't think it's going to be enough to offset some of these other factors. Um so generally speaking if you compare the inflation outlook today looking forward to the last 10 years the last 10 years or 20 years maybe sending backwards had the benefit of cheap Chinese goods which were being dumped on the west. That's not happening anymore. What we got to rely on is the sort of somewhat um nebulous idea of AI productivity gains and I just don't know how to evaluate those. So my best guess would be that most of the thrust in inflation is actually coming from a devaluation of paper currency. >> And we're also seeing different policy responses from countries that want their piece of this AI and possibly commodities boom. So this week we saw in Argentina, Malay was picturing the country as a lightly regulated home for AI companies while Mosamb beek on the heavyhanded sort of end of of that spectrum. Uh they've just passed a mining law requiring 15% state ownership in all mining projects and more local processing of minerals. Um and Mosamb beek's a major graphite producer. So that's relevant for for batteries and energy storage. Um so does that sort of show that as liquidity moves out of financial markets and into into Main Street or or the real economy um that individual countries can possibly shape how much of that capital actually lands on their shores and and for investors do you think that jurisdiction is going to become as important as the commodity itself? >> Yes. Well absolutely. I mean makes makes perfect sense. Uh you know whereas I' I sort of labeled before in a uh what we describe as a capital war. Um it may not be a kinetic war. It may ultimately become a kinetic war. Um you know that would obviously be an unfortunate um step. But certainly in the short term uh or in in the you know foreseeable future we're in a capital war and capitals are essentially struggling for dominance. Uh they want to get access to resources. um they want to make sure their supply chains are there and one of the things that is pretty clear from what the US is doing specifically but also what Europe is struggling to do in its wake is trying to make sure that manufacturing industry uh in these jurisdictions is capable of actually delivering a war economy if necessary um and therefore you need access to commodities uh etc. Now what African countries and other commodity producers are seemingly doing is saying well okay we want to make sure that the profits out of this um uh out of this production uh stay uh stay on shore in the domestic economy. It makes perfect sense. Uh that's what they ought to be doing. Um and I think you're going to see more and more evidence of that. Um but you know whatever Malay is doing in Argentina and whatever Mosmbique is doing I'm sure is going to be copied in many other countries. And and carrying on with this topic of critical minerals for technology and and uh the technology of war as well. Um USA Rare Earth said this week that it has finalized agreements giving access to $1.6 billion in chips act funding and that is uh part of Washington's sort of continuing efforts to try and build a domestic rare earth supply and not be so reliant on China. So is that do you think how this next commodity cycle maybe gets built with governments deciding which resources matter and then sort of dragging private capital behind them. Well, I think that I mean we're seeing that already. I think I mean the US has taken the lead for sure, but China is also doing uh a similar exercise and uh you know, one's got to hope that the Europeans in general or Europe in general gets his act together. But you know, the whole the Europe is is a lot less flexible than these other countries that it tends to look backwards, not forwards, and it tends to be tied up with bureaucracy. Uh I think if you start to evaluate what the new world looks like, you can see what a dire situation Europe and Britain really are in. Uh there's no leadership. There's no vision. Uh there's no access to resources. I mean, the only thing they can do at best is to try and tax their um you know, their their electorates uh as best they can or as much as they can. Uh there's there's no there's no growth going on there at all. I mean, these economies slipping into the Mer. Um so I think that you know the fact is that the world the future of the world is really uh in play between China and the US or let's say broadly Asia and the US Europe is is losing out hugely. I mean, I draw the caveat that Eastern Europe seems to be a lot cleverer than Western Europe, but you know, that may be that may be a small concession. >> And US energy regulators granted a waiver this week to speed up the connection of the 3M island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, which is being restarted to serve Microsoft data centers. Um, so we've we've already spoken about AI demand showing up in in power grids and and in various resources. Um, but this is sort of a direct example of AI pulling old energy infrastructure back into use. Um, so I wanted to ask, do you think given that politicians remain reluctant to lean too heavily on fossil fuels, do you think that nuclear nuclear inevitably becomes one of the main winners of this real asset cycle? >> Well, it must do. I mean, I'm sure that's the uh, you know, path of least resistance. I mean, it's a clean energy technology. Uh I mean apart from sort of maybe one episode being three mile island um and there have been very very few nuclear accidents that have occurred uh certainly in my memory uh and my memory goes back quite a long time. So you know I think the uh the fact is that nuclear is a pretty safe option particularly these days and I think uranium uh therefore consequently has got to be you know a fuel of the future without any question. Um, and I think, you know, hopefully, uh, one one extends it to the to the UK, they they they wake up. I mean, the French have got a pretty decent nuclear program. Uh, they've had that for for decades. Uh, Germany's got rid of its nuclear reactors, uh, through some, you know, foolish decision. Uh, you know, playing to the Greens or whatever it was. uh Britain I mean you've got Britain's got the highest energy cost or among the highest energy costs in the world which seems to me a completely foolish thing to do in a world where technology and particularly electricity are vital ingredients for future growth but you know trying telling that to the politicians uh they they're they're on a different planet >> and but obviously not all politicians are giving fossil fuels to cold shoulder because we've got another story about Trump this week using emergency powers to direct hundreds of millions of dollars towards US coal including $425 million for upgrades to 13 coal fired power plants and 75 million for a coal export terminal in California. Um and they're framing this as a national security issue because again uh AI data centers need reliable electricity. Um, so do you think that energy security could end up trumping energy transition narratives in more countries including in Europe and the UK as power demand from AI keeps rising? >> Well, I think inevitably that must be true, Mark. I mean, the fact is that reality will uh ultimately, you know, shake these politicians or these bureaucrats out of their slumber at some stage. But you need you need energy security, you need mineral security. Um, and u that's simply what Europe doesn't have. I mean, where does Europe get its energy from? I mean, that's a that's a big question that no one's really seeming to answer. Uh, the US is sitting pretty because it's got huge resources, particularly of energy. It's a net energy exporter. Um, you know, China's obviously a mineral exporter. It does need energy. Um, but, you know, Europe is lacking both. And, um, that's that's the real problem. Uh, you know, I'm not too sure how Europe sits in this world. uh particularly if you've got you know particularly with the current leadership uh across the uh across the region which as I say seem to have no vision uh at all >> and and staying with energy Saudi Aramco the world's biggest oil company warned this week that around 3 million barrels a day of refining capacity closed between 2020 and 2023 adding to you know concerns about the supply bottlenecks that we're seeing. Um, and at the same time, Reuters reported that Iranian crude and condensate exports fell below 300,000 barrels a day in May, which is their lowest level in at least 6 years. Um, because obviously there's there's a naval blockade going on. Um but my question would be if Hormuse reopens properly, do you think oil will you know precipitously collapse in price and and sort of return into the backdrop and no longer be an issue? Or do you think that these problems with refining capacity, you know, that have gone back many years from today um and sort of ongoing shipping risks are going to cause the oil price to remain high going forwards? >> Yeah, it's going to remain high. It's going to go higher. Oil looks very cheap um both u you know in real terms looking at consumer prices and also looking uh in terms of relative value against other commodities. And I think you know one of the uh interesting exercises is to think in terms of the gold to oil ratio which is um a ratio that many market participants look at. I mean I know it's dismissed by economists but um you know let them do that. Um the ratio over the long term has been about 20 times. Um that seems some sort of equilibrium because it always seems to mean revert back to that level. uh and that's data which is you know 50 60 years of um uh of evidence. Now if you think about what's driving gold, gold is being driven by monetization and debasement. U it's not just debasement in the west, it's debasement in the east as well because China is up to the same tricks. It needs to devalue its currency to get out of debt and it's got an awful lot of uh old debt it needs to get rid of. So gold is going to remain elevated. uh I mean as we speak I know it's soft but that may be other reasons but we're looking at the trend and that trend is likely to go up now even if you assume that it doesn't and you assume that gold maintains at around the $4,000 uh an ounce level okay and as I said that stress that is conservative but hold it at 4,000 divide that by 20 and what's the resulting oil price implication $200 a barrel so you know if you triangulate that one of those three is assumptions must be wrong. Either the gold price is wrong at 4,000. I would venture that's not true. Either the gold oil ratio at 20 is wrong, but then we've had 60 years of experience, so that seems to be pretty rock solid. Uh or the idea of $200 a barrel of oil is wrong. Um so, you know, the fact is you've got to think of each one of those legs of a stool and think which one is consistent or inconsistent. So uh many you know I've given that um suggestion or made that statement many times in recent weeks and the kickback I get from almost everyone is that I'm insane because gold is sorry oil is never going to reach $200 a barrel. I think it will. H just to play devil's advocate there, what's the justification for assuming that there should be any sort of relationship between the price of gold and oil? Because they're two very different commodities with their own supply and demand backdrop. Isn't it like saying, you know, the ratio of the shoe price compared to Coca-Cola price? I mean, why why should there be a fixed relationship between their prices over decades? Well, it shouldn't necessarily be fixed, but it should be predictable, should it not? It should reflect underlying productivity uh in those two industries. Um and is a technical relationship uh which comes from production. And if you look at um you know the resources that go into mining gold, the resources that go to uh refining and u extracting oil, they're not hugely dissimilar. And so one would assume that there's a technical relationship between the two. And as I said, that seems over the very long term to be about 20 times. Productivity uh and technological advances in both industries would be pretty much pretty similar. But you know, let's not get hung up on oil or gold. You think of oil to copper or think of some other relationship. But all I'm saying is there's a technical relationship uh which runs alongside a monetary relationship which is the devaluation of the currency of denomination. So there's a two moving parts to a price. H as we sort of wrap up this episode, I'd like to close by playing a couple of games that we repeat at the end of each of these uh news shows. And the first one is called date, marry, or run. So your choices are between um coal, uranium, and gold. So which one would you date for a shortterm trade? Which one would you marry for the long term? And which one would you run from? We got pole, uranium, and gold. >> Well, do I have to ch I have to uh It's got to be all three. So, I can't marry two. >> You can't. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to date one, marry one, and run. >> Well, I think the I mean, the answer would be uh probably uh marry would be uh would be gold because I think that's the the long-term uh that trend is is solid long term. I think in terms of uh of a shorter term trend uh because I think it's out of fashion um and probably needs to come through. I mean maybe that's a medium-term call would be uranium and run I wouldn't really run from coal but I mean I think that um uh maybe there's you know given how much it's it's rallied recently maybe um you know it's the one to avoid in the short term but I mean I I don't know. I mean actually I'd like to marry all three but I'm not allowed to. is some sort of polygamist then in that case trying to marry everyone. Yeah, >> that's right. That that's the ideal, isn't it? >> Yeah. All right. Uh and then the final game to close then the show is our milliondoll model portfolio. So, every week we ask our guest on the news show to make just one change, uh, which is to sell $100,000 of something that we already own and then to put that money into the asset that they think has the best long-term setup from here. And it could be a stock or an ETF or an ETC or or anything um, but nothing too complex that we can't track in this uh, model portfolio. So, let me share my screen with you a moment. Ju ju just I'll just let you have a moment to look at that and read it out study study what what we've got while I just remind the viewers about what our previous guests have done. >> So, um we had professor Steve Hanky who sold bonds and he bought gold. We had Simon Hunt who uh sold global equity and he bought gold. And we have Peter Schiff who sold bonds and he bought his own Europac mutual gold fund. So a lot of uh people very bullish on gold, but so far it hasn't been serving us too well. We're actually 7% down on our gold position, which now makes up around 20% of our portfolio. And on Peter Shift's Europac mutual fund, we're down 6% since he bought that. Uh we also had David Morgan on who sold bonds and he bought a silver miners ETF and he also bought a Freeport and uh Freeport is actually up 4.4% since he bought that and we had uh Michael Oliver on as well who also bought the silver miners ETF and that is down 3% makes up 15% of our portfolio. Uh we've also got in our portfolio our best position is the the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF which makes up around 40% and is up almost 10%. Uh we're flat on bonds which make up around 5% now because everyone's been very uh adamant that we should sell them. And Energy Transfer which was Doomberg's individual stock pick, it makes up 10% of our portfolio and it's down 2% since he bought that uh two weeks ago. So, Michael, having a look at our portfolio then. What would you sell $100,000 of? And uh what would you like to buy with $100,000? Okay. Um well, I would say let's um let's be controversial and um let's uh let's sell $100,000 of gold and put it into an agricultural ETF. >> Okay. any any agricultural ETF in particular or >> well um I know off the top of my head not but I mean there's I'm sure there's many out there that you can you can pick on um you know or or just you know it's difficult to buy a commodity like soya bean but something like that you that's what you want you want agricultural product >> okay why would why would you want to sell gold then and own an agricultural product what would be the sort of element for that with >> I mean presuming this is a short-term trade you're talking about or If it's if it's a if it's a if it's not a short-term trade, I'd take 100,000 out of the Vanguard stock ETF. >> Um, well, it's it's long-term in the sense that you're not going to be able to come back and sell it at the you're not going to be able to be marketing it. >> Quit quit the gold then. Keep the gold where it is and basically um um take it out of the vanguard. >> Right. Okay. So you want to sell our best performing asset and move it into an agricultural ETF. So why are you bullish on agricultural products then? >> Well, because I think that if you look at the sequence of moves in commodity markets, it normally begins with gold. Uh it transitions through uh base metals to energy and then finally into food commodities and I think we're seeing that sequence unfolding. >> And does that have anything to do with the disruptions in uh sulfur and ura and hormos or is it totally totally I mean that that that obviously helps but it was it's a different it's a structural view. >> It's not dependent on that at all. >> Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much, Michael. So, we'll uh make that trade and uh we'll continue tracking this portfolio each week. Um thanks again for coming on the show. Is there any sort of closing thoughts you'd like to leave our listeners with or we'll let them know where they can find you and keep up to date with you and your work? >> Well, I'd maybe say say two things. I mean one is that if they want to keep up with what we do uh the best way of looking at that is to look at the capital wars substack uh we write on that um you know three four times a week uh with different commentaries and providing data uh and that data and narrative is focused around liquidity and that's the second idea. You've got to understand what's happening to money flows and watch where money is moving and um that's been the basis of our asset allocation advice for a long time now. Um so watch the money. Michael, thanks again for coming on the show and we hope to have you back again soon. >> Thanks so much. Thank you.
Inflation Is Unstoppable: Gold & Silver Are Your Only Protection | Michael Howell Interview
Summary
Transcript
This video is sponsored by Terra Hutton, who make the invisible investable. My name is Mark and you're watching Resource Talks weekly news roundup for the week ending June the 7th, 2026. This week, US regulators granted a waiver to speed up the restart of the 3mile Island nuclear power plant for Microsoft data centers. Markets began pricing the possibility that the Fed's next move could be a hike. and gold bar and coin demand was forecast to overtake jewelry demand for the first time. And joining us to make sense of it all is Michael Howell, founder of Crossber Capital. His work focuses on global liquidity and how the movement of money through the financial system helps shape market cycles. He spent decades tracking the forces that sit behind asset prices from central bank policy to the plumbing of global finance. And at the end of the conversation, I'll ask him how he'd invest $100,000 in this environment. So, Michael, thanks for being here. >> Well, Mark, hi. Great pleasure to be here. >> Metal's focus says physical gold investment is set to overtake jewelry as the biggest source of gold demand this year for the first time in its data. They expects bar and demand to rise 15% led by China. Al jewelry demand falls 11% and central bank buying drops 15%. So Michael, I want to get your insights as to what this shift from luxury buying to investment buying tells you about gold and more importantly from your unique focus about where we are in the liquidity cycle as well. >> Well, I think what it says above all is that um investors are getting pretty uncertain and maybe pretty scared about the prospects of inflation. Um you know gold is a brilliant monetary inflation hedge. It basically hedges um the uh actions or the nefarious actions of central banks imprinting money and destroying the value of their currencies and that has been proved time and time again over the centuries and um we're it's happening again before our eyes. Uh the Federal Reserve has got the money printer out. Um the Europeans have got the money printer out. um the Chinese have got the money printer out and uh basically that's the that's the risk looking forward. So it feels to me that we're in an environment pretty much like the 1970s where it's um you know you're seeing obviously or people are feeling inflation pressures in the high street but actually behind that uh the rate of monetary inflation which is a slightly different and maybe higher level concept is actually growing at a much faster rate and we're beginning to see the high street or main street prices catch up and you can see that through the sort of the sequence of increasing commodity prices. I mean, if you just ask the question, which is always a good question to ask, what is my personal inflation rate? I tell you, it definitely isn't definitely isn't the 2% the central banks uh uh try and kid us about. Uh it's way way higher and you need protection. Gold is a great protection. >> Another story in precious metals this week came out of India where they tightened silver import rules requiring prior approval for some forms of the metal. And that comes just weeks after the country doubled import tariffs on gold and silver to ease pressure on the rupee. So I suppose my question is if investors and and households around the world are looking towards precious metals like you say for protection against the nefarious actions of the governments with the printing press. Do you think that then that leads to a reaction in the sense of fairly draconian methods in this case of import taxes, outright restrictions and and maybe even bans on buying precious metals without questions anything they can. U the simple reason is that uh they need to get themselves funded. Um the biggest challenge that central banks and finance ministries have is basically selling their debt. Uh they're going to go to any lengths they can to make sure they sell it. uh you know just look what happened in in America in 1933 34 uh they basically confiscated gold um you know it's probably difficult to do that exercise again but um I mean that was clearly robbery from the private sector and as soon as the government stole the gold they revalued it higher um so they got a windfall got a double windfall if you like uh in terms of that uh that exercise but you see what the Indians are doing is well I'm say more or less the same thing it goes down the same track. I mean, they're just trying to effectively attempt at least uh to demonetize gold, but you can't demonetize gold. You know, governments have tried many, many times to do that, but um it never happens. You can't demonetize gold in the private sector because people realize its true worth. >> Um I want to turn to the topic of rates, which is uh more in your your wheelhouse than Indian import taxes. um particularly in terms of how it could affect gold though because we've got a piece from Reuters this week that said um markets are starting to price in the possibility that the Fed's next move is a hike maybe by year end. And uh and the oped made the case that inflation still above target. Um AI spending is booming, energy prices have been pushed around by the Iran war and uh US financial conditions are the loosest that they've been in in years. So if rates do go up and you know in in that sense does gold is gold able to keep pulling in investment demand as a safe haven asset because then you got treasuries starting to look more and more attractive and serving the same function in that sense. >> Well I think there there's a number of ways to answer that Mark. I think the first thing to say is you've got to you got to think about trends as well as cycles. And what we're looking at is a trend towards much much greater uh fiscal expansion. Um not just in the US, not just in the UK, but globally. And debt GDP ratios are rising. Um and there's no way that they can be pulled back under sort of current um uh current political thinking because basically governments would have to dismantle welfare states and rene uh on many promises for social security or welfare payments. And that's not an easy thing to do. And I can't even think of any political party that even suggesting doing that. So, u what we're looking at is a trend increase in debt GDP. Now, what we know is that um it's very difficult to sell debt without pushing interest rates up higher. So, what central banks are going to have to do and what they've done many many times in recent years is to start funding that at the very short end effectively by printing money. Now whether they actually go through the exercise of using the printing press deliberately itself or more subtly to issue bills and get the banks to buy those bills, it comes to very much the same thing. And that particular process is one where they can actually uh you know they can cut back on uh or they can reduce their interest bill because they're effectively in control of the short end of the market. And that's really what we've seen. I mean just look at um you know what happened during COVID uh as one great example. um you know what you saw was any additional expenditure uh or any emergency spending was basically printed or it was it was QED if you like uh that was uh that was when that moniker really came in really came alive uh QE was active for a long time it took a long time for them to turn it off in the US they've just restarted QE as of December so there's certainly u you know a desire or to do that u whenever push comes to shove so you know they're they're printing money and printing money and expanding the deficit, expanding government debt is all about what happens as we label monetary inflation. So you've got monetary inflation going on um over the period and let's take the US as an example because I'm pretty familiar with that. Uh if you look at the period since uh year 2000, I think I'm correct in saying that US debt has increased in absolute size by about 10 times or that sort of magnitude. Uh gold has gone up by about 12 13 times in value. uh the S&P has gone up by about five times, five to six times. So you can see there that gold is easily uh the best hedge against fiscal profleacy and we've got a trend towards fiscal profleacy. So that's why you need to have gold in a portfolio particularly looking forward. Uh but it was certainly made a lot of sense in the last 20 years. It will make even more sense in the next 20 years. As regards the cycle, that's a very different issue. And as regards the cycle, interest rates can matter, but they're cyclical. So if interest rates do rise significantly and we're talking about rises not just at the short end but potentially at the long end. Uh the long end the government is not really in control of. Uh that's the private sector. The private sector will start to price in higher interest rates if it fears inflation and that's what we're beginning to see as well now. But that particular process will raise the attractions of treasuries uh or guilds. There's no question about that. Uh it will clearly dent some of the uh you know luster of uh of of gold u without question. Will it destroy the trend? Very unlikely. It will slow the trend, but it won't uh it won't destroy it. And um you know, at some stage interest rates will have to come down because economies need to grow. So you know the fact is it's the trend that's more important. But you've got to pay some attention to cycles. >> I do want to know more about that. But people listening should also know more about Terra Hutton who made the invisible investable. Terra Hutton is built for the people who are tired of going through boring PowerPoint decks and geological jargon when they're analyzing mining companies. It's a digital platform where the data, the story, and the context sit together so mining investors can understand the why without needing a geology degree or a week off work. And if you're on the company side, it's a way to present your project like a serious operator with everything investors keep asking for in one place. And do you agree with that oped that I just cited that it's most likely that from here the Fed are going to be raising rates? >> Well, I think the uh I mean the answer is that they certainly should be. I mean the US economy is on a roll. Uh there's strong growth evident in the US. uh that's coming because of capex and because of the federal deficit. The federal deficit itself is what 6 to 7% of GDP. Uh capex is enormous. The AI spend and what we know is that that AI spend or any capex spending is inflationary. Um I mean we can debate and dance around the head of a pin to say whether or not AI ultimately is deflationary. It may be. I mean I've got no particular strong view on that but it's certainly inflationary in the short term. And I suppose the one thing we do know in specific products uh it tends to be very deflationary uh for that particular te tech episode. I mean just look a great example and probably this is appropriate in the light of um these big IPOs that are coming in the US in the next well next few weeks uh starting next week uh with SpaceX is that um there was a similar episode back in I think it was 1999 when Global Crossing was a mega IPO deal. Global Crossing was a f a c fiber a fi fiber optic company uh laying transatlantic cables they had fat margins they came with a huge offering um they I mean at the time 1998 we're talking you know 25 years plus ago uh the size of that reached about $55 billion um so at the time it was it was big and obviously not the trillions of dollars we're talking about now but you know nominal values have gone up since uh it was big but within 5 years global crossing had filed for chapter 11 because the price of fiber optic had collapsed by 90%. Now uh never say never and let's put AI in that same in that same bucket. Could it do the same thing? So I think that what you're looking at is a lot of inflationary pressures but um uh AI is fueling that but the AI boom is probably fragile in itself but that may take some years to actually unwind but notwithstanding there's an inflation backdrop. the Fed has to raise interest rates or put it another way, the Fed should be raising interest rates. Will the Fed do that? I think practically it's difficult because you need a majority in the FOMC. They probably got out of 12 voting members, they probably got five uh who could vote for a uh for a rate hike. Uh could it could or maybe lean that way uh but seven probably don't. And actually getting the extra two votes uh may be a tricky thing in the next few months. Um so you know the odds are that rates stay where they are but they should be going up and probably if you take a longerterm perspective let's take 12 months they almost certainly will be going up uh because of this inflation backdrop. Um and you just got to you know put it in context. I mean nominal GDP in the US is probably growing something like 6 to 7% at least at an annual rate. Um how does that square with bond yields that are under 5%. It doesn't and there's an anomaly. Uh yields have got to rise. Um and um that means rates ultimately have to go up. Um the Federal Reserve follows the bond market. It doesn't lead it. Um and bond markets know best. They're pointing the way already. >> Turning to AI, which you mentioned, there's a headline about Hitachi Energy um saying that Texas power demand grew 9% in recent months, which was nearly five times the US average. and they're saying that that was driven in part by data centers. Um but then on the other hand uh also related to the resource demands from this AI technology, we've got a Reuters commentary piece that warned that um AI won't automatically mean a boom in copper demand, which is something that lots of uh copper bulls have been expecting because they say that grid delays, power shortages, transformer bottlenecks, and changes in data center design could all affect how much copper's used. Um, so what I wanted to ask you is when investors say that AI is bullish for commodities, how do they work out which resources will actually see demand rise and uh and which ones might end up disappointing? [clears throat] >> Well, I think I mean my answer was have to ask them that. I think that um those that make the claims um I'm not making those claims. I just what I'm saying in general is that uh what you have in uh in inflation when you look at main street inflation you have two moving parts. One of those moving parts is monetary inflation the destruction in the value of paper money u by overprinting or over issuance of both debt and uh government debt and uh uh and currency. And you've got another element which is the underlying costs um that go into prices. Uh things like oil prices, things like technology, things like productivity, things like taxes, those elements. Now, I'm absolutely uh 100% assured um that monetary inflation is going to propel main street prices higher because we know and we can hear the wear of the printing presses. Um, as regards the cost background, I'm not entirely sure, but I would suggest that um, the pace of demand that you're getting at the moment is already lifting commodity prices up and commodity prices are a pretty decent indicator of the sort of cost rising cost background. Will you get an offsetting productivity miracle through uh, from AI? I I just simply don't know. I don't think anyone knows. Um, we may um, but I don't think it's going to be enough to offset some of these other factors. Um so generally speaking if you compare the inflation outlook today looking forward to the last 10 years the last 10 years or 20 years maybe sending backwards had the benefit of cheap Chinese goods which were being dumped on the west. That's not happening anymore. What we got to rely on is the sort of somewhat um nebulous idea of AI productivity gains and I just don't know how to evaluate those. So my best guess would be that most of the thrust in inflation is actually coming from a devaluation of paper currency. >> And we're also seeing different policy responses from countries that want their piece of this AI and possibly commodities boom. So this week we saw in Argentina, Malay was picturing the country as a lightly regulated home for AI companies while Mosamb beek on the heavyhanded sort of end of of that spectrum. Uh they've just passed a mining law requiring 15% state ownership in all mining projects and more local processing of minerals. Um and Mosamb beek's a major graphite producer. So that's relevant for for batteries and energy storage. Um so does that sort of show that as liquidity moves out of financial markets and into into Main Street or or the real economy um that individual countries can possibly shape how much of that capital actually lands on their shores and and for investors do you think that jurisdiction is going to become as important as the commodity itself? >> Yes. Well absolutely. I mean makes makes perfect sense. Uh you know whereas I' I sort of labeled before in a uh what we describe as a capital war. Um it may not be a kinetic war. It may ultimately become a kinetic war. Um you know that would obviously be an unfortunate um step. But certainly in the short term uh or in in the you know foreseeable future we're in a capital war and capitals are essentially struggling for dominance. Uh they want to get access to resources. um they want to make sure their supply chains are there and one of the things that is pretty clear from what the US is doing specifically but also what Europe is struggling to do in its wake is trying to make sure that manufacturing industry uh in these jurisdictions is capable of actually delivering a war economy if necessary um and therefore you need access to commodities uh etc. Now what African countries and other commodity producers are seemingly doing is saying well okay we want to make sure that the profits out of this um uh out of this production uh stay uh stay on shore in the domestic economy. It makes perfect sense. Uh that's what they ought to be doing. Um and I think you're going to see more and more evidence of that. Um but you know whatever Malay is doing in Argentina and whatever Mosmbique is doing I'm sure is going to be copied in many other countries. And and carrying on with this topic of critical minerals for technology and and uh the technology of war as well. Um USA Rare Earth said this week that it has finalized agreements giving access to $1.6 billion in chips act funding and that is uh part of Washington's sort of continuing efforts to try and build a domestic rare earth supply and not be so reliant on China. So is that do you think how this next commodity cycle maybe gets built with governments deciding which resources matter and then sort of dragging private capital behind them. Well, I think that I mean we're seeing that already. I think I mean the US has taken the lead for sure, but China is also doing uh a similar exercise and uh you know, one's got to hope that the Europeans in general or Europe in general gets his act together. But you know, the whole the Europe is is a lot less flexible than these other countries that it tends to look backwards, not forwards, and it tends to be tied up with bureaucracy. Uh I think if you start to evaluate what the new world looks like, you can see what a dire situation Europe and Britain really are in. Uh there's no leadership. There's no vision. Uh there's no access to resources. I mean, the only thing they can do at best is to try and tax their um you know, their their electorates uh as best they can or as much as they can. Uh there's there's no there's no growth going on there at all. I mean, these economies slipping into the Mer. Um so I think that you know the fact is that the world the future of the world is really uh in play between China and the US or let's say broadly Asia and the US Europe is is losing out hugely. I mean, I draw the caveat that Eastern Europe seems to be a lot cleverer than Western Europe, but you know, that may be that may be a small concession. >> And US energy regulators granted a waiver this week to speed up the connection of the 3M island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, which is being restarted to serve Microsoft data centers. Um, so we've we've already spoken about AI demand showing up in in power grids and and in various resources. Um, but this is sort of a direct example of AI pulling old energy infrastructure back into use. Um, so I wanted to ask, do you think given that politicians remain reluctant to lean too heavily on fossil fuels, do you think that nuclear nuclear inevitably becomes one of the main winners of this real asset cycle? >> Well, it must do. I mean, I'm sure that's the uh, you know, path of least resistance. I mean, it's a clean energy technology. Uh I mean apart from sort of maybe one episode being three mile island um and there have been very very few nuclear accidents that have occurred uh certainly in my memory uh and my memory goes back quite a long time. So you know I think the uh the fact is that nuclear is a pretty safe option particularly these days and I think uranium uh therefore consequently has got to be you know a fuel of the future without any question. Um, and I think, you know, hopefully, uh, one one extends it to the to the UK, they they they wake up. I mean, the French have got a pretty decent nuclear program. Uh, they've had that for for decades. Uh, Germany's got rid of its nuclear reactors, uh, through some, you know, foolish decision. Uh, you know, playing to the Greens or whatever it was. uh Britain I mean you've got Britain's got the highest energy cost or among the highest energy costs in the world which seems to me a completely foolish thing to do in a world where technology and particularly electricity are vital ingredients for future growth but you know trying telling that to the politicians uh they they're they're on a different planet >> and but obviously not all politicians are giving fossil fuels to cold shoulder because we've got another story about Trump this week using emergency powers to direct hundreds of millions of dollars towards US coal including $425 million for upgrades to 13 coal fired power plants and 75 million for a coal export terminal in California. Um and they're framing this as a national security issue because again uh AI data centers need reliable electricity. Um, so do you think that energy security could end up trumping energy transition narratives in more countries including in Europe and the UK as power demand from AI keeps rising? >> Well, I think inevitably that must be true, Mark. I mean, the fact is that reality will uh ultimately, you know, shake these politicians or these bureaucrats out of their slumber at some stage. But you need you need energy security, you need mineral security. Um, and u that's simply what Europe doesn't have. I mean, where does Europe get its energy from? I mean, that's a that's a big question that no one's really seeming to answer. Uh, the US is sitting pretty because it's got huge resources, particularly of energy. It's a net energy exporter. Um, you know, China's obviously a mineral exporter. It does need energy. Um, but, you know, Europe is lacking both. And, um, that's that's the real problem. Uh, you know, I'm not too sure how Europe sits in this world. uh particularly if you've got you know particularly with the current leadership uh across the uh across the region which as I say seem to have no vision uh at all >> and and staying with energy Saudi Aramco the world's biggest oil company warned this week that around 3 million barrels a day of refining capacity closed between 2020 and 2023 adding to you know concerns about the supply bottlenecks that we're seeing. Um, and at the same time, Reuters reported that Iranian crude and condensate exports fell below 300,000 barrels a day in May, which is their lowest level in at least 6 years. Um, because obviously there's there's a naval blockade going on. Um but my question would be if Hormuse reopens properly, do you think oil will you know precipitously collapse in price and and sort of return into the backdrop and no longer be an issue? Or do you think that these problems with refining capacity, you know, that have gone back many years from today um and sort of ongoing shipping risks are going to cause the oil price to remain high going forwards? >> Yeah, it's going to remain high. It's going to go higher. Oil looks very cheap um both u you know in real terms looking at consumer prices and also looking uh in terms of relative value against other commodities. And I think you know one of the uh interesting exercises is to think in terms of the gold to oil ratio which is um a ratio that many market participants look at. I mean I know it's dismissed by economists but um you know let them do that. Um the ratio over the long term has been about 20 times. Um that seems some sort of equilibrium because it always seems to mean revert back to that level. uh and that's data which is you know 50 60 years of um uh of evidence. Now if you think about what's driving gold, gold is being driven by monetization and debasement. U it's not just debasement in the west, it's debasement in the east as well because China is up to the same tricks. It needs to devalue its currency to get out of debt and it's got an awful lot of uh old debt it needs to get rid of. So gold is going to remain elevated. uh I mean as we speak I know it's soft but that may be other reasons but we're looking at the trend and that trend is likely to go up now even if you assume that it doesn't and you assume that gold maintains at around the $4,000 uh an ounce level okay and as I said that stress that is conservative but hold it at 4,000 divide that by 20 and what's the resulting oil price implication $200 a barrel so you know if you triangulate that one of those three is assumptions must be wrong. Either the gold price is wrong at 4,000. I would venture that's not true. Either the gold oil ratio at 20 is wrong, but then we've had 60 years of experience, so that seems to be pretty rock solid. Uh or the idea of $200 a barrel of oil is wrong. Um so, you know, the fact is you've got to think of each one of those legs of a stool and think which one is consistent or inconsistent. So uh many you know I've given that um suggestion or made that statement many times in recent weeks and the kickback I get from almost everyone is that I'm insane because gold is sorry oil is never going to reach $200 a barrel. I think it will. H just to play devil's advocate there, what's the justification for assuming that there should be any sort of relationship between the price of gold and oil? Because they're two very different commodities with their own supply and demand backdrop. Isn't it like saying, you know, the ratio of the shoe price compared to Coca-Cola price? I mean, why why should there be a fixed relationship between their prices over decades? Well, it shouldn't necessarily be fixed, but it should be predictable, should it not? It should reflect underlying productivity uh in those two industries. Um and is a technical relationship uh which comes from production. And if you look at um you know the resources that go into mining gold, the resources that go to uh refining and u extracting oil, they're not hugely dissimilar. And so one would assume that there's a technical relationship between the two. And as I said, that seems over the very long term to be about 20 times. Productivity uh and technological advances in both industries would be pretty much pretty similar. But you know, let's not get hung up on oil or gold. You think of oil to copper or think of some other relationship. But all I'm saying is there's a technical relationship uh which runs alongside a monetary relationship which is the devaluation of the currency of denomination. So there's a two moving parts to a price. H as we sort of wrap up this episode, I'd like to close by playing a couple of games that we repeat at the end of each of these uh news shows. And the first one is called date, marry, or run. So your choices are between um coal, uranium, and gold. So which one would you date for a shortterm trade? Which one would you marry for the long term? And which one would you run from? We got pole, uranium, and gold. >> Well, do I have to ch I have to uh It's got to be all three. So, I can't marry two. >> You can't. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to date one, marry one, and run. >> Well, I think the I mean, the answer would be uh probably uh marry would be uh would be gold because I think that's the the long-term uh that trend is is solid long term. I think in terms of uh of a shorter term trend uh because I think it's out of fashion um and probably needs to come through. I mean maybe that's a medium-term call would be uranium and run I wouldn't really run from coal but I mean I think that um uh maybe there's you know given how much it's it's rallied recently maybe um you know it's the one to avoid in the short term but I mean I I don't know. I mean actually I'd like to marry all three but I'm not allowed to. is some sort of polygamist then in that case trying to marry everyone. Yeah, >> that's right. That that's the ideal, isn't it? >> Yeah. All right. Uh and then the final game to close then the show is our milliondoll model portfolio. So, every week we ask our guest on the news show to make just one change, uh, which is to sell $100,000 of something that we already own and then to put that money into the asset that they think has the best long-term setup from here. And it could be a stock or an ETF or an ETC or or anything um, but nothing too complex that we can't track in this uh, model portfolio. So, let me share my screen with you a moment. Ju ju just I'll just let you have a moment to look at that and read it out study study what what we've got while I just remind the viewers about what our previous guests have done. >> So, um we had professor Steve Hanky who sold bonds and he bought gold. We had Simon Hunt who uh sold global equity and he bought gold. And we have Peter Schiff who sold bonds and he bought his own Europac mutual gold fund. So a lot of uh people very bullish on gold, but so far it hasn't been serving us too well. We're actually 7% down on our gold position, which now makes up around 20% of our portfolio. And on Peter Shift's Europac mutual fund, we're down 6% since he bought that. Uh we also had David Morgan on who sold bonds and he bought a silver miners ETF and he also bought a Freeport and uh Freeport is actually up 4.4% since he bought that and we had uh Michael Oliver on as well who also bought the silver miners ETF and that is down 3% makes up 15% of our portfolio. Uh we've also got in our portfolio our best position is the the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF which makes up around 40% and is up almost 10%. Uh we're flat on bonds which make up around 5% now because everyone's been very uh adamant that we should sell them. And Energy Transfer which was Doomberg's individual stock pick, it makes up 10% of our portfolio and it's down 2% since he bought that uh two weeks ago. So, Michael, having a look at our portfolio then. What would you sell $100,000 of? And uh what would you like to buy with $100,000? Okay. Um well, I would say let's um let's be controversial and um let's uh let's sell $100,000 of gold and put it into an agricultural ETF. >> Okay. any any agricultural ETF in particular or >> well um I know off the top of my head not but I mean there's I'm sure there's many out there that you can you can pick on um you know or or just you know it's difficult to buy a commodity like soya bean but something like that you that's what you want you want agricultural product >> okay why would why would you want to sell gold then and own an agricultural product what would be the sort of element for that with >> I mean presuming this is a short-term trade you're talking about or If it's if it's a if it's a if it's not a short-term trade, I'd take 100,000 out of the Vanguard stock ETF. >> Um, well, it's it's long-term in the sense that you're not going to be able to come back and sell it at the you're not going to be able to be marketing it. >> Quit quit the gold then. Keep the gold where it is and basically um um take it out of the vanguard. >> Right. Okay. So you want to sell our best performing asset and move it into an agricultural ETF. So why are you bullish on agricultural products then? >> Well, because I think that if you look at the sequence of moves in commodity markets, it normally begins with gold. Uh it transitions through uh base metals to energy and then finally into food commodities and I think we're seeing that sequence unfolding. >> And does that have anything to do with the disruptions in uh sulfur and ura and hormos or is it totally totally I mean that that that obviously helps but it was it's a different it's a structural view. >> It's not dependent on that at all. >> Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much, Michael. So, we'll uh make that trade and uh we'll continue tracking this portfolio each week. Um thanks again for coming on the show. Is there any sort of closing thoughts you'd like to leave our listeners with or we'll let them know where they can find you and keep up to date with you and your work? >> Well, I'd maybe say say two things. I mean one is that if they want to keep up with what we do uh the best way of looking at that is to look at the capital wars substack uh we write on that um you know three four times a week uh with different commentaries and providing data uh and that data and narrative is focused around liquidity and that's the second idea. You've got to understand what's happening to money flows and watch where money is moving and um that's been the basis of our asset allocation advice for a long time now. Um so watch the money. Michael, thanks again for coming on the show and we hope to have you back again soon. >> Thanks so much. Thank you.