Description:
Marc Faber breaks down Trump’s 15% growth promise, Fed policy under Kevin Warsh, exploding debt, money printing, and why …

Transcript:
But it’s something I would strongly advise you to hold. I would not strongly advise you to hold the fun seven stocks in America, the magnificent seven and the semiconductors, but I would strongly urge you to hold some gold, silver, and platinum. >> President Trump just promised us 15% growth in the US under incoming Fed chair Kevin Worsh. What does that mean? Is he really g is he giving away free money? How is he going to achieve that? And of course, we’ll talk gold, silver, what phase of the cycle are we in right now? I’ve invited a fantastic guest to combine all those topics for us. His name is Dr. Mark Faba. He’s the author of the Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report, and I can’t wait to catch up with him on those topics, of course. But before I switch over, hit that like and subscribe button. It helps us out tremendously. We really appreciate it. And one quick reminder, we heard your feedback. you want access to our interviews as quickly as possible, as soon as they’re recorded, sign up for our channel membership and we’ll grant you that wish. So much appreciate that. Now, Dr. Fab, it is great to welcome you back on the program. It’s good to see you again. >> It’s my pleasure. Thank you and good day to you viewers and listeners and of course to you. >> I appreciate it. No, really, really good to see you again. Always enjoy our conversations. We have lots to lots to discuss, of course. Last time we spoke in the summer um I think it was early August that we spoke Dr. Faba lots has changed we’ve seen some fed rate cuts uh which brings me also to the first topic really is the promise of crazy US growth meaning 15% is something President Trump said in an interview yesterday u that he expects to see or wants to see under incoming Fed chair Kevin Walsh the question though is Dr. Faba, how realistic is that? And if it were realistic, how are they going to achieve it? >> Uh, it’s completely unrealistic and it proves that Mr. Trump is either a liar or mentally deranged. Uh, there’s no way the US will grow at 15% peranom. Even coming out of a recession, they are unlikely to be able to grow at 15% and certainly not from the current level of asset prices and of economic activity. >> The the question though is like we’re looking at 4% apparently right now. Howard Lutnik even talked about five to six% all based on AI boom and we’re seeing massive numbers like hundreds of billions in in capex to be announced. I think it was 625 billion in capex that was announced. Is that the only growth sector? And how is that getting financed? How is that even possible? >> Well, uh the way it gets financed is essentially by issuing bonds and by printing money. uh the money supply is growing again and uh in my view the economy is not growing at 4% peranom. Uh there are some sectors that may grow at 10% peranom like the AI cap boom and so forth but uh it’s unlikely to last. And secondly, I’d like to point out that uh gross figures are usually taken by measuring GDP, the size of the economy. And it depends very much how you adjust uh the nominal growth uh to real growth uh by deducting the impact of price increases. In other words, the consumer price index by how much do prices go up? uh if you measure how high prices go up maybe you get nominally 15% growth but if the price increases are say 20% then you have in real terms inflation adjusted terms a 5% contraction so I would be very skeptical about the figures that governments are publishing in terms of GDP P grows. I think more relevant would be to look at uh the well-being, the standard of living of the typical household. Is the typical household doing well or is the typical household struggling? And we know that in America close to 70% of families they live paycheck to paycheck. In other words, they need to get the salary by check in order to pay their bills. That in my view is not a sign of a very healthy economy. >> No, not at all. And it’s that K-shaped economy that the the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Of course. Yes, this is the case. I mean, I think it’s very important to distinguish between the economy of wealthy asset holders. They own stock portfolios, they own properties and so forth and uh they theirs is increasing and they have a high spending power. But the typical household is actually hurting because of increased food prices. Uh increase in insurance premiums uh for the homes and for the health and for the cars. I mean this is a big item and depending how the government weights certain items in the consumer price index basket you will get totally different results. I mean I have an economist John Williams of shadow stats according to him inflation is running up over 10% peranom and accelerating on the upside not diminishing and whether Mr. Walsh Walsh will cut rates and accommodate Mr. Trump or not is another question. That that is another question because the market was fairly surprised by the announcement I would say because the market expect more of a a dovish character meaning somebody who would actually lower interest rates more aggressively while Kevin War said well you know he’s he’s more of a hawk might maybe keep interest rates stable and then most importantly something we need to discuss Dr. Faba, he wants to shrink the Fed balance sheet. >> And the question is like what what does that mean and what is the impact of that? Um if he wants to shrink it cuz it’s expanding again right now. He wants to shrink it. That means the Fed cannot step in. They can’t do much. I’m curious what your take on that is and whether that even has a chance. >> Well, I mean, I listened to some speeches and some interviews with Mr. war and I have to say intellectually he is a very well uh educated person and I’m sure that he has good intentions for the Federal Reserve but at the same time he moves in a very affluent society including his wife’s family uh lo there they they are asset holders, you understand? And I I don’t think that he and his friends and so forth want necessarily to see the stock market down 50% or 40% or even 20%. So intellectually he may think that you would need to increase interest rates at the present time especially if by accident or unrealistically economic growth was 4% but it isn’t. But in this position of being surrounded by asset holders, including the Trump family, it’s unlikely that they will take measures to increase interest rates and lower asset prices and increase the affordability for ordinary people. In my view, he is more likely to support asset prices at the current artificially high price. The question is like will will he like participate in yield curve control and things like that, right? Uh it seems like the Fed and the bond the Fed needs to re sorry not the Fed the Treasury needs to refinance of course this year and bond yields are wonky to say the best to to say the least here. Um they’re they’re not they’re fairly volatile right now and it seems like they’re trending higher. So um the the Fed’s stepping in potentially buying bonds and treasuries from the US Treasury. Um is that a high chance of likelihood? like what what do you make of that? >> Quite frankly, I don’t know. And I think investors should get used to the fact that the more the government intervenes and Trump is an interventionist. Unfortunately, he’s an ignorant interventionist. He he intervenes into everything because he’s a typical sort of narcissistic personality that thinks that he is smarter than anybody else in the room and so forth. And uh with these characters then Bessant is also an interventionist with these characters you don’t know exactly what will happen but I maintain the likelihood of the Fed and the Treasury tightening monetary conditions the likelihood is very More more likely is that as every government in history has done sooner or later to resolve not resolve postpone the problems is money printing that uh hurts the rich people the least at the beginning the elite they actually benefit from money printing and I’m not saying this out of any anger or so. I as a financial man I also benefit from money printing. The price of gold goes up, the price of silver goes up and so on. But I’m saying that money printing is very detrimental to the well-being of the typical household in in every the sort of average Tom, Dick, and Harry. Uh because their cost of living is going up more than the salaries. Plus the their taxes are going up. >> Yeah. Taxes are not being lowered. I can tell you that. I’m I’m seeing that across the globe. Um just looking at US credit card debt as well, it’s at a record high, $1.23 trillion. It keeps going higher. Uh there there’s no end in sight. Absolutely. So >> that that the credit card debt tells you that things are not particularly good because credit card credit is very expensive. you know, we’re talking about something like 20% peranom or more. If >> if I may jump in there, sorry to interrupt you, Mark. Um, President Trump suggested or proposed 10% cap at least for a year on the credit card rates. I’m curious what your take on that is and what the effect might be. I don’t know for sure what the effect will be but uh as I said he is a typical interventionist that intervenes into things without thinking it through. I would have to study the matter and what the consequences would be because at 10% the credit card companies will probably not issue any credit cards for so I can tell you >> they might do credit. >> I’m sure that this is a very wise measure. >> They might actually do credit checks so we’ll see decreased liquidity and people will consume less. >> Yes, exactly. I mean I we’re talking about the world needs especially with the government debt being at such a high level they need liquidity and if you withdraw that liquidity you have an economic crisis and whether the governments will accept especially Mr. Trump whether he wants an e economic crisis, I doubt. >> No, I I don’t think he wants a crisis. Not not until November, >> right? Um maybe we need to frame it like that because after that, I actually don’t know what he wants. Quite honestly, I always thought he wants a much lower dollar. Right now, he’s happy with where we’re at. >> He’s happy to print more money. He’s happy to give out more money to the constituents through tariff checks. So, I’m quite curious what I I actually don’t know what he wants post midterm elections. Like, do you do you have an inkling? Do do you have an idea like maybe he’ll completely turn around and do the opposite? Is that like a fair I would say a guesstimate, right? Is it’s a guess on my part. In my view, what he wants is to be in the limelight >> and live in his world of illusion where he thinks he’s the smartest man on in the world and the most powerful man in the world and he wants to increase his wealths. That is what I think he wants. Well, he’s doing a pretty good job at at least the latter part, meaning creating wealth for himself. So, he’s doing fairly well there. >> Um, >> lately, not not so much because he’s heavily into cryptocurrencies and his collapsed. >> Yeah, there is a bit of shod in Florida in there. I do have to admit, um, when it comes to that part. But um Mark, look looking at the equity markets again. I’m looking at the S&P 500 and we’re seem seemingly oscillating at at at the highs here and the market doesn’t really reflect reality like it’s closer to a breakout than uh it’s close to 7,000 points in the S&P 500 which is a very high level. So the market seems to be oblivious to uh maybe the reality and I’m curious like Dr. Fab what is priced in in this market right now? Is it just a a measure of liquidity that we’re seeing or is there actually some realism to the current pricing? >> In my view, uh the market consists of a small number of stocks that are highly priced in my view grossly overpriced. These are the MAC 7 stocks and the semiconductor sensors. And then you have a wide range of stocks say in the SNP 480 stocks. They haven’t moved much in the last few years. And the S SNP was driven by these 20 or so stocks that I just explained. And the question is now last year for the first time in say around 15 years since 2010 Europe and emerging economies grossly outperformed the US grossly with a few exceptions say Indonesia and Thailand they didn’t move up but other like Brazil uh the stock market gain and the currency gain added to almost 50%. So this is a big change that other markets and other assets are performing better than the US market and the big change was also the outperformance of gold, silver and platinum v say the SNP and the Dow Jones and so was and I think that uh they can print money. Yes. And in nominal terms, the Dow and the S&P may go up somewhat, but inflation adjusted and especially adjusted against the gold price. I think these financial assets will continue to go down will continue to go down against gold, silver, platinum. >> No, that’s when reality kicks in. The question though is when when is that is do you expect a certain trigger? When when does that when do we reach that tipping point when uh pricing actually works again like the market actually produces a proper price? When does that happen again? >> Well, I think the market produces a proper price and that’s the price of gold. Now, some people will say gold is in a bubble. Yes, it’s gone up a lot, but I can turn around and say no, gold and silver and platinum uh their prices are steady. What has however happened is that the purchasing power of paper monies around the world, I mean not just the US but also in Europe and in Japan that these purchasing powers of paper monies have collapsed. In other words, whereas when you were young, you could buy for $10 this basket of good, now for $10 you buy just this basket of goods. In other words, prices have gone up a lot or the value of money has gone down a lot. And I I think if we look at gold, we we may argue yes, overbought, >> but then I look at the purchasing power of money and it’s gone down a lot. >> I mean, if someone tells me the inflation rate is 2%. Is a complete joke. Go once to the doctor, go into restaurant, go and pay your insurance premiums and the electricity for your house and so forth is up much more than 2%. In Switzerland, they claim they have no inflation. And in every survey about the the price level of cities in the world, the Swiss among are among the top 10 cities worldwide always. Uh how come that are the most expensive cities in the world if there is no inflation? >> Just greed that they just raised prices. It has nothing to do with inflation. Nothing. No. Um, but Dr. Fab, just just to stay on that topic, so gold has maybe just revalued to where it should be based on what you just said based on the devaluation of currency of fiat. And that’s $5,000 or $4,500, wherever you want to draw the line, is the new normal. And that’s where it should be. This is a very difficult question in life where prices should be because in a free market they fluctuate and in a planning economy under the communist system or socialist system you have price fixing. That’s what Trump wants to do with the interest rates on the credit cards. You understand? I would have voted for Mr. Trump because I think the alternatives would be even worse. But it is not clear to me that he’s a capitalist. In many ways, he is a central planner. Now, is he a fascist or a socialist? That I don’t know. But he’s an interventionist. And in a perfect world, he would rule America and the whole world like a king or an emperor. That is his dream. The fellow although I would have voted for him, is mentally deranged. Well, from looking at at it from a mining perspective, that’s where we come from. wants to offer a price floor for critical minerals and uh for for silver to a degree as well, although it hasn’t been mentioned explicitly. So, I’m curious if there will be a price floor for silver as well. Do you think that’s a good idea? Especially for silver critical minerals, I get but but silver, what would that do to the market? In my opinion, prices should fluctuate freely without the government intervening into the price. And the prices should decline when there is over supply and they should go up when there the markets are under supplied, when there are shortages. And as prices go up, new mines are opened up and so forth. And as prices go down, minds are closed and that is a free market. And okay, other people have different views, but in my view, free markets are very important and they are the basis of our capitalistic system and they’re the basis of the incredible growth the world has experienced. since the essentially adoption of the capitalistic system say around 1800. Okay. Before that there was in the world very little growth economic growth and the world’s population in 1800 was not significant. It had gone up from the times of Jesus Christ but not dramatically. But then between 1800 and today it’s gone up eight more than eight times. >> Yeah, that that is quite significant actually. The question is no will it go higher, right? I mean, I look, I’m an elderly man and I went to the socialist communist countries in Eastern Europe, in Russia and China early on and I saw the economic disaster socialism and communism produces and the unhappiness among the general population because they’re forced to do things and are not allowed to develop their own initiative. And once they gave up these communist regimes or the communist political philosophy, all these countries exploded on the upside, including China and India more recently and Russia and Eastern Europe and Poland and I mean you it’s hard for young people to believe that that these countries were impoverished beyond belief. Uh when I went there first in the 1960s and 50s, a lot lot has changed, but we’re still wanting the same like we still want to come back to communism. If I see some of that uh being, you know, propagated out on the doorsteps of uh some of the, you know, countries governments here as well. So >> yeah, but I agree. Yes, this is something that as a say someone who studied history and someone who is a social observer like I am. I’m not saying that I’m a scholar and an academic voice although I studied economics but this is something that has surprised me that in western societies where the whole system is based on a relatively free market and free economics that you continuously get these socialists to have so much power and let’s say in Switzerland we have cities that are run by the socialist and green communists >> but I can see one thing you understand a government official he is paid a salary he’s not very much but some countries they pay them well in order to avoid corruption say Singapore pays government officials and ministers as well, but they’re not allowed to be corrupt. Now, in other countries, this changes and the one way to extract money from the taxpayers for their own pockets is to have a big government. You understand? An honest government. They steal say 5 10% a very dishonest government like you find in Africa, they steal and uh through corruption maybe 80% flows into the pockets of government officials and and but nowadays in America if you have a budget of $8 trillion and you steal 10% is a lot of money >> that is that is a lot billion dollars. >> Absolutely. Um Dr. Faba, I have two last questions for you. One is maybe probably deserves a longer answer and we could probably spend 30 minutes alone on that question is but does President Trump in the US in general have a chance to escape that death spiral? Meaning we’re looking at exploding debt that it looks like we’re we’re steering towards financial and monetary reset here. Um but the the policies that are being introduced, do you see any chance of escaping that death spiral? >> Well, I tell you already in the early 80s uh Maril Lynch had three strategies. Charlie Mter and uh uh his name was Aaron Stein, but I forgot his first name. and Stan Salvixson and they predicted sort of a debt collapse by the end of the 1980s. And here we are still and still printing money and the system still works somewhere somehow. And I think uh Trump and his lackers at the Fed and at the Treasury and in government, they can postpone the crisis. Can they postpone it forever? No. Eventually the policies will lead to such an impoverishment of the population that they will rebel that they’ll there’ll be social struggle and maybe a civil war. So that is something I would consider. Number two, geopolitically the conditions today for war are better than at any time following World War II. I think it’s not uh necessary to have World War II, but the likelihood that we will have World War II has increased. And we have the way we economist we have business cycle series the contraatf the kitchen the jugler the knates and so forth and the historians they have war cycle series and the conditions for war are now very favorable very favorable doesn’t mean that war will break out but is a possibility >> yeah that’s something that’ll reset everything pretty much war will just re redefine the economy economic baseline in general because we’ll just have wartime spending like you would not believe. So >> yes, >> absolutely. Um Dr. Faba, very last question because I know my audience wants you to answer that question is just where are we headed in gold and silver? What what is your expert opinion? I’m not asking for a price target or anything but uh ju just a bit of direction. What should we be expecting here in the in the near term? My view and answer would be you may like gold and silver or you may not like it. But in my opinion, you will be grateful at some point in your life to have had say 20 30% or more in gold and silver because paper monies will go down in value. And if the past 5,000 years is a guide, governments will before they fall, before they implode and collapse and everything goes sour, before that happens, they’ll print money. >> I think we’re very close to some gold and silver. Now depending uh you know some people hold more and some people less but it’s something I would strongly advise you to hold. I would not strongly advise you to hold the fun seven stocks in America the magnificent seven and the semiconductors but I would strongly urge you to hold some gold silver and platinum. >> Absolutely. No really appreciate that Dr. Faba, much appreciate you coming on. Typical question at the end if our audience doesn’t know where to find more of your work and uh they should by now but uh ju just in case where where can we send them? >> I have a website gloomboomdoom.com all in one word gloomboomdoom.com. >> Fantastic Dr. Faba as always much appreciate the conversation. Thanks so much for joining us. Always good to see you. Can’t wait to do this do this again here soon. And in the meantime, stay safe out there. Have have a good time. And everybody else, thank you so much for tuning in to this conversation with Dr. Mark Faba. I tremendously appreciate his time. Uh always fun to chat with him. Uh if you enjoyed this conversation, hit that like and subscribe button. Let us know in the comments down below how you see things unfold. Does the US have a chance to escape the death spiral? Really curious what your thoughts are on that topic as well. And as I mentioned earlier, we have introduced channel memberships for you that want early access to all our interviews that we’re doing. We’ll upload them as soon as they’re edited and right before we publish them. So, really appreciate you watching. Thanks so much for tuning in. Take care out there.

Pitch Summary:
Mattr Corporation has undergone a significant transformation under new management since 2021, shifting from a cyclical oil and gas business to a more stable industrial materials supplier. The company has divested low-margin businesses and acquired high-margin ones, such as AmerCable, which is expected to be immediately accretive to EPS. Management is focused on organic growth, targeting a 10% annual increase into 2030, while also executing aggressive share buybacks. The CEO, Mike Reeves, brings a strong track record from previous roles, and insiders are buying shares, indicating confidence in the company’s future. Despite current financial noise and economic headwinds, the company is positioned for long-term growth, with a strategy that includes maintaining low leverage and capitalizing on market opportunities.

BSD Analysis:
Mattr’s strategy mirrors successful private equity turnarounds, focusing on organic growth and accretive acquisitions. The recent acquisition of AmerCable at a low multiple is a strategic move to enhance margins and EPS. The company’s capital allocation strategy, including share buybacks and moderate leverage, is designed to maximize shareholder value. Despite current margin compression and flat revenue growth, the company’s long-term targets suggest significant upside potential. The market’s low expectations provide a margin of safety, and if management executes well, the stock could see substantial appreciation. The involvement of Turtle Creek Asset Management, which has increased its stake, further validates the investment thesis.

Pitch Summary:
AT&T is strategically positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for broadband and fiber services. The company has refocused its business on core telecommunications operations, shedding non-core assets like WarnerMedia and DirecTV. With a robust fiber network and a strong presence in both urban and rural markets, AT&T is poised to capture market share from competitors like T-Mobile and Verizon, who face challenges with network integration and spectrum limitations. AT&T’s strategy of deploying fixed wireless internet in areas slated for future fiber expansion allows it to preemptively capture customers from rivals. The company’s focus on convergence, bundling internet and cellular services, enhances customer retention and revenue growth.

BSD Analysis:
AT&T’s competitive advantage lies in its extensive fiber network and spectrum holdings, which provide a sustainable edge over competitors. The company’s ability to offer bundled services positions it well against T-Mobile, which relies on rented fiber, and Verizon, which faces integration challenges with its patchwork fiber network. AT&T’s strategic acquisitions, such as the EchoStar spectrum, further strengthen its 5G capabilities and support its fixed wireless internet strategy. The company’s focus on decommissioning legacy copper networks and expanding fiber coverage aligns with industry trends favoring high-speed, low-latency connections. Despite past challenges with non-core assets, AT&T’s streamlined operations and strategic focus on telecommunications offer a compelling investment thesis.

Description:
Unemployment looks strong. Inflation seems contained. But beneath the surface, William White sees mounting risks. Rising debt …

Transcript:
Gold is trading near historically high levels. Southern debt is at very, very high levels. The world is indebted like you would not believe. And of course, questions around fiscal dominance and long-term monetary stability are rising. We’ve done a great job on this channel really trying to explain this, but there’s so much to it. And now we’ve really invited or we’ve invited an absolute insider to the whole plumbing of how this system works. Really looking forward to the conversation with Dr. William White. He’s a a senior fellow at the CD How Institute and formerly served as the head of monetary and economic development or department at the Bank of International Settlements, the BIS, the central bank of central banks. You might have heard us talk about the BIS here before in different contexts. So, I’m really looking forward to having that discussion with him because uh he can tell us what is really happening behind the scenes and uh how are the central banks thinking about things. So, I’m really curious to hear more. But before I switch over to my guest, hit that like and subscribe button. Helps us out tremendously, reach a wider investor audience of course, but also bring phenomenal guests like Dr. White onto the program. Now, Dr. White, it’s an extreme honor to having having you on the program. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Oh, it’s a real pleasure to be here, Kai. Thank you for inviting me. >> Yeah, really looking forward to the next 30 minutes with you. We just spent 30 minutes already talking about like everything like there’s so much to talk about of course but let’s let’s see if we can condense our conversation that we just had off record on record and make it palpable for our audience. Um Dr. White let’s start off very high level. Um what what is your current assessment of the economy like where are we at? Well, I mean, when you look at the numbers, uh unemployment, inflation, um you can make a case that things look uh things look pretty good. Inflation is probably running still a little bit too high. Um but unemployment is still very low. Uh growth is has not been all that rapid. Uh but um certainly growth is continuing. So, superficially everything looks fine. But I guess what I’ve been worried about for a long period of time has been um the the joint problems of what they call financial and and fiscal dominance which is the question of debt levels relative to GDP both public and private have been building up for a very long period of time uh really starting in the the early 1980s and it’s been a steadily upward trend for these ratios. for a long long period of time. And that obviously raises some questions about um going forward, whether there’s a possibility in light of all of these um uh these high debt levels of of something going something going wrong, some kind of a financial crisis. And um again I I think the PIS for a very long period of time has been stressing the the the point that central banks really ought to give more attention to financial developments than they do and that they shouldn’t use labor markets and inflation alone as a as a primary goal of of monetary policy. In other words, I guess they have been and I have been saying for a long period of time that price stability as they define it uh is not exactly the same thing as macroeconomic stability and it doesn’t guarantee macroeconomic stability. So that’s sort of what I’m worried about is uh you know the side effects of past policies which have been in my view too easy resulting in this buildup of debt and that the the buildup of debt might might in some way come back and it causes some serious problems. >> Yeah, you you’ve advocated for that like through various cycles all we do is we just add more debt. We keep kicking the can down the road but there’s no real solution and uh fewer policy options left. like how close are we to that debt trap being exposed and maybe you know kicking the can down the road we’ll hit a wall. How close are we there? >> Well the private sector side um problem with the debt on the private sector side is so much of it is migrated out of the banking system. So in a certain sense we have no clear sense of who’s doing the lending and who’s doing the borrowing and the purpose for which that borrowing has been done. Okay. The purposes for which the debt’s been taken out. So, it’s just a kind of black box at the moment. I know that the authorities are trying to sort of throw some light on it, but still there’s a lot of uncertainty about what might happen. And I think that’s been one of the reasons why people have been so eager to get interest rates down um after the period when they went up because of the inflation coming out of CO. Um but the more recent concern I think has been on the fiscal side and for the first time really that I can remember in a pretty long career uh you know there are there are people sort of raising serious doubts about the capacity of of major governments uh to honor their debt service um which has been going up with higher interest rates. um to to to do that without in fact turning to um the central bank to buy some of that stuff. And um I think when you look back over the the COVID period um it it didn’t help to observe that the overall increase in sort of debt government debt was more or less the same as the size of the increase in the C central bank balance sheets. So that you know there’s prima facy case for for worrying that um well the central the last time the government had a big financial requirement the central banks printed the money and they’re likely to do the same in the future and that fundamentally has got to lead to inflation in the long run and I’m out of here. Now the question of I’m out of here, you know, basically saying I I don’t want to hold government bonds anymore. We are starting to see some aspects of that. Uh certainly when you think about the United States, you know, where official reserve holdings in dollars uh really have been sort of flat to down since about 2014 and much of the external demand has come from really very short-term money. And uh the the uh the BIS actually uh had a a recent um the general manager had a a speech about this that um a lot of sort of the long-term bonds are being financed with short-term repos and a lot of the foreign inflows people get the dollars through using short-term swaps. So there’s there’s a lot of short-term hot money out there that’s financing long-term government deficits. So they can turn on a dime if they want to. And the question is um do they want to and there I think the jury is still out but it is interesting that in the states in well I won’t say the states in particular but as short-term rates have been trending down the long-term rates have been flat to up and that’s very unusual and another thing I mean when you think about the states is that um even as the short rate the short rates have gone down. The long rates have gone up and the dollar has been weakening after being strong for for many many years. And that sort of together with the increase in the price of gold makes one wonder whether there’s not a tipping point sort of in the in the near future. But we haven’t seen um um anything sort of totally dramatic up until now. But um just little little tremors, you know, the the real worry is that the the tremors foretell a real earthquake. They’re not a guarantee, but um sometimes it happens. >> You you just mentioned the divergence in bond yields like the shorter term bonds, the the bills like trending lower while the 10-year 20-year yields are trending higher like directionally. Like is that is that a signal that there there is a problem maybe refinancing down the road here? uh the US has to refinance $9 trillion this year. Most of it will probably be short shortdated builds. Um so the question is like is is that that crack that you you might have mentioned is that that tremor and uh how do we con contain it perhaps and what should we be paying attention to when the refinancings are starting off and we’re hearing more and more about it? Well, I I I certainly think you ought to be looking at directly at what’s happening to the long-term yields. And uh if you have a world in which you lower interest rates and the long bond rates go up, then you have to start asking yourself what’s what’s the underlying problem. And one of them could be just a simple fear of inflation. you know this this will end in higher inflation relative sorry moderately higher inflation. Um another possibility is that people are getting more and more concerned about the independence of central banks. You know we’ve had particularly what President Trump has been doing with Jay Powell and uh and and the Fed. Uh but a third thing that sort of is is sort of more dramatic is that it may be people are starting to focus in on the debt dynamics and the recognition that the more you finance your debt shortterm the more you’re you’re exposed to higher interest rates severely having an impact on your debt service charges. Okay. So it’s it’s a question of how how much debt is there and how much of it is short-term that needs to be financed. And the more that they move in the direction of sort of le let’s let’s issue shortterm as opposed to long term. Okay. Um you can see that they’re saving the long term from going up. Okay? Because they’re not issuing today. But what you do know is that the chances of them having to issue still more debt at still higher interest rates has gone up significantly because the duration has now been shortened. So there’s all these things sort of working together. And the the other thing is that um people might say well listen the long-term rate is going to be held down somewhat at least by um the anchor of inflationary expectations. But I think there’s an increasing literature now sort of really questioning whether that anchor is as strong as you think it might be. So there was a paper by Jeremy Rudd came out four or five years ago in which he he basically said there were no grounds for belief uh either empirical or theoretical that long-term inflation expectations were pegged with the target of the central bank. You know this was just all a myth. And sort of more recently there have been people like the BIS Claudia Boreo for example has written a couple of pieces on this talking about the anchor of stability. You know an idea that actually came out with Axel Leonford many many years ago but anyway that the contention is that inflation expectations are anchored only because nobody’s paying any any nobody’s paying any attention to them because inflation is low. Okay. So it looks it looks anchored, but it’s because people are just not thinking about inflation at all. But once you get above a certain level, then all of a sudden it’s the actual inflation that starts to kick in. And people have a tendency not just to um take the higher inflation as this is what the future holds. But there’s also the possibility that they just start extrapolating. So, it’s gone up so much, it’ll probably go up that much more tomorrow. So, there’s a lot of a lot of pieces here that could sort of come unstuck. And it’s not to say that they will, but it’s to say that they could do. And um we know I mean historically I mean we always like to say well we’re smart guys and the other guys weren’t smart guys but there’s so many historical examples of governments um basically uh overextending themselves very frequently because of problems in the banking sector or in the financial markets where they have to take private debt onto the public public sector debt and in the end they can’t hope and it winds up in very high inflation or even hyperinflation. You know, the the Latin American solution to this problem. So, we’ve got a theoretical basis for concern. We got an empirical basis for saying it happened before it it can happen again. Do you know the old line? Even an economist when he sees something happen will admit it is possible, right? Well, history shows us this stuff is possible. Um, so those are the kinds of concerns that one one has and I I would be looking at the the long bond rates. The the other thing that I I would look at is is currency and I mean there’s another think about Japan for example, you know, where the the the short rates are going up, uh the long rates are long rates are going up and the yen is falling. And you sort of say, well, what what what’s consistent with with that configuration of events? >> And the answer is there’s an increase in the in the currency premium. You know, that the the the risk premium being demanded to hold yen has now gone up. And um anyway, the but when you talk about currencies, I mean, here’s the the the real problem is that when you think about one country that’s got a debt problem or fiscal problem, uh it normally sort of starts in the the the worries normally start in the currency market, right? And the long bond market, but the currency market, I’m out of here. I’m I’m going to sell anything that’s denominated in that particular currency. The the real complication at the moment is that all of the current no not all but many of the currencies that you would consider to be um um h have problems. There’s so many of them where where would you flee to? You know you’re in the UK for example and you start looking at sort of you know thinking about a repeat of the trust moment. You say well I buy by euros. You say, well, what what about France then? You know, or France has got a big budget deficit. Um, and the Xile Jon are in the street sort of protesting against any kind of effort to deal with it. Seems to be no political will to deal with it. So, is the, you know, is the euro a good idea? So, well, you’re buys. Well, I think we’ve talked a bit about the dollar already. You know, that they may have um the biggest transition of them all because they have been sort of the safe currency. uh the Japanese yen which we just mentioned which also used to be considered as a safe currency. This is where you went when times got tough and now we see the yen is has been falling like a stone. Um so there there’s some there are some puzzles. I don’t think we’ve seen this. I don’t I don’t I’m not the greatest student of history, but certainly in recent history, you know, I can think of no examples where you’d say I don’t like any of them. Um this is sort of an interesting period. >> Yeah. And we’re we’re running out of options, right? And uh like I’m going to make a hard cut in the conversation because we’re going to talk about gold here now. But uh I think if the audience gives us a bit of leeway here, I think they’ll understand that how we will come back to the initial discussion here. Um cuz you were at the BIS. Um you had an important role at the BIS. And recently um the Bank of International Settlements made gold a tier one asset, right? And you you gave me some interesting points before the conversation here. That’s why I believe we can make the circle back to the original discussion here by throwing gold into it. Um why do you think that happened and how do you see that implemented? Meaning gold being a tier one asset with the with the banks and the institutions and how much of an effect does it have on the price right now as well? Just more of a tangent question there. >> Yeah. Well, I’d have to say two things. One, um I’ve been away from the BIS for a long time. I left in 2008 although I still have contacts obviously. The second point that has to be realized is that the stuff that gets done at the BIS gets done by the committees made up of national experts. Okay. So the Basel committee is made up of people who are either at the central bank worrying about supervisory issues or in the supervisory agency in the country that we’re talking about. So it’s those people who come together in the committee format who make their own decisions about what’s best for them collectively. So I was not involved with the discussions at all about tier one. Um but it would be consistent with the recognition or sort of growing recognition that gold is um gold has got a kind of moneylike quality about it and that um it deserve to be in there in tier one and certainly what it’s going to do and I I have no idea at all about the magnitude here is that it will increase the attractiveness of gold for banks. Uh physical gold um the treatment of goldbacked derivatives and things like that that’s that’s a different story, but certainly the demand for physical gold will be higher than it would previously been. And I think too there’s going to be a symbolic although again I can’t I couldn’t put any numbers on this but you know if you’ve got a group of people like the supervisors who basically say gold is more moneylike than we had previously thought it to be. that that’s going to have an impact on other people who will also look upon gold rather more as a money than as a commodity or something is used only for jewelry or whatever. So I think the symbolic implications of that could be could be quite significant >> now because you were talking about like how do we get out of this and you were talking about the bond market. Of course you don’t want to hold bonds and and before we hit the record button you hinted maybe gold is that uh that safe haven that people are now fleeing to as as well. I think that’s why I was trying to make that connection between gold and our initial discussion here. Um because you made some really interesting points before hitting that record button, why that is the case and why gold all of a sudden is that tier one asset, right? That’s that’s why I wanted to bring that up. >> Yeah. Yeah. Of course. >> Well, what one of one of the other things and this is all linked back into the dollar question, you know, dollar dominance and you know, the the um the the privilege of being able to issue a a reserve currency. I think the sanctions, the Russian the sanctions against Russia and the sort of the the weaponization of the dollar um really sort of although done obviously for for a good purpose at least as viewed by the western countries that it really put the wind up a lot of people and I think there’s been sort of two implications of that is one that there has been an attempt to diversify reserve holdings and we see it sort of not so much in people worry about the sort of the the mimi coming to be a sort of more dominant currency. It it hasn’t been that up until now but it’s been a gradual increase in the holdings of Canadian dollars, Swiss Franks, Australian dollars, you know, sort of good reputable countries. Um but I think it’s also been reflected in an increase in an increase in interest in gold. And the thing about gold, I mean, as as you know, is um there’s no liability associated with it. You just own it. You know, you you don’t have to worry about it being a claim on some counterparty that goes bankrupt. You just own it. It’s in the vaults. And now of course with this tier one thing as an added attraction there’ll be more of a tendency for both banks and central banks to to want to hold some of it. Um but it it there is this broader broader question of the sanctions and the worries that people have not just about not being o able to hold how can you know not being able to get access to their assets which is what happened to the Russian assets you know held in Belgium and elsewhere. But the whole idea that your banking system can be cut out of the international global payment system. So there’s a lot of interest going on there. And uh again I think it’s it’s linked back to the business about if we do it through a different mechan if we can make the payments through a different mechanism. uh and one, as it turns out, that’s both cheaper, faster, and overcomes all the disadvantages of Swift. Um there’d be an inclination to want to do that, particularly if the governance arrangements of that system were set up in such a way that it couldn’t be weaponized. Okay. The difficulty now is that it’s essentially a dollar system. um not just not principally because the US owns as it were the sort of the central clearing houses and that stuff you know CLS and um swift etc are not in fact US-based but the influence the political influence the US has is extends extr territorially as as well so um I think there’s a lot of interest in sort of getting out from that problem >> and um I was just reading a piece from the it’s a joint thing from the Royal Academy and the Carnegie Institute sort of saying that the dollar system had now become a source of instability because there were so many people. So the Americans apply sanctions, people increasingly try to avoid the sanctions that just demands more sanctions which avoids which demands more avoidance. You can see again we’re on a kind of bad path >> that could lead to a bad end. >> But um anyway, that’s you’re starting to see papers written about people who’ve got worries of this nature and I think that’s helping gold as gold as well. >> Well, even Marco Rubio just the other day expressed his concerns that the long-term effectiveness of sanctions are in question if the US dollar loses global reserve status and the dollar dominance is waning. Right. So, um, they’re they’re fully aware of what is happening, >> right? Fully aware. Um, and while the yuan or so is not a tier one asset yet, gold is, maybe that’s one of the reasons gold has run up. It’s a that diversifier in that tier one >> tier. Um, so that makes sense. But coming back to that and I think it’s a good segue to talk about project. Um I I mentioned to you I’m keen on like understanding how that a that project was started, how it evolved, but then also how it was cut from the BIS. It was part of the innovator hub or innovation hub at at the BIS and now it’s been let’s say release released into the world meaning ties were cut at the BIS and the the project is stands on its own feet. So I’m really trying to understand like the system behind it. We’ve we’ve talked about this on our channel a number of times but more on the of a bricks from the bricks angle of course. So I’m curious what your take on project embridge is. Is it is it viable and should we be concerned about it or is that something we should uh be looking forward to? Well, being concerned about it, I mean certainly the banks will be concerned about it because uh a bankbased payment system from which they receive substantial compensation um will no longer be viable or could no longer be viable. And um of course it’s going to be opposed by people who like to use financial you like to use the dollar as a financial weapon and presumably that includes the US government. So um there’s a lot of vested interests here that are going to be threatened. Um from what I understand and again I’ve been gone from the BIS the for a long while the technology hub was set up after I left. Um but the BI the BIS I think quite rightly got into this because they recognized that the crossber payments in particular was really very inefficient and Embridge was just one of I don’t know half a dozen if not more of the projects that were set up to take a look at alternative ways of doing things. So it’s not as if um the BIS was sort of you know directly what’s the word focused solely on on embbridge. It was one of a number of different projects and um the BIS basically said that Austin Carson basically said when the BIS withdrew that it had really gotten to the stage where they proved that it was viable. I can’t remember the technical term that they used but it was viable. Uh they done some tests uh large sums of money which cleared almost instantaneously without any difficulties whatsoever. Um so the the the thing works. uh the question is whether people will be uh inclined to use it and uh the number of countries I think the number of them there were four or five originally it was very important I think that when the Saudis joined okay so now we’ve got whereas in the old days we always thought about the kind of deal was that uh the oil states would use the dollar as a reserve currency and as a sole means of payment uh and that the US in return would give them military protection um because the US needed the oil. But now we have a world in which the US is basically oil you know shale whatever um independent and uh the question arises of whether the US would in fact uh spring to their aid if they had problems and if that sort of is in doubt well then the other side of the bargain is also in doubt about uh so Saudi sort of entering into the embbridge thing I think was a was a big development um I can’t remember how many countries are now associated with it as observers 30 30 plus including the IMF and the um uh the World Bank um and I imagine the BIS is I imagine is still there as an observer I don’t know but the the next step in a way is if this starts to become um a real sort of competitor to the current way of doing things and it could do because like I say it’s instant virtually inst instantaneous. I see estimates that it costs 10% of what it costs to do things under the current set of circumstances. You see the attractions of doing this. You can pay in local currency. Um so you don’t have to go through the dollar. You don’t have to hold dollars and maybe see their value go down as the value of the US dollar goes down. See all sorts of advantages particularly for people in the south. Uh and another thing of course is that the the southern countries have sort of made the running on this. the emerging markets and it sort of helps to redress the balance a bit because you know when you think about post-war it’s basically the US at the top but all of the western industrial countries really basically running the system and in the interval of course these emerging markets have become much much more important in the economic side and the financial side and they want to have a say in the running of things uh quite rightly and um it’s sort of been denied to them when you start thinking about the you know the IMF leadership of the IMF and the World Bank and all that kind of stuff. So here’s a way to sort of assert their importance and there’s all sorts of reasons why because people would be interested in doing this and of course it would done under bricks opus would do something to to help the reputation on that front too but if you’re going to have a kind of world system like that world payment system and I’m not saying it will happen but it it looks to me as if there’s grounds for relief that over time it could become much more important then you’d want to have some kind of world governance. It seems to me I think the IMF has already started to you know put out feelers about you know shouldn’t we have a say in how this sh how this thing should be run and clearly one of the things that we top of the list was the payment system cannot be weaponized to suit the interests of any particular country. So that that’s going to be very interesting in terms of new new ways of doing things that threaten not just the financial but also the political status quo. That’s very interesting. >> Absolutely. I think the biggest challenge as you pointed out is really trying to keep it neutral and not weaponizing it and making it a geopolitical like >> farce perhaps almost right. Um so that that’s really important. Dr. White, I could chat with you for hours. There’s so much going on in the world, but maybe just to to sum up the conversation and give our audience a bit of like guidance, like what what do you expect or what should we be paying attention to over the next 6 to 12 months here that you think are probably the most influential or crucial that could shape markets here? Well, I think the inflation outlook, as I said before, I I think we’re heading sort of quietly into a new age of scarcity uh that could conceivably cause uh bond rates to go up. And if inflation is a byproduct of these intended new of these expected new developments, then the policy rates might start moving up as well. So inflation is certainly something to look at. um the long bond rates um are are clearly also very important. You know, whether the expectations are starting to come unanchored, I think that’s going to be very important to look forward to. Um I think those would be the two big things. The currency of course is is also very important. I’m I’m looking at Japan so you know particularly at the moment. But um there you do run into this problem of uh you know what’s the cleanest shirt in the laundry. >> So um >> but those would be the big big macro things that I’d be looking at. And of course um any signs of um malfunctioning in markets. I know a lot of people at the moment are concerned about the treasury market, US treasuries and the extent to which you’ve got uh you know this uh carry carry carry trade between the the the the spot in the future treasuries and what will you know zillions of dollars being involved in that and what might happen if it all starts to unravel. So there’s a lot of a lot of questions about short-term market functioning that I think people should look at. It’s not at all clear to me that everything will unfold smoothly as we might like. >> No, lots of challenges ahead and we haven’t even had a chance to talk about the new incoming Fed chair as well and how he might shake things up and why he was nominated in the first place. So, lots of uh turbulence on the horizon, I would say. Uh it’s like a pilot putting on the seat belt sign before we hit the turbulence because uh we we can see what’s coming, right? So absolutely doc Dr. White, it was a tremendous honor having you on. Is there is there a way our audience can >> So um is there a way our audience could follow they can see all the they can see >> Yeah, sure. I’ve got my own website and it’s simple enough. It’s williamwide oneword.ca. So, it’s a Canadian website because that’s where I’m from. >> Fantastic. Dr. White, thank you so much for coming on. We’ll have to have you back soon because we we have so many topics still to to to cover. We’ll we’ll have to do a part two at some point. So, really looking forward to that already. And everybody else, thank you so much for tuning in to Soar Financially. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. William White as much as I have. I’ve learned a lot. He’s a wealth of knowledge. He’s seen a lot and he he was part of a lot that has been discussed as well or is being discussed today. So really really important conversation. Um you should listen to it twice. I know I will do that again later today as well. So thanks so much for tuning in. Hit that like and subscribe button. We’ll be back with lots more on sore financially. Take care out there.

Pitch Summary:
Remitly is positioned as a leader in the digital payments industry with a strong growth trajectory, evidenced by its impressive 5-year CAGR in revenues, EBITDA, and free cash flow per share. The company benefits from new legislation that favors online transactions, potentially increasing its market share. Despite trading at a low EBITDA multiple, Remitly’s financial metrics, such as a high LTV/CAC ratio and strong customer satisfaction scores, indicate robust business fundamentals. The company plans to leverage its free cash flow for share buybacks, which could significantly enhance shareholder value given its current undervaluation. Remitly’s strategic focus on larger, more profitable customers and new product offerings further solidifies its growth prospects.

BSD Analysis:
Remitly’s market position is strengthened by its ability to capture a larger share of the total addressable market through strategic customer targeting and product expansion. The company’s financial health is underscored by its strong free cash flow conversion and substantial net cash position, allowing for aggressive share repurchases. This strategy could transform Remitly from a company experiencing dilution to one that enhances shareholder value through buybacks. The market’s frustration with past share dilution may be alleviated by the founder’s commitment to declining stock-based compensation and the authorization of a share buyback program. Remitly’s valuation, at a significant discount to its peers, presents a compelling investment opportunity, especially if the company achieves its projected earnings growth.

Pitch Summary:
Vodafone is undervalued by the market, trading at a depressed valuation of around 5x EBITDA. The market is overlooking Vodafone’s strategic partnership with AST Spacemobile, which has the potential to significantly enhance Vodafone’s financial performance. The Sat-co joint venture with AST Spacemobile will provide direct-to-device connectivity across Europe, eliminating coverage dead-spots without the need for expensive hardware. This venture is expected to drive revenue growth, reduce churn, and lead to operational cost savings, thereby boosting Vodafone’s free cash flow. The market has not yet priced in the potential financial contributions from Sat-co, presenting an opportunity for a re-rating of Vodafone’s stock.

BSD Analysis:
Vodafone’s partnership with AST Spacemobile positions it uniquely in the European telecommunications market, especially with the upcoming allocation of S-band spectrum in May 2027. The Sat-co JV’s ability to leverage existing spectrum and its potential to secure new spectrum allocations due to geopolitical considerations enhances its competitive advantage over rivals like Starlink. The European focus on self-reliance and the strategic importance of telecommunications infrastructure further bolster Vodafone’s prospects. As European defense budgets grow, the potential for Sat-co to secure defense contracts similar to ASTS in the US could provide additional revenue streams. If Vodafone can achieve even modest improvements in free cash flow conversion and earnings growth, the stock is poised for a significant re-rating, similar to the tobacco industry’s transformation with new smoke-free products.

Description:
Gold dropped. Silver crashed. Peter Schiff says this is just a correction inside a much bigger bull market. We break down why …

Transcript:
I mean, what are we not doing? Because we don’t have an unlimited amount of capital. And so, if we’re spending all this building out this AI infrastructure, what are we not doing? Where’s the money coming from? >> It is volatile out there. Gold, silver, moving hundreds of dollars within minutes without notice. They just drop like water. You see waterfall shorts left, right, and center. What is happening in the world of precious metals, but also what’s happening in the US economy? We’ve got a lot of data last week. jobs report, CPI or CPI as some of our guests like to refer to and we need to dig a little deeper. What is happening? Is the economy really doing well? 15% growth was advertised by the president of the United States. Howard Lutnik was a little more uh conservative. He said five 6% is possible, but we all know this is very difficult to achieve. So, I’ve invited Peter Schiff, founder of Shift Gold, Europe Pacific Asset Management, back to the program. Really looking forward to catching up with him. But before I switch over, hit that like and subscribe button. helps us out tremendously reach our goal of 100,000 subscribers before the end of this quarter. Let’s see if we can make it together. So, Peter, thank you so much for joining us again. It’s always great to see you. Happy President’s Day. >> Yeah, thanks a lot. Market holiday today, but happy to uh participate in your program. >> Yeah, really appreciate it. It’s fairly calm outside today, like no not not a lot of news. It’s fairly quiet on the mining side as well. It’s quite refreshing to be honest. uh given the backdrop that we’ve had over the last 10 maybe two 10 days 14 days here um help us maybe start high level like help us make sense of the volatility that we’re seeing in precious metals right now um what’s your general assessment >> well I mean you you can’t um look at that volatility without looking at what preceded it so we had a spectacular rise in in gold and silver rally really took place over a more extended period of time. Really, gold broke out in early 2024 and had a slow and steady rise uh to 4,000. Then it kind of had a very quick move from 4,000 to above 5,500. Silver really went nowhere as gold went from 2,000 to 4,000 and then finally moved from 3,000 to 120. And in fact the move from 80 to 120 was like a few days. Uh so I think once silver broke out above 50 that was both a psychological and a technical uh overhead resistance going all the way back to the Hunt brothers and 1980. So I think once that happened a lot of money came into silver came into gold and silver obviously got ahead of itself. The exchanges came in several rounds of uh you know margin hikes and I think some of the speculators got caught and there was you know a lot of volatility. People got forced out of positions. Uh a lot of uh weaker longs might have bailed out. you saw the media talking about a silver bubble uh which you know bubbles don’t form over a matter of days or weeks. It’s something that forms over a much longer period of time than that. Um but I think a lot of people uh may have been scared out of the market who recently got in. Maybe other people were motivated to take profits hearing all of the talk of a bubble and the bubbles popped and the market’s going to go down. But I think the volatility uh makes sense given the move that preceded it. I think it’s a huge breakout in silver. I think silver prices are headed substantially higher from here. Uh I I think a lot of this volatility will ultimately uh you know go away and I think we’ll see a far more orderly appreciation of silver. maybe something more similar to what was going on with gold up until uh the recent volatility and I think the bull market in gold is going to persist. Uh you know gold is only about 10% off its highs. So you know nothing like silver down 30 40% from its highs. So it’s just a normal correction in the a silver in the gold bull market. But I think what happened in silver is a very rare event, but it coincides with something that was also rare, which was this massive breakout in in in silver. Uh so I think, you know, I think it’s very bullish for the metals and even more so for the miners. I think the the precious metals mining companies are are even cheaper and uh Wall Street is still not woken up to that reality either. >> Absolutely. Yeah. this SIJ versus silver ratio, for example, has dropped to historic lows here. And we we’ll get to the miners later in the conversation here, Peter, because I’m just trying to emphasize like how healthy or unhealthy that correction is. And maybe just summarizing what you just said, it sounds like quite a normal move that we’re seeing in in the precious metals right now. Silver obviously more violent um than gold here. Silver crashed per definition. Gold >> Kai, I don’t know that I would say a normal move. I’m just saying that given the abnormal rally that we had and breaking out of such massive overhead resistance, it’s not to be unexpected. It’s not like, oh my god, look how much silver went down. Yes, but you can’t look at that in a vacuum. You have to look at how much it went up and you know, right before then. And even when you’re talking about, oh, silver crashed. Okay, but where did it crash from and where did it crash to? Because, you know, if it’s crashing into the $70 an ounce level, that’s not a crash, you know, other than for the people who happen to buy it at 120, which, you know, was only one day. The vast majority of my clients who have been buying silver from me for 20 years, I, you know, I started um selling my clients silver under $5 an ounce. So for my clients, $70, $80 silver doesn’t look like a crash. It looks like a really good price. >> Today’s sponsors, Stellar Gold, is sitting on three major Canadian projects. Tower and Colac are among the largest undeveloped gold sites in the country. Tower alone could be worth $2.5 billion after tax at $3,200 gold according to a recent study. And if prices go higher, so does its value. Colomax spends over a thousand square kilometers of greenstone and could be Canada’s next big gold camp. They also have Hollinger Tailings, a cleanup project that could deliver near-term cash flow. Across all projects, they’ve trilled over 16 million ounces of gold, which would cost over $2 billion to replicate today. And with a seasoned team and huge upside potential, Stellar Gold is one to watch. Visit stellarold.com to learn more. This message is forformational purposes only. It’s not investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment decisions. Now, let’s jump back into the conversation. AB: Absolutely. No, like we’re complaining at a very high level here, right? So, just try to put some context around it, of course. Um, Peters, like a lot of trading or a lot of selling has happened actually during US trading hours. Like, we we see gold and silver tick up during Asian trading hours. US opens and the prices close lower. Um, China is closed this week. What do you make of that? Do you expect lower prices and where do you see perhaps a floor um for gold and silver? >> Well, I think it makes sense because obviously gold is under accumulation in the east and the selling has been coming from the west. Uh and I think the the east has it right. I think you know China is correct that buying gold is the right thing to do and that the price is going to go higher. to the extent there are speculators in the US that don’t get this uh and that want to short gold and silver or who want to sell the gold and silver they have because they think it’s some kind of a bubble. I think they’ve got it wrong. And I I think the buyers have a lot more dollars that they need to convert into gold and silver than the speculators can short as far as their ability to short and sell gold and silver that they don’t own and have no ability to deliver. >> Absolutely. No, it may makes sense and uh we’ve seen that trend, you know, for for a number of months now. 15 months of Chinese central bank buying, for example, is a constant reminder. >> It’s not just Chinese central banks. There’s a lot of other central banks that are buying and there’s private demand that is growing, not just around the world, but you’re now starting to see some private demand in the US. So, it’s picking up all over the world. >> 100%. Yeah. People are worried. Uh the debt bubble we can talk about here later as well. Just the macro picture hasn’t changed at all for gold and silver, right? But um the question though is like how should serious investors approach this now? Is this a buy the dip opportunity? Should we wait for this to play out? How do you reframe this moving forward? It uh if if you’re new to the space, for example, because the recent price hike or explosion has has brought in a lot of eyeballs, how would you handle this now? >> Well, I mean, I think, you know, buying gold anywhere below or close to 5,000 I think still makes sense. I I don’t think there’s significant downside risk to me. Gold is acting around 5,000 the way it acted around 4,000, the way it acted around 3,000. uh but also buying gold at 5,000 you’re getting it 10% below its high. So that is a a decent correction. Does it mean it can’t go to 4,900 or 4,800 or 4750? No, it doesn’t mean that. But who cares, right? If you’re if you’re buying gold as a long-term store of value, it doesn’t matter if after you buy it, it gets a couple hundred an ounce cheaper. In fact, you could always buy more. Uh, as far as silver, expect more volatility. So, silver as we’re talking is just below 76. Yes, it could easily fall below 70 and so you’d be down close to 10% on paper if you bought some here. But again, I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t think silver’s going back down below 50. In fact, I don’t even think it’s going to get anywhere near 50. So, I think we’re not that far. maybe the upper 60s or you know low7s is maybe about as cheap as you can get it. But the other problem you have is that physical silver is getting harder to procure. So the premiums that people are paying now on silver coins and bars especially low denomination are higher. So even if silver goes down $10, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to buy it $10 cheaper if you actually want physical. So you’ve got two things working there. You’ve got, you know, the scarcity of the physical metal. Yeah. If you want to buy a futures contract, you may be able to buy it, but buying a futures contract is not the same as getting metal delivered to your door, you know, which is what we’re doing at Shift Gold. So I I just tell people just buy whatever we got while we have it in stock because I could tell by what’s happening in the market that we’re going to run out at some point. it’s going to be hard to get silver phys uh because I think there’s been a big disconnect between the paper market and and the real market and eventually that’s going to resolve itself with the futures moving higher. Uh but in in the short run, you know, the futures price could do whatever it’s going to do, but the physical market is limited by the actual supply of deliverable silver and the demand for that silver, which is growing, not just by investors, but by industry that needs silver. So if you if you’re, you know, making batteries and the batteries need silver, you can’t just buy a silver contract. You you you can’t put the contract into your battery. You got to actually have real silver delivered to you. So you have to buy it in a physical market. >> Is that though more a supply chain issue within the precious metal space or is that really a silver shortage? Like people use that word silver squeeze constantly and maybe misuse it as well because you have access and you have insights into what’s happening on the physical side in the supply chain. >> Yeah. Supply chain issue or really a squeeze? Well, it’s both because I mean a there’s a constraint on how much silver can come out of a mine. There’s, you know, there’s only so much the mines can produce. They just can’t turn on a new mine just because silver is higher in price. They just can’t say, “Oh, let’s let’s mine more silver.” Uh, most of these miners were already mining as much silver as they could uh at at at the older prices. but also has to do with the refiners. You know, if they run out of inventory that, you know, they can’t magically transfer bullion into into into coins and bars, you know, the raw silver. So, if all of a sudden there’s a big increase in demand by investors, they just don’t have the capacity to immediately supply it all. So, you get a backlog and you get delays. uh so you know then obviously people will start to pay more money for a more immediate delivery of of their metals. So all these things are happening. I mean I could tell you at shift gold business was very slow for the last several years. It just picked up a lot in the last month to the point that we’ve never been this busy. But to go from a very slow um you know environment to all of a sudden busy well you don’t have the the demand power. You don’t have the resources. You’re not used to it. All of a sudden there’s a big increase. Uh and and that’s not unique to my company. Obviously it’s happening all over the industry. So yeah, we’ve hired some more people. We’re ramping up um to deal with it. But you know that there there’s going to be problems throughout the entire distribution channel when all of a sudden there’s a lot more demand for for the metal. >> Absolutely. Yeah. As as you said, like you can’t ramp up and I hear the US mint is usually not the best producer, especially when it comes to the American Eagle. Um they’re lacking behind massively as well. So been hearing those rumors quite quite for quite a while now. Um Peter, you you you touched on the miners and we we need to talk about them. uh a lot big big opportunity here. Um they they have been lagging the precious metals uh for for a while caught up now the the precious metals have dropped. Like what’s the situation here for the mining companies? Is there still room to run and what’s the opportunity here? >> Yeah, I mean there’s a lot of room. Um Wall Street has pretty much been skeptical of the gold rally ever since 2000. So the whole time gold was going up, Wall Street was expecting it to go down. In fact, if you go back to early 2024 when gold was at 2,000, uh major banks that that that cover mining companies were putting seller recommendations on Pneumont and Bareric and the rationale was gold has peaked at 2000. there’s no upside. And so why own these miners when all that’s going to happen is the price of gold is going to go down? And and so these companies have never never really reassessed that that bad that bad conclusion. Uh and and so they’ve watched gold prices more than double uh since that that forecast, right? Um, and even though the gold stocks have, you know, let’s say they’ve tripled as gold went from 2,000 to 5,000, and that’s a little bit more than the increase in the price of gold. One would have expected a lot more than that given the magnitude that $5,000 gold has on their earnings. the your earnings don’t just triple when the price of gold triples. Your earnings move up by a much greater factor than that. You know, if your if your cost of mining gold is 1,500 and the price is 2,000, you’re making $500 an ounce. But if the cost goes to 5,000 and you’re still at 1,500, right? You’re making $3,500 an ounce. seven times the profits on on not not three times. So there should be a lot more leverage because these companies are inherently much more valuable today. But it’s not just that gold is at 5,000 today. It’s that it’s going to be much higher tomorrow. Wall Street still doesn’t get that gold prices are going to keep rising. Not only are gold prices not going to fall, they’re going to keep going up, which means the earnings that are already not being properly, you know, attributed to these companies and valued are going to go even higher in the future. So, I I think you still have a great opportunity to buy these companies. And in fact, some of the best opportunities are in the juniors, the real juniors that haven’t even moved as much as the senior stocks. and and and there, you know, the opportunities are incredible because I think a lot of these small companies are just going to get bought out by the big companies that have massive cash flow. Now, what are they going to do with all their money? I mean, they they could jack up their dividends a lot. They could buy back a bunch of their own stock or they could try to accumulate more reserves so they have more gold to mine. And the way the easiest way to do that is buy up smaller companies that have a lot of reserves. proven, but that don’t have the cash to develop them and just buy up those reserves and just, you know, put them on ice or, you know, you don’t even have to develop them now. Just hold on to them because you don’t have an infinite uh supply of gold. Uh so, you know, just keep them for the future because it’s they’re only the gold’s only going to get more valuable. The longer you wait to mine it, the more it’s going to be worth. So, some of these smaller companies may need to mine the gold now because they have obligations. But if the big companies buy them up, they don’t need to mine it. They’ll just throw it in there and it’ll just be valued as part of their reserves. They got more operating cash flow than they know what to do with right now. They they’ve never been making money like this. So, you know, we’ve got a lot of these small companies in my gold fund, the Europe Gold Fund. EPGIX is the the ticker or the no-loadad symbol for the fund that you can get at any discount broker. Uh and we’re we have uh separately managed accounts at Europe Pacific Asset Management that focus on the mining companies and we have other strategies. You know, just our dividend payer strategy for example, just owning foreign dividend payer stocks was up I think 62% last year. It’s up about 13% this year. So crushing the US stock market. But obviously the mining focus strategies have done even better than that. >> Uh but now I think it’s still a great time to get into my my fund because of the big position that we have about a third of the portfolio in these really small stocks uh that you know would be hard for any other fund to buy now in that kind of size uh given the type of liquidity. Uh but I think there’s some tremendous performance that that we’re going to get in the future based on this portfolio that people can take advantage of by buying into it now. >> Absolutely. Yeah. As as you said like gold price for example Q4 average gold price I think I got it right here it was a 4163 per ounce realized price in in Q4 and as we just discussed at Nausea is like we’re at close to $5,000. It’s almost $1,000 higher within six weeks. >> Yeah. And what people also don’t think about is the cost side of this because the costs have been a big problem for the mining companies until very recently. Oil is barely over $60 a barrel. That’s cheap, you know, in relationship to where it’s been in the past. I mean, oil’s been over a hundred when gold prices were a lot lower than they are right now. So, that’s the main cost in mining. I mean, you’ve got uh wages and then you’ve got energy. And energy is generally number one and maybe wages number two. And the wages are not up that much given, you know, where the dollar is right now. If you look at the Canadian dollar, the Australian dollar, some of these South American currencies, they’re still relatively low compared to where they’ve traded against the US dollar in the past. So the operating costs are low. And another thing that people don’t consider is that silver is a byproduct of mining gold. And almost all the gold mining companies mine some silver. They also may mine some platinum and other precious metals. And what the money they get from mining silver doesn’t show up as earnings. It just shows up as reducing their costs. So their cost to mine gold goes down if they get more for their silver. So if they’re selling their silver at 80 bucks and they used to sell it at 30 bucks, that’s a lot of money, you know, you know, so that lowers their cost. So you’re going to see not only the top line going up, right, but that the cost going down. So the margins are just exploding for these gold miners. >> 100%. and I’m here for it as well. So, absolutely, I can’t wait for that to happen and price price moves have already been fantastic in my portfolio. I can’t complain, right? Um pet Peter, you have a lot of confidence that gold will go higher. I think we need to work through that just a little bit. Explain to our audience who might not be following you as closely as others. Um what is driving gold higher right now? Where where where do you get the confidence that even from $5,000 we could be going higher? What what are you seeing out there that that makes you say that? I think it’s inflation ddollarization which is a function of a loss of confidence in the US in its ability to honestly repay its debts in the independence of the Federal Reserve in the Fed Fed’s commitment to uh maintain the dollar’s value or fight inflation. I think, you know, markets are coming to terms with the reality of, you know, $ 38 trillion national debt rising, you know, you know, in perpetuity by two, three, four, five trillion a year. Who knows? Uh, you’ve got Donald Trump wanting lower interest rates, putting pressure on the Fed to lower rates because we need lower rates because we can’t afford to pay the rates because we have so much debt. Uh Donald Trump’s main goal is to continue to inflate a bubble. He doesn’t want asset prices to go down. He wants the stock market to keep going up. He wants the real estate market to keep going up. The only way to do that is by sacrificing the value of the dollar. And that’s what they’re doing. And so if we’re sacrificing the value of the dollar, why does the world want to hold the dollars? The world doesn’t want to be sacrificed. Foreign central banks don’t want to hold a currency that’s going to depreciate as a reserve. So foreign central banks are moving from dollars to gold. Uh international investors are doing the same thing and you know Americans are going to be doing the same thing. It’s going to be a mass exodus out of US dollars into an alternative and gold is the most viable monetary alternative. I mean for banks it’s really the only alternative. uh you know, private citizens. Yeah, they could buy stocks, they could buy real estate, they could buy other things, but but gold and silver are going to be a big part of what investors buy when they want to get rid of their dollars and and that is going to continue. There’s no end in sight to the deficit spending. Uh the Republicans have no stomach uh to cut government spending. They refuse to do it. They may criticize deficit spending when the Democrats do it, but the minute they have control, they do the exact same thing. Look at the big beautiful bill that the president brags about signing. You know, they criticize all the spending under Biden and say that’s why we had inflation under Biden. Yet, when they had an opportunity to cut back on the Biden spending, they not only didn’t do that, they preserved all that extra spending and then added to it with extra spending of their own. And then they cut taxes so that we have less revenue than Biden had, but we have more spending. So, we’re going to have bigger deficits under under Trump than we had under Biden. and and and so the world can see this and it’s like all right well you know we gota we got to get out >> and you know plus we’ve weaponized the dollar both under Biden and Trump you know we use it you know to to bludgeon people with sanctions >> uh and you know the world doesn’t like this and now you know Trump is out there chastising the world criticizing the world you know we we’re entitled to low rates you guys you know and you you’re taking advantage of us you’re ripping us off. So, we’re going to put tariffs on everything. You know, we’re angering a lot of our allies and then we’re, you know, threatening to invade them. You know, Trump was talking about invading Greenland. He eventually backed down, but the fact that he even put that out there and suggested that it was something that we were considering. I mean, why the hell does the world want to subsidize that? If if we’ve gone from being the protector of the world to being an aggressor to saying we can take whatever we want if we think it’s in our interest to invade your country, we’re just going to invade it. Uh I don’t think that’s something the world wants to subsidize. And that’s what they do by by holding dollars. >> Absolutely. No. And uh maybe one thing I want to follow up on and drill down just a bit more is really the Supreme Court and the tariff situation here. Peter, I’m just just picking one of the many topics we could spend hours talking about, but um just pulled up poly market here and the Supreme Court rules in favor of Trump tariffs is only a 26% chance. Personally, like on this channel, we barely talked about a potential fallout of the Supreme Court ruling against the Trump tariffs. And I’m curious what your take is. What will it do to the markets and how do we prepare for it based on what you’re saying here? Well, you know, to the extent that the markets already expect the tariffs to be ruled unconstitutional, and they are. So, I mean, if the court rules correctly, they will get thrown out. I think the question is how will the administration respond? How much of the tariffs uh will he be able to continue anyway despite the ruling? Uh that’s hard to say. And will the court rule that the funds previously corrected collected need to be returned? Um, so that remains to be seen whether they’ll just say, “Look, you can’t impose these tariffs prospectively, but I don’t know if the court’s going to rule that everybody who paid a tariff is entitled to their money back.” Now, they should be, uh, but I don’t know if it’s just going to be confined to the party that sued and that party will get their their money back, uh, and that everybody else would have to file their own lawsuits to get their money back. I I I don’t know I don’t know how disruptive it would be on the US government to return all that money. >> Um but you know I think that to the extent that the court strikes down the tariffs and there is an economic problem that may have happened anyway even if the tariffs were upheld. It does give the Trump administration a convenient scapegoat because Donald Trump’s narrative was the tariffs were great, the tariffs were making us rich, we had a booming economy because of the tariffs. Now, all that is a lie, but that’s what Trump’s been saying. Now, if the Supreme Court eliminates the tariffs, which is actually a good thing, which actually would make the economy better, right? But let’s say the Supreme Court throws out the tariffs and then the economy crashes, which it would have crashed anyway. Now Trump could say, “You see, look, everything was great and look what the court did. The court ruined this great economy that I created.” So I I think politically it’s actually better for Trump if the Supreme Court, you know, overrules the tariffs because it gives him a scapegoat to blame bad stuff on. That would have happened anyway. >> Excellent point. I didn’t even look at it from that angle because I was wondering, okay, what happens? Excessive money printing if everything has to be paid back. inflation might make a return six months down the road, things like that. I was looking >> but that’s happening anyway. So, you know, at least, you know, because Trump is g Trump is going to run against at least in the midterms, the Republicans are going to run against the Fed and maybe they’ll run against the court. They’ll be able to say the Fed screwed it up uh by not cutting rates enough, by being too slow, and the court screwed it up by rejecting my great tariffs. You know, >> absolutely. Maybe la last question, Peter. We’re running out of time here, but uh Kevin Walsh, of course, was on nominated. The marketer was quite surprised uh to to see that name because he stands actually for something that doesn’t really align with Trump’s policies or what Trump’s asking for. He’s more hawkish. He wants to, you know, reduce the balance sheet of the Fed. What do you make of that nomination? And where where does it take us? >> Well, first of all, I don’t know why it was a surprise because he was always one of the front runners. It wasn’t like he was like a dark horse. I mean, he was at least like 20 30% probability, you know, and there was only like three or four, you know, top choices. So, and I don’t remember people questioning him when he was a top choice, saying, “Why is he at the top of the list? This guy is such a hawk.” Right? So, it it was only spun that way after he was nominated. And I think that was deliberate on the part of the Trump administration. I think they they gave out those talking points because that coincided with the raid on gold and silver. I mean, the big drop happened. Gold was down $500 on the day his uh announcement came out. And part of what was motivating the selling was that this was some kind of gamecher that he was a hawk now and he was going to start coming in, you know, guns ablazing, uh, hiking race, shrinking, you know, going back to quantitative tightening or some crazy stuff. And look, I think the the the plan of the administration is to frame this guy as if he’s some kind of hawk and independent of Trump so that when he does exactly what Trump wants and slashes interest rates, they’ll be able to say, “Well, it must be justified because here you’ve got this big hawk cutting rates, so it must be okay. It must be uh economically justified. It’s clearly not politically motivated. I didn’t I didn’t appoint one of my flunkies. I went I went and I got this totally independent guy. So, but I think that’s all, you know, a charade. I mean, there’s no way that Trump would appoint Walsh if he thought Walsh was going to be really tough uh uh and be this hawk because that would make him worse than Pal. And the reason he doesn’t like Pal is because Pal wasn’t easy enough. So he’s not going to appoint somebody that will be less easy or, you know, tight. He wants cheap money. He wants rates slashed. And if you listen to what Walsh is saying now, he’s saying we need lower rates. Now, one of the things that Walsh says, which is true, is that growth doesn’t cause inflation. It doesn’t. You know that. And neither does low unemployment. None of that stuff causes inflation. Inflation is caused by an increase in a supply of money and credit. And what generally brings that about is deficit spending. The more deficits we have, the more money the Fed has to create to cover the cost. Um and and so Trump is running massive deficit spending which is ultimately going to be monetized. The Fed is already doing that. And Trump is doing what he can to expand credit whether through it’s the GSC’s or the banks. And the credit expansion also fuels inflation because you have more money at chasing the whatever the supply of of of goods are. And in fact, if you look at the big beautiful bill, it is all demand stimulus. It’s no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security. None of that leads to increased investment or increased production. It just means that workers and social security recipients have more money to spend to buy stuff. They don’t produce anything more. They just spend more. So, it’s all going to be putting upward pressure on prices. But when you hear him going out and saying growth doesn’t cause inflation, people think, oh, so he’s outside the box because, you know, he doesn’t believe in the Phillips curve and all this nonsense, which is true. But he’s also trying to pretend that we’ve got this booming economy and we can still cut rates because we don’t have to worry about the growth causing inflation. We don’t. It’s not the growth that’s going to cause inflation. It’s the inflation. In fact, it’s the inflation that’s causing the growth because it’s not real growth. The US economy isn’t really growing, right? we just inflation can can look like growth and yes there is an overinvestment right now in AI almost all the GDP growth comes from this AI spend um but massive amounts of debt are being accumulated to pay for all this and we have no idea if the return on investment is going to be worth it I I don’t have any doubt that AI is going to be substantial in its ability to increase uh productivity over time. But who knows if the investments that are being made today uh are really necessary to to to bringing that about. I I don’t know. Um a lot of the stuff that they’re buying today may be obsolete in four or five years. >> Well, that capex cycle $660 billion is an insane number and uh it it’s tough to >> and nobody talks about like what are we not doing? Where’s all this money coming from? I mean, what are we not doing? Because we don’t have an unlimited amount of capital. And so, if we’re spending all this building out this AI infrastructure, what are we not doing? Where’s the money coming from? You know, we’ll find out. Like, because there’s obviously a lot of things where there’s been underinvestment to to to pay for all this. >> No, it’s all positive for gold. Maybe to summarize the conversation, Peter, and all the macro points that have driven gold higher have not disappeared. They’re still here. So, >> yeah, we know none of the it’s not like that we’re Yeah, we should be spending some of that money mining mining gold and silver, copper, stuff like that. We need more of these mines, you know, where >> I think it’s just a matter of time. >> We’re still wasting money. We’re still wasting money on crypto. We’re still coming up with, you know, meme coins and crap like that because the Trump administration still wants to make America the crypto capital of the world. and he and he wants us to be a Bitcoin superpower or whatever. You know, you know, when Bitcoin is down 50% and no end in sight to where it’s going, he’s still they’re trying to push more more money into this thing. >> Well, as long as Pokemon cards still sell for record prices like $13 million. I’m not sure if you’ve seen that today, but uh >> Oh, no. >> And uh I think Logan Paul, Jake Paul, one of the one of the Pauls sold his uh Pokemon card for a new record price of $13 million. That just tells you there’s too much money. who bought it from him. >> I have no idea. I don’t I don’t even care. I I just know that it’s too much money for something that is just like an NFT. >> Yeah. So, >> but you know, I mean, I guess I’d rather have a Pokemon card than a Bitcoin if if those were my two choices. >> You can hold it at least, right? So, >> well, I mean, in theory, I mean, I guess that particular card is rare. Not that all Pokemon cards. There’s lots of I mean my kid I’ve got I’ve got packages and packages of these Pokemon cards. So there’s there’s a huge supply of cards, but they do have limited edition cards, individual cards. I don’t know what makes them much different than the other cards cuz when you look at them to me, they all look the same, right? They’re not that much different. But to the collectors, you know, they’re willing to pay this crazy amount of money for, you know, a particular card that’s rare. The question is, for how much longer will people be willing to pay that much for a Pokemon card? I mean, how how long are the collectors that think these cards are worth so much, how long are they going to uh believe that >> or even have the money to sustain the prices? Because it doesn’t take much to collapse the whole market, you know? >> Yeah. Well, we’ve seen it with NFTs. They’re worthless now, right? They just disappeared like the the board ape or whatever it was just >> Well, most of those. Yeah. Most, in fact, Logan Paul lost a lot of money on some of his NFTts. He had some highprofile buys where he paid a lot of money and they’re worth next to nothing. So, you know, at least he’s making up for that on his Pokemon card. >> Well, you know, I’m not crying for the Pauls. You know, they’re making a ton of Especially Jake, you know, is making all these fights. He’s making so much money. They both live here in my my neighborhood in Puerto Rico. So, >> there you go. >> Right right right around the right around the block on the same street. Fantastic, Peter. Really appreciate your time as always. A fascinating conversation. Um, everything points north uh for for gold and silver here. So, really appreciate where do we send our audience to follow more your work if they don’t know by now, Peter? >> Well, you know, um, you know, my podcast I do regularly on Shift Radio and on my YouTube channels, both Peter Schiff and Shift Gold. Uh, so subscribe to those channels, follow me on X. I’m constantly uh posting my thoughts, especially debunking a lot of the false narratives out there uh perpetuated by by the Trump administration now, but but also by the Democrats. I mean, the Republicans think Democrats, you know, are are both lying to to to to Americans about pretty much everything. So, um, I try to get the truth out there, not only about economics, but about the markets, about, you know, where you should be investing your money. And for that, you know, you should work with me at Europe Pacific Asset Management, set up an account, you know, call, talk to our advisors about having a portfolio transferred over to for us to manage. Um, go to shift gold. We’ve got great prices on gold and silver, particularly silver. Now, when I look at a lot of my major competitors, we’re a lot cheaper now than we used to be because they’ve, you know, really jacked up their prices more than we have. Uh, and so, you know, you got to get some physical gold and silver. You could do that right now at at shift gold um.com. And if you’re a do-it-yourselfer, I’ve got five mutual funds that I manage from Europeific Asset Management. You can get information on all the funds, the prospectuses, the ticker symbols on the website, and you can buy them no load if you get the advisor class through Schwab or Fidelity or any of the big online uh discount brokers and just get my strategies uh into your portfolio, including the gold one I mentioned, uh EPGIX, and I mentioned the dividend payer strategy, that’s EPDIX, which invests in these foreign dividend paying stocks. I have an emerging market fund, got a foreign bond fund. I’ve got a lot of uh uh funds that are specifically designed to uh do well in the environment that we have right now. Dd dollarization, stagflation, foreign markets outperforming the US market, money moving out of US assets into foreign assets. You know, all of my portfolios are constructed to take advantage of of of this of this shift. And I think it’s still early. I think it’s got a long way to go the trend. >> Absolutely. I’m right there with you and we’ll enjoy it together, Peter. Can’t wait to see you again in person. Um really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for coming on Sore Financially. Always a pleasure and uh I’ll see you again soon. Um everybody else, thanks so much for tuning in. Tremendous conversation here with Peter Schiff. Always always a very a great entertainment, but also so valuable in terms of information that he shares with us. Hope you enjoyed this conversation. Hit that like and subscribe button. Helps us out tremendously. As I mentioned before, our goal is to reach 100,000 subscribers by the end of this quarter. Let’s see if we can make it happen with your support. So, thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll be back with lots more. Take care out there.

Pitch Summary:
Qoria Ltd was considered for investment due to its impressive growth metrics and management’s significant ownership stake. However, HD Capital Partners decided against investing, primarily due to concerns about the company’s cash flow and balance sheet. Despite reporting a positive EBITDA, the company was burning cash, with a negative free cash flow of approximately $20 million in FY25. Additionally, Qoria’s balance sheet showed a net debt of around $30 million, raising concerns about its financial stability, especially in the event of a revenue decline. The company’s valuation, at an EV/ARR multiple of 5x, did not offer sufficient upside to justify the risks.

BSD Analysis:
HD Capital Partners emphasizes downside risk in their investment strategy, prioritizing cash flow analysis over reported EBITDA. Qoria’s cash flow issues and indebted balance sheet posed significant risks, particularly given the company’s historical cash burn and fully drawn $50 million debt facility. The sensitivity analysis indicated that even a minor revenue decline could severely impact EBITDA and leverage ratios. Furthermore, peer analysis with Life360 highlighted discrepancies in capitalized development spend, suggesting that Qoria’s reported EBITDA might not fully reflect its operational costs. Despite potential upside, the risks associated with Qoria’s financial structure and market valuation led to a decision against investment.

Pitch Summary:
Global Testing Corporation Limited (AYN.SI) is a Singaporean nanocap company trading at low earnings multiples with a strong balance sheet. The company specializes in semiconductor testing services, primarily wafer sorting and final testing, with operations based in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Despite a flat revenue trend over recent years, AYN reported a significant revenue growth of 22% year-over-year in H1 2025, driven by increased orders from Taiwan and the US. The company maintains a robust balance sheet with substantial cash reserves and has been actively returning capital to shareholders through buybacks and capital reductions. However, concerns about customer concentration and the capital-intensive nature of the business, coupled with a lack of growth in revenue, weigh on the valuation. The business focuses on legacy chip designs, limiting its appeal in the high-growth semiconductor sector.

BSD Analysis:
Global Testing Corporation’s financial stability is underscored by its strong cash position, with $21.6 million in cash against $11.6 million in liabilities, providing a solid foundation for operations. The company’s strategic buybacks have reduced outstanding shares by approximately 5% since 2021, enhancing shareholder value. However, the high customer concentration, with the top three customers accounting for 68% of revenue, poses a significant risk. Additionally, the capital-intensive nature of semiconductor testing requires continuous investment in new equipment, which constrains cash flow despite healthy operating cash generation. The company’s focus on mature chip designs limits its growth potential in an industry increasingly driven by advancements in AI and other cutting-edge technologies. While the recent uptick in revenue is promising, the lack of diversification and growth prospects tempers enthusiasm.