Pitch Summary:
FILA, an Italian stationery and art supplies company, has a significant stake in its Indian subsidiary, DOMS Industries Limited, which it IPO’d in 2023. The DOMS stake is valued at 57% of FILA’s enterprise value, making FILA’s core operations appear undervalued. However, FILA’s history of uninspiring mergers and acquisitions, coupled with the overvaluation of DOMS shares, makes the investment less compelling. FILA’s remaining stake in DOMS is strategic, and the company is unlikely to monetize it soon.

BSD Analysis:
FILA’s valuation, when adjusted for its DOMS stake, suggests a significant discount on its core operations, trading at only 2.9x EBITDA and 4.2x EBIT. Despite this, the company’s track record in acquisitions raises concerns about future growth and value realization. The high valuation of DOMS shares, trading at 75x trailing earnings, poses a risk if FILA cannot capitalize on this valuation soon. The strategic nature of FILA’s DOMS stake, necessary for maintaining voting rights, further complicates potential monetization. Overall, FILA’s current valuation and strategic decisions do not present a compelling investment opportunity.

Pitch Summary:
Fortune REIT, backed by CK Assets, offers a high dividend yield and trades at a significant discount to NAV. However, the Hong Kong retail real estate market faces challenges, particularly due to competition from Shenzhen, where lower costs and better customer experiences attract consumers. Fortune’s malls, located mainly in the New Territories, are vulnerable to this trend, with footfall and spending significantly below pre-COVID levels. The government’s incentives for outbound consumption to Shenzhen further exacerbate these issues. Rent reductions and strategic shifts in tenant mix are necessary to remain competitive.

BSD Analysis:
The proximity of Fortune’s malls to Shenzhen, combined with the trend of Hong Kong residents traveling to Shenzhen for shopping and leisure, poses a significant risk to Fortune’s revenue. The REIT’s reliance on middle-class neighborhood malls, which are less competitive compared to Shenzhen’s offerings, necessitates rent cuts and potential reconfiguration of mall spaces to include more experiential tenants. Additionally, the strong USD and pegged HKD amplify the cost differential with Shenzhen, further pressuring Fortune’s competitiveness. While corporate governance practices have been reasonable, the macroeconomic headwinds and structural challenges in the retail sector make Fortune a less compelling investment compared to other options in the market.

Pitch Summary:
CK Asset Holdings, with a market cap of USD 14.37 billion, is a well-diversified conglomerate that has strategically pivoted away from China due to geopolitical tensions and market conditions. The company has a strong history of generating high ROIC from Hong Kong property development and has been redeploying capital into stable, recurring income streams such as utilities and defensive consumer staples. Despite the challenges in the Chinese real estate market, CK Asset’s diversified portfolio and conservative management approach provide a cushion against downturns. The company is trading at a significant discount, offering a 6% yield while investors wait for the market to recognize its value. The management’s focus on buybacks and dividends further enhances shareholder returns.

BSD Analysis:
CK Asset Holdings has been proactive in reducing its exposure to China, recognizing early on the less favorable business environment under the current Chinese administration. The company’s strategic shift towards international diversification, particularly in regulated utilities and infrastructure, has positioned it well for stable growth. Despite market skepticism about its European investments, CK Asset’s conservative financial management, with minimal leverage and a substantial cash reserve, provides flexibility to capitalize on distressed opportunities. The company’s recent acquisitions, although not without criticism, align with its strategy of ensuring stable cash flows. As Victor Li takes the helm, his capital allocation decisions will be crucial, but the company’s strong fundamentals and attractive valuation make it a compelling investment.

Pitch Summary:
Getbusy plc is a speculative investment with the potential for significant returns. The company’s focus on document management and productivity software positions it well for growth. Despite its speculative nature, the potential for a 2-4x return in three years is compelling. The company’s innovative solutions and market positioning support a bullish outlook. The investment thesis is based on the potential for substantial appreciation.

BSD Analysis:
Getbusy plc’s innovative approach to document management and productivity software is expected to drive growth. The company’s speculative nature is balanced by its potential for significant returns. The focus on niche software solutions provides a competitive advantage. The potential for a 2-4x return in three years highlights its growth potential. The company’s market positioning and innovative solutions make it a compelling speculative investment.

Description:
Mark Thornton sits down with Ben Mumme of “Living Your Greatness” for a wide-ranging, long-form conversation, starting with …

Transcript:
[music] Hello and welcome to another episode of the minor issues podcast. I’m Mark Thornton [music] at the Misesus Institute. This week’s episode is a long form interview by men Ben Mummy of the Living Your Greatness podcast. And in this uh episode uh it looks at a lot of things uh in my own personal journey. Uh but starting with the recent activity in the precious metals markets, why did things go up so high? Why did we have uh the recent crash um in the market and what I think about the current situation and things moving forward? Um we look at the macroeconomic uh economy, the macroeconomic situation. Uh but then um Ben takes me through my own personal journey and education um and in my own thoughts and and opinions really about what people can do in the present to deal with this macroeconomic uh situation. So, it’s a lot of fun and um Ben uh had me spend a great deal of time on my perspective on Austrian economics, my own journey um in Austrian economics as well as precious metals and um and what people um out there can learn and integrate it into their own situation, their own livelihoods, their own lives and um you know what kind of strengths does that bring to each and every person moving forward. Um so we do a lot of uh background on myself uh my opinions and uh about the current situation including um and most importantly really what the power elites have constructed for American society in particular um and how that’s having such a negative effect on so many people and what we can do about it really and uh and also why I’m so optimistic about the world um in the even in the current context but certainly moving uh forward over time. And so, uh, it really is a, um, it’s a very long form interview, uh, but it gets to, uh, uh, things that might not otherwise come up, um, in terms of my own, uh, personal perspective and opinions, um, and, uh, what I’ve been learning along the way, including fairly recently, um, in terms of how important it is for each and every one of us uh to self-dagnose uh the world economy, their current uh personal economy. Um I even talk about my recent uh runin with cancer um and how that um can really benefit everybody’s um outlook and how they can uh better manage their own situation uh moving forward. So, uh, this is a long interview, so uh, don’t just click right away. Um, and, uh, but because you’re going to need some time to digest all this, but I think it’s very interesting and I appreciate Ben’s questions especially, um, and his podcast in general. So, thanks for watching this episode of the Minor Issues Podcast on Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute. Welcome back everyone to Living Your Greatness. My name is Ben Mummy and I’m excited today to have Dr. Mark Thordan onto the podcast. So Mark, welcome to the show. So good to see you here today. >> Hey Ben, it’s great to be on your show. Thank you for the invitation. >> Super great to have you here. I actually said to you earlier on that I’ve been following your work probably the last four years and here we are now. Here we are chatting. It’s crazy how gold is up more than 65% than a year ago. And even silver, you know, it’s up 165%. Last week, there was a big thing that happened with silver and spooped a lot of people out, a lot of investors, especially who are new. I just want to give you the floor. If you could just share what are you seeing right now in the financial markets and even specifically gold and silver. you know, that was kind of a reckoning last week. It was also historic. So, I’d love to get your opinion and to hear you talk. >> Yeah, Ben, it was absolutely historic and it was absolutely shocking despite the fact that myself and I think most people were at least starting to think in terms of a big correction in the market just because it had gone up gone up literally straight up into the air on the charts. And you know whenever you see that uh you need to be a little more cautious uh and a little more pessimistic and a little more careful uh about investing under those conditions. Uh and that’s true of any market really. Uh any market that goes straight up um has a tendency to move right back down a certain amount. uh we’re still trading above in gold and silver above where the we started the year. So, as horrific as a move and as shocking a move that we saw and almost predictable really that, you know, something negative was going to happen eventually. Even if we were thinking about a straight line between where we are right now and where we think we’re going to be, you know, sometime in the future, you can look at any chart of any asset and it’s moving a lot around like crazy, generally speaking. Um, and so, you know, I was expecting it initially. I thought, well, this this is to be expected. And of course, a lot of people had stoploss orders in on electronic silver and gold and, you know, the miners and things like that. So, once the market starts to go down, it hits all those stop-loss orders and it sort of caves in on itself. Now, of course, uh I’ve been interviewed already about this situation, and the first thing I noted was the fact that President Trump uh appointed Kevin Walsh to be the new chairman of the Federal Reserve uh on Thursday, late Thursday. And if you look at the charts, you know, you see uh the price of gold skyrocketing and you see the price of gold plum pl plum uh excuse me, the price of gold skyrocketing and the value of the dollar plummeting. uh as we looked at you know Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we get the appointment right then right after the dollar index has hit uh a new low we really had broken technical support. So if you were in Washington or New York, uh it would have set off little alarm bells that hey, the dollar is crashing and you know Kevin Walsh gets appointed and the dollar rises and of course gold uh sinks. So I think that’s the primary driver of those events. But of course other people more expert in the technicalities of these markets uh have indicated that clearly there seems to be an orchestrated sort of demolition um of this market. Um I learned from David Jarrett for example that um you know normally we would have expected some circuit breakers to go off in the futures market. you know, if it goes down 10% in an hour, they’re supposed to have a halt of trading. But for whatever reason, there’s a technicality that the high frequency traders were able uh to engineer so as to avoid uh that shock absorber, that halt in trading. So everything uh looks kind of suspicious and I used to be not very suspicious of things like especially markets. Uh but I become increasingly more suspicious over time, especially when you reach sort of into the realms of this world that the power elite uh control and you know they control Wall Street, they control Washington DC. uh the small investor and the average American voter has very little say over their domains. And you know, the evidence is starting uh to look like that they were um you know, active in markets to stabilize the dollar and to, you know, put the herd on gold prices and especially of course silver prices which fell much more than gold. And so, you know, I think it was those combination of those factors of the setup in the market, the fact that it had gone so high and we had all these stop-loss orders in and then the futures market uh was set and primed uh to be able to, you know, sell futures uh contract short, push the market down, uh break those stop-loss orders and to not set off uh the trading halts. And as a result, you know, it threw the market into a tizzy, at least in the short run. And uh pullbacks of that nature can cause a short to intermediary uh intermediate chaos into the marketplace. So, we don’t know really where the market’s going to go right now in the short run. it seems to be uh trying to stabilize itself under uh the prices that existed at the end of 2025. Right. No, I appreciate that explanation and even this shock that has just happened especially with silver. You know, Michael Oliver has been actually saying, “Hey, there might be a jiggle at some point.” He recently was interviewed and actually was honest about yeah I think this is that jiggle that pullback which we’ll probably see at least for the next month in terms of the short term. So something I want to kind of ask you Mark was you spoke about control right and I know people that are watching this we have some retail investors we have some more maybe traders but sometimes people are worried about is the market manipulated so I would love to get your opinion on do you feel that investors when they are looking at the gold and silver space do you feel it will always be manipulated and controlled >> no um I don’t I think that, you know, when silver went through $50 an ounce, I said that, you know, we’re going to be experiencing growing pains um in these markets. And we’ve seen every aspect of those markets from, you know, mom and pop coin shops, from the refiners, from the distributors, from the mints, um government mints, private mints, the wholesale market, the big-time refiners. Um everybody, um is experiencing growing pains. Everybody is dealing with a whole new set of problems. And I think um you know so there’s a little bit of chaos right now because of that uh and there’s going to be longerterm adjustments um that are going to be coming about exactly because of that and I think we’re going to be in a better place uh in the future going forward as new refining capacity uh is established and as new futures and commodity markets notably in China and other places around the world where these other markets are going to grow in size and importance relative to the London market and the American market. Uh, and so I think um the shenanigans that the power players um have been up to for years and that they’ve been using to manipulate the market just recently because, you know, for whatever reason they they’ve sold too much short um or whatever the reason is that they’re doing it. Um, I think that that’s going to cause them to lose market share and to lose market influence and they’re already under a lot more suspicion and they’re a lot more under the microscope um of this gr this grand emerging army of silver stackers in the United States and around the world. you know, everybody’s realizing that, hey, you know, this this isn’t some denatured sort of independent objective marketplace at the wholesale level. So, everybody’s much more on guard right now. And in other markets like in China, um you know, they’re they’re looking to establish their independence. Um and so moving forward, I think that the influence that our power elites have over the London market and the um and the wholesale markets and the futures markets in the United States is going to be greatly diminished. And so I’m not really worried about that, especially from the perspective of uh your typical man on the street silver stacker who has really an objective function of accumulating small amounts of silver consistently over time. It’s not really worried about price um or, you know, or things of that nature. you’re just following a plan, executing a plan, sticking with a plan. Uh I I feel like that has been vindicated um for sure. And I think that that is the the sort of the game plan um to even to work through these much more difficult and much more turbulent times. People ask me, you know, what should we do? How should we do it? And I just say stick with the plan. >> So then let’s hear more about that plan. It sounds like you were saying being consistent, knowing the fundamentals, being educated, but right now Mark, if I was, let’s say you’re a nephew and I was reaching out to you and I was like, “Hey Mark, I’m new to the space. I’ve been educating myself. I’ve now bought in a small trench of silver and I also own a little bit of gold, but you know, I’m kind of new to this.” What would you advise them if you could go deeper more into this plan? >> Well, you know, I think the silver stacking plan is to purchase a regular on a regular basis amount an amount of silver that a certain number of dollars can buy. And so you’re exchanging your government fiat currency for actual real substantive money that’s your property. And uh you know you have to have a budget, personal budget and you have to establish a schedule so that you can either buy silver at a local coin shop on a weekly basis maybe um or make a online purchase, you know, if you don’t have a local coin shop on a monthly basis where you can get where you can make your purchase without paying, you know, the shipping and handling charge. At least that’s my thinking. Um, and you know, you just stick with that plan. Uh, the price of silver, the purchasing power of silver has risen and you’re exchanging, you’re getting out of fiat currency as one form of you saving for the future. And uh and so that smaller amount of silver still has the same amount of purchasing power uh as it did the last month that you paid, you know, that you exchanged those number of uh dollars um currency units. And and so you’re you’re purchasing the same amount even though it’s a a smaller weight of silver. And so you don’t want to necessarily have to think about it. You don’t want to necessarily have to worry about it. You’re, you know, you just have to stick with the plan, you know, making sure you have disposable income um with your paycheck to make those purchases on your schedule. and uh you know and then you don’t have to really worry about what might happen you know years from now in terms of hyperinflation um and you’re protected even in the shorter run if you run into some personal difficulties um with your job or your home or whatever you know you have an additional form of savings that is not the currency units but it’s silver and I think the great thing about saving being, you know, making silver a big part of your personal savings is that it is tax-free until you exchange it. Even then, you might be able to get around the taxes. Um, so and and plus there’s transactions cost in terms of using your silver to make purchases or to pay bills. And so I’ve always found from a very long time ago that I was very reluctant to ever sell any of my silver and that I would always try to make do with my currency holdings of dollar bills uh to pay my bills and to get through things and and so you know that stack of silver builds up over time. You don’t think about it. You don’t waste time thinking about it or worrying about it. it’s in a safe spot. You know, you’ve got your plan, you execute your plan. Um, and that’s the way savings should be. Now, of course, the government has made savings for regular people almost impossible because it inflates the value of the currency away and then it taxes the interest uh that you might earn at a bank. And then of course the Fed has been keeping interest rates at, you know, very low levels uh for years and years now. And so they’ve made saving for your future, improving your future incredibly difficult. And I hold that against the Fed. I hold that against our government, our politicians, even the voters that they’re willing to put up with that because really the American dream is firmly embedded in this concept of savings, savings in the bank, you know, savings in in your household, um those kind of things so that you raise your standard of living over time. That’s what we want. We want people independent. We don’t want people, you know, if they get a bad bill or, you know, a medical condition that all of a sudden they, you know, they’re they’re paycheck to paycheck and they don’t have any savings. Uh that destroys individuals independence. And so silver stacking is one way of overcoming that adverse uh those adverse policies that their government is imposing on each and every one of us. And so, you know, I think it’s um it’s a legitimate um thing to consider and to include in your own budgetary plans that you know people make um if they want to build for a better future. And of course to see the extent of what government policy has done to people. I mean, my god, we’ve got people now with, you know, huge mortgages and huge student debts, huge credit card debts. Uh we’ve got corporations with, you know, huge amounts of debt and of course the government itself with huge amounts of debt. and uh you know and now you know the stories in the news are about you know where people you know make Door Dash purchases on installment plans you know so they’ve completely warped the way Americans used to be which were just like a lot of people in other countries India and China and the Netherlands and you know other countries where they didn’t have this uh persistence uh you know, people save and Americans used to save. We used to save more than 12% of our disposable income um and not have, you know, that’s above and beyond any net debt. Uh and really the only form of debt that um Americans used to have uh was their home mortgage. And uh you know the credit cards uh they’ve been around for a few decades now, but that’s a relatively uh that’s not you know that was uh a relatively new phenomenon. I mean in the 1970s people most people did not have credit cards. So, um, but now, of course, you know, everybody has multiple credit cards and they have thousands of dollars, uh, on balances and I get, you know, credit card applications for my cats. you know, I’m not sure how it how that’s worked out, but I I get um applications or I did I actually haven’t I haven’t seen many credit card applications in the mail in recent months, but um you know, it’s they’ve turned society upside down and made us more dependent and less independent, right? So, I would love you to expand a little bit more on why, you know, credit cards, this concern that you just spoke about is such a big deal in today’s age. Well, you know, in in today’s age, you know, we do use um cards and accounts to make payments for virtually everything. Um so, it’s not that I’m against the idea of using credit cards to make payments or debit cards um or even, you know, the use of credit cards to temporarily borrow money. Uh but every smart financial person that I know uh they will tell you that they if they do use credit cards, they always pay off their balances 100% every month. Um, you know, that’s just um a general rule of thumb that I’ve found with people who are stable. Maybe not lavishly uh successful and rich, but people who are stable and uh can afford to buy what they want and live within their means. Um all of those things. Uh but when I was a kid, yeah, people did not have credit cards. Credit cards were a relatively new thing. Um the [clears throat] market discouraged people from using credit cards and of course the interest um on credit card loans. You know, you’re making teeny loans that are unsecured. You know, a mortgage is a secured loan. It’s a huge loan. There’s not much paperwork in the sense that it’s just, you know, one transaction. And so the interest rate on home mortgages is relatively low because it’s secured collateralized with your house whereas credit cards are not. And so the credit card companies, you know, if somebody doesn’t pay their bills, uh, you know, they may lose that money and they have to take allowances for that. And as a result, the risk of credit card lending by those companies and those banks carries a much much higher interest rate on them. So it’s unsecured um lending. It involves lots of transactions costs and uh and typically it’s people with uh lower credit scores that are using them the most. And so the the interest rate on those things is exorbitant and uh of course it’s not there’s no tax advantages like there is with a home mortgage. So again another rule of thumb that I found with smart stable people is that yes they do have a mortgage. That’s the last thing they try to pay off uh because the rates are lower and it has some tax advantages uh built into it. So, um there are really two different um cases of credit. Uh and secured credit is just at a much lower interest rate. Yeah. No, I hear you. I appreciate that answer because it’s also just habits, right? Financial habits. If you want to have a war chest that you want to keep growing, you don’t want these habits to compound in like a negative way, right? You’d rather it be going in a positive way. and you would rather than if you’re saving your money than learning how you can invest your money. So, we spoke a little bit about silver. I would love to hear your opinion on both gold and silver of why you owe both of them and why you think it’s so important that more people need to understand the fundamentals that you were alluding to before, but I don’t think you fully went into. >> Yeah. Well, you know, gold and silver are money and the paper notes that the government issues that’s currency. Uh it’s unbacked by anything real or tangible where gold and silver are real tangible commodities that have a very high demand for them for for a variety of reasons. And gold and silver are property. They’re your property. if you own them, they’re your property. Whereas, you know, fiat dollars issued by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, those are not properties. are a financial instrument and uh there’s no backing to those things and they can be the supply of them can be expanded to infinity um at the any anytime the government officials and politicians um wish to do so. And gold and silver have a many thousands of years um as used as commodities and almost the same amount of time as used as a medium of exchange or as a form of money. Money is a medium of exchange and you know and so it was something that was determined or set in the marketplace and governments didn’t really get involved at all until much later. And then of course they realized uh that you know that’s one thing that most governments in fact all governments have wanted to control. They’ve wanted to have some control over um gold and silver. They took over the private minting and the private mining um of these things. Initially they started making their own coins. you know, they realized it it, you know, it was such a great opportunity for them to extract advantages uh from the economy if they could somehow in a form of alchemy, you know, create more money, whether that’s shaving the coins or clipping the coins or converting the coins into paper. uh you know they realized that um early on but it was something that was discovered in the marketplace and basically I’ve done a study of the history of gold in particular but gold and silver more generally and you know um as a matter of fact the French word for money aren is the French word for silver you know so it it’s got that kind of history going back to the early days of linguistics and languages. So, it’s embedded in human civilization, not in some government uh decree. But the great thing and probably why the marketplace chose these uh metals in in the early metal ages of early human history was that they maintained um a very stable purchasing power of all other things in the economy. So you know right now gold and silver are highly erratic but that’s only relative to the paper currency. If we go back to times when gold and silver were the actual money they had a very very stable purchasing power and that’s why the marketplace ended up picking them. So uh for example gold and silver have always had industrial uses. Now, of course, it’s much more complicated. Gold, silver, and platinum have medical uses. Uh they’re used in medical technology and medical devices and electronics. And you know, gold is really too expensive nowadays. So, it’s not involved in a lot of the things that could be involved with like electronics and stereo equipment and you know, all sorts of things. It’s just too expensive. That’s why you see this big emphasis on silver in electronics and artificial intelligence and computers and AI and you know also alternative energies uh solar panels, windmills, all sorts of things. So it’s got a lot of practical uses as a commodity but it also has uh demand as money. And so it’s got multi- reasons why people demand it. And they also have multiple sources of supply. Uh there are many mines out there that can be opened and closed and expanded and contracted. Uh there’s ways to recycle these metals. Uh there’s ways to take um uh substitute away from industrial uses into monetary uses. So it’s a multiaceted market and they the various uses interact with one another so that the metals are put to their most highly useful purposes and you know that means all kinds of micro adjustments are going on uh constantly in a natural money market using gold and silver and that’s why they had tremendously stable purchasing ing power over hundreds of years really. And um and so that’s what makes gold and silver great. It’s not that they’re shiny or it’s not that they’re pretty. Um it’s that they really impact and interact with society and individuals on so many different levels. And it’s really the marketplace that orchestrates all of these interactions um so that we get a very stable unit of money but also we can um deploy a lot of gold and silver to its most highly valued uses. And also we put a lot of effort and resources into recycling these metals especially when they’re highly highly valued. Um, you know, we go out of our way uh to find alternative ways of substituting out of silver and out of gold uh so that the those elements can be redeployed in other industries or as money. So, it’s a very flexible natural marketplace, right? I really appreciate that explanation. And you know, we talked about your nephew and what about if you had a niece who was like, “Hey, I get this. I look at all the fundamentals. I see that gold and silver are real monetary metals, you know, they’re not a US dollar that is almost like cash or that cash is trash, you know, or even toilet paper as Robert Kiyosaki always says. Maybe a little exaggerated, but also true. But what if they come up to you and they’re like, “Yeah, but Mark, you know what? There’s only one thing I’m concerned about. In 1933, gold was confiscated by the government. So, that could happen again. So, I’d love to get your opinion on what if someone is holding back, not because of all the fundamentals are so bullish or strong, but if they’re concerned about that, what would you say to them? Well, I think most people are jumping in rather than holding out. But, you know, I understand there’s a lot of concerns. I don’t think younger people really maybe have never really been told about Roosevelt’s confiscation of gold. Um, and you know that’s a possibility, but I don’t think the go the government has created such a monster of of economic and financial problem that they’re not going to really be able to go around and get people at the uh, you know, the tip of a bayonet or a gun to get people to turn in their gold and silver. And I think really that they would be very reluctant uh to do that because they’re in such a state of being discredited. Political leadership in the United States is widely mistrusted. Uh most Americans who trust have any trust left in a polit a politician or a political party only do so because they’re so afraid of the other party. uh but in general they they don’t like what’s going on in especially in national politics and they have a very very low level of trust and I think right now uh the level of trust uh on the part of Americans in government in our particular form of national government and the power elites that control it and I think it does seem more obvious today that the power elites control our elected officials whereas I think when I was a kid we didn’t there was not really much thought um in those terms and and and Washington DC did behave um a little differently but I think that there’s you know a lot of um scams a lot of one-sidedness in American politics there’s not a lot of bipartisanship. Um, you know, we have these scandals that are reoccurring. I think the Ebstein case is something that I haven’t followed um you know directly and in any kind of detail way but it’s it really has infuriated uh a lot of Americans that our politicians won’t do anything when it seems obvious that a lot of bad things uh happened and the politicians and the courts are not really following up on what is a huge amount of evidence and there are other things you know people being um you know shot by the government officials uh Charlie Kirk being murdered uh President Trump being shot at you know there’s a lot of things that uh just aren’t right and um and I think most Americans let’s say a a very large and increasing number of Americans ans uh don’t trust uh the people at the top and I think that’s a good thing because nothing good comes from the top down. Everything good in human society comes from the bottom up. And that, you know, that’s an age-old lesson that things that come from bottom up are tend to be, you know, good things or great things. And, you know, things that are, you know, edicts from up on high. and things from the top down are inherently seen as problematic and where you know people’s individual situations are taken to account of and so I I think that that you know that the government risks um you know furthering their the disrespect that people have of them if they even suggested that or you know it would be very similar except in much larger numbers numbers if they started taxing people’s uh retirement accounts, which I have a feeling that’s going to eventually happen. And you know, people are going to be in an uproar. And you know, that these are um supposed to be, you know, once a benefit is given, people assume that, you know, it’s their property uh that they paid their taxes and now they’re being taxed again. That’s going to be, you know, a very unsettling attitude. And the more people oppose government, the better government acts. So if we’re if we sit around on our hands and we don’t do anything, we don’t put up a fuss, um you know, government officials will continue to act more irresponsibly and the political elites will act much more disrespectful to the average citizen. Whereas if there’s opposition where there’s self-education and people are aware of what’s going on or what they should know, what they should be allowed to know and they’re not being told. Um, you know, I think that’s a problem for the elites. And so, you know, this is not a one, you know, one thing or another. There’s a margin involved where, you know, the more we distrust, the more we hold public officials accountable for, the more we know about what they’re doing, the less they can get away with. So then let’s go there. If we cannot trust them with a T here, let’s go with what should people be more educated about? We spoke a lot about gold and silver, but I would love to hear all the hard truths that you want to talk about right now. Wow. Well, I mean, you know, my business is teaching economics and economics is fundamental for society in general. I mean uh what Austrian economics does is it brings a uh you know some people call it common sense but it’s really um a hard established doctrine set of doctrines based on economic theory which is using the logic of human action. And once you start to understand and appreciate what the Austrian school has produced and how relevant it is for all aspects of society, uh then you have a tool. So it’s not just you working now. You have a tool for understanding the world and politics and current events and history. Very important. And of course, we address all of those things on our web page. We have articles on history. We have articles on politics and political science. Um, you know, current events and, uh, economic policies. And it all starts with, you know, the great thing about Misesus is he wrote an entire treatise on economics of human action at its most basic level. Murray Rothbart also uh improved and extended that. And so we have the tools. And so here at the Mises Institute, we’re we’re not in the business of telling people you need to support the free market. Uh you need to be opposed to the government. We’re here to teach why the free market works, how does it work, and why does go government action in the economy, why does it always fail, why does it always produce a lots of negative results? Why doesn’t it ever resolve issues? They tend to compound economic problems. So, you know, that’s kind of what I do and what we do and what, you know, Misesus and Rothbart and others have developed these tools, the hammer and the saw and the screwdriver for how uh to work through and to understand things. And and I think that’s really important because there are a lot of people out there, in fact, I think it’s probably the majority who think the free market’s a pretty good thing and who think that, you know, government intervention in the economy is really problematic. But we don’t, a lot of us don’t know why that’s the case. And once we know why that’s the case, then you know the socialists who say you know we need a basic income or we need minimum wage or you know housing is unaffordable so we need to build government housing or have rent control. You know well the average person isn’t going to know well what’s wrong with that? you know, that sounds like maybe something I should support that. But if you understand economics, you’ll realize that that doesn’t solve the problem. And it makes the problem worse over time. And you know it also you know economics shows that an economy where private savings is invested in the economy creating capital in businesses better tools for making goods and services that you know the economic pie expands and wage rates go up. So, you know, those are some of the basics that we really try to hit home on so that we have a much more uh educated and people who can deal with uh this huge opposition in society that is you know advocates intervention in the economy and nowadays advocates socialism of the economy. I want to continue on this path of Austrian economics. I’ve spoke a little bit about it on the show, but definitely not enough, which is why I want to go deeper with you. There are some greats or the giants in the space, you’ve spoken about some of them. I always believe it doesn’t matter what you do, whether it’s sports, whether it’s finance, whether it’s economics, when you study the best of the best, you learn a lot. So I would love to give you the mic again here to talk about who are some of the greats and what are the biggest lessons that you’ve learned from them that you think more people need to know about. Well, the Austrian school has long tradition. It goes back to Carl Manger and his first book um the principles of economics in 1871. But the the actual tradition without that name Austrian goes back a lot longer than that into the 15th century. Uh the person I do my research on his name is Richard Kantion who wrote a manuscript in 1730 right after the Mississippi bubble where he laid out economic theory for the first time. So the school goes way back in time and we’ve really solved a lot of the theoretical problems that ancient thinkers or Adam Smith, you know, points that Adam Smith didn’t get. Um, and nowadays the school has greatly expanded. I mean in addition to Mises and Rothbart, I mean another giant is Friedrich von Hayek or FA Hayek. As a matter of fact, we’re giving away a free book of Hayek’s greatest hits articles to anybody who who writes us and signs up and wants a copy. You can get the physical copy, but you can also download the electronic or ebook, you know, PDF versions as well. It’s his greatest hits. and he talks about economics, he talks about socialism, he talks about choice and currency which is uh the inspiration the for the founders of Bitcoin in cryptocurrency. Um he also talks about why the worst people get to the top in government. Um so it’s it’s really a great little collection. It’s a great starting point, but you can just go to mises.org og and you know whether you’re interested in uh sports or finance or history um uh international relations really any topic uh we deal with um you know with articles and lectures and videos and conferences which are recorded and available um you know so many different avenues. So your interests you can find a common bond with Austrian economics where one of us or most of us like I’ve done a lot of work about the war on drugs you know and uh and my work is cited as is one of the important contributions to the economics of the war on drugs because it explains why prohibition of drugs lead to harder, more potent, more dangerous drugs. And I wrote that in the 1980s. And you know, now it’s more important than ever because of things like fentanyl, you know, and so we’re out there addressing issues um of the common man on the street. And that’s why we, you know, have this aversion to mo the modern political elites that seem to want to remake society in their image. And so, and we’ve got a lot of great um economists here on staff. Joe Serno is really um an amazing economist. He’s our vice president of academics here at the Misesus Institute. He’s the editor of our academic journal. We have the jour the quarterly journal of Austrian economics and we also have the journal of libertarian studies too. So we do academic work and academic conferences. Um yeah and nowadays there’s Austrian economists around the world. When I went to graduate school, there were almost no um Austrian economists who were still working and working at a PhD granting university. And fortunately, I think Lou Rockwell came around just in the nick of time and um you know started the institute and it’s become kind of the bedrock uh for reestablishing the Austrian school. So there’s a lot of um Austrian economist in Spain and throughout Europe, especially Poland. You’ll notice that Poland, you know, they seem to be a little smarter than the rest of the Europeans and they’re the ones that are adding to their gold and silver, you know, reserves. Um, and uh, you know, and then there’s Austrian economists really around the world. uh Javier Malay in Argentina, you know, was was a mainstream economist who converted to the Austrian school and became president of Argentina because the people down there had been suffering severely from government uh and unions uh union oppression really and fascism and interventionism um for decades and decades and they finally threw up their hands. Well, You know, things are not perfect in Argentina, but they’ve made a lot of progress in Argentina. You know, it’s a political process, so it’s going to be imperfect, but they’ve definitely turned things around in the right direction. I have, you know, high hopes or at least great wishes that all of that continues. uh and we have you know students and professors coming from you know uh various countries from around the world uh including Japan and China, India uh many of the Eastern European countries in Europe um you know South America and uh so it’s a it’s a movement that is spreading so It it may still be the smallest compared to mainstream economics, but it is the oldest and I think it’s the fastest growing and I think we have the youngest demographic. You know, we have the youngest group of faculty relative to the mainstream and we have lots of young uh supporters out there uh who’ve come to our conferences and who are on Twitter and in other social media, you know, making um a statement. And of course in the precious metal uh arena, you know, there’s a lot of advocates and proponents of Austrian economics because it’s we’re advocating for a return to real money and away from, you know, paper money. So these are people in in the precious metals, even if it’s their business, you know, and they’re making money by the fact that government is inflating the money supply and creating a demand for inflation. hedges. They still would rather have uh a free market economy with a free market monetary system without the uh Federal Reserve. So, I think that speaks very loudly um for what Austrian economics can teach us all. When did you first go down that rabbit hole of studying economics in general before even going to Austrian economics? Well, uh, I was a coin collector as a as a young child and, um, I was exposed to the fact that my relatives had all put away the silver coinage, you know, in their businesses, uh, when they took silver out of coins. And I had a couple of silver dollars, uh, excuse me, um, silver certificates, the paper dollars that said silver certificates. And I told my father one day, I said, “I’m going down to the bank and I’m going to turn these silver certificates in for silver coins.” And my father said, “No, they won’t do that anymore. They’ll just give you a new dollar bill.” And so I felt like I was I I’d been totally scammed by my government. And you know, I’ve been that’s stuck with me really almost my entire life. Um, now not constantly. You know, I went to through high school and into college. Wasn’t really thinking about that, but I did become an economics major. Um and uh it was um at um uh the Libertarian Party had had gotten I’d noticed the Libertarian Party and through that I had become aware of the Austrian school in Mises and Hayek. Um, and so I’d studied that a little bit on my own and I went to an Institute for Humane Studies conference where I met a professor who taught at Auburn University. And so when it came time to graduate from college, of course, it was probably the American economy was in the worst shape ever. Uh in the early 1980s, interest rates were 20%, un um unemployment was 10%. Uh the inflation rate was over 10%. There were no jobs. So I went to graduate school and I ended up choosing to go to Auburn University because I had met this one Austrian professor, Roger Garrison. And uh so I came to Alabama, you know, and people thought this could well people already thought I was crazy. Uh but when I said I was moving to Alabama, they really thought I was crazy, but it’s turned out great uh in the sense that Lou Rockwell founded the Mises Institute the same year and moved it to Auburn University the next year. And I’ve been fortunate to be affiliated with the Misesus Institute in one form or another uh for a very very long time. And you know, we’ve seen uh the Austrian school and the Austrian movement, the libertarian movement grow from virtually nothing uh into into becoming, you know, an important consideration and something that the power elites really want to squash, which I think you could see very vividly uh in the most recent Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention where, you know, somehow or another the Libertarian Party ended up with without really any kind of national candidate to speak of um mysteriously and and so it’s been a heck of a ride and um but I think you know that fundamental notion that the we’ve allowed the government to be put in charge of money um and it reic on that promise uh in 1971 and you know in 1971 where Nixon took us off of the gold standard supposedly on a temporary basis of course it’s been more than 50 years now it’s you know there’s no looking back really and then of course those times were not good the 1970s the economy was not good. The business cycle was rampant. Inflation was rampant. Unemployment was rampant. It was the decade of stagflation. Um it was a very difficult economic decade for a lot of people, most people um in the American economy. So it really stuck with me. And um when I found Austrian economics, I really started to get some answers beyond that basic notion about gold and the value of money where gold kept the value of money stable. And without gold, everything became erratic and everything became less stable. And a lot of the institutions and a lot of the behaviors um that existed when we were on the gold standard have sort of been cut loose from their moorings and and of course we see that uh to a large extent today in the United States. We had a a a summer research fellow here for a couple of summers, uh Jeffrey Daggner who completed his dissertation work here and which was on the economics of inflation and the family. And what Jeff did was he demonstrated theoretically and empirically how inflation uh has undermined the American family. And uh it’s a very powerful argument, set of arguments. Uh it was published recently as a book. And so we’re, you know, we’re not just concerned with the stock market. We’re not just concerned with economic growth. We’re concerned really and increasingly so in the bedrock foundations of human society. And I think that’s reflected in what Austrian economists have addressed over time and what the institute has been trying to uh promote um and to reinvigorate uh within well not within academia but in academia you know Austrian economics is is is not does not get along well with mainstream economics. they, you know, they don’t uh like what we have to say and they would rather that we go away and hide and not uh make our points of view known. They they’ll they’re much more willing to put up with, you know, the crackpots and cranks on the left, so to speak. Uh the modern monetary theorists and the the outright socialist and Marxist. Um but you know Austrian economics uh has to be ignored and has to be suppressed uh from the mainstream point of view because we do have a point of view with theory to back it that shows that their recommendations and their analysis are faulty and that their recommendations really uh don’t solve problems and end up making these problems s bigger over time rather than causing some kind of resolution to problems. >> Why do you think mainstream media doesn’t like Austrian economics? >> Well, mainstream media is kind of in bed with uh the power elites. you know, they’re they’re clearly um you know, controlled by you know, the the mainstream media is controlled by the power elites. I mean, you know, they Amazon owns the Washington Post and you know, this corporation owns CBS News. you know, all the networks, all the major newspapers um are controlled uh by much larger corporations um in the United States and those corporations are controlled by the power uh the power elites and you know so in the in the mainstream media you know you can’t really talk they really can’t talk openly and honestly about politics. They can’t talk openly and honestly allow free speech with respect to vaccines and COVID. uh you know there’s no there’s no critical discussion of the pharmaceutical industry um or the medical establishment or the Federal Reserve >> or the big banks or you know there’s no critical analysis of even you know the federal budget you know and so the main the mainstream media because they’re in bed with the power elites and actually owned by the power elites. All of these issues are simply not discussed in any kind of open competitive way in the mainstream media. And you know, anybody who’s aware of, you know, the media outside of the mainstream realizes, you know, if you go back and watch uh the mainstream news and the mainstream media, um you know, it’s it’s a singular almost a singular voice, you know, and that there’s very little disagreement uh even between the political parties, you You know, there’s just a few issues, a few individual departmental budgets that are contested, but the vast majority of it is all accepted by the major political parties and the major corporations who benefit uh from the system. And the, you know, and the power elites, they all they all benefit. They all profit from an approach that’s referred to as kicking the can down the road. You know, that’s the policy that they prefer. Uh they don’t want to solve any of the problems because all the money that government is throwing at these problems is where they’re getting a lot of their profits from. So, you know, quite naturally, um, you know, that the the mainstream media is not really uh an arena, a competitive arena where issues are fully vetted and fully debated. And why, you know, such a huge portion of the active and intelligent uh American population is going to the realm of podcasts. uh to get their news um to get their information uh to be educated about issues and events. Uh because so much, you know, that those people in particular realize that, you know, they could spend a whole year listening to the mainstream media about various contested issues and they’re not going to really find out the truth or even come anywhere close to the truth or even a fair and balanced presentation um of the issues. It’s just not there. And so that’s why people are going hand over fist in incredible numbers to uh the podcast arena where things are competitive, things are open. Um things are um there’s a lot of different podcasts um in every different area and a lot of general interest podcast uh with their own demographic audiences. And so there’s no way to control uh those groups unless you’re explicitly taking funding from, you know, pharmaceutical ads, let’s say. you know, there there’s no way that any aspect of the power elites can really control that marketplace at this point in time, you know, and but you know, that’s always something we’ve got to be concerned about is that they do want to control everything. you know, they will reach down and if given the opportunity, they certainly have the resources that they will attempt to control every source of information. I really appreciate you speaking your truth about that because it’s not always comfortable and you know, it shows that you’re someone that you choose to think for yourself and you choose to think critically and I really admire that about you. I think it’s also important for anyone that’s tuning in to realize that we need more openness. We need more openness. You don’t need to even if we’re on a different side here, we need to hear opinions. We need to have more conversation. How’s the hard talks actually because that’s where real progress gets made forward rather than avoid and keep picking the can. Mark, something I I can’t help but ask you is if you were to take a step back, you know, from your financial title or your economic title or just all titles aside, who is Mark? Well, that’s a good question. Um, you know, I’m a I’m a I’m a very mildmannered person. I wouldn’t even a couple of years ago I wouldn’t even be uh speaking as openly and negatively against the power elites but I’ve become I don’t know if the word is disgruntled but you know I’ve been preparing myself uh for this battle for a very long time and I got to tell you I couldn’t be more optimistic about how this is all going to work out in the end. But it really is going to take um a lot of people stepping forth and understanding the problems that we face and be willing to speak up uh to their friends and neighbors about how they feel. you know, not in the comfort of the voting booth, but you know, we believe that ideas matter. And I I’m just um you know somebody who loves ideas um especially about the free society because everything else in my life that I love um about life, my family and my friends and art and science >> and sports and baseball. Um, you know, I I feel like I want to do my part to protect uh the best of what human society can do and has done. And I think the the Austrian school’s belief in the importance of ideology and an understanding a liberal understanding of society, you know, that um brought it in uh to human slavery just a few hundred years ago and started standing up for women’s rights just a few hundred years ago. That was something that happened near where I grew up. Um, Senica Falls, New York, the sort of the birthplace of the women’s right movement in the United States was just 10 minutes down the road from where I was born and grew up. But the liberals of Europe actually started um working in this direction long before anything like this happened in the United States. So I’m very proud that this intellectual tradition that I’ve been fortunate enough to be educated in and to contribute little bits and pieces to um you know has done so much to contribute to the the flourishing of human society and the individual human spirit and has seen being, you know, this flowering of, you know, great fiction and great art and uh sports and, you know, rights and um you know, all the magnificent things that the free market society um has helped brought about. Um, and so I see it as a, you know, my work is to go in and do what I can to see, you know, how I can best help protect what’s left um of those institutions and hopefully and and I am very hopeful uh that we can really restore uh free markets because if we look around the world, if we look at this in the long term, And we look at in global terms uh you know more and more of the world is actually a market-based economy uh you know poverty is falling the standards of living are rising um income distribution is getting more equal I mean there’s nothing inherently necessary or great about equality but you know if we look at the whole globe the distribution of income and wealth is actually becoming more equal as the world becomes more market oriented. So I do take that longer term view and I don’t let you know short-term losses and short-term distortions uh day-to-day events discourage me because I think we are winning and I think we will win. I want to build off of that optimism. You have a lot of I think it’s beyond hope. I think you have a lot of desire to share your knowledge because when people have knowledge, they can’t get it stolen from them. They can’t get taxed. And I think knowledge is just super powerful. It also builds competency which then builds our confidence right in. So something I want to kind of ask you here is right now if you think about each person that you’re trying to educate right that ripple effect what is it that you’re trying to do as your end goal here? Well, um, at a in a very general level, I want people to think for themselves. And I wanted I wanted them to think and this is maybe just a re a recent realization on my part in terms of the last three or four years that it’s really important for people to be to self-dagnose to self diagnose their own problems and to self diagnose the problems in society that they see around them. Economics helps with a lot of that. Obviously, we can’t start from scratch on any of this stuff. Um, you know, inflation that took us took economists 500 years to figure out what it was. So, you know, we have to rely on competency and expertise uh to a certain extent. But still once you self diagnose something like inflation and you realize the what’s causing it and what its effects are um you know you can therefore integrate that into the rest of your activities. Um, I recently had um just this past week I had a surgery to remove a precancerous skin cancer uh from my temple. And you know, it’s something we all know a little bit about and you know, my doctor didn’t see it. Um, in the examination, uh, my dermatologist didn’t see it, but I knew there was something wrong. I sort of self diagnosed myself and I alerted them to take a second look at this thing in particular. And you know obviously I don’t know anything about ter dermatology but I you know you learn you can learn a few things on the cheap about any including cancer um and I self diagnose that so I think you know various forms of self diagnosis with a little bit of expertise which you can get pretty cheaply I mean you can get to you can learn a lot about economics by going to Mises org. Um, and you can pick up, you know, a lot about your health, uh, from the medical establishment and the medical anti-establishment. Um, and I’m not, you know, recommending wholesale uh, self diagnosis and treatment here, okay? I mean, I went to my doctor. I went to the dermatologist, you know, I made a realization and I asked for assistance from the professionals. Um but I think we do have to think about things in terms of self diagnosing our problems, our individual problems. Uh be objective. Uh learn about things and then of course our economic problems whether they’re individual or where they’re they’re social. I mean the government has run up $ 38 trillion in national debt. you should know the ABCs of what that implies for your future. And uh it’s not really that hard uh to come to grasp with that, but you need to know that so you’re not caught flatfooted and that you can make some initial steps in the direction of preparing yourself uh for buying, you know, whatever the problem is. You can buy a fire extinguisher, right, to put out a fire. And that’s what, you know, silver stacking is all about for the problems of inflation and hyperinflation and the difficulty of savings in America. It’s one little thing, you know, that many many people have found is a practical solution to multiple problems of government in the economy. Um so these are it’s not rocket science. Um and you can’t be uh you have to be objective about these things as well. So um but it’s thinking for yourself basically. I mean that that’s that’s what it all really boils down to is thinking for yourself coming to grips with what you don’t know. I mean that’s the biggest issue is you know what don’t I know? What do I have to guess at? What am I really unfamiliar with? And if it’s important, find out. If this was your last interview today, what would be one last thing that you’d want to share with everyone? Whether it’s something you’re concerned about or a life lesson, anything. Anything. Well, you know, a lot of what the things that we’ve talked about today, I’ve been thinking about for a very long time. And at various points in time in my life, I’ve been very discouraged, especially when things turn sour. Uh the government goes in the wrong direction. Um you know, that sort of es and flows over time. It seems to have gotten to a very bad point in time. Gold and silver are kind of like the alarm bells in the economy. They’re kind of like the canary in the coal mine. If the canary, they used to put canaries in coal mines and as a signal that if the canary died meant that the air was too impure and that it would eventually, you know, people would pass out and die. So it that’s what gold and silver are in today’s economy. They’re like an alarm bell. Um, and so we’re at a very important juncture. But I think the thing that I’ve learned over time in many many different aspects and ways and from historical lessons that I’ve seen in this country and in others is that the human spirit um has got to be considered not the underdog but the favorite in this battle. government is, you know, it has the advantage of just hanging on uh and tolerated at certain points in time until it gets the upper hand and government has the upper hand right now. But I I have the feeling that we can overcome this, we can um solve these problems, we can get these problems behind us. We might even get to the sort of a philosoph philosophical millstone of where we don’t need traditional government at all. >> That government has become really the central problem of human economic and social development. And you know, as this battle rages on over the next several years, more and more people are going to see that point and and hopefully we can get to that point that we were headed towards just a couple of hundred years ago. And uh maybe we can get back on that path where we’re moving directly uh towards a society with less government uh in our lives. I hear you, Mark. Well, Mark, I just want to take this last little bit of time, you know, first time meeting you virtually and I’ve enjoyed this conversation a lot. So, I would love to take this last little bit of time to really thank you for being here. Thank you also too for being so consistent. It’s been like so many years, at least 60 years that you’ve been in this space. So, I just want to drink this last time to just Yeah. Thank you for being here today and sharing your knowledge. Thank you, Ben. It’s been great being on your program and I really respect the program that you’ve designed and are carrying out there for people.

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Description:
George Noble, CIO of Noble Capital Advisors, lays out his big theme for 2026: rotation. George argues that the debasement trade …

Transcript:
If you think about gold relative to inflation, gold relative to money supply, gold relative to GDP, etc., etc., etc., it’s easy to come up with numbers like 6,000, 8,000, [music] 10,000. So, what I’m trying to So, I’m not giving you a particular number, but what I am trying to tell you is it’s higher. That’s my point. Uh, and meaningfully higher. And if we get to a Banana Republic Vimar type scenario, all bets are off. But you don’t have to believe in that to want to own gold miners is my point. George Noble, CIO of Noble Capital Advisors, also the former um assistant to Peter Lynch and also someone who ran the number one mutual fund in the country at the time, which was the Fidelity Overseas Fund, a former guest of the show. Welcome back. Great to have you again, George. I really enjoyed our conversation from was well almost over a year ago, nine months ago at this point. I don’t know, a long time ago at this point. um spring of 2025. Great to see you. Really appreciate you taking the time, George. >> Thanks for having me. Thanks for putting up with me. >> This is going to be fun. Uh last time it was fun, too. And you made some preient calls, which I will get into. But George, you watched the show, you listened to the show. Um it’s been a while since we had you on. Feel like gosh, a lot has transpired in that time. So, since it’s been a while, can we just start big picture? Can you set the stage for us? Uh set the table. What is the big picture macro view for you today? Where do you see things headed? What’s been on your radar of late? Um your assessment of the economy globally, domestically. We can throw markets in there. Um let’s take all the time you need to set the table when it comes to that big picture macro view. >> Thanks Julia. So much has been made of the debase so-called debasement trade of late and that’s really the narrative that I’m running with. um you know there there is a sometimes the macro forces aren’t that significant but other times they are and this is one of those times that they are um the whole basis for they very kindly reminded me of the call we got lucky last time about calling for it to buy gold and silver and precious metals I think that’s still very much on the cards essentially um if you look at um past you look at what’s going on right now you see a lot of move different moving prices you see gold going up crypto going down. The dollar’s been weak. Emerging markets are doing well. Uh commodities are on fire and AI trades now losing losing ground. And there’s a lot going on. They may seem disperate, but actually they’re all connected in a way. And it’s it’s the it’s the influence of the macro um settling out over the entire investment landscape. you if you go back you know and essentially this debasement trade all has to do with I think that the bill is coming for the um reckless policies that we’ve had both fiscal and monetary ever since Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971 um we’ve just been spending more and more running running bigger and bigger deficits and you keep doing it until you can’t uh and I think we’re kind of getting to that place or at least we can do it but the market’s starting to vote with its feet um and so this is the macro overview that’s informing my opinion. I’m both a bottomup guy, macro guy, chart guy. I try to try to synthes synthesize a coherent view putting all those pieces together. But you know, if you think like think back to past cycles, I mean 1998 it all when we had the Asian contagion um and you know the whole long-term capital uh crisis that all started seemingly with a little incident in Thailand where the Thai bot blew up. Okay. But that really had to do that was just a manifestation of the giant carry trade coming unstuck. Um and then and then we know what happened thereafter. If you look at uh 2008 the great financial crisis that all started from uh cracks and fissures from the an obscure part of the uh housing finance market where that US housing market blew up and we all know what happened after that. So I think what’s happening now is we’re devaluing um u um uh paper money. Um we’ve made all kinds of promises. Many of your guests have abley spoken about this but you know it’s unsustainable and I think the market’s starting to sniff that out. Um you know you look at the increasing uh uh debt that we’re accumulating and by the way Julia I’m not I mean you’ve had some other guests on who are much more expert at economics than I am even though I did study the disable science at Yale. Um, I consider myself more of a stock guy, but you know, there’s a pretty good correlation between uh debt and uh interest rates. And um you know, if you look I I read this the other day. Um you know, many people were saying, well, 200 26 you’re going to have lower deficits than in 25. Not true. I read an IMF paper a couple weeks ago. I think they’re calling for deficits to GDP of 7.9% this year. That’s up from like six something last year. So deficit’s getting worse. Um, and it’s pretty clear that, you know, they’re going to have to just print more money to finance this whole thing. Raising taxes isn’t really a tenable um a tenable option. They’re spending money like drunken sailors. We talked about this last time, but you know, you’d almost think that modern monetary theory is okay. It’s like, hey, Julia, what are you worried about? We’re running this huge deficit. Nobody cares. Like, look, mom, no hands. So, my view is, and I, you know, I think Ed Edardi coined the phrase the bond market vigilantes. I think they’re going to keep doing this until the bond market cracks. Uh, at a minimum, I think rates are coming down. So, they may want to cut rates, which I, you know, there’s been a lot of talk about a couple rate cuts in 26. I really don’t know. But if they do, I suspect it’s going to blow up on them. It’s going to backfire. I.e. long-term yields, bond yields are going to go up. The curve will steepen. So, for me, um, I don’t see a recession. Um, I think inflation is sticky. Um, if anyone believes the official inflation numbers, I got a bridge to sell you, but I think inflation is sticky and probably heading up. Also ties into my oil price outlook. I think oil prices are headed up. Um, you know, consider the inflation numbers that we’ve seen are all against the backdrop of a well- behaved oil price. So, um, I think bond yields are uncooperative. I think they’re going to have to print more money to um to to fund all these promises. I mean, Julia, think about this for a second. Imagine, imagine you had income of $5 billion and you were spending $7 billion. You, Julia Lar Ro, okay? You had 5 billion in income, 7 billion in in in um in spending. It’s actually 7.5 billion. And you owe the bank 38 billion. And then you have some offbalance sheets obligations of, I don’t know, 125 billion. And you go to the bank, you say, “Let me some money. I want to borrow money for 10 years. Like with inflation where it is 3-ish% 2 3% lending you money at 4.3%. Are you crazy? So I think bond yields are just way too low. U I it wouldn’t surprise me if you see yields north of 5% um or more. Um and so I think I think as I look at markets overall, I’m kind of going all over the place here. I think uh 26 is going to see a lot of volatility. It’s going to be very different from what we’ve seen previously. And as I think I shared with you before we started, my big theme for 2026 is uh rotation. Rotation within markets. In other words, don’t look at the indices, look beneath the surface of what’s going on. And why is that going on? That those are the really the key things. Don’t just worship at the altar of price. >> Yeah. I want to get into the um the theme of rotation, but just let’s stay on the macro bit. Um because I think it’s also really important to understand like the backdrop and probably the regime in which you’re operating in because that probably informs too like how do you want to be allocated when you’re looking under the surface of the opportunities. So what I was hearing from you was the bill’s coming due the math eventually is not going to work out and you want to be in places where there’s stores of value. Correct. >> Is that fair to say? >> Correct. >> Mhm. Okay. So Ian just add to that please if I may. I’m told I like to interrupt people. Sorry about that. >> No, go for it. >> My mind just keeps going at such a frengatic pace. Um, you know, all the money kind of came to the US the last decade or so. US assets well outperformed the rest of the world. And look, US exceptionalism and and by the way, it wasn’t random. US profit growths were staggeringly good compared to the rest of the world. So, you know, relative talk about equities now, relative um price follows relative earnings. So, it was justified. But um we got to the point now where um there’s there’s a story has been emerging in other in other areas now. So like for instance Europe was more abundant for many years. I don’t want to get into politics. Let’s talk about the effect of politics. The fact that Europe’s now had to mobilize now and is spending tons fiscal stimulus particularly for defense spending. So all of a sudden there’s a fiscal pulse in Europe. They were in a fiscal stray jacket previously. Okay. So you look at bon yields u okay they’re soaring. All right, European bank stocks have been through the roof. They basically trade lock step with European bond yields. You look at what’s going on in China. All right. Uh China, you know, the economyy’s not been so great. Um and they’ve been very um uh tentative about about monetary stimulus, but it looks like they’re take they’re taking the gloves off on that. Now, the Chinese market, the Chinese market handily outperformed the US market. This is mindboggling. It’s not Some people say, “Oh, China.” Okay, China handily lapped the US market in 25. It even beat the US market in 24. So I expect China, the Chinese stock market and historically haven’t been a fan of Chinese equities. I think that’s going to outperform the the US uh again in uh in in in 26. So what I’m saying coming back to the macro picture, it’s not just that, you know, we have increasing deficits and we need the foreigners to put more and more money in. it’s that there’s a fiscal story abroad now in some places, a stimulus story abroad, a growth story abroad. And also, let’s not forget, we haven’t exactly been treating foreigners particularly well uh to try to encourage them to put more money in the US. So, so I I I think I think I think US long rates are flat to up from here. >> Is part of it like the rotation out of US dollarbased assets as well? >> Yes. Yes. Um, you know, the dollar I I’m not where I don’t know where we are year to date exactly, but um I think we’re down slightly. Last year we’re down 9%. Um, you know, the yen’s anybody’s guess. But but the real thing, you know, even more than I mean, I expect the euro will probably go up against the dollar, but that’s not the point. I think the real bigger overarching point is I think all fiat currency, all paper currency is going is going down against real assets, going down against gold going. Okay, that’s the key thing. So, we can get into debate, oh well, you know, George, what do you think of the euro or what do you think of uh the yen or this that whatever. It’s like the race to zero. The history of paper currencies is they all wind up going the wrong way. And I think the market’s gotten wise to this now. And so that’s why you look it’s it’s not just individuals but more importantly central banks foreign central banks have been accumulating gold. Um and one thing just on participation it’s it’s really remarkable. You look at we’ll come to gold and silver later but this rally with the exception of the last couple months where you know US retail investors adopted SLV and GLD as meme stocks which gave me a little bit of a concern. This the bulk of this rally has not been accounted for by American investors. As a matter of fact, if you look at holdings of uh ETFs, uh precious ETFs from American investors, they’re lower than they were like a number of years ago. So, I think there’s a lot more to go in this rally. Um I think going back to the question, yeah, do I see the dollar lower? Yeah, I do. But rather than just going and shorting the dollar, I think they’re better ways to play the lower dollar. That’s what I’m trying to get trying to get to. M and then like you know earlier you mentioned like the US like the long bond for example like or that we could see rates where do you see you said north of five like or you see a five handle >> yeah what we 425 or some somewhere thereabouts >> what would be the implications of that just help me understand if you saw that kind of level I don’t know if that’s if that is if that’s the level where you see things headed but what tease that out a bit like what are the implications >> it’s a great question uh Um, I know you’ve had my good friend Melody Hopster on the show. I’m a huge fan of Melody’s and she and I have similar views about housing. I think housing is dead. >> Many of the housing bulls expect or long bond yields to uh come down, mortgage rates to come down. Um, I don’t think it’s going to happen. I mean you had you had you had mortgage you had yields come down somewhat because spreads narrowed but in the overall scheme of things um going back to the question I think if if the long bond is flat to up from here think about what that means for mortgage rates not not happening and so I think the housing market is likely to remain uh more abundant uh and I would stay away from housing stocks as an example um and you think people I know you understand this but many people when they when you talk about rates there’s a short rate the long rate I mean nobody borrows individuals don’t borrow at at the short end of the curve all right or if they do it’s at a much it’s at a much higher number and actually the Fed doesn’t even control uh the Fed has no control over the long end all right and the Fed >> because they cutting it backed up right >> yeah exactly okay you know I we haven’t seen that in you know quite a while so I think it’s beyond their control I really do uh And you know, to your question, what’s the implication? I think I think if the long if the long end of the curve, if long rates start going up for $50 in double jeopardy, joke, what’s a question I’ll answer myself, that ain’t good for equity valuations. Uh, and you know, I also all lied to that. We got to look at credit spreads. Credit spreads have been incredibly tight, extremely well behaved. So for those that have been looking for a recession, not happening. Not happening. Um and so you know you’ve got if anything uh as my friend Louis Govikavka always refers to more likely to look at a inflationary boom. In other words economy doing okay. All right but with flat to up prices. You see so many price increases all over the place right now. And so the idea that you know a 10-year money should be at 4.2% or the short rate at 3 and a half or whatever it is. I mean to me it’s just nuts. But that’s not really the basis of my of my bearishness. I’ll put it to you another way too. Here’s a better way of thinking about it. So, it’s one thing to look at the coupon, the yield that you’re making on a 10-year piece of paper, but as I think we spoke last time, the bond price, well, it went up, it went down, I don’t know, it’s probably flat from where we were last time we’re on on together, that’s measured in American pesos, US dollars. If you look at in a different unit of account, like units of gold, it’s been crashing. In other words, you know, as Alan Greenspan famously once said, um, they were questioning, this goes back 20 some odd years ago, I think it was like 1998 or something. Um, you know, what can you can you guarantee us that social security payments and, uh, will still be made and also social benefits? And he said, “Yeah, we’re not going to run out of money. I I guarantee you that. But what I can’t guarantee is what the value of that money is going to be.” So you can sit there with your bond that’s worth a hundred and you’re getting your coupon of four and a quarter, but why would you hold that piece of paper? I mean, put it another way. Okay, I was at a conference last fall. I really played around with the audience and I put a chart of the bond market up and we all know the chart of the bond market. And then I put another chart up um except I measured the US bond market in Turkish LRA. We all know the Turkish L is a banana currency. So, so if you’re a Turkish investor sitting in Anchora and you look at the US bond market, it’s in a huge bull market because measured in Turkish LER it’s unbelievable. All right, you say, “Wow, that looks great.” I didn’t tell people what it was. They said, “Oh, yeah. I like that chart.” And then to finish it off, it’s like when you go to get your your eyes checked, you know, the eye doctor says, “Do you like it better this way or this way?” I put a chart of bonds up, but I divide the bond market by by ounces of gold. And there the chart down, down, down, down, down. It was, “Oh, that’s terrible.” I said, ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the same item. It’s the same assets, US bond market. Just a question. What’s your union account? Is it dollars American pesos or Turkish ler or ounces of gold? So, you know, people may say, “Oh, 6040 portfolio. I got my bonds. I got my income.” Blah, blah, blah. I think you should run that walk as fast as you can away from a bond allocation. >> Wow. The 6040 sounds like it’s dead, but like, okay, so that’s so interesting. And it’s like understanding that there’s been a real depreciation too that’s probably underappreciated still. >> Um we all kind of sense it. We intuit it and I feel like a lot of people on this show definitely do. >> Um does that all tie back, George, to just inflation and how we’ve seen the purchasing power of the dollar decline? Like what is like where does it all come back to like that? Because it definitely feels like you don’t get as much anymore. >> That’s for sure. And by the way, Julia, you just triggered me again. You triggered me a lot today. So, people get into this whole inflation discussion. >> Well, if I look at the true inflation, it’s only 1.8%. Or if you take the >> I know they’re saying that in the comment section. Now, >> if you if you if you if you look at the last 3 months annualized, it’s only 1.2. Julia, think about this for a second. All right. >> Mhm. >> Less important than inflation. People don’t live on rate of change. They live on price levels. Let me put you this way. Let’s say um your cost of living, your mortgage goes up over uh two or three years. Let’s say it goes up 30%, 40%. Your rent, okay? Because rents have skyrocketed, right? So let’s say your rent, cost of living, mortgage, whatever goes up 30% over 3 years. So 9 10% here. It’s a big number. And then let’s say in the the next year the rent doesn’t get increased. So the bean counters at the government goes, “See Julia, look look >> your rent’s not going up.” And meanwhile, you’re you’re dying cuz you just got 30% hike. >> And so and so and so in terms of like your wage demands, you need to catch up. People don’t live on rate of change. They live on levels. So this is another dishonest. >> I feel the same way, George. I’m glad you said that. I was literally thinking about this this morning because some of you are saying, “Oh, true inflation shows this.” So I’m like, “Yeah, but the prices did not come down from when we saw that big surge postco.” >> Yep. >> Like the prices are still there. So it’s like, hm. Yeah. It’s just that rate of change. >> So yeah. So what that means is the prices are still So what means is the average person is going to say, you know what, I need a way I need I I I need a wage hike to catch up. So that’s pressure on wages. >> And are they getting them? That’s the other question. >> That’s the other question. Or if they’re not getting them, their real incomes are suffering. So they’re not going out to eat you eat it much and have to cut back. One or the other, Julia. I don’t care which way you take it. Neither one is good. >> Hey everyone, I hope you are enjoying this interview. If you can take a quick moment and hit that subscribe button, [music] we are on a mission to hit our next goal of 100,000 subscribers and your support could really help us get there. Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of the interview. And then I feel like there probably other forces at play where it’s like, you know, if you have a job, you want to keep your job. So maybe it’s like let me keep my head down, not like ask for more money uh to keep up with all the >> and then and then the other thing too, excuse me, I can see the wheels turning on your head and we’ve talked a lot about the K-shaped economy. It’s unbelievable the people I mean it it we have such a disparity of wealth in this country now. >> The people who own the assets, they’re long real estate, they’re long NASDAQ, they’re killing it. All right. >> And don’t they benefit from the inflationary environment, too? like if you’re the asset holders or or is that just like an illusion of like I don’t know but is is there something to that like in the inflationary backdrop that if you’re an asset holder it’s been great >> it’s it has been great past tense as I say Julie what is it that past performance is no guarantee of future returns future results okay so who knows but you know I was just talking to a friend this morning guy was on vacation at a richy island in the Caribbean he’s at St. parts actually. And I said, and he goes there, he goes there once a year. And I was like, okay, so what’ you what do you notice this time? Yeah, you Julie, I’m sure you have this experience. You go to a place you’ve been many times before and you notice like, okay, is it cleaner, dirtier, nicer, more expensive? The PE. Okay. So, I said, what’d you notice? He goes, George, the prices are insane. I go, what do you mean? He goes, I go out my wife for dinner. She only has like one glass of wine. The two of them, it’s like €300. And they’re not going to some like fancy damn place. I was on vacation a couple months ago in an island not so fancy as uh as St. Barts beyond my pay grade, but same thing. I notice how much that the restaurant prices have gone up. So for the wealthy tourists that are going through these places, fine. But if you’re the average Joe working in one of these places, like it doesn’t work. >> Mhm. Yeah. It doesn’t work. Um Okay. I want to give you credit where credit is due. So, you were on the show in May of 2025 and you said you cannot be bullish enough on gold. I don’t even know what gold was trading at back then, George. You probably know, but wow, we have seen gold on an absolute tear. And a lot of people who watch this channel, we are not a gold channel, but I will say the audience, I would say most of them probably own gold. They tend to like gold, so they’ve probably been pretty happy. So, we’ve seen gold on an absolute tear. We did see that pullback recently, but it’s coming back. So yeah, like maybe talk to me about the move that we saw in gold. I take that that definitely did not surprise you and where you see things today. Like where do you stand today on that comment? >> So thank you for reminding me of that. Get them right, get them wrong. It’s nice to be recognized when you get it right. Um this is a long-term structural secular story building on what we just discussed in the last few minutes. the driver as to why gold is going up. Again, it’s not that the price of gold is going up. It’s that the value of the money is going down. People say, “George, when are you going to turn bearish on gold? I’ll turn bearish on gold when one can turn bullish on the value of money.” I’ll turn bearish on gold when you start seeing sensible monetary and fiscal policy out of governments. I’ll tone bearish on gold when geopolitical u uh disturbances tone down. So all the drivers this why I go back to being the conversation it’s not what’s happening it’s why is it’s happening it’s just like when you look at the price of a stock you know a lot of people do what they call resulting they just say oh number go up right well why is it going up okay if you don’t understand the why it’s not the what the what is the price it’s the why okay so your question on gold I think the macro factors that are have been driving gold are still in play um you know trying to call gold on a short-term basis a fool’s errand as I mentioned A few minutes ago, I got a little bit worried the last couple of months when it wasn’t the wellthoughtout big picture guys you have on your show and and ladies. Uh it was more, you know, SLV became a mean stock. Bitcoin bro wasn’t enough juice in that. So, they jump over to SLV or GLD, the silver and gold ETFs. And so, you had a lot of hot money momentum types piling in. And it got so it went up too much too quickly, you know, a zillion% over the moving averages, blah blah blah. Um, I was surprised it went up as much as it did. Not surprised that it came down as sharply as it did, but I put out something on my Substack the other day entitled the song remains the same. Again, we had such a sharp runup, some consolidation. I don’t mean to engage in strategist world salad, but I, you know, in the very short run, I don’t really know. It could go up, could go down. But the more interesting question, the more important question, the more relevant question for your viewers is not what is gold going to do in the next 30 days. It’s not like what’s the trade if they’re investing, it’s like where’s gold going to be a year from now. And in fact, if you buy some today, if you don’t now, I’d buy some. All right? Um, and if it goes down, you buy more. And by the way, I don’t want to sound like Michael Sailor. I don’t want to be, oh, and you buy more and you buy more and you buy more. No, >> you’re not saying put all of your money in gold either. I’m sure it’s like a portion. No. Yeah. And >> and even more important than gold, better than the gold, gold and silver and and that whole complex, the miners to me look much more interesting. Um they, you know, they’re leveraged to the gold price. So, as you look at a lot of these, the most recent quarter, I think we haven’t had fourth quarter numbers yet, but third quarter numbers, I think they’re realizing average prices of, I don’t know, 3500, 4,000, something like that. Gold’s now 5,000. So, I think you’re going to see major major uh positive earning surprises. And I think you could buy pretty much any gold miner. Um I think if the price of gold stays where it is, gold and silver, they stay where they are. Uh I think these stocks can double in 12 months. And if gold and you say, “Well, Julia, Julia, you say, George, how high can gold go?” I don’t know. But um if you think about gold relative to inflation, gold relative to money supply, gold relative to GDP, etc., etc., etc., it’s easy to come up with numbers like 6,000, 8,000, 10,000. So what I’m trying to So I’m not giving you a particular number, but what I am trying to tell you is it’s higher. That’s my point. Uh and meaningfully higher. And if we get to a Banana Republic Vimar type scenario, >> all bets are off. But you don’t have to believe in that to want to own gold miners is my point. >> You know, you kind of brought up an interesting point. I want to ask you as like someone who’s been in the space for 45 years investing. Um it was this idea of like I can’t tell you like where it’s going to go in 30 days or like even a year. you just know like for the long term you want to own it. Do you think oftentimes on Wall Street we get too caught up into like the short term like what did it do in this 30 days the quarter the year like in terms of performance versus like I’ll tell you I’ve owned gold since August of 2011 and maybe there were some bad times I know right >> I should [laughter] I should be to you what what are you asking me what I think of gold you think of gold >> look I have not sold it but and look uh August 2011 was not the best time to get in but you know like how sometimes we get so fixated on like the time frame like I’m up this amount this percent this year or something. I don’t know. Is there something to it that like maybe that’s not the way to look at investing is like >> 100%. And let me let me just share with you sort of what the world looks like if you’re a real money investor say at Fidelity just as example. >> Mhm. >> It takes it takes a long time to get in and out of positions. So you know if let’s say right now we say oh gold’s going to go up 20% this week. I’m just making up something stupid. Finale can’t take advantage of that. You know, I remember back in the day I was working for Peter Lynch. They did a calculation. I think I think on average it took Fidelity, it took Mellan Fund 6 months to get in and out of a position. So this fixation of you know it’s up today, it’s down tomorrow. And the volatility, look, the shiny object of the volatility, the hot potato, that that that’s the siren calls beckon. Ignore them. Ignore them. Okay. You got to be a fundamentally invasive based investor. One of the things that’s really struck me recently, I’m horrified. I digress. One story. You’ll like this story. So, my Substack, which we’ll mention later, um we’re starting to write individual stock reports and I I recommended Southwest Airlines uh two weeks ago. I got lucky. They had a good quarter. Stock did pop 20% in one go. It’s not recommended. Hey, I by the way, not investment advice. Do your own work. But I still like that stock a lot. Um, anyway, I had to write a report. I hadn’t written a report for quite a while. So, I go back, I dust it off of my old Fidelity report. What was on an investment community report? Name of the stock, elevator pitch, few sentences, strengths, weaknesses, positive, negatives, what could go wrong, what could go right, catalyst, income statement, balance sheet. Pretty simple. Get to the to the kernel of the issue. So, I wrote this report and it’s funny. I I put it in chat GPT too. I was trying to get it to fix some things and you know the chat GPT it hallucinates. It lies. And what’s really funny I noticed the research that’s out put out nowadays they don’t talk about fundamentals or valuation. It’s all number go up. It’s all what’s chart look like you know what’s what’s the story? What’s the chart? That’s not investing. That is gambling. Okay. And the problem is the problem is that approach has been so successful in recent years. That’s all and you have so many investors came in the market postco that’s all they know. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Dunning Krueger effect. You know, it’s when you okay self-confidence. So I’ve coined a new it’s a I’d like to kind of wire get wire people up. >> When I find one of these newbies that that can’t analyze companies to save their life, I say, “Aha, there goes another graduate of the Dunning Krueger Institute of Finance.” Okay, these guys are all just it’s like old man, you’re a boomer. That’s the pjorative term they use to describe me. They’re not doing the work. Okay, and it’s fine when pigs are flying. But one of the things we’ll get into, I think we’re witnessing the death of speculation right now. So all the meme stocks, all the all the AI nonsense, it is nonsense. all the um crypto stuff things where there isn’t a wellthoughtout fundamental case with a valuation underpinning that was fine as long as the m money printer go burr but I think we’re in the process of seeing that change. >> Wow. Okay. So that’s an interesting idea the death of speculation because I mean I guess for the last I don’t know how many years you’ve also had like the passive bid in the market like you point out and look you worked for Peter Lynch. have this book on my bookshelf and it makes me wonder are we going to go back to a stock picker market and is picking stocks a lost art you think because you’re kind of just all just even writing at fundamental research >> Julia is a lost art >> thank you so much for that question this is was not rehearsed I love that question okay for years stock pickers are beginning killed all right we all know why okay mag seven concentration blah blah blah blah blah the passive bid I’m here today to tell you, and I’ve been saying this for a couple months now, that game is over. At least in 2026, I think the S&P, there’s so many ways to beat the S&P now because the S&P is um anchored by, you know, a heavy exposure to MAG 7. Those are inextricably linked very much identified with the AI trade um and the technology uh situation. And I think what’s happening now the rotation, the reflation and the rotation into um foreign markets, commodities, emerging markets. Some people like to say small caps. I think small caps will outperform large caps. And I don’t want to get into a growth value argument, but I think small caps will outperform large caps. But it’s not so much because I’m bullish on small caps. It’s because I think large caps are going to do worse. Small caps might be flat and large caps are going to go down. So I think small caps will will outperform large caps. But the but the more direct way to answer your question I would look at the equal weight S&P the RSP that’s an equally weighted index of the S&P stocks and that has been badly lagging the S&P which is cap weighted for quite a number of years. You’re already seeing it starting to outperform and I think that’s going to continue. Let me give you one anecdote. I can recall in the 80s when I was investing um for Fidelli the Fly overseas fund in Japan. You know Japan we all laugh at it now. It’s hard to believe that actually was long that market at the time. Japan had the bull market of all bull markets. It peaked in the last day of 1989. And the Japanese market at its peak accounted for 2/3 of the EHA index. Europe, Australia, Far East. Think of that as a non- US S&P. So if you’re investing in foreign markets, twothirds of your benchmark was Japan. I think today it’s like 10% or 15%. It’s some crazy low number. So the point was if you didn’t own Japanese stocks, you had no way of keeping up with the market. And the Japanese market was on 60 times earnings 10 time and you had Japanese banks on 10 times book value and 100 PE. So any fundamental investor would say this is insanity. This is insanity. I I can’t buy that. But if you’re defining a risk as career risk like I don’t want to underperform the market. You had to own Japanese banks. You had to own the Japanese stock market. All right. So in similar fashion fast forward read what’s the read across? Had you if you hadn’t owned MAG7 these last few years you were dead. There were good fundamental reasons why it worked. the earnings growth was superior. Earnings growth for the 493 was terrible. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. But what happens? I think more the the valuation on those stocks really soared to to to a place where they’re not terribly attractive right now. And more importantly, I think you’re looking at significant multiple compression as the wheels come off the AI story. So, I actually think that um this is a great time to be a stock picker. to finish the point on Japan. Once you got past a peak in the Japanese market for the next 20 years to outperform the non US index, all you had to do, Julia, just one thing, just one thing and one thing only have zero in Japan and index everything else. You’d have to pick stocks. You just make one decision. >> And I think that’s what we’re looking at in the US. I know that’s that’s very out of consensus, but I think it’s definitely a stock pickers market. It’s definitely a stock picker market now. >> Wait. Okay. So why do you think it’s so out of consensus? >> Because you know why? Because it’s behavior. Anyone who’s owned their their their index funds, put your money into a lowc cost index fund. Active managers owners underperform. Okay, that’s worked for how many years now? And now everyone’s like, oh the narrative, oh these are great. Yeah, they are great companies, but everything has a price. Okay, so I think it’s I think it’s recency bias. And I don’t want to say they had been fooled, but cuz they had been fooled. They made a lot of money. But Julie, you’ve heard the line. I think it’s from is it Mark Twain or Oscar? I think it’s Mark Twain. It’s it’s harder to convince someone they’ve been fooled than to fool them in the first place, you know. So I think there’s a there’s an anchoring and and the other thing I would say I’ll remind people, you know, fund flows. Money follows performance. That’s FOMO. At Fidelia, we’d see it all the time. You know, you could have a hot a hot fund, a hot sector, but the money only comes in once it’s gotten really hot and it only leaves once it’s gone down a lot. And so I think we’re in that in that throws of that changing of the tides. The tides come in on all the mag seven and now it’s starting to go out, but it’s not obvious to everyone yet. I think it’s going to soon become obvious. >> Okay. Very interesting. So would it be fair then George would you characterize yourself as bearish or are you just like picking opportunities out like what >> what’s a fair characterization? >> Very good question and no I’m not bearish. I’m bearish on certain things but as I said it’s rotation. So for instance >> got it. >> Aside from gold and precious metals and and and base base metals and copper and all the rest I love energy. Love energy. >> I want to talk to you about energy. Yeah. love energy. Okay, energy is so out of favor. It’s only 3% of the S&P. Oil price has been depressed for quite a while. It’s starting to pick up recently. Um sentiment’s very bad. Started to improve. Uh there’s this nar going around the world’s washing oil blah blah blah blah blah. Uh if you actually look at consumption, it’s quite healthy. Um and you know, at these level, this level of oil prices, it’s a it’s a deterrent to to exploration and future finding new production. And as you know Julia, depletion is such that we lose about 5% of production every year. In other words, you have to find 5% more oil just to keep the production stable. And so um spot oil prices, you know, they live in the in in the present. The equities live in the future, i.e. it’s discounted cash flow future profits. So I think energy equities are incredibly attractive. I particularly like the oil service companies. The O is the ETF for that. You know, Schlumbumberge, everyone knows that’s the biggest stock. There’s some smaller, more interesting ones in there as well. But, you know, I was asked at the turn of the year in another interview and I don’t like doing picks, but you for the year ahead. But, you know, I had to come up with something sensible and I didn’t want to mention gold again because people are tired of hearing gold and silver. So, I wanted to come up with something new. >> They’re not that tired of it. But, >> no, you’re you’re not. Yeah. But, you know what’ll happen, but you know what I’m afraid of? People see this and they’ll be like, “Oh, it’s another gold.” And by the way, I am not a tinfoil gold guy. Okay. I’m an equity guy. All right. This is this is totally opportunistic on my part. Save it. Save it. I wanted to come up with something that wasn’t um a top of mind for everyone and where I thought the riskreward was really favorable. I energy might not work, but if it doesn’t work, you’re not going to get hurt. So, it’s kind of like tales you win, heads you don’t lose. So, um I like energy a lot. You know, they’re you can pick your pick your names, but um I think you know, think of it this way. The entire energy sector is I think 3% of the S&P. I think Nvidia is like 6% of the S&P. So, you know, all it takes is is, you know, we talk about mag 7 being whatever 30 35% of the market. All it takes is a couple% of the money to come out of that and go into energy. >> $50 in double jeopardy. Uh Julia, what do you think the energy stock prices are going to do? >> Yeah. Um go higher. But so that’s the rotation for you is the rotation out of tech into energy. >> Yep. >> Got it. Okay. Um the oil price is interesting too like where it is today. I don’t I want to say it’s probably like 64. I have not looked today. Um where is it anyway? Like 64.94 a barrel. >> Um >> do you think that the oil price is going to go higher? Because we also talked about inflation too at the top of this and we do know that that is an important component. Um >> help me tie it together too. >> Yeah. No, it’s a good question. So a couple things. So, one, I’d like to point out the oil stocks, the equities, >> they’ve been doing incredibly well the last couple of months, despite the oil price not doing a hell of a lot. >> So, the stocks, as I say, live in the future, they’re starting to discount that maybe out there things are going to get better. >> Um, as far as the oil price is concerned, trying to predict oil prices is a fool’s error, particularly on a short-term basis. Okay. But again, looking out anything but the short term. I think oil prices need to go higher to encourage future uh uh exploration. There is some conspiracy theory uh around and I know you’ve had some pretty good conspiracy experts on your show in recent months. Some have speculated that um there have been deals cut behind doors. The Trump administration decided to keep the oil price down and had the elections blah blah blah blah blah. I don’t know if that’s true. Wouldn’t surprise me if it is. Um, and that would just add that would pour more gasoline on my fire, no pun intended. So, I I I don’t think there’s a lot of downside in the oil price. Is it going to go up a lot in the short run? I have no idea. But my my my view on on energy stocks doesn’t need oil prices to go up in the short run. Eventually, they will go up. But you look at you look at the operating leverage in a Schlumbumberge or a Tidewater or Valaris. Um, those are two those all service companies. You don’t you don’t need higher prices. You just need more activity. And I think we’re going to see a lot of that. And oh, by the way, I’ll preempt the question. I don’t think you’re going to answer it, but if you do, and then you talk about the noise, forget about Venezuela. That is that is a nothing burger. All right. So, going back to the volatility and noise of too much short-termism. That’s one thing. Fade the hot takes. Fade the hot takes. I have one analyst on, a really smart guy. I love I love Jay. He says, he says, and this is not a political statement. It’s not likes Trump, hates Trump. He comes to hate Trump. That’s beside the point. He goes, “His superpower, his superpower is ignore what Donald Trump says.” >> Wait, who’s this? >> Okay, this is Jay Pilowski. And the reason he No, you have to have Jay on the show. You’ll really like him. By the way, he’s a he’s a Duke guy. I don’t know if you can deal with him. He’s a Duke. >> I went to Carolina, so I know. >> No, I can handle the Jay on. He He played football at Duke, actually. >> Okay. I I’m tired of hearing about the Blue Devils and the basketball and all that stuff. Anyway, so Jay’s like, he goes, “My superpower is I ignore ignore what Donald Trump says.” And what he means by that, it’s not I hate Trump. It’s he introduces so much noise into the markets. Traffs are on, they’re off, they’re up, they’re down. It’s taking your attention away from what’s really important, which are the fundamentals. And by the way, you know what’s really funny, Julia? Think about everything we’ve been talking about previously. Gold, AI, tech, this, that, whatever. As I said to somebody yesterday, tariffs. What’s that? No one’s talking about tariffs [laughter] now. Like, like that’s so yesterday, you know? No one talks about it anymore. >> So, so the answer is avoid hot takes. Avoid hot takes. >> Okay, that’s a good mental model. All right. Are you shorting anything right now, George? >> Oh, yeah. >> What do you Yeah, tell me. >> So, run don’t walk from all the AI related stuff. So, I think the NeoClouds, the core weeaves, NBIS, cipher, all these things is was I love, you know, it’s basic. I love the So, I think the wheels are coming off the AI trade and and let’s back up. Um, AI is an important breakthrough. No argument about that. But I think the benefits of it have been greatly exaggerated. You probably heard from others, Julia, waiting to see the use cases. Like, who can make money from using all this stuff? And um, it’s not clear that’s got a commercial payoff remotely sufficient to justify the trillions of dollars that are slated to be spent on this project. The Chinese are doing it with deepseek at a fraction of the cost. Maybe 10% of the cost. Is it as good as ours? No. But is it good enough? Yes. Um, and so I I think I think the adjustable market for AI, it’s it’s not an efficiency revolution. AI is dumb. By that I mean it can’t invent anything. All it does is it makes predictions. It aggregates existing data. Goes all over the internet and tries to figure out based on looks for patterns and based on A will it be followed by B and by C. But for AI cannot solve cannot cure cancer. AI can for on the other hand in 30 seconds when we’re done with this show can give you a very nicely organized summary of what we discussed. But you know that only goes so far. And so is that enough to justify the trillions of dollars that are being going to be spent on this? And I think the answer is no. Um I think AI is designed to fail. And so I think all the and by the way there will also will be winners and losers within AI. So for instance, you look at Google absolutely killing it. All right. On the other hand, you know, Microsoft bet on the wrong horse, chat GPT, and so they they’re in big trouble with that. You look at Elon Musk thing, they’re bad. You know, the anthropic that’s doing really well. U so there’s winners and losers. But I think overall the fervor over the AI trade is is now starting to recede. And more importantly, it doesn’t matter what I think. The market will tell you or as my Greek friend uh Stavos always says it will show us. The market will show us. So what’s important is not your opinion or my opinion, Julia, but and so you might say, well, George sounded smart. The bears always sound smart, but the market will render a verdict as to whether or not what I’m saying is true. And I would just for $50 in double jeopardy, and whereas I wasn’t short these things last year, now I would be short. I am short a little bit. Um, you know, in a bull market, companies rewarded for bigger and bigger spending. You know, I’m gonna spend 100 billion, 200 billion, 500 billion, and stock number go up, stock prices go up. When the market starts to call into question though the legitimacy of those actions, it votes with its feet and price goes down. And so, you’re starting to see that. Look at Oracle, for instance. Oracle went up, what was it, 30 or 40% in one day a few months ago when they had that crazy announcement. It’s crashed back down. It’s lower now than it was before that announcement. Okay. Um the the semiconductor stocks have been on fire. Um they’ve done nothing wrong except for the fact that they’ve gone up so much and they’re so expensive. I don’t think the market’s going to pay for any more improvements from here. So I think AI trades are a short. I think Nvidia is a short. I think Tesla is a short. I’m naming names. Um software. I learned a new phrase yesterday, Julia. Maybe you know this already. They had what’s known as SAS mageddon instead of Armageddon or Volmageddon. SAS mageddon. No. SAS companies. So, here’s a situation where, you know, everyone’s concerned whether concern [clears throat] is right or not, who knows? I think it is right, but everyone’s concerned that many of these software uh companies are going to be upset by AI. Um, and whether that turns out to be the case, who knows? But the market’s voting with its feet. And so, valuations come down. Earnings haven’t changed, but multiple start to come down. It’s discounting a slowdown. And as you know, valuations expand and contract with accelerating decelerating growth. And so I think the software stocks are shorts. Uh I was chuckling. I couldn’t believe it the other day. Someone was pointing out a stock I think was service now. I don’t really know much about the company, but whatever. So look at the chart. Looks terrible. Absolutely horrendous. And then look at the valuation. It’s down by like I don’t know 40 50%. It’s still on like 73 times earnings, nine times book value. I’m like are you crazy? Now, the problem is these stocks did so well for so long. People, you said earlier, why don’t people sell? Because they think that, oh, number don’t worry, it’ll go back up. It’ll go back up. It’ll go back up. It’s like a little boy, the cried wolf. And throughout the cycle, it has kept going back up. But one day, it won’t go back up. And I think that’s where we are with these things. I think people are going to become have become will increasingly become concerned about the impact of AI on um on on software. So I think the whole tech complex is under suspicion and that’s why I said before you know go to if nothing else just go from S&P market cap weighted to equal weighted I think you’re going to improve your performance. >> Yeah. So like again like the theme here is rotation understanding where you see that headed. You’ve been quite um in this conversation descriptive of like what’s going on predictive of like where things are headed. Um, and you’ve been prescriptive, but let’s just drill down a little bit more for investors. What should they do like from your vantage point? >> So, so for the average investor who’s probably been told by and listen it, the markets are are more difficult now than any time at 45 years. So, if investors are home and confused, don’t worry. Good company, right? Nobody really knows what’s going on. Let’s be blunt about this, okay? I’m sorry. I love your show, Julia. You’re great. You got great guests. But when I watch mainstream media and these guys come on with this just unwavering conf confidence and then like two weeks later they come back and the exact opposite happened and it’s like h oh oh but we sold we sold. So anyway um so in terms of trying to trying to help people make money which is also what my conference is about. So everyone’s been you know in the 64 to portfolio they already should have an idea that bonds are a disaster. bonds have have lost money I think three four years in a row now and given my outlook for spending and debt and inflation I think they’re going to continue to do poorly so I would take some of my bond money and put it into gold uh I would have nothing in bonds but even Morgan Stanley take Michael Wilson is a good strategist he’s got his shares of share of good and bad calls even he said take take half of your bonds and put them into gold so 20% gold so I take some of my bonds and put into gold I personally would be I have no bonds get out of bonds and then as far as equities go mean shorting is not for everybody. Don’t you don’t have to go short, but I would the S&P has too much tech in it. I would go to the RSP, which is the equal weighted tech. Um, and I think that’s going to outperform uh the SPY, the S&P. I’m a bit suspicious of the Russell, the IWM, Russell 2000. Um, it’ll probably outperform, but a lot of bad companies in there. I mean, I think it’ll outperform the S&P just because S&P is not going to do well until my outlook for tech, but I think 40% of the companies in the Russ are lossmaking. So, I’d stay away from that. Um, so, so, so, so own gold. Um, get out of your bonds, go to Equalade S&P, put some money abroad. Put some money abroad. It could be the EM or any other emerging market fund. Or if you want a particular emerging market, I happen to like Brazil. I happen to like China. Put some money there. I think I think foreign markets and are going to vastly outperform the US market. They already have. last year to from memory I think the S&P was up 16 and I believe EM emerging markets was up 33. So it’s not like I’m predicting, you know, it’s not like, oh, you know, something that goes in motion stays in motion. It’s already happening. All right? So it’s not like some crazy prediction. So I think if you just do those few things, get some money out of the country, go to equal weight, sell your bonds, buy some gold, buy some energy, you don’t have to be crazy like me and short stocks, but I think for the average person, that’s going to really improve their performance. >> George, I I’ve had a lot of fun having you back on. Um before I let you go here, you have a conference coming up. You mentioned that. Um I want you to take a moment, let folks know about the conference, how they can attend or join. Um and uh also you write a Substack, you host a bunch of spaces on X and also just leave them with some parting thoughts. So just take the next few minutes. Um the floor is all yours. >> Thanks Julia. So we’re having a conference um on March 11. Um you can go on my Twitter or on my uh Substack. All the details are there. This is unlike any other conference that you would have been to. And we’re basically having 15 um well-known independent thinkers come in and give pick, stock picks, prescriptive ideas, not well I think the GDP is going to do this and the yield curve is going to do that. No, how do we make money? That’s what this is all about. How do we make money? And this is like an all-star team of investors. These are all guys are on the buy side run their own funds or they have their own independent research firms. So they’re eating their eating their own cooking. Eat what you kill. May not get it right, but the incent the incentives are properly aligned. The quality of this event was inspired by over the years and Julia, I’m sure you’ve been to some of these. You go to these dinners where they have some really highowered investors and you get to hear what they’re saying. The average investor doesn’t have exposure to that. That’s what this conference is designed to do. And I just I I’m blown away. Okay, you I bet it’s 45 years. Julia, this is only $99. I mean, I’m not going to make much money out. It’s not the point. The point is I’m trying to give access to people, access to to the folks so they can hear from top rate investors what they’re thinking. Uh, you know, as an example, I don’t want to embarrass them, but you know, Robert Mullen from Marathon advisers out in San Francisco, his fund was up over 100% last year. 100%. Uh, Tom Chenos, brother of Jim Chenos, had a great short idea. I think it was Fresh Pat last year. um you know uh Adam Parker, former uh domestic ex strategist for uh Morgan Stanley. I mean, these are not fly by night guys. This is this is really first rate. In this conference, I promise you this. You may not make money, but you’re going to enjoy it and you’re going to learn a lot. And I’m telling you, this conference is better than any other conference you’ll ever see. And the reason I say that is because it’s not my ideas. No, it’s like I’m putting on a concert and I’m able to gather the best musicians in the world to come perform. And so as opposed to, you know, if you’re at Goldman Sachs and Morgan, not to pick on them, they have their own analysts and, you know, they have their own conflicts of interest and so on and so forth. This is like an all-star team. You’re a basketball fan, Julie down in Carolina. Imagine if I got to pick instead of just being stuck with the Duke team, I could go around the ACC and pick the best player from each team. Okay, that’s what this is. All right, and so you know, Tavi Costa, Don Durret, two of the leading gold guys. Tavy’s funds were up over 100% last year also. All right, we got as I mentioned, Robert Mullen is doing gold. We got a short seller guy, Tom Thornon, who I think you’ve had on. >> I love Tommy. >> Tommy, I love he’s a dear friend. He’s going to be on. He had a Door Dash short last year. It was great. Anyway, it’s a And Jay Pilowski, by the way, I mentioned earlier, he is the former head of emerging market strategies for Morgan Stanley. He’s given the keynote and he’ll tell you about his secret secret uh power about ignoring Trump. In fact, Julie, we got to get we got to get you into the conference. So anyway, it’s I promise you, you’re going to come with a lot of ideas. $99. I mean, listen, last year I did a couple of these, they were great successes. The content was phenomenal. But the first time I did one, I want to have proof of concept. I drastically cut the price just because I want to have a big outing. And if this is successful, I will do this on a quarterly basis. Where else can you get this? Nowhere. So, I just wish in my career I had this open to me. I mean, you go to dinners, you hear guys, you know, talk their book, whatever. But imagine in your own home, you can watch 15 guys, 20 minutes a piece. The replays will be available within 24, 48 hours. It doesn’t get any better than that in my opinion. George Noble, CIO of Noble Capital Advisors. Thank you so much for being so judous with your time, all of your knowledge, your wisdom, helping us learn and get better. This was such a fun conversation. Really appreciate you and I look forward to our next conversation and best of luck with the conference. >> Thank you, Julia. Good to see you. Take care.

Pitch Summary:
Kelly Partners Group (KPG) is well-positioned to adapt to the evolving landscape of professional services, particularly with the rise of AI. While AI poses a threat to routine revenue streams by automating repetitive tasks, it also presents opportunities for KPG to pivot towards high-value, expert-driven services. The company’s decentralized yet supported network allows for quick AI adoption, enhancing efficiency and enabling the offering of premium services. Despite short-term volatility due to AI fears, KPG’s recent financial results and strategic acquisitions demonstrate resilience and potential for growth. The company’s proactive reinvestment in intellectual property and central resources further supports its adaptability and long-term growth prospects.

BSD Analysis:
KPG’s unique model, combining centralized support with local autonomy, positions it to leverage AI as a tool for enhancing service offerings rather than a threat. The company’s focus on strategic advisory, complex tax planning, and risk management aligns with industry trends towards human-AI collaboration. Regulatory changes and increased complexity in accounting practices may counterbalance AI’s automation effects, driving demand for professional guidance. KPG’s growth strategy, including recent acquisitions and reinvestment in central resources, indicates readiness to capitalize on these trends. The company’s ability to maintain high margins and expand its service offerings will be crucial in navigating the challenges and opportunities presented by AI.