Precious Metals: Strongly bullish on gold and silver driven by central bank buying, Asian demand, and loss of trust; price action framed as currency debasement rather than metal appreciation.
Paper vs Physical: Claims of market manipulation via futures with extreme paper-to-physical ratios (e.g., 360:1 in silver), LBMA/COMEX tightness, and SLV creation/borrow constraints signaling real-world shortages.
Monetary Policy: Reverse repo cash is exhausted and the Fed is signaling an end to QT and likely rate cuts, reinforcing a currency debasement thesis supporting precious metals and commodities.
Energy Outlook: Underinvestment in oil and gas, shale roll-over, and supply risks highlighted; Exxon (XOM) CEO warns of future shortages, suggesting a multi-year opportunity in Energy and E&P.
Natural Gas: Production projected flat while ~12 Bcf/d of new LNG capacity comes online, creating a looming supply-demand mismatch favorable for gas-linked assets.
AI and Power Demand: AI’s real impact is soaring energy needs as data centers strain grids; utilities see significant price increases, implying a capital shift from Big Tech toward Energy and related infrastructure.
Systemic Risks: Concerns over derivatives counterparty risk, potential metals-market fraud spillovers, rising high-yield spreads, and the First Brands receivables scandal elevate broader market fragility.
Positioning: Preference for physical metals, select miners with improving free cash flow, and a growing allocation to commodities and energy as narratives shift and money flow follows fundamentals.
Transcript
Nothing in this program should be considered investment advice. It is for educational purposes only. Please hit pause and read this disclaimer in full. History is going to go back and define the turning point [music] was the lack of trust when when we stopped utilizing the rule of law and weaponized the banking system against those that we disagreed with around the globe. Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Finance Q. I'm your host Chris Martinson. We have so much to discuss today because something really magnificent and maybe a little scary is happening out there in the markets. What is going on with gold? What is it telling us? We've been on this scent for a while. Who's we? Well, that's myself and Paul Ker of Kiker Wealth Management. Hey Paul. >> Hey Chris. Good to see you this morning. I I truly think we're this is legendary times here and uh I've been a gold and silver investor for over 25 years. I've been and not just an investor, not just somebody who bought some and put it in the closet. I'm somebody who's been watching the market very very closely. I used to trade gold futures for a period of my life. That was a high stress occupation, but I learned about markets. The [snorts] tuition was expensive, but I paid it. Um, so this is what we said last week. And Paul, gold at $4,000 was also so last week. I wake up this morning, just one week later. We're having the same conversation. Now it's 4,200. >> Mhm. >> When I wake up this morning. Uh, so what is it telling us? And by the way, growing alarm drives gold to records. You see this article in the Financial Times? Oh, wait. That was 2011 when gold was 1,600 an ounce. [laughter] But they do go on, you see, I underlined it down there, currency debasement. So they they they at least acknowledge that sometimes some of the fears that people if people are investing in gold out of fear, which is a very western concept because the Chinese don't invest in gold out of fear, they save their money in gold and have for thousands of years. So that's not it's not a fear trade. >> But they do say that so such as the westerners are going to get involved in this. Um, it's a fear trade and they're fearing this currency debasement, by which we mean money printing, which quantitative easing, right? Let me just throw in here, silver at spot is at 5268 as of uh 9:00 this morning when I took this snapshot. That's a big deal. >> Yes, >> Tom Mlen has said, "Hey, the Fed is going to have to ease here because you and I have talked about this. The green line is uh the 2-year interest yield and the black line is the Fed. And as you can see, if you follow along carefully, you see the green line goes up first and then the Fed comes out and says, "Oh, we've decided it's time to raise rates and then oops, you know, the green line starts falling and then the Fed tails along for a while, then it follows along and gives these nice things with these statements where words are changed here and there and people are like, "What wisdom?" And here the the 2-year yield goes up and the Fed trails along, makes a big oopsie error and tries to play catch-up and then keeps it. And then again, the 2-year is falling. Point is is that the 2-year is always in front of the Fed. And here it is. And it's falling. And it's a pretty big gap. And the Fed's behind the curve, so they're going to have to cut rates. And he's saying a half point cut is needed right now. Tom Mlen, Mlullen Oscillator, I follow him. He's been doing great work for a long time. So, good good guy to follow. >> And it turns out, you and I have been talking about this. This is the repo, the reverse repo facility at the Fed, which is >> other people's money. This is money they shoved into the markets and banks shoved it back at the Fed and it's been used for this crazy thing called reverse repos. All we need to know is it used to be $2.5 trillion and it's gone almost to zero. This is what's been used to buy all those Treasury bonds and it's almost out. It's like out. It's gone. >> So, you and I have said for a long time when it runs out, what's going to have to happen? The Fed's going to have to come out with one of their August statements. Oh, there's a little tightness in the markets. We may have to stop shrinking our balance sheet, which is code speak for Oh, well, would you look at this? This just came out yesterday, pal. Starting to see a little a little tightening in money markets, right? And then this just came out this morning and I I I stole that. Um, I believe that was Chris Irons who who I first read that from who said printer is coming. >> Chris is Chris Irons is on fire from time to time when when it comes to talking about that. >> Absolutely. So Powell signaled the central bank may stop shrinking its balance sheet in the coming months. An important shift necessary to preserve liquidity in the overnight funding blah blah blah. Right? So, uh, listen, they printed up a huge amount of money during COVID. It's basically run out and they're going to have to print more. And you and I have been on this print, print, print, print. To the extent gold is telling us that there's a currency debasement coming. >> Well, I think that's at least part of the message gold has been sending here. And I don't know how else to look at it right now. It sure seems to be, you know, and and one of the things that I've struggled back and forth with, you know, as this data comes out, you see it, you look at the long term, then you look back at the short term. So, so [clears throat] you kind of got to be fast on changing your your mind and opinion in the short run from time to time, but the long term, we're still continuing to head in that direction. Everything points in that direction. And um so but you know one of the things I'm looking at is trying to figure out used to you could look at the dollar index and you could compare that to others you know and the argument is the dollar index is linked with you know other fiat currencies. So if they're all going down together and all the central banks the world have decided that they're going to commit to debasement of the currencies then it's hard to get a signal from the dollar in the short run. So, I'm trying to develop other pairs that you can look at just to try to to to see is is gold central banks really moving in? Is this big institutions? Is it a fear trade? Or is it just the realization that we're into a debasement situation and all of the reserves that the global governments had sitting in treasuries, you know, especially with the weapon weapon weaponization of the swift banking system, the seizure of Russian assets, if trust is lost just like they do in in Asia, you know, do they necessarily trust their governments throughout history? I mean, there's a lot of suspicion. So gold is their choice of saving those assets. And now you're seeing it move into silver. I think you're going to see it move into rare earth metals and and commodities, you know, seem to be signaling that that's going to protect your purchasing power in the decade ahead much more than anything else, >> which is pretty typical for debasement cycles. But this is kind of going to be the granddaddy of all debasement cycles, right? Because the magnitude of the printing this. I mean, it was one thing to say, oh, you know, the the British pound was pound sterling was the world's reserve currency for a bit, but the world was a lot smaller, right? And uh it didn't have quadrillions of derivatives. It didn't have like the need for instantaneous global capital flows measured in the trillions of dollars per day just to support certain aspects of the piping that we hope doesn't freeze up because that'll trigger the great taking. The scale is different. Also, the speed is different. And so what's interesting is so when they first took gold off the gold out of the gold standard 1971, right? Actually, I think Great Britain did it in 1914 around World War I and that hastened the but it still took a few decades for the pound sterling to get kicked out in 1944. Right. >> So here 1971 happens. Um 1973 Americans are allowed to own gold again. I don't how how do you make something illegal in a free country like that? weird, right? But yeah, [snorts] come get your foam number foam finger out. We're number one and they hate us for our freedoms, right? Whatever. Um, and then what they did next, Paul, was they put every effort they could into containing the price of gold. They had this thing called the gold pool where all this big gold holders agreed to sell it to try and keep the price down. When that broke down, then they had came up with a Washington agreement where the BIS was coming together and they did everything. And so this is what happened. [snorts] Gold as a share of official global reserves came down and down and down during the '9s was like it's over and it bottoms out right here around 20045 at just about 5% >> or 10% of yeah I guess about 10% of of global reserves. It's nothing. And it goes nowhere till about 2019 and now it's peaking its head up and now it's at about 25%. the dollar's coming down. You could actually see these two lines crossing. But my point here is gold was back here. They said it's not money. And here we're finding out it is money. >> Mhm. >> That's a big shift right there. >> Well, it it seems there's a there's a complete difference between theory and reality. So it seems like a lot lot of intellectuals got together and decided that they had this theory that everything was going to work out and in reality it didn't work out the way that they convinced themselves that it would and there's a major scramble back in the other direction. And I really believe history is going to go back and to find the turning point was the lack of trust when when we stop utilizing the rule of law and weaponize the banking system against those that we disagreed with around the globe. bad idea, right? >> Hey, um, so I've been getting this question a lot from people like, you know, what's the fair price for gold? 4,000 it feels expensive. Um, as we saw 1,600 was expensive just, you know, a little while ago. Every first Paul, I just want to say every single time I've bought gold, I've had to kind of hold my nose. And it was a hard decision when it was 300 an ounce. It was a hard decision when it was 500. It was a hard decision when it was 1,200. It's been a hard decision ever. It's never easy. It's It's just not >> um looking in retrospect, it looks like, oh yeah, load the back the truck up. But I love this one. We showed this last time, a little golden history. So this is Weimar, Germany during its famous debasement period. So you see here, oh yeah, gold's overbought and it had this huge retracement. Like you were totally felt stupid for about a year here if you'd bought there and then it sort of climbs back, but it's going nowhere. Look at this. Two years it's going nowhere while they're busy debasing their currency like crazy. And then here, you know, they say, "Ah, well, gold is effed, right? It sort of comes up and it's not really going anywhere." And then, oh, it's going to collapse. But it went from, let's say, 10 to a trillion. >> This is orders of magnitude. 10,000, 100,000, million, up, up, and up and it goes. That's what it looks like. But of course, gold isn't going up. >> No. >> That ounce of gold is an ounce of gold is an ounce of gold. Nothing happened. What happened was the paper went down. Correct. >> Make sure we have that frame of reference. So, >> well, and I would venture to say at some point it outpaced, but all along that journey, I would assume, and I want to go back and look at this because this is what gold does. It bought the same number of cans of soup close to, you know, on that journey all the way up as it did at the bottom. The difference was it was, you know, it retained its purchasing power and technically it built wealth compared to the loss of purchasing power from everybody else. you know, you you were better off than the average individual in Germany if you had gold, but you weren't necessarily any richer. You just maintained the purchasing power of the as you know, uh, and gold versus the fiat um, German mark. That that was entirely true with with one proviso which was that if if you had some debt outstanding like let's say you had a hotel and there was debt on it and the debt was denominated in marks >> and all of a sudden you could pay that debt off with a single gold coin whereas it would have taken >> uh yeah you know hundreds of gold coins in the in a prior era that's you can actually do like if you have debt that's denominated in a debasing currency you can actually do okay. Um, so I'm not saying people leave her out, go out, take on lots of debt, you know, buy gold. Not not saying that at all. But that's one wrinkle. But otherwise, your point, all that gold really is is a way of saving for the most part. Same number of cans of soup, >> same number of acres of land, same number of everythings. And that's important because if you look at this, you could have still saved in gold >> here. If you'd had gold, you would have saved. The fact that the currency is blowing up has no meaning. That's why I think it's important to understand the framing that in China, most of Asia, India too, they save in gold and silver. They don't speculate. They're not trying to, you know, game the debt markets. They save. Over here, it's been pitched to us as a fear trade. Oh, no. People fear debasement. Now, I don't fear debasement. I know it's coming. It's a thing. >> I'd rather be able to save my money in a reliable way. Well, and that that's the important part of when I'm talking to to individuals, especially if they're new to this journey right now. Let's say it's somebody new, I'm meeting them, they've had no exposure to precious metals in any way whatsoever. There is a tremendous number of people out there like that. So, you know what I what I'm trying to do is take them off of our hindsight bias, right? Because I'm having a lot of conversations, you know, can gold go higher? Can gold go higher? Now, I'm getting the conversations. Do you think ever goal will ever go back down again? But people are still frozen to make that allocation. So I just explained to them it's a mindset. Okay. You know, we've talked about for some time 10% [clears throat] of your not a recommendation. This is just a thought process. 10% of your assets be set into goal from a long-term standpoint like fire insurance on your home. Okay? So mentally we want to say I don't care if it doubles in the next 6 months or if it goes down 50% in the next 6 months. I'm looking for 10 years from now because in the interim period there's going to be all kinds of noise. There's going to be, you know, selloffs and lack of liquidity events, forced liquidation when people are just selling anything they can in the short run. Kind of similar to what happened to to cryptocurrencies last Friday. So mentally, we hope 10 years from now it's the exact same price that it is today. And that's not a bad thing. If you take 10% of your assets and you put it over there because you had insurance against that, it's no different than paying for the property and casualty insurance on your home. Are are you upset 10 years from now that the house didn't burn down and you theoretically wasted that money? No, we're not. because we understand the risk associated the financial impact if your primary residence was to burn down or an office building. So if you have that mindset and you forget about it, that portion of your insurance from a long-term standpoint, the journey is a lot easier and it makes it easier to allocate funds here in the short run where we don't know if we're going to have a major pullback here or just a consolidation or if it's going to continue because the debasement trade is on. So, I want to tell people from a long-term standpoint, you know, obviously you got to get some advice and see if it's appropriate, but you have to get your mindset on the long term and the and the direction that things are going. And and this leads me back to one quote that I want to uh point out. So, back in June of of 17th of 2022, and I'll I'll read this out and maybe I need to share the screen. global global institutions, governments recognize what's taking place. You know, my concern is is within the United States, we're getting a lot of propaganda from Wall Street. We're getting a lot of propaganda from the government that wants to obiscate what's really taking place. But if we go back and we take a look at what Vladimir Putin stated, according to the IMF, global currency reserves are at 7.1 trillion and dollars and 2.5 trillion euros. Now, these reserves are devalued at an annual rate of about 8%. Moreover, they can be confiscated or stolen any time if the United States dislikes something in the policy of the states involved. Let's just think about that for a minute. Moreover, they can be confiscated or stolen at any time if the United States dislikes something in the policy of the states involved. What have we heard in the news here recently? What is it they're talking about giving the assets that they see seized from Russia over to Europe? Now, if you're if you're a global institution, what's your alternative? So he goes on to say according to analyst estimates conversion of gold reserves will begin just because there's no room for them with such shortages. Now he's going and talking about commodity shortages, rare earth and and you know all this money that's moved in there. They will be converted from weakening currencies into real resources like food, energy commodities and other raw materials. Other countries will be doing this of course. Obviously, this process will further fuel global dollar inflation. >> Now, I know why they hate him so much. He's speaking the truth. >> He's speaking the truth. Have you ever heard that quote that's out there? And I got to give Luke >> No, I haven't. I love that. >> I got to give Luke Groman kudos for pointing that out in in one of his research reports. So, I didn't find this on my own. It was for paid research. But, you know, that's incredible. So, what I wanted to do is I wanted to go back when I read that and let me get to another screen. I want to get over to gold and I want to look at gold and see what has occurred since that period of time. >> That's from June of 22. I got that right in my head. I know exactly what happened. >> That's June of 22. Well, I marked it here on the chart so that you can see it. So, it's marked right there. So, Putin's warning. Now, this is approximately June 17, 2022. Well, guess what? gold got smacked down in the short run. And I would I would assume that there's powers that be, you know, maybe I'm being a little too cynical that says, "Uhoh, I don't want anybody listening to Putin. Let's get this out of the the mainstream media for a period of time." Well, what has gold done in in that period of time? It allowed those other individuals and institutions to continue to accumulate gold. And then we had the breakout in 24 and we've just continued to move from there. Well, what a couple of months prior to that, global financial assets and gold share, the percentage of global financial assets and gold was 1.5%. And I need to update this now, but all it did was go up by a little over a half a percent and the price went from about 1,800 up to about 2,000. What's going to happen if it continues to go up to 10 or 15 or 20%? How much higher can those prices go? Well, I got two things also. So, for for viewers looking at this that it doesn't maybe look like that dramatic of a rise because Paul has pulled up a log chart. Um, >> yes. Log and weekly chart. Yeah. Sorry, Chris. Chris doesn't like log charts. >> No, I love log charts because you see a straight line, you know, it's rising exponentially, right? Yeah. >> Um, but this is a log chart. So, uh, and the second thing I want to point out is that whole time while they were holding the price of gold down, and they were, we know they were. We know they've been doing this for decades. I'm I've got the receipts with me today. We're going to discuss that in a minute. While they were doing that, weirdly enough, Asia said, "Oh, the price is low. We'll take more of it." >> Now, they use prices that go nowhere to sort of abuse investors in the West and go, "Oh, it's a dead asset. It's not really going anywhere. The price is not confirming what you want it to confirm." So, for us, if the price isn't doing something exciting, we lose interest. We bring in grandma's silverware, you know, grandpa's gold, gold gold coin. We just bring them in and get rid of get rid of that stuff. >> Asia looks at it and India looks at it differently. They're like, I like it cheap. Thank you very much. And huge amounts of gold and silver left for the for the east. That's the risk. So in the west, they can play their games. They can wang the prices around. They can, you know, do their little paper stop runs and all that junk, which by the way, I think is ending. Um, but uh it's counterproductive because while you're doing that, you're hemorrhaging your actual wealth to your potential adversaries or at least competitors on the global landscape. >> Yes. Yes. And let me show one more one more chart. I didn't want to keep that up the whole time you were talking so people could see, but this is a monthly. Okay. So, this is monthly. Now, I don't have his speech announced. So, that's 2022. That's actually right in this area here. >> Yep. But that was prior resistance. Look at the accumulation that took place. It digested that move from 2000 to 2012 and just consolidated for a decade. It gets out of the average investor's mind, Asia, the West, everybody that was, you know, research analysts with eyes wide open was talking about everything taking place. And now we've started that next move up again. So, and again, this is a log chart, so you can see just to explain how tight the price gets in there, but it just gives you an idea that that I mean, after this breakout that occurred back here, the price continued for a long time. And look, there was volatility in there. Okay, you had volatility, you had periods of consolidation, but it continued to move. It consolidated for a long period of time. All of those that gold left the West, not all of it, but a large portion of it left the West to go to the east. And I'm not so sure that we're going to be able to afford to buy it back again. >> No, probably not. >> Um, not with the depreciating currency. >> Yeah. Well, Paul, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk about the actual paper manipulation in the gold and silver markets, how it happened, and what that actually means. So, we'll be right back. Today's markets are more volatile than ever. 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I'm Dr. Chris [music] Martinson, proud to work with Peak Financial Investing, and my support reflects my professional views. I encourage you to take control of your financial future [music] by making informed decisions. All right, Paul, that was a perfect setup for this. I want to talk about I I think this is a legendary moment in time. I really do. And it's legendary because the shenanigans that have been participated like our markets are kind of fraudulent in a number of dimensions. We saw that if if you saw the movie The Big Short, right? And you know, the main protagonists, they've made all the right bets. You know, you've got your Michael Buries, you've got your um Mark Bounds, right? And and they've made the right bets that these are dog meat, you know, uh assets, and they've shorted them and the whole market's falling apart, but they're not getting repriced, which is a fancy thing for the big banks are just holding them at a fictitious price because that s that was in their financial best interest. Didn't matter if it was right. didn't matter if it was legal, illegal, irrelevant. So, the big banks play games. Here's the fun part. Big banks are willing to play that game for as long as until it looks like they might lose something and then they suddenly run for cover. The light comes on in the kitchen and the cockroaches all run. And um you can always always always count on the banks to operate in their own self-interest. So, I think we're at a self-interest moment. And here's what happened. So it turned out that in 1973 they were they were considering reopening gold to be legal for US investors or um you know citizens to own and they were a little scared what that was going to do like what if the price of gold went up a lot all of a sudden and so here's a cable that was sent between London and New York and it talked about a major impact of private US ownership. Okay. Ah what do we do? So here they are conspiring and they said quote to the dealers expectations the gold dealers expectations will be the formation of a sizable gold futures market. Each of the dealers expressed the belief that the futures market would be of significant proportion and physical trading would be minuscule by comparison. Also expressed was the expectation that large volume futures dealing would create a highly volatile market. In turn, the volatile price movements would diminish the initial demand for physical holding and most likely negate long-term hoarding by US citizens. End quote. So, they just laid it out here, Paul. They said, "Look, we're going to make this paper market. We're just going to make that paper market dominant. We're going to use it to wang the price of gold around, make it very volatile, and diminish people's appetite for that asset. We're just going to we're just going to nudge them away from this because we don't want people buying too much gold. We'd rather they didn't. There it is in black and white. They thought it up and then they executed it for decades, >> decades and decades. By the way, same same process happens in the US stock futures market. But um all futures, all pe this is all paper games. >> Oh yeah. In other words, we're going to punish you for owning it. We're going to we're going to uh uh make you go through all kinds of emotional and financial pain. And they did the same thing to short sellers after 2008. every time that you get a major technical breakdown on the market, the Fed would step in and intervene on the weekend and any shorts got their face ripped off on the other side. They just they just eliminated the bears >> and and it's a completely different environment now. That's been hard to adjust to because there's periods of time where you had somewhat of a free market in US equities and they let it uh you know fluctuate, but now it seems to be more of a political utility. I mean, that's when they commit to it, they cause all kinds of emotional pain for those who are who are trying to seek the truth is what they're doing. >> Well, it's deeply fraudulent and and I object to it as well because it punishes the prudent. If you if you if you read the tea leaves correctly, they said, "Well, that's not allowed. Let us punish you. We're going to reward the people who are scoundrels and raccoons, and we're going to punish the prudent." Absolutely backwards. if you want to have a functioning society, good capital markets, prosperity, it's just it's just a fraudulent fiction. And they and Paul, they just did it so that they could just continue to print money and hopefully the golden canary wouldn't be keing over in the mine, right? So it wouldn't be warning anybody that what was happening was uh going to be very very bad. But that's the debasement environment we're in. So, I came across this last week >> on Twitter and it's an article from 2022 and it's by Peter Hamro, who by the way is in the gold business for 40 years. And so, get this. He says, you know, um this is kind of fascinating. He says, "Disinformation for many years has kept the lid on this tinder box. And since 2018, the financial stability desks at the World Central Banks have followed the Bank of International Settlements instruction to hide the perception of inflation by rigging the gold market. So he says this from a deep insider. Quote, "The only way to achieve the cover is by smashing the price of physical gold by the alchemical production of paper gold. That's the gold futures market. With the help of the futures market and the connivance of the alchemists, the bullion traders, yes, that includes me. I was deputy managing director of Makata and Goldsmith managed to create an unshakable perception that ounces of gold credited to an account with a bank or a bullion dealer where the same is the real thing. And much easier, old chap, you don't have to store or insure it. Once investors swallowed this stupifying pill, it was easy to sell them gold that simply didn't exist. And of course, there were wary investors who found it hard to believe that the likes of Mata, Montigue, Rothschild, and the Sharps Pixley were undoubted counterparties and wanted to be assured that the gold would be there when they called for it. Easy, we said. Don't bother to pay for it. Just give us initial cash margin. Agree to a variation margin. Uh, and our paper promise is as good as gold. This was the simple derivative. If you thought the price would go down, you could sell us gold and you didn't have to have margin and margin the trade in the same way. And then along came a raft of options and other products in the derivative market and for this is for that is what this Camaro was called started to spiral like a tornado. >> So here's a deep insider saying listen here was the game. The game was we wanted to keep you off the scent of gold. We didn't want gold signaling anything unoured like you know that everybody's debasing their currencies and gold would tell you that because then people might do something really awkward and start moving into other commodities like oil and copper and wheat and other commodities all of which are subject to the same paper futures market. All of these have mysterious like sell orders that just flood them from time to time. This is happening in the oil market right now. And that's all well and good, Paul, but you're you're debasing currency and denying reality. >> Yes. >> And the reality is new wells aren't being drilled. New mines aren't being opened. More investments into productive farming aren't happening. And you do that long enough and you wake up one day and you go, "Wait, where's all this stuff we need? Why isn't it here?" It's because we let these charlatans get their raccoon paws into this and just, I think, ruin these markets. >> Yeah. I mean they and and they start it and then it takes on a life of its own, right? And and >> when you when you listen to an insider talk about that and I've just been amazed I mean amazed by how corporate Wall Street, your major firms have just convinced their adviserss, convinced their clients that gold's an ancient relic, that you're as dumb as a box of rocks for buying it, and you shouldn't pay any attention to it from a long-term standpoint. And and once they get that started, you know, it just becomes this belief out there. And for those of us who have been been purchasing it based on the knowledge of history and the lessons that it could teach basic mathematics, you know, you kind of felt crazy for a long period of time and then now we get into a situation where the price is finally moving and there's all kinds of anxiety around that. What's it signaling? What's this taking place? You know, what happens in the short run? But with all that money printed, if we reach the end of the disinflation, deflation that occurred because of globalization and del globalization, then we may be in the very very early stages of a long-term uh change in the price of gold and and that psychology reverting back because that psychology as well is like taking a basketball and holding it under the water, you know, for for an extended period of time and then when you finally lose control of it. It has to find that new equ equilibrium. And where's that equil equilibrium going to be with the Fed talking about, you know, slamming rates down, you know, potential yield curve control discussions coming out, you know, back page of the Wall Street Journal. Theoretically speaking, not actually. Well, I think actually it it might have, but the point being is preparing the public for the fact that that here we are. we're going to go back to the printing presses and then and if you've got this real move towards commodities, you know, with Trump taking purchases and and critical minerals and and reallocation and the free cash flow right now in the gold miners with the where the price is, you know, we're going to see a sea change and that could be cost push inflation, right? We've had asset price inflation, but if these commodities go up dramatically, at some point that's going to squeeze the profits on Wall Street and this party that this shifting and adaptation of of where the money's going in the future is going to catch a lot of investors offguard. >> Well, it will. And [clears throat] and that beach ball though. So, >> yeah, >> these raccoons have been at this for a really long time. And I'll tell you this, I talked to a lot of really deep insiders who've been in the gold business forever, and nobody can answer the most basic question, which is, do we know who owns which gold bars? >> Yeah, >> gold bars have serial numbers on them. It should be a simple thing. I could do it in a spreadsheet, right? Give me an afternoon. >> You just put all the numbers in there and you say, "This bar belongs to Paul." >> That spreadsheet does not exist. Tells you something. They've been like, "Paul, I would sell you one." Or or these the bullion banks we just heard about, you know, they they sell paper promises and they say, "Paul, you're you're trust us. You know, you got this bar over here with your name on it." But they've also sold it to me and five other guys and >> four other girls and and we all think all 10 of us that, you know, we own that same gold bar. So, here's where we're at. Here's the beach ball. It turns out that as of this morning, there are 360 paper contracts for every 1 oz of physical silver. >> Goodness gracious. 360 paper for every 1 ounce of physical. Wow. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but wow. >> No, go for it. I mean, come on. That's shocking, right? >> Golly, >> how does that resolve? Okay, check this out. So, uh, Brian Kuzmar says, "Hey, whoa, these kinds of moves in precious metals are unprecedented." All caps. I have been doing this since 1977. Have never seen this type of movements, not even in 1980. Something bigger than gold and silver is happening. Gold and silver are merely being symptoms here of something. And we're in the waiting room anxiously looking for the monster that's about to devour the economy. Whatever it is, something tells me nothing will be the same. Just my gut. And still no major pullbacks. And it turns out London is OU T of silver. Yesterday SLV shrank by 700,000 shares, Paul, even as silver went up by $2 an ounce. How does that happen? Right. >> That's a good question. >> Yep. That's because they are short of physical silver to back up new SLV shares. So SLV ETFs says in my opinion are good indicators of the silver squeeze. Um and uh and so when they don't have it, why? because they already used their holy ammunition on Monday at the end of day they added 11 million shares right equal to 93% of all the silver that was shipped from comics last week and assuming 100% of that went to London and after that they still had zero shares available for borrowing boom um and we're seeing you know millions of ounces outflow from comics right they're they're doing everything they can they're sending it to London as fast as possible and Robert Gotautly former ex-executive from JPM's bullion bank said looks like the LBMA in London needs at least 150 million troy ounces more physical silver right now just to normalize the situation. >> Wow. >> So it's it's they're out. They're out. They're out and we're watching we're watching this play out. But what we're really seeing is that 361 to1 paper promise thing play out. And we're about to find out and here here's why Paul I think this is such a big deal. Okay, their their paper shenanigans are out. So what does that mean? This is the proverbial thread that unravels the whole rug. What happens if people find out that the silver turned out it was fraudulent? People were selling naked shortselling silver they didn't have with a promise as good as gold from the major bullion bank. Don't worry Paul, I'm JP Morgan. I got your silver right here. >> Mhm. >> But it actually isn't there. Well, if that gets revealed and then you find out, well, is that probably also true for gold? You keep on pulling on that thread and then people start going, "Well, hold up. What what what is all this collateral? What what actually is backing any of this stuff? Do the shares actually exist that I think I own in my account, right? We don't know, right? Because, you know, the SHO has been abused and and naked shortelling has been allowed to carry on and nobody's done anything about it using that little uh broker dealer market maker dodge." You know, they've allowed that. We just found out um that uh you know uh there was that company that was um that was fraudulently saying they backed all their collateral with with assets they didn't have, right? And so we saw that blow up. We'll maybe get to that in a minute. But I I think they're worried that we'll find out possibly if you just it's kind of like the um the arguments they have for remember the anti-Jab arguments like no no we can't we can't allow any any bad news to even begin because that would lead to hesitancy. Yeah, >> I think it's the same argument here. It's like, oh no, if we allow one corner of the market to be revealed as fraudulent, >> well, that raises a lot of questions about all the rest. And then people get into that cockroach scurry under the counter moment and they go, I got to reel all I got to what do I own, right? I got to I got to I don't even know who the counterparties are, let alone what the risk might be because I don't know who they are. I think that's what's at stake here. >> Well, well said. And I was going to bring up thericcolor situation and the bankruptcy and you led right into that perfectly. So, so notice after thericolor first brand situation where if I remember correctly they rehypothecated. So guys rehypothecation is you know you loan something to somebody they turn around and loan it out again. So well that's not a good term for what they did but they basically sold the same loan 70 times right? So if you had this erosion of trust under the surface, regulators are supposed to catch that. Well, guess what? The only reason they caught it was because some bank actually asked a question before they loaned them another $8 billion. Like who who was not asking questions or verifying before? I mean, any of you that go get a mortgage, I mean, my gosh, they give you a prostate exam, you know, to give them information that goes in there and the amount of data that we have to get for clients is incredible. But apparently they're not doing that in the private equity market. Apparently they're not doing that with these big institutions. And somebody happens to ask a question. So what we're finding is you cannot tell me that's the only situation that that happened in. There has to be more out there. And now we're going into hyperdrive of well if they've done it with auto loans and these big banks are loaning money out to them and they didn't find it. We know that, you know, there's been manipulation of the metals market in the past. So maybe I need to take physical possession of that and that is not what we've cons continued to see accelerate and how quickly is this going to come apart. >> Yeah. Well, if I could um this is the first brand this bonds were like everything is fine. Everything is fine and they go to zero. Everything is not fine. Um, hey, once again, good job Moody's and S&P, you know, bond rating agencies. Awesome, awesome oversight there. But I this I think this email ought to be ought to be framed and put in the Louv or somewhere. [laughter] >> You know, this person um somebody's asking the question. You said finally somebody asked the question. They said, "Oh, hey, thank go first. Do we know whether FBG actually received first brands group actually received 1.9 billion?" No, no matter what happened to it, do we know did they get the 1.9 billion? Second, um would you tell us how much is in the segregated accounts in respect of the factored receivables as today? So, how much has been set aside? Like, did they get the billion 1.9 billion? How much have you set aside? One, we don't know. Two, zero. >> Zero. >> It's just so pippy. [laughter] >> Boom. >> Could you imagine the gut punch that the individual felt when they received that back? And and so much for market anticipating what's going on in the future literally right nobody sniffed this out before. Nobody was doing any research in there. Nobody was trying to pay attention to what's under the surface. Nothing. >> And that's what happens when the government intervenes and papers over everything. >> People become complacent. They're convinced that the regulators are not going to allow anything to or the government's not going to allow anything bad to happen. And then all of a sudden the rot starts coming to the surface. So yeah, let's start the clock. Chris Bear Stern collapsed in February, March of 2007. Lehman was about nine months behind it. And you know, so so I think that's the first shot across the bow. The question is what's going to happen on the other side. And will we see it before because I think it's more in the private equity space than it is anything. And will we see it before 401ks are actually adapted enough to transition this all over to your average uh American citizen who's just chasing hindsight returns without questioning what's taking place under the surface. You know what? Gold and silver are my top choices to protect my wealth against inflation and economic instability. Now, with all the monetary debasement and all these geopolitical risks going on, hedging your wealth has never been more important. I recommend that everybody own some gold and silver, physical, in your hot little hands. But what if you want to hold it elsewhere? Gold Core is an excellent choice and will rapidly and securely deliver physical gold and silver [music] to your doorstep. But GoldCore also lets you buy and store your gold and silver in high security vaults in places like Switzerland or Singapore or the US at your choice. 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Um, somebody said, "It's like it's like you received a 5,000 yuan order, but you only have a,000 yuan worth of goods and no capacity to produce the remaining 4,000 yuan. The deadline for delivery is approaching, so you have no choice but to buy the rest from the market." However, the other party knows you're in a bind, hikes the price to 6,000 yuand with no other option and nothing waiting and wanting to protect your credit. You buy it at the high price to fulfill the order. So, do you make a profit? And the reply was the ideas they come up with now are freezing the spot price to prevent it from rising. They really have a way with it. The jig is up. People have figured it out. And so, Paul, everything we're talking about, this whole paper game, which they they pretended like it was this big sophisticated thing, it was a shell game. It was fraudulent. And they were selling stuff they didn't have and had no intention of delivering and thought they could just come out and just throw more paper at it every time they want. And all week I've been watching them, two weeks now, watching them throw paper at it. just the other night, two nights ago, huge slam Monday night, 1 in the morning, like just massive amounts of oh, they threw everything they could at it and by the end of the day, uh, silver had reclaimed all of that back. So, that's not how that's supposed to work. Paper game is over. And I think, but the derivative we have to be aware of here is the extent to which this could reveal the depth of the fraud and that that actually probably isn't contained in this one tiny thing we call the silver market. >> Right. Right. And and somebody out there says, "Thank you for smashing the price because you're allowing me to buy it at a little bit lower price right now." I mean, that's that's they're doing somebody a favor. And right now, it doesn't seem to be the average American citizen. It seems to be international and and major institutions. >> Well, also there's a massive silver shortage all around the world right now. We've heard about in Holland, and Australia, but most importantly, they had to shut down new silver investment ETFs in India. And that's a big big big customer for these things. And as well, China is experiencing some shortages here as well. So, so these are these are just these are giant players now. And at one point during this big furious trying to keep silver under 50, over 1.1 billion ounces were traded in the US paper futures market, which by the way is 130% of yearly mine output in one day just to try and keep it from breaching the psychologically important level of of 50 bucks. Paul, somebody in the background is blowing up right now. Guaranteed. >> Yeah. We don't know who it is yet, but mark it. >> Yeah, we'll find out. And well, I hope we're going to find out within the next 6 to9 months, unless the governments just decide to to to for national security to hide it and sweep it under the rug because they seem to like to hide a lot of things and keep the American people from seeing the truth. So, Chris, I read something yesterday. So, and I and I've been thinking about this a lot. So they stated, and you may know this data, but they stated that for every 1 ounce of gold that comes out of the ground in the mining process, there's only 8 ounces of silver that are coming out of the ground. Does that sound correct based on your research? >> Yeah, it's it's seven or eight, something like that. It used to be it used to be 15 to 17 depending, but we're we're running out. We're getting a little more gold out compared to silver now. >> Correct. So at current prices, silver's got about a 51 ratio um uh to gold. So if this game is up and we're going to revert the market's going to force truth in time, then we should settle down with silver about eight times, you know, uh about a eight ratio. Maybe we go back to 15 to what gold is from a long-term standpoint, which means there's a substantial amount of catch-up that has to take place in the silver market. I'm not saying it's going to happen overnight. there's forces that that may mean that it's 10 or 12 years from now before that reaches that ratio, but it seems to be that that's where we would go back to at some point um if this if this thing blows up. And my concern is, you know, we've talked about our concern about the derivatives market. That's one of the reasons I'm not willing to to use options to to short the market and hedge positions right now because that is the the massive unregulated that's where all the dark secrets are going to be behind the scene, right? >> Mhm. So if if something blows that up and your compete counterparty risk goes, I mean, that's that's where you could have a great taking event happen to where where everybody just blows up across the board, which which I'm not so sure that the governments of the world wouldn't consider that, you know, they may welcome that because now old system's gone. Here's your central bank digital currencies. I know there's logistics with the older individuals having to learn to do it, but you know, learn the the new whatever the technology will be. That's going to be a challenge for a lot of people, but it certainly gives the crisis that they would need to be able to say, "Hey, here you go. Let's start a new system here." So my my my complaints and and they are kind of complaints because I I don't have a lot of [snorts] leverage to do much about it, but my complaints are that markets are supposed to be markets, right? So a market is a place where willing buyers and sellers show up and they come at a negotiated price. A market with air quotes around it is a signaling device used by the powers that be to telegraph something they want to have telegraphed. So they they that we had gold markets. They didn't want gold rising too quickly because that would send the wrong signal, right? It it had nothing to do with what was right or wrong or any of that stuff. I mean, I'm a full-blown market libertarian, Paul. I think gold should just be free to do whatever it wants. I think interest rates shouldn't be set by the Fred. They should do whatever they want to do. >> And then you let the market decide what's the right price for money and what's the right price for an ounce of gold. And it will tell you things. And if you're mismanaging that as the steward >> of so-called stable prices, which the Fed's supposed to have as one of its dual mandates, well then guess what? Um, you might have to steward a little differently, but they don't want to do that. They want to steward how they want to steward, and they don't want anybody telling them what to do. And they don't want gold, you know, shining a bad light on on their productions. Um, >> but that leads you astray over time. >> Yes. Yes, it does. And that that's why I wish we had free markets like we don't. I mean, okay, we we don't have pure capitalism. We don't have free markets. It's central controlled, central bank controlled. I mean, that's that's basically financial socialism within the markets. >> So, if we get back to freedom, that's good for everybody involved because you have the freedom to reap the benefits of good decisions and you also have the freedom to suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And if you allow that to take place in the markets and in life, then society is going to be better from a longer term standpoint. It's going to be based off of truth instead of, you know, these lies. I mean, it we go back to what happened in 2020 during the pandemic. You have these individuals that are that are intellectuals. They're really educated. They have this, you know, I am smarter than you. You should do what I say. And when you challenge them on things, they're like, well, trust the science. Well, they're not even they're not even basing their decisions off the science that they were educated in at this point. So, it becomes narrative and control. Do what you do this because I think you should do it. Now, I do think hopefully at some point, you know, the pain of this control is going to be severe enough that the people demand a free market. But I don't think we're anywhere close to there yet because I think there's a lot of fear out there of individuals and they're willing to accept some of these lies right now, which means we're weak. It people, they're willing to accept these lies right now because they don't want to give up the perception of the future that they have when they look back over the the, you know, past 5 to seven years. They they're looking 5 to seven years out and going, "Oh man, I'm going to be wealthy. I'm going to be whatever." So, they're accepting these lives right now because they're they're unwilling to embrace the reality of the situation that we're in right now. >> Well, very well said. And and here here's >> again back to my my complaint set is that I believe that that the stock markets have become political narrative machines, right? No politician wants things to go down on their watch and and the Fed doesn't and there there's a whole ecosystem of people who sort of >> sort of grown up in this and this is just how the system works. But I believe if you have eyes to see it's right in front of us. You want to see the chart that that just soon as I saw it, it like this is I saw this one chart and everything changed for me instantly. And it's this one. And what's being um cataloged here by Suscoana Research is two things. If you had bought the S&P 500 at market open, it opens at 9:30 and you held it all day long and then you sold it at the end of the day. And you started doing that way back there in um in uh what's that? 93, right? >> Mhm. >> You went nowhere. I mean, you're up like, I don't know, maybe 100%. Right. From 1993, just literally. But Paul, if you bought the futures in the S&P stock market at market close at 4:30, held them all night and then sold them in the morning, you're up. The whole thing it basically 90 plus percent of the stock market air quotes time moves can be explained by stock futures buying in the overnight markets. >> Mhm. >> Now that's weird because we don't announce things in the middle of the night and companies don't announce earnings in the middle of the night and market moving things tend to happen during the day and all kinds of things. But this just showed me that your overnight returns were a,000%. Your returns during the day were 15.9%. >> Yeah. This is just primmaasi. If you have eyes to see, you just go, "Wow." So, how do I explain stocks only seeming to go up during the overnight? Like, I have to come up with a model for that. And so, let's talk about let's talk about markets. So, so let me bring it home. Let's look at last night. This is stocks had this Vreovery right at 9:30 for no good reason. and sold off into the close yesterday. But then all night, Paul, look what happened. Stock futures just went up. And you wake up this morning and they say stock futures rise amid solid earnings in rate cut hopes. There, there's the explanation for why this thing went up. And by the way, I love this to paraphrase Harry Marcopoulos. He said, "Anything in finance that goes up in a straight line is fraud." How do we explain a straight line frog march in in stock futures all night long? coupled to this narrative shaping headline to this is they're just they're just using these it's become it's lost its way. Markets were supposed to be willing buyers and sellers and coming together for the spirit of capital deployment and investment and it's suddenly become something where it just it's unrecognizable some serious way. >> If you will pull that chart back up one more time. I want to show you something else that I see in the mechanics of the market. So, if you'll notice, there was a consolidation period yesterday before the breakdown. Okay? So, that that tells me that there were a lot of sellers that entered the market at that point yesterday. It breaks down overnight. >> So, as well, knowing the market, there's going to be individual traders that are going to go short at that point. Well, guess what the added benefit of that straight line up overnight is? You're opening above those theoretical shorts yesterday, and it forces short covering in the in in the short term. So, it's just continuing to pro provide this fuel to drive the market up because if you went short yesterday, now all of a sudden you're negative in that trade. You've broken out of resistance. So, you're forced mechanically to cover that >> and and especially the computers are not going to hesitate. They're going to they're going to cover that because it's mechanical and and and it's just so frustrating, right? It's just so frustrating. >> Well, it it is. And again, it it's it but it creates why that's why I put quotes around it. They're not markets anymore because a market is a place where where price discovery happens. This is not price discovery. This is price setting. Mhm. >> We also have had um several decades of beachball under the water price setting for gold and silver and that's now breaking down and they're scrambling and you know they're going to do something and um you know I will only become really agrieved when when they decide that they're going to have to make gold and silver illegal again because they screwed it up but they're going to have to blame the prudent. They're going to have to blame the wrong people for it because that's just how they are you know right >> it seems. So, so at any rate, um the only way I know to to begin to play this game effectively is you have to see it for what it is. >> I mean, it's you just see it for what it is and then then you can sort of um begin to play it. But I think to get off my complaining side, get onto my my um opportunistic side, it creates extraordinary opportunities, >> right? >> Unbelievable opportunities. It really does when because as the truth comes back in, even if they continue to obiscate it, market forces have discovered it. I believe at this point, lack of trust rules it today. >> Mhm. >> Physical possession is 10/10en of the law. So >> yeah. >> Yeah. That I stole that from somebody, you know, from you, Chris, but um and and the reality is, and I and I've talked about this before, so I'm not short right now, okay? We haven't broken these trend lines. There's all kinds of volatility. There's things that I'm concerned about, but around 2014, I had on my computer screen, my mirror, everybody reality, okay? There's there's the way we wish things would be and there's the things then there's the way things are. So, we have to accept the reality of the situation that we're forced to play the game by the rules that are that are cast upon us. I don't like it. I wish we could change it, but we can't bury our heads in the sand. So, we have to find a way, which is which is by God's grace what we've attempted to do and been able to to to do over time and continue. This is an imperfect game. Uh, Coach Kei with Georgia Tech, I listen to the press conference and you know, people call him out, well, how'd that mistake make? He's like, this is an imperfect game that we're trying to achieve perfection in. Okay? Every trade's not going to work. Every investment is not going to work. Every exit's not going to work. But if you've got a a a a strategy that you can utilize that'll tell you when to overweight commodities that'll tell you when where you're looking at asset classes is tools to be utilized. Okay. My problem with Wall Street saying oh you know uh uh with their propaganda against gold and precious metals over time and even commodities. The reality is you're setting a subset in individual's minds and the adviserss that are listening to that that that's a tool that I should never use. That's not true. It's a tool that should be used for a period of time to accomplish an end. And when it's obvious that it's it's time to use another tool, you pull that off uh out of your um working belt and set it back on the shelf. So that's that's the thing, you know, just remember we have to for those listeners out there, we have to play the game by the rules that are forced upon us. We can complain about it. I've been nervous because we you know, we're not fully invested in all our portfolios, but we own what makes sense to own. So, so far, you know, this year that could change tomorrow, but um you know, we we've complained about these, we've warned, we've had exposure to them because it made sense, you know, and and we're going to have to continue to do doing that going forward. And I think commodities will continue to, as far as our strategy goes, be built upon on pullbacks and weakness and as that information comes along because everything is pointing that this big ball of money is starting to move. So much so that I've been a little slow in rolling out our energy strategy because of the fact that energy is not we're seeing a little bit of money flow but not momentum. We've finally rolled that out now so that we've got another tool in the toolbox where we can get some exposure to sectors that that should benefit from from the path that they're just screaming that we're headed down and money's moving towards. So I'm I'm great setup because just yesterday I interviewed Adam Rosenwag of Garing and Roenwag the resource investors. It was my quarterly once a quarter we get together and it was the usual Adam Tour to force talking about how he sees that you remember you and I talked about that double hump inflation that um the that the Apollo research economist had pointed out. Same thing like this setup that I see now Paul for energy in particular it it's unbelievable like Adam and I are looking at the same thing. I know you know this data too, which is well the US shale space is rolling over and somehow oil just keeps going down and it's and it's it's the most bizarre setup ever, right? And you know, he very clearly points out that a lot of people are trading off of what the International Energy Agency says. And they're just they're literally spouting fictions. They're saying, "Well, demand is down and and and and supplies are up. You know, global inventories are surging." He said, "The problem is that's not true." Um, and so he said every six months they sort of have to backize that what they just said wasn't right, but they keep on with this fiction. And the way he looked at it as a longtime market observer, he said, "Look, sometimes a narrative just gets entrenched." And that becomes the actual story everybody believes, right? >> And then it just sort of has a life of its own until one day people wake up and go, "Wow, we had the wrong story." And bang, they all go off the other direction. So, I'm glad you have that tool in place because hopefully you can sniff out when those first sort of mice start scurrying for the exits of getting in there. >> And we're starting to see it. You know, it started with gold, now it pulls over to silver. It's probably going to move to other commodities. And and look, the psychological part that you're talking about where everybody believes that narrative. >> I think I have the history of bubbles back there. Everybody believed the narrative, right? Until they realized that the narrative didn't make sense and they changed their behavior. Now, that's the popping of bubbles that I'm showing. I I wish I had maybe I need to find somebody to make me one of those where it shows, you know, like that basketball under the water and then finally that narrative change and money flows into that direction and moves up. We're starting to see it and that's one of the reasons why we've had an a higher exposure to commodities. I mean, outside of gold, we really didn't have any commodities outside of short periods of time. energy made a lot of sense from the 2020 bottom to to about end of 2022, but you know, that's just been these little rises and it gets smacked back down. But there's a consistent flow that's shifting into those commodities. And what's interesting to me is you got retail, you've got, you know, Bezos and some of these others that are selling a lot of their stocks right now. Insiders are selling big while retail's piling over there. And very quietly money is flowing into that commodity space. Not so much quietly with silver over the past and gold over this past year. Gold's up 57% year to date. Whoa. Amazing. And uh but we're starting to see that money flow go over and and you just got to as the information comes out, you got to make these steps. And and quite frankly for the listeners out there, the best investments that you're going to make in time, you're scared that you're too early. you're scared that you're, you know, wrong. Now, yeah, you can be nervous if you're chasing Nvidia out there right now because it's on a stem, but there's still that euphoric purchase. You're doing it because everybody else is. The best investments are made when not when other people are not paying attention and then the market comes to you. And if you have these tools to where, hey, I'm starting to see money flow because the big money moves before retail does, right? And um so the big money starts moving in that direction and then retail's following a lot quicker behind. But but you want to be where you want to be where everybody's going to be two to three years from now and have the patience and the fortitude to follow a strategy through. Most people just want to do what the herd's doing. That's the reason why those things blow up. Most people participate in it. Most people get blown up. But for those that that have the ability of tools that can help guide them from a money flow perspective, they can make that adaptation, but there's still going to be a little fear and trembling and patience and discipline involved in it. There's nothing we can do in our lives that doesn't require some sacrifice, some mental pain, some long-term thinking and [music] discipline associated with it. Markets [music] are facing heightened uncertainty and thoughtful portfolio management has never been [music] more important. If your current strategy relies solely on passive [music] investing or diversification without active oversight, it may be time to consider a different approach. At Peak Financial [music] Investing, we connect you with experienced wealth managers who actively manage portfolios using disciplined, [music] research-driven strategies designed to adapt to evolving market conditions. Our focus is on helping [music] clients navigate volatility with clarity and confidence. While no investment strategy [music] can guarantee results or eliminate risk, we believe that preparation and active [music] management can make a meaningful difference over time. Visit peakfinaniinvesting.com [music] to schedule a complimentary consultation and explore whether our approach aligns with your goals. I'm Dr. Chris Martinson and I am proud to support [music] Peak Financial Investing. This is not a guarantee of future performance, but a call to take your financial planning seriously. Again, that's peak financial.com. [music] Investing, of course, involves risk, including the potential loss of [music] principle. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please consult with a qualified adviser before making investment decisions. When I started investing in in gold and silver or saving my money, um it was because I could see the long-term trend, right? So, I put out this thing called the crash course in 2008 and I just noted that look um debasement is just the rule, right? So, the Romans took their daenerius and it was about 90ish% silver and over the next 300 years debase that all the way down to 02%. Those clever clever people had figured out how to electroplate lead with silver and they didn't have electricity. So that's pretty clever. They they had figured out a chemical reaction. So debasing is just what people do. That hasn't changed. So that was easy. Now I can clearly see the same setup where because we've had our fictitious markets for a long time. People have all sort of been conditioned that, you know, the exciting stuff is over there in tech for the moment, but we've been completely ignoring the capital requirements needed for um things like oil and gas, right? And so there was just this big um conference in London and the CEO of Exxon said, "Wow, capital is reeling in so fast." He said, "I just see shortages of of oil going forward." This is the CEO of Exxon. Probably knows what he's talking about, right? But that same sentiment is out there. But it doesn't matter. I'm sure you probably know this. The percentage allocation of the S&P that's actually energy companies. Was it like 2% something? It's 2.3. >> It's just minuscule. >> It's like minuscule, >> right? As if we don't need this stuff. That's what that's saying. You know, it's an afterthought when it's the lifeblood of all the rest that makes the whole thing happen and we've been underinvesting in it. So, welcome to the to the resource side cycles. They're long, but man, they burn hard and long when they finally go the other way. And we're going to have to put capital's going to have to get over into >> that's going to have to grow again. Just is or we're going to have dark nights and and no economy. I mean, it's just very simple to see for me because I understand the role of energy in an economy. I get it. Um but I'm surprised how few people do. >> Yes. >> Including Trump. >> Including Trump. And the weight of the information continues to build uh from the future, right? You've got what 37 to 40% of the S&P 500 going into these big names that are all just putting tremendous amounts of money into the AI trade and and yeah, it's made some efficiencies, but at this point, you know, it's creates really cool videos. Um, and it's it's a superpowered internet search. I mean, that's really the only thing we've seen. I use some for note takingaking, which is absolutely incredible, but that's more efficiency. It's not gamechanging, right? >> Mhm. >> So, um, but you look at the data that's coming out all over the place. We're way underinvested in the energy and utilities and energy production. These are energy hogs. These states that they're building these um data centers in. They've seen their their utility prices go up by 300%. So, we know where this is going. especially if it actually becomes the utility that they claim that it's going to be. Then at some point in the future, you're going to see massive increases in in energy. That's one of the reasons why I'm like, look, the weight of the information continues to build. I like to wait for momentum. We rolled out the mining strategy, you know, back at the first of the year cuz finally we started to get some breakouts and momentum in the mining space. Happened a lot quicker than I thought. I don't think energy may necessarily be that as instantaneously rewarding, but the weight of the evidence is there. So, you have to to have something that can keep you in that space from a long-term standpoint that makes sense, that's adaptable. >> Yep. And and the narrative that's going to shift, Paul, is is the the narrative is, oh, we're just super overs supplied with oil and gas in the United States. We just drill more whenever we want it. And that's going to shift to oh no we actually have don't have as much as we thought and um and now we're into sort of that scarcity mindset and it's going to be pretty fast. Uh particularly I think natural gas is my favorite thing to look at in that regard >> because even the EIA that's the energy information administration out of the department of energy US they do all the energy statistics they say natural gas output is going to be flat for the next two years. Flat little bumps you know that's their prediction. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. But if that's the prediction, what do we do with the fact that over the next 2 years, we're going to be commissioning another 12 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas liquef? Where's that 12 BCF coming from? Nobody's square in that circle at this point. I'm just I'm shocked by it. It's kind of like, isn't somebody in in a significant position going to ask a question like, did you get your 1.9 billion? What's backing our receivables? like somebody should be asking these questions and I'm always shocked that it seems to be me and you and people like us at the edge kind of going that doesn't make sense like I thought there was more intelligence baked in this system somehow >> right well hey look and first brands tells us that those in the positions of power that are making these massive deals haven't been asking a lot of questions until finally somebody did right >> well last chart on that but have you seen this um just found this on the great Marty this morning. Um and uh so it's like junk bonds were were like trending lower and lower and lower in yield for four months. Like ah everything's getting just just everything's fine but then oops you like your breakouts Paul um broke that trend line pretty hard. Now I think that's related to the first brands but um uh still things can turn around in a hurry when they finally get going the other way. They can and I watch that very closely because I as I explain it to clients, I know this is a terrible analogy, but in that space, you're loaning money to crack addicts. I mean, like that's the best analogy from a riskreward standpoint. Maybe they've changed, maybe they haven't, but I pay very close attention to high yield from that standpoint. So, >> um, people are starting to ask questions there and which trends change like that that you know, who knows? They might it might go back to a normal trend, but that's the first decision point that you have to say, "Oh, maybe now it's time to take action in certain areas, but you get more information as it comes along." So, I think that's a pretty important breakout. >> Yeah. All right. We'll keep our eye on that. And this brings us to the end of our time here today. So again, if you want to talk to Paul andor his amazing team, just go to peakfinancialinvesting.com, fill out a simple form and somebody from Paul's team will be in touch with you within 48 business hours to set up an appointment. And as always, I will tell you people absolutely love the service you provide, Paul. That's all the feedback I get. And it's just uh because you offer great a really great service. Really good. >> Thank you. >> And just helps people plan, you know, and I think we all need a plan right now. failure to plan is is a plan to fail right now. >> Correct. Correct. And it's an honor. We work hard for the people that we serve. We love what we do and we [music] pray that the Lord grants us the wisdom to help people navigate the days ahead uh prudently and wisely. [music] >> Excellent. Well, until next time, Paul, have a great day and even better weekend.
Gold & Silver Markets Reveal Hidden Manipulation — What’s Going On?
Summary
Transcript
Nothing in this program should be considered investment advice. It is for educational purposes only. Please hit pause and read this disclaimer in full. History is going to go back and define the turning point [music] was the lack of trust when when we stopped utilizing the rule of law and weaponized the banking system against those that we disagreed with around the globe. Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Finance Q. I'm your host Chris Martinson. We have so much to discuss today because something really magnificent and maybe a little scary is happening out there in the markets. What is going on with gold? What is it telling us? We've been on this scent for a while. Who's we? Well, that's myself and Paul Ker of Kiker Wealth Management. Hey Paul. >> Hey Chris. Good to see you this morning. I I truly think we're this is legendary times here and uh I've been a gold and silver investor for over 25 years. I've been and not just an investor, not just somebody who bought some and put it in the closet. I'm somebody who's been watching the market very very closely. I used to trade gold futures for a period of my life. That was a high stress occupation, but I learned about markets. The [snorts] tuition was expensive, but I paid it. Um, so this is what we said last week. And Paul, gold at $4,000 was also so last week. I wake up this morning, just one week later. We're having the same conversation. Now it's 4,200. >> Mhm. >> When I wake up this morning. Uh, so what is it telling us? And by the way, growing alarm drives gold to records. You see this article in the Financial Times? Oh, wait. That was 2011 when gold was 1,600 an ounce. [laughter] But they do go on, you see, I underlined it down there, currency debasement. So they they they at least acknowledge that sometimes some of the fears that people if people are investing in gold out of fear, which is a very western concept because the Chinese don't invest in gold out of fear, they save their money in gold and have for thousands of years. So that's not it's not a fear trade. >> But they do say that so such as the westerners are going to get involved in this. Um, it's a fear trade and they're fearing this currency debasement, by which we mean money printing, which quantitative easing, right? Let me just throw in here, silver at spot is at 5268 as of uh 9:00 this morning when I took this snapshot. That's a big deal. >> Yes, >> Tom Mlen has said, "Hey, the Fed is going to have to ease here because you and I have talked about this. The green line is uh the 2-year interest yield and the black line is the Fed. And as you can see, if you follow along carefully, you see the green line goes up first and then the Fed comes out and says, "Oh, we've decided it's time to raise rates and then oops, you know, the green line starts falling and then the Fed tails along for a while, then it follows along and gives these nice things with these statements where words are changed here and there and people are like, "What wisdom?" And here the the 2-year yield goes up and the Fed trails along, makes a big oopsie error and tries to play catch-up and then keeps it. And then again, the 2-year is falling. Point is is that the 2-year is always in front of the Fed. And here it is. And it's falling. And it's a pretty big gap. And the Fed's behind the curve, so they're going to have to cut rates. And he's saying a half point cut is needed right now. Tom Mlen, Mlullen Oscillator, I follow him. He's been doing great work for a long time. So, good good guy to follow. >> And it turns out, you and I have been talking about this. This is the repo, the reverse repo facility at the Fed, which is >> other people's money. This is money they shoved into the markets and banks shoved it back at the Fed and it's been used for this crazy thing called reverse repos. All we need to know is it used to be $2.5 trillion and it's gone almost to zero. This is what's been used to buy all those Treasury bonds and it's almost out. It's like out. It's gone. >> So, you and I have said for a long time when it runs out, what's going to have to happen? The Fed's going to have to come out with one of their August statements. Oh, there's a little tightness in the markets. We may have to stop shrinking our balance sheet, which is code speak for Oh, well, would you look at this? This just came out yesterday, pal. Starting to see a little a little tightening in money markets, right? And then this just came out this morning and I I I stole that. Um, I believe that was Chris Irons who who I first read that from who said printer is coming. >> Chris is Chris Irons is on fire from time to time when when it comes to talking about that. >> Absolutely. So Powell signaled the central bank may stop shrinking its balance sheet in the coming months. An important shift necessary to preserve liquidity in the overnight funding blah blah blah. Right? So, uh, listen, they printed up a huge amount of money during COVID. It's basically run out and they're going to have to print more. And you and I have been on this print, print, print, print. To the extent gold is telling us that there's a currency debasement coming. >> Well, I think that's at least part of the message gold has been sending here. And I don't know how else to look at it right now. It sure seems to be, you know, and and one of the things that I've struggled back and forth with, you know, as this data comes out, you see it, you look at the long term, then you look back at the short term. So, so [clears throat] you kind of got to be fast on changing your your mind and opinion in the short run from time to time, but the long term, we're still continuing to head in that direction. Everything points in that direction. And um so but you know one of the things I'm looking at is trying to figure out used to you could look at the dollar index and you could compare that to others you know and the argument is the dollar index is linked with you know other fiat currencies. So if they're all going down together and all the central banks the world have decided that they're going to commit to debasement of the currencies then it's hard to get a signal from the dollar in the short run. So, I'm trying to develop other pairs that you can look at just to try to to to see is is gold central banks really moving in? Is this big institutions? Is it a fear trade? Or is it just the realization that we're into a debasement situation and all of the reserves that the global governments had sitting in treasuries, you know, especially with the weapon weapon weaponization of the swift banking system, the seizure of Russian assets, if trust is lost just like they do in in Asia, you know, do they necessarily trust their governments throughout history? I mean, there's a lot of suspicion. So gold is their choice of saving those assets. And now you're seeing it move into silver. I think you're going to see it move into rare earth metals and and commodities, you know, seem to be signaling that that's going to protect your purchasing power in the decade ahead much more than anything else, >> which is pretty typical for debasement cycles. But this is kind of going to be the granddaddy of all debasement cycles, right? Because the magnitude of the printing this. I mean, it was one thing to say, oh, you know, the the British pound was pound sterling was the world's reserve currency for a bit, but the world was a lot smaller, right? And uh it didn't have quadrillions of derivatives. It didn't have like the need for instantaneous global capital flows measured in the trillions of dollars per day just to support certain aspects of the piping that we hope doesn't freeze up because that'll trigger the great taking. The scale is different. Also, the speed is different. And so what's interesting is so when they first took gold off the gold out of the gold standard 1971, right? Actually, I think Great Britain did it in 1914 around World War I and that hastened the but it still took a few decades for the pound sterling to get kicked out in 1944. Right. >> So here 1971 happens. Um 1973 Americans are allowed to own gold again. I don't how how do you make something illegal in a free country like that? weird, right? But yeah, [snorts] come get your foam number foam finger out. We're number one and they hate us for our freedoms, right? Whatever. Um, and then what they did next, Paul, was they put every effort they could into containing the price of gold. They had this thing called the gold pool where all this big gold holders agreed to sell it to try and keep the price down. When that broke down, then they had came up with a Washington agreement where the BIS was coming together and they did everything. And so this is what happened. [snorts] Gold as a share of official global reserves came down and down and down during the '9s was like it's over and it bottoms out right here around 20045 at just about 5% >> or 10% of yeah I guess about 10% of of global reserves. It's nothing. And it goes nowhere till about 2019 and now it's peaking its head up and now it's at about 25%. the dollar's coming down. You could actually see these two lines crossing. But my point here is gold was back here. They said it's not money. And here we're finding out it is money. >> Mhm. >> That's a big shift right there. >> Well, it it seems there's a there's a complete difference between theory and reality. So it seems like a lot lot of intellectuals got together and decided that they had this theory that everything was going to work out and in reality it didn't work out the way that they convinced themselves that it would and there's a major scramble back in the other direction. And I really believe history is going to go back and to find the turning point was the lack of trust when when we stop utilizing the rule of law and weaponize the banking system against those that we disagreed with around the globe. bad idea, right? >> Hey, um, so I've been getting this question a lot from people like, you know, what's the fair price for gold? 4,000 it feels expensive. Um, as we saw 1,600 was expensive just, you know, a little while ago. Every first Paul, I just want to say every single time I've bought gold, I've had to kind of hold my nose. And it was a hard decision when it was 300 an ounce. It was a hard decision when it was 500. It was a hard decision when it was 1,200. It's been a hard decision ever. It's never easy. It's It's just not >> um looking in retrospect, it looks like, oh yeah, load the back the truck up. But I love this one. We showed this last time, a little golden history. So this is Weimar, Germany during its famous debasement period. So you see here, oh yeah, gold's overbought and it had this huge retracement. Like you were totally felt stupid for about a year here if you'd bought there and then it sort of climbs back, but it's going nowhere. Look at this. Two years it's going nowhere while they're busy debasing their currency like crazy. And then here, you know, they say, "Ah, well, gold is effed, right? It sort of comes up and it's not really going anywhere." And then, oh, it's going to collapse. But it went from, let's say, 10 to a trillion. >> This is orders of magnitude. 10,000, 100,000, million, up, up, and up and it goes. That's what it looks like. But of course, gold isn't going up. >> No. >> That ounce of gold is an ounce of gold is an ounce of gold. Nothing happened. What happened was the paper went down. Correct. >> Make sure we have that frame of reference. So, >> well, and I would venture to say at some point it outpaced, but all along that journey, I would assume, and I want to go back and look at this because this is what gold does. It bought the same number of cans of soup close to, you know, on that journey all the way up as it did at the bottom. The difference was it was, you know, it retained its purchasing power and technically it built wealth compared to the loss of purchasing power from everybody else. you know, you you were better off than the average individual in Germany if you had gold, but you weren't necessarily any richer. You just maintained the purchasing power of the as you know, uh, and gold versus the fiat um, German mark. That that was entirely true with with one proviso which was that if if you had some debt outstanding like let's say you had a hotel and there was debt on it and the debt was denominated in marks >> and all of a sudden you could pay that debt off with a single gold coin whereas it would have taken >> uh yeah you know hundreds of gold coins in the in a prior era that's you can actually do like if you have debt that's denominated in a debasing currency you can actually do okay. Um, so I'm not saying people leave her out, go out, take on lots of debt, you know, buy gold. Not not saying that at all. But that's one wrinkle. But otherwise, your point, all that gold really is is a way of saving for the most part. Same number of cans of soup, >> same number of acres of land, same number of everythings. And that's important because if you look at this, you could have still saved in gold >> here. If you'd had gold, you would have saved. The fact that the currency is blowing up has no meaning. That's why I think it's important to understand the framing that in China, most of Asia, India too, they save in gold and silver. They don't speculate. They're not trying to, you know, game the debt markets. They save. Over here, it's been pitched to us as a fear trade. Oh, no. People fear debasement. Now, I don't fear debasement. I know it's coming. It's a thing. >> I'd rather be able to save my money in a reliable way. Well, and that that's the important part of when I'm talking to to individuals, especially if they're new to this journey right now. Let's say it's somebody new, I'm meeting them, they've had no exposure to precious metals in any way whatsoever. There is a tremendous number of people out there like that. So, you know what I what I'm trying to do is take them off of our hindsight bias, right? Because I'm having a lot of conversations, you know, can gold go higher? Can gold go higher? Now, I'm getting the conversations. Do you think ever goal will ever go back down again? But people are still frozen to make that allocation. So I just explained to them it's a mindset. Okay. You know, we've talked about for some time 10% [clears throat] of your not a recommendation. This is just a thought process. 10% of your assets be set into goal from a long-term standpoint like fire insurance on your home. Okay? So mentally we want to say I don't care if it doubles in the next 6 months or if it goes down 50% in the next 6 months. I'm looking for 10 years from now because in the interim period there's going to be all kinds of noise. There's going to be, you know, selloffs and lack of liquidity events, forced liquidation when people are just selling anything they can in the short run. Kind of similar to what happened to to cryptocurrencies last Friday. So mentally, we hope 10 years from now it's the exact same price that it is today. And that's not a bad thing. If you take 10% of your assets and you put it over there because you had insurance against that, it's no different than paying for the property and casualty insurance on your home. Are are you upset 10 years from now that the house didn't burn down and you theoretically wasted that money? No, we're not. because we understand the risk associated the financial impact if your primary residence was to burn down or an office building. So if you have that mindset and you forget about it, that portion of your insurance from a long-term standpoint, the journey is a lot easier and it makes it easier to allocate funds here in the short run where we don't know if we're going to have a major pullback here or just a consolidation or if it's going to continue because the debasement trade is on. So, I want to tell people from a long-term standpoint, you know, obviously you got to get some advice and see if it's appropriate, but you have to get your mindset on the long term and the and the direction that things are going. And and this leads me back to one quote that I want to uh point out. So, back in June of of 17th of 2022, and I'll I'll read this out and maybe I need to share the screen. global global institutions, governments recognize what's taking place. You know, my concern is is within the United States, we're getting a lot of propaganda from Wall Street. We're getting a lot of propaganda from the government that wants to obiscate what's really taking place. But if we go back and we take a look at what Vladimir Putin stated, according to the IMF, global currency reserves are at 7.1 trillion and dollars and 2.5 trillion euros. Now, these reserves are devalued at an annual rate of about 8%. Moreover, they can be confiscated or stolen any time if the United States dislikes something in the policy of the states involved. Let's just think about that for a minute. Moreover, they can be confiscated or stolen at any time if the United States dislikes something in the policy of the states involved. What have we heard in the news here recently? What is it they're talking about giving the assets that they see seized from Russia over to Europe? Now, if you're if you're a global institution, what's your alternative? So he goes on to say according to analyst estimates conversion of gold reserves will begin just because there's no room for them with such shortages. Now he's going and talking about commodity shortages, rare earth and and you know all this money that's moved in there. They will be converted from weakening currencies into real resources like food, energy commodities and other raw materials. Other countries will be doing this of course. Obviously, this process will further fuel global dollar inflation. >> Now, I know why they hate him so much. He's speaking the truth. >> He's speaking the truth. Have you ever heard that quote that's out there? And I got to give Luke >> No, I haven't. I love that. >> I got to give Luke Groman kudos for pointing that out in in one of his research reports. So, I didn't find this on my own. It was for paid research. But, you know, that's incredible. So, what I wanted to do is I wanted to go back when I read that and let me get to another screen. I want to get over to gold and I want to look at gold and see what has occurred since that period of time. >> That's from June of 22. I got that right in my head. I know exactly what happened. >> That's June of 22. Well, I marked it here on the chart so that you can see it. So, it's marked right there. So, Putin's warning. Now, this is approximately June 17, 2022. Well, guess what? gold got smacked down in the short run. And I would I would assume that there's powers that be, you know, maybe I'm being a little too cynical that says, "Uhoh, I don't want anybody listening to Putin. Let's get this out of the the mainstream media for a period of time." Well, what has gold done in in that period of time? It allowed those other individuals and institutions to continue to accumulate gold. And then we had the breakout in 24 and we've just continued to move from there. Well, what a couple of months prior to that, global financial assets and gold share, the percentage of global financial assets and gold was 1.5%. And I need to update this now, but all it did was go up by a little over a half a percent and the price went from about 1,800 up to about 2,000. What's going to happen if it continues to go up to 10 or 15 or 20%? How much higher can those prices go? Well, I got two things also. So, for for viewers looking at this that it doesn't maybe look like that dramatic of a rise because Paul has pulled up a log chart. Um, >> yes. Log and weekly chart. Yeah. Sorry, Chris. Chris doesn't like log charts. >> No, I love log charts because you see a straight line, you know, it's rising exponentially, right? Yeah. >> Um, but this is a log chart. So, uh, and the second thing I want to point out is that whole time while they were holding the price of gold down, and they were, we know they were. We know they've been doing this for decades. I'm I've got the receipts with me today. We're going to discuss that in a minute. While they were doing that, weirdly enough, Asia said, "Oh, the price is low. We'll take more of it." >> Now, they use prices that go nowhere to sort of abuse investors in the West and go, "Oh, it's a dead asset. It's not really going anywhere. The price is not confirming what you want it to confirm." So, for us, if the price isn't doing something exciting, we lose interest. We bring in grandma's silverware, you know, grandpa's gold, gold gold coin. We just bring them in and get rid of get rid of that stuff. >> Asia looks at it and India looks at it differently. They're like, I like it cheap. Thank you very much. And huge amounts of gold and silver left for the for the east. That's the risk. So in the west, they can play their games. They can wang the prices around. They can, you know, do their little paper stop runs and all that junk, which by the way, I think is ending. Um, but uh it's counterproductive because while you're doing that, you're hemorrhaging your actual wealth to your potential adversaries or at least competitors on the global landscape. >> Yes. Yes. And let me show one more one more chart. I didn't want to keep that up the whole time you were talking so people could see, but this is a monthly. Okay. So, this is monthly. Now, I don't have his speech announced. So, that's 2022. That's actually right in this area here. >> Yep. But that was prior resistance. Look at the accumulation that took place. It digested that move from 2000 to 2012 and just consolidated for a decade. It gets out of the average investor's mind, Asia, the West, everybody that was, you know, research analysts with eyes wide open was talking about everything taking place. And now we've started that next move up again. So, and again, this is a log chart, so you can see just to explain how tight the price gets in there, but it just gives you an idea that that I mean, after this breakout that occurred back here, the price continued for a long time. And look, there was volatility in there. Okay, you had volatility, you had periods of consolidation, but it continued to move. It consolidated for a long period of time. All of those that gold left the West, not all of it, but a large portion of it left the West to go to the east. And I'm not so sure that we're going to be able to afford to buy it back again. >> No, probably not. >> Um, not with the depreciating currency. >> Yeah. Well, Paul, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk about the actual paper manipulation in the gold and silver markets, how it happened, and what that actually means. So, we'll be right back. Today's markets are more volatile than ever. 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I'm Dr. Chris [music] Martinson, proud to work with Peak Financial Investing, and my support reflects my professional views. I encourage you to take control of your financial future [music] by making informed decisions. All right, Paul, that was a perfect setup for this. I want to talk about I I think this is a legendary moment in time. I really do. And it's legendary because the shenanigans that have been participated like our markets are kind of fraudulent in a number of dimensions. We saw that if if you saw the movie The Big Short, right? And you know, the main protagonists, they've made all the right bets. You know, you've got your Michael Buries, you've got your um Mark Bounds, right? And and they've made the right bets that these are dog meat, you know, uh assets, and they've shorted them and the whole market's falling apart, but they're not getting repriced, which is a fancy thing for the big banks are just holding them at a fictitious price because that s that was in their financial best interest. Didn't matter if it was right. didn't matter if it was legal, illegal, irrelevant. So, the big banks play games. Here's the fun part. Big banks are willing to play that game for as long as until it looks like they might lose something and then they suddenly run for cover. The light comes on in the kitchen and the cockroaches all run. And um you can always always always count on the banks to operate in their own self-interest. So, I think we're at a self-interest moment. And here's what happened. So it turned out that in 1973 they were they were considering reopening gold to be legal for US investors or um you know citizens to own and they were a little scared what that was going to do like what if the price of gold went up a lot all of a sudden and so here's a cable that was sent between London and New York and it talked about a major impact of private US ownership. Okay. Ah what do we do? So here they are conspiring and they said quote to the dealers expectations the gold dealers expectations will be the formation of a sizable gold futures market. Each of the dealers expressed the belief that the futures market would be of significant proportion and physical trading would be minuscule by comparison. Also expressed was the expectation that large volume futures dealing would create a highly volatile market. In turn, the volatile price movements would diminish the initial demand for physical holding and most likely negate long-term hoarding by US citizens. End quote. So, they just laid it out here, Paul. They said, "Look, we're going to make this paper market. We're just going to make that paper market dominant. We're going to use it to wang the price of gold around, make it very volatile, and diminish people's appetite for that asset. We're just going to we're just going to nudge them away from this because we don't want people buying too much gold. We'd rather they didn't. There it is in black and white. They thought it up and then they executed it for decades, >> decades and decades. By the way, same same process happens in the US stock futures market. But um all futures, all pe this is all paper games. >> Oh yeah. In other words, we're going to punish you for owning it. We're going to we're going to uh uh make you go through all kinds of emotional and financial pain. And they did the same thing to short sellers after 2008. every time that you get a major technical breakdown on the market, the Fed would step in and intervene on the weekend and any shorts got their face ripped off on the other side. They just they just eliminated the bears >> and and it's a completely different environment now. That's been hard to adjust to because there's periods of time where you had somewhat of a free market in US equities and they let it uh you know fluctuate, but now it seems to be more of a political utility. I mean, that's when they commit to it, they cause all kinds of emotional pain for those who are who are trying to seek the truth is what they're doing. >> Well, it's deeply fraudulent and and I object to it as well because it punishes the prudent. If you if you if you read the tea leaves correctly, they said, "Well, that's not allowed. Let us punish you. We're going to reward the people who are scoundrels and raccoons, and we're going to punish the prudent." Absolutely backwards. if you want to have a functioning society, good capital markets, prosperity, it's just it's just a fraudulent fiction. And they and Paul, they just did it so that they could just continue to print money and hopefully the golden canary wouldn't be keing over in the mine, right? So it wouldn't be warning anybody that what was happening was uh going to be very very bad. But that's the debasement environment we're in. So, I came across this last week >> on Twitter and it's an article from 2022 and it's by Peter Hamro, who by the way is in the gold business for 40 years. And so, get this. He says, you know, um this is kind of fascinating. He says, "Disinformation for many years has kept the lid on this tinder box. And since 2018, the financial stability desks at the World Central Banks have followed the Bank of International Settlements instruction to hide the perception of inflation by rigging the gold market. So he says this from a deep insider. Quote, "The only way to achieve the cover is by smashing the price of physical gold by the alchemical production of paper gold. That's the gold futures market. With the help of the futures market and the connivance of the alchemists, the bullion traders, yes, that includes me. I was deputy managing director of Makata and Goldsmith managed to create an unshakable perception that ounces of gold credited to an account with a bank or a bullion dealer where the same is the real thing. And much easier, old chap, you don't have to store or insure it. Once investors swallowed this stupifying pill, it was easy to sell them gold that simply didn't exist. And of course, there were wary investors who found it hard to believe that the likes of Mata, Montigue, Rothschild, and the Sharps Pixley were undoubted counterparties and wanted to be assured that the gold would be there when they called for it. Easy, we said. Don't bother to pay for it. Just give us initial cash margin. Agree to a variation margin. Uh, and our paper promise is as good as gold. This was the simple derivative. If you thought the price would go down, you could sell us gold and you didn't have to have margin and margin the trade in the same way. And then along came a raft of options and other products in the derivative market and for this is for that is what this Camaro was called started to spiral like a tornado. >> So here's a deep insider saying listen here was the game. The game was we wanted to keep you off the scent of gold. We didn't want gold signaling anything unoured like you know that everybody's debasing their currencies and gold would tell you that because then people might do something really awkward and start moving into other commodities like oil and copper and wheat and other commodities all of which are subject to the same paper futures market. All of these have mysterious like sell orders that just flood them from time to time. This is happening in the oil market right now. And that's all well and good, Paul, but you're you're debasing currency and denying reality. >> Yes. >> And the reality is new wells aren't being drilled. New mines aren't being opened. More investments into productive farming aren't happening. And you do that long enough and you wake up one day and you go, "Wait, where's all this stuff we need? Why isn't it here?" It's because we let these charlatans get their raccoon paws into this and just, I think, ruin these markets. >> Yeah. I mean they and and they start it and then it takes on a life of its own, right? And and >> when you when you listen to an insider talk about that and I've just been amazed I mean amazed by how corporate Wall Street, your major firms have just convinced their adviserss, convinced their clients that gold's an ancient relic, that you're as dumb as a box of rocks for buying it, and you shouldn't pay any attention to it from a long-term standpoint. And and once they get that started, you know, it just becomes this belief out there. And for those of us who have been been purchasing it based on the knowledge of history and the lessons that it could teach basic mathematics, you know, you kind of felt crazy for a long period of time and then now we get into a situation where the price is finally moving and there's all kinds of anxiety around that. What's it signaling? What's this taking place? You know, what happens in the short run? But with all that money printed, if we reach the end of the disinflation, deflation that occurred because of globalization and del globalization, then we may be in the very very early stages of a long-term uh change in the price of gold and and that psychology reverting back because that psychology as well is like taking a basketball and holding it under the water, you know, for for an extended period of time and then when you finally lose control of it. It has to find that new equ equilibrium. And where's that equil equilibrium going to be with the Fed talking about, you know, slamming rates down, you know, potential yield curve control discussions coming out, you know, back page of the Wall Street Journal. Theoretically speaking, not actually. Well, I think actually it it might have, but the point being is preparing the public for the fact that that here we are. we're going to go back to the printing presses and then and if you've got this real move towards commodities, you know, with Trump taking purchases and and critical minerals and and reallocation and the free cash flow right now in the gold miners with the where the price is, you know, we're going to see a sea change and that could be cost push inflation, right? We've had asset price inflation, but if these commodities go up dramatically, at some point that's going to squeeze the profits on Wall Street and this party that this shifting and adaptation of of where the money's going in the future is going to catch a lot of investors offguard. >> Well, it will. And [clears throat] and that beach ball though. So, >> yeah, >> these raccoons have been at this for a really long time. And I'll tell you this, I talked to a lot of really deep insiders who've been in the gold business forever, and nobody can answer the most basic question, which is, do we know who owns which gold bars? >> Yeah, >> gold bars have serial numbers on them. It should be a simple thing. I could do it in a spreadsheet, right? Give me an afternoon. >> You just put all the numbers in there and you say, "This bar belongs to Paul." >> That spreadsheet does not exist. Tells you something. They've been like, "Paul, I would sell you one." Or or these the bullion banks we just heard about, you know, they they sell paper promises and they say, "Paul, you're you're trust us. You know, you got this bar over here with your name on it." But they've also sold it to me and five other guys and >> four other girls and and we all think all 10 of us that, you know, we own that same gold bar. So, here's where we're at. Here's the beach ball. It turns out that as of this morning, there are 360 paper contracts for every 1 oz of physical silver. >> Goodness gracious. 360 paper for every 1 ounce of physical. Wow. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but wow. >> No, go for it. I mean, come on. That's shocking, right? >> Golly, >> how does that resolve? Okay, check this out. So, uh, Brian Kuzmar says, "Hey, whoa, these kinds of moves in precious metals are unprecedented." All caps. I have been doing this since 1977. Have never seen this type of movements, not even in 1980. Something bigger than gold and silver is happening. Gold and silver are merely being symptoms here of something. And we're in the waiting room anxiously looking for the monster that's about to devour the economy. Whatever it is, something tells me nothing will be the same. Just my gut. And still no major pullbacks. And it turns out London is OU T of silver. Yesterday SLV shrank by 700,000 shares, Paul, even as silver went up by $2 an ounce. How does that happen? Right. >> That's a good question. >> Yep. That's because they are short of physical silver to back up new SLV shares. So SLV ETFs says in my opinion are good indicators of the silver squeeze. Um and uh and so when they don't have it, why? because they already used their holy ammunition on Monday at the end of day they added 11 million shares right equal to 93% of all the silver that was shipped from comics last week and assuming 100% of that went to London and after that they still had zero shares available for borrowing boom um and we're seeing you know millions of ounces outflow from comics right they're they're doing everything they can they're sending it to London as fast as possible and Robert Gotautly former ex-executive from JPM's bullion bank said looks like the LBMA in London needs at least 150 million troy ounces more physical silver right now just to normalize the situation. >> Wow. >> So it's it's they're out. They're out. They're out and we're watching we're watching this play out. But what we're really seeing is that 361 to1 paper promise thing play out. And we're about to find out and here here's why Paul I think this is such a big deal. Okay, their their paper shenanigans are out. So what does that mean? This is the proverbial thread that unravels the whole rug. What happens if people find out that the silver turned out it was fraudulent? People were selling naked shortselling silver they didn't have with a promise as good as gold from the major bullion bank. Don't worry Paul, I'm JP Morgan. I got your silver right here. >> Mhm. >> But it actually isn't there. Well, if that gets revealed and then you find out, well, is that probably also true for gold? You keep on pulling on that thread and then people start going, "Well, hold up. What what what is all this collateral? What what actually is backing any of this stuff? Do the shares actually exist that I think I own in my account, right? We don't know, right? Because, you know, the SHO has been abused and and naked shortelling has been allowed to carry on and nobody's done anything about it using that little uh broker dealer market maker dodge." You know, they've allowed that. We just found out um that uh you know uh there was that company that was um that was fraudulently saying they backed all their collateral with with assets they didn't have, right? And so we saw that blow up. We'll maybe get to that in a minute. But I I think they're worried that we'll find out possibly if you just it's kind of like the um the arguments they have for remember the anti-Jab arguments like no no we can't we can't allow any any bad news to even begin because that would lead to hesitancy. Yeah, >> I think it's the same argument here. It's like, oh no, if we allow one corner of the market to be revealed as fraudulent, >> well, that raises a lot of questions about all the rest. And then people get into that cockroach scurry under the counter moment and they go, I got to reel all I got to what do I own, right? I got to I got to I don't even know who the counterparties are, let alone what the risk might be because I don't know who they are. I think that's what's at stake here. >> Well, well said. And I was going to bring up thericcolor situation and the bankruptcy and you led right into that perfectly. So, so notice after thericolor first brand situation where if I remember correctly they rehypothecated. So guys rehypothecation is you know you loan something to somebody they turn around and loan it out again. So well that's not a good term for what they did but they basically sold the same loan 70 times right? So if you had this erosion of trust under the surface, regulators are supposed to catch that. Well, guess what? The only reason they caught it was because some bank actually asked a question before they loaned them another $8 billion. Like who who was not asking questions or verifying before? I mean, any of you that go get a mortgage, I mean, my gosh, they give you a prostate exam, you know, to give them information that goes in there and the amount of data that we have to get for clients is incredible. But apparently they're not doing that in the private equity market. Apparently they're not doing that with these big institutions. And somebody happens to ask a question. So what we're finding is you cannot tell me that's the only situation that that happened in. There has to be more out there. And now we're going into hyperdrive of well if they've done it with auto loans and these big banks are loaning money out to them and they didn't find it. We know that, you know, there's been manipulation of the metals market in the past. So maybe I need to take physical possession of that and that is not what we've cons continued to see accelerate and how quickly is this going to come apart. >> Yeah. Well, if I could um this is the first brand this bonds were like everything is fine. Everything is fine and they go to zero. Everything is not fine. Um, hey, once again, good job Moody's and S&P, you know, bond rating agencies. Awesome, awesome oversight there. But I this I think this email ought to be ought to be framed and put in the Louv or somewhere. [laughter] >> You know, this person um somebody's asking the question. You said finally somebody asked the question. They said, "Oh, hey, thank go first. Do we know whether FBG actually received first brands group actually received 1.9 billion?" No, no matter what happened to it, do we know did they get the 1.9 billion? Second, um would you tell us how much is in the segregated accounts in respect of the factored receivables as today? So, how much has been set aside? Like, did they get the billion 1.9 billion? How much have you set aside? One, we don't know. Two, zero. >> Zero. >> It's just so pippy. [laughter] >> Boom. >> Could you imagine the gut punch that the individual felt when they received that back? And and so much for market anticipating what's going on in the future literally right nobody sniffed this out before. Nobody was doing any research in there. Nobody was trying to pay attention to what's under the surface. Nothing. >> And that's what happens when the government intervenes and papers over everything. >> People become complacent. They're convinced that the regulators are not going to allow anything to or the government's not going to allow anything bad to happen. And then all of a sudden the rot starts coming to the surface. So yeah, let's start the clock. Chris Bear Stern collapsed in February, March of 2007. Lehman was about nine months behind it. And you know, so so I think that's the first shot across the bow. The question is what's going to happen on the other side. And will we see it before because I think it's more in the private equity space than it is anything. And will we see it before 401ks are actually adapted enough to transition this all over to your average uh American citizen who's just chasing hindsight returns without questioning what's taking place under the surface. You know what? Gold and silver are my top choices to protect my wealth against inflation and economic instability. Now, with all the monetary debasement and all these geopolitical risks going on, hedging your wealth has never been more important. I recommend that everybody own some gold and silver, physical, in your hot little hands. But what if you want to hold it elsewhere? Gold Core is an excellent choice and will rapidly and securely deliver physical gold and silver [music] to your doorstep. But GoldCore also lets you buy and store your gold and silver in high security vaults in places like Switzerland or Singapore or the US at your choice. 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Um, somebody said, "It's like it's like you received a 5,000 yuan order, but you only have a,000 yuan worth of goods and no capacity to produce the remaining 4,000 yuan. The deadline for delivery is approaching, so you have no choice but to buy the rest from the market." However, the other party knows you're in a bind, hikes the price to 6,000 yuand with no other option and nothing waiting and wanting to protect your credit. You buy it at the high price to fulfill the order. So, do you make a profit? And the reply was the ideas they come up with now are freezing the spot price to prevent it from rising. They really have a way with it. The jig is up. People have figured it out. And so, Paul, everything we're talking about, this whole paper game, which they they pretended like it was this big sophisticated thing, it was a shell game. It was fraudulent. And they were selling stuff they didn't have and had no intention of delivering and thought they could just come out and just throw more paper at it every time they want. And all week I've been watching them, two weeks now, watching them throw paper at it. just the other night, two nights ago, huge slam Monday night, 1 in the morning, like just massive amounts of oh, they threw everything they could at it and by the end of the day, uh, silver had reclaimed all of that back. So, that's not how that's supposed to work. Paper game is over. And I think, but the derivative we have to be aware of here is the extent to which this could reveal the depth of the fraud and that that actually probably isn't contained in this one tiny thing we call the silver market. >> Right. Right. And and somebody out there says, "Thank you for smashing the price because you're allowing me to buy it at a little bit lower price right now." I mean, that's that's they're doing somebody a favor. And right now, it doesn't seem to be the average American citizen. It seems to be international and and major institutions. >> Well, also there's a massive silver shortage all around the world right now. We've heard about in Holland, and Australia, but most importantly, they had to shut down new silver investment ETFs in India. And that's a big big big customer for these things. And as well, China is experiencing some shortages here as well. So, so these are these are just these are giant players now. And at one point during this big furious trying to keep silver under 50, over 1.1 billion ounces were traded in the US paper futures market, which by the way is 130% of yearly mine output in one day just to try and keep it from breaching the psychologically important level of of 50 bucks. Paul, somebody in the background is blowing up right now. Guaranteed. >> Yeah. We don't know who it is yet, but mark it. >> Yeah, we'll find out. And well, I hope we're going to find out within the next 6 to9 months, unless the governments just decide to to to for national security to hide it and sweep it under the rug because they seem to like to hide a lot of things and keep the American people from seeing the truth. So, Chris, I read something yesterday. So, and I and I've been thinking about this a lot. So they stated, and you may know this data, but they stated that for every 1 ounce of gold that comes out of the ground in the mining process, there's only 8 ounces of silver that are coming out of the ground. Does that sound correct based on your research? >> Yeah, it's it's seven or eight, something like that. It used to be it used to be 15 to 17 depending, but we're we're running out. We're getting a little more gold out compared to silver now. >> Correct. So at current prices, silver's got about a 51 ratio um uh to gold. So if this game is up and we're going to revert the market's going to force truth in time, then we should settle down with silver about eight times, you know, uh about a eight ratio. Maybe we go back to 15 to what gold is from a long-term standpoint, which means there's a substantial amount of catch-up that has to take place in the silver market. I'm not saying it's going to happen overnight. there's forces that that may mean that it's 10 or 12 years from now before that reaches that ratio, but it seems to be that that's where we would go back to at some point um if this if this thing blows up. And my concern is, you know, we've talked about our concern about the derivatives market. That's one of the reasons I'm not willing to to use options to to short the market and hedge positions right now because that is the the massive unregulated that's where all the dark secrets are going to be behind the scene, right? >> Mhm. So if if something blows that up and your compete counterparty risk goes, I mean, that's that's where you could have a great taking event happen to where where everybody just blows up across the board, which which I'm not so sure that the governments of the world wouldn't consider that, you know, they may welcome that because now old system's gone. Here's your central bank digital currencies. I know there's logistics with the older individuals having to learn to do it, but you know, learn the the new whatever the technology will be. That's going to be a challenge for a lot of people, but it certainly gives the crisis that they would need to be able to say, "Hey, here you go. Let's start a new system here." So my my my complaints and and they are kind of complaints because I I don't have a lot of [snorts] leverage to do much about it, but my complaints are that markets are supposed to be markets, right? So a market is a place where willing buyers and sellers show up and they come at a negotiated price. A market with air quotes around it is a signaling device used by the powers that be to telegraph something they want to have telegraphed. So they they that we had gold markets. They didn't want gold rising too quickly because that would send the wrong signal, right? It it had nothing to do with what was right or wrong or any of that stuff. I mean, I'm a full-blown market libertarian, Paul. I think gold should just be free to do whatever it wants. I think interest rates shouldn't be set by the Fred. They should do whatever they want to do. >> And then you let the market decide what's the right price for money and what's the right price for an ounce of gold. And it will tell you things. And if you're mismanaging that as the steward >> of so-called stable prices, which the Fed's supposed to have as one of its dual mandates, well then guess what? Um, you might have to steward a little differently, but they don't want to do that. They want to steward how they want to steward, and they don't want anybody telling them what to do. And they don't want gold, you know, shining a bad light on on their productions. Um, >> but that leads you astray over time. >> Yes. Yes, it does. And that that's why I wish we had free markets like we don't. I mean, okay, we we don't have pure capitalism. We don't have free markets. It's central controlled, central bank controlled. I mean, that's that's basically financial socialism within the markets. >> So, if we get back to freedom, that's good for everybody involved because you have the freedom to reap the benefits of good decisions and you also have the freedom to suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And if you allow that to take place in the markets and in life, then society is going to be better from a longer term standpoint. It's going to be based off of truth instead of, you know, these lies. I mean, it we go back to what happened in 2020 during the pandemic. You have these individuals that are that are intellectuals. They're really educated. They have this, you know, I am smarter than you. You should do what I say. And when you challenge them on things, they're like, well, trust the science. Well, they're not even they're not even basing their decisions off the science that they were educated in at this point. So, it becomes narrative and control. Do what you do this because I think you should do it. Now, I do think hopefully at some point, you know, the pain of this control is going to be severe enough that the people demand a free market. But I don't think we're anywhere close to there yet because I think there's a lot of fear out there of individuals and they're willing to accept some of these lies right now, which means we're weak. It people, they're willing to accept these lies right now because they don't want to give up the perception of the future that they have when they look back over the the, you know, past 5 to seven years. They they're looking 5 to seven years out and going, "Oh man, I'm going to be wealthy. I'm going to be whatever." So, they're accepting these lives right now because they're they're unwilling to embrace the reality of the situation that we're in right now. >> Well, very well said. And and here here's >> again back to my my complaint set is that I believe that that the stock markets have become political narrative machines, right? No politician wants things to go down on their watch and and the Fed doesn't and there there's a whole ecosystem of people who sort of >> sort of grown up in this and this is just how the system works. But I believe if you have eyes to see it's right in front of us. You want to see the chart that that just soon as I saw it, it like this is I saw this one chart and everything changed for me instantly. And it's this one. And what's being um cataloged here by Suscoana Research is two things. If you had bought the S&P 500 at market open, it opens at 9:30 and you held it all day long and then you sold it at the end of the day. And you started doing that way back there in um in uh what's that? 93, right? >> Mhm. >> You went nowhere. I mean, you're up like, I don't know, maybe 100%. Right. From 1993, just literally. But Paul, if you bought the futures in the S&P stock market at market close at 4:30, held them all night and then sold them in the morning, you're up. The whole thing it basically 90 plus percent of the stock market air quotes time moves can be explained by stock futures buying in the overnight markets. >> Mhm. >> Now that's weird because we don't announce things in the middle of the night and companies don't announce earnings in the middle of the night and market moving things tend to happen during the day and all kinds of things. But this just showed me that your overnight returns were a,000%. Your returns during the day were 15.9%. >> Yeah. This is just primmaasi. If you have eyes to see, you just go, "Wow." So, how do I explain stocks only seeming to go up during the overnight? Like, I have to come up with a model for that. And so, let's talk about let's talk about markets. So, so let me bring it home. Let's look at last night. This is stocks had this Vreovery right at 9:30 for no good reason. and sold off into the close yesterday. But then all night, Paul, look what happened. Stock futures just went up. And you wake up this morning and they say stock futures rise amid solid earnings in rate cut hopes. There, there's the explanation for why this thing went up. And by the way, I love this to paraphrase Harry Marcopoulos. He said, "Anything in finance that goes up in a straight line is fraud." How do we explain a straight line frog march in in stock futures all night long? coupled to this narrative shaping headline to this is they're just they're just using these it's become it's lost its way. Markets were supposed to be willing buyers and sellers and coming together for the spirit of capital deployment and investment and it's suddenly become something where it just it's unrecognizable some serious way. >> If you will pull that chart back up one more time. I want to show you something else that I see in the mechanics of the market. So, if you'll notice, there was a consolidation period yesterday before the breakdown. Okay? So, that that tells me that there were a lot of sellers that entered the market at that point yesterday. It breaks down overnight. >> So, as well, knowing the market, there's going to be individual traders that are going to go short at that point. Well, guess what the added benefit of that straight line up overnight is? You're opening above those theoretical shorts yesterday, and it forces short covering in the in in the short term. So, it's just continuing to pro provide this fuel to drive the market up because if you went short yesterday, now all of a sudden you're negative in that trade. You've broken out of resistance. So, you're forced mechanically to cover that >> and and especially the computers are not going to hesitate. They're going to they're going to cover that because it's mechanical and and and it's just so frustrating, right? It's just so frustrating. >> Well, it it is. And again, it it's it but it creates why that's why I put quotes around it. They're not markets anymore because a market is a place where where price discovery happens. This is not price discovery. This is price setting. Mhm. >> We also have had um several decades of beachball under the water price setting for gold and silver and that's now breaking down and they're scrambling and you know they're going to do something and um you know I will only become really agrieved when when they decide that they're going to have to make gold and silver illegal again because they screwed it up but they're going to have to blame the prudent. They're going to have to blame the wrong people for it because that's just how they are you know right >> it seems. So, so at any rate, um the only way I know to to begin to play this game effectively is you have to see it for what it is. >> I mean, it's you just see it for what it is and then then you can sort of um begin to play it. But I think to get off my complaining side, get onto my my um opportunistic side, it creates extraordinary opportunities, >> right? >> Unbelievable opportunities. It really does when because as the truth comes back in, even if they continue to obiscate it, market forces have discovered it. I believe at this point, lack of trust rules it today. >> Mhm. >> Physical possession is 10/10en of the law. So >> yeah. >> Yeah. That I stole that from somebody, you know, from you, Chris, but um and and the reality is, and I and I've talked about this before, so I'm not short right now, okay? We haven't broken these trend lines. There's all kinds of volatility. There's things that I'm concerned about, but around 2014, I had on my computer screen, my mirror, everybody reality, okay? There's there's the way we wish things would be and there's the things then there's the way things are. So, we have to accept the reality of the situation that we're forced to play the game by the rules that are that are cast upon us. I don't like it. I wish we could change it, but we can't bury our heads in the sand. So, we have to find a way, which is which is by God's grace what we've attempted to do and been able to to to do over time and continue. This is an imperfect game. Uh, Coach Kei with Georgia Tech, I listen to the press conference and you know, people call him out, well, how'd that mistake make? He's like, this is an imperfect game that we're trying to achieve perfection in. Okay? Every trade's not going to work. Every investment is not going to work. Every exit's not going to work. But if you've got a a a a strategy that you can utilize that'll tell you when to overweight commodities that'll tell you when where you're looking at asset classes is tools to be utilized. Okay. My problem with Wall Street saying oh you know uh uh with their propaganda against gold and precious metals over time and even commodities. The reality is you're setting a subset in individual's minds and the adviserss that are listening to that that that's a tool that I should never use. That's not true. It's a tool that should be used for a period of time to accomplish an end. And when it's obvious that it's it's time to use another tool, you pull that off uh out of your um working belt and set it back on the shelf. So that's that's the thing, you know, just remember we have to for those listeners out there, we have to play the game by the rules that are forced upon us. We can complain about it. I've been nervous because we you know, we're not fully invested in all our portfolios, but we own what makes sense to own. So, so far, you know, this year that could change tomorrow, but um you know, we we've complained about these, we've warned, we've had exposure to them because it made sense, you know, and and we're going to have to continue to do doing that going forward. And I think commodities will continue to, as far as our strategy goes, be built upon on pullbacks and weakness and as that information comes along because everything is pointing that this big ball of money is starting to move. So much so that I've been a little slow in rolling out our energy strategy because of the fact that energy is not we're seeing a little bit of money flow but not momentum. We've finally rolled that out now so that we've got another tool in the toolbox where we can get some exposure to sectors that that should benefit from from the path that they're just screaming that we're headed down and money's moving towards. So I'm I'm great setup because just yesterday I interviewed Adam Rosenwag of Garing and Roenwag the resource investors. It was my quarterly once a quarter we get together and it was the usual Adam Tour to force talking about how he sees that you remember you and I talked about that double hump inflation that um the that the Apollo research economist had pointed out. Same thing like this setup that I see now Paul for energy in particular it it's unbelievable like Adam and I are looking at the same thing. I know you know this data too, which is well the US shale space is rolling over and somehow oil just keeps going down and it's and it's it's the most bizarre setup ever, right? And you know, he very clearly points out that a lot of people are trading off of what the International Energy Agency says. And they're just they're literally spouting fictions. They're saying, "Well, demand is down and and and and supplies are up. You know, global inventories are surging." He said, "The problem is that's not true." Um, and so he said every six months they sort of have to backize that what they just said wasn't right, but they keep on with this fiction. And the way he looked at it as a longtime market observer, he said, "Look, sometimes a narrative just gets entrenched." And that becomes the actual story everybody believes, right? >> And then it just sort of has a life of its own until one day people wake up and go, "Wow, we had the wrong story." And bang, they all go off the other direction. So, I'm glad you have that tool in place because hopefully you can sniff out when those first sort of mice start scurrying for the exits of getting in there. >> And we're starting to see it. You know, it started with gold, now it pulls over to silver. It's probably going to move to other commodities. And and look, the psychological part that you're talking about where everybody believes that narrative. >> I think I have the history of bubbles back there. Everybody believed the narrative, right? Until they realized that the narrative didn't make sense and they changed their behavior. Now, that's the popping of bubbles that I'm showing. I I wish I had maybe I need to find somebody to make me one of those where it shows, you know, like that basketball under the water and then finally that narrative change and money flows into that direction and moves up. We're starting to see it and that's one of the reasons why we've had an a higher exposure to commodities. I mean, outside of gold, we really didn't have any commodities outside of short periods of time. energy made a lot of sense from the 2020 bottom to to about end of 2022, but you know, that's just been these little rises and it gets smacked back down. But there's a consistent flow that's shifting into those commodities. And what's interesting to me is you got retail, you've got, you know, Bezos and some of these others that are selling a lot of their stocks right now. Insiders are selling big while retail's piling over there. And very quietly money is flowing into that commodity space. Not so much quietly with silver over the past and gold over this past year. Gold's up 57% year to date. Whoa. Amazing. And uh but we're starting to see that money flow go over and and you just got to as the information comes out, you got to make these steps. And and quite frankly for the listeners out there, the best investments that you're going to make in time, you're scared that you're too early. you're scared that you're, you know, wrong. Now, yeah, you can be nervous if you're chasing Nvidia out there right now because it's on a stem, but there's still that euphoric purchase. You're doing it because everybody else is. The best investments are made when not when other people are not paying attention and then the market comes to you. And if you have these tools to where, hey, I'm starting to see money flow because the big money moves before retail does, right? And um so the big money starts moving in that direction and then retail's following a lot quicker behind. But but you want to be where you want to be where everybody's going to be two to three years from now and have the patience and the fortitude to follow a strategy through. Most people just want to do what the herd's doing. That's the reason why those things blow up. Most people participate in it. Most people get blown up. But for those that that have the ability of tools that can help guide them from a money flow perspective, they can make that adaptation, but there's still going to be a little fear and trembling and patience and discipline involved in it. There's nothing we can do in our lives that doesn't require some sacrifice, some mental pain, some long-term thinking and [music] discipline associated with it. Markets [music] are facing heightened uncertainty and thoughtful portfolio management has never been [music] more important. If your current strategy relies solely on passive [music] investing or diversification without active oversight, it may be time to consider a different approach. At Peak Financial [music] Investing, we connect you with experienced wealth managers who actively manage portfolios using disciplined, [music] research-driven strategies designed to adapt to evolving market conditions. Our focus is on helping [music] clients navigate volatility with clarity and confidence. While no investment strategy [music] can guarantee results or eliminate risk, we believe that preparation and active [music] management can make a meaningful difference over time. Visit peakfinaniinvesting.com [music] to schedule a complimentary consultation and explore whether our approach aligns with your goals. I'm Dr. Chris Martinson and I am proud to support [music] Peak Financial Investing. This is not a guarantee of future performance, but a call to take your financial planning seriously. Again, that's peak financial.com. [music] Investing, of course, involves risk, including the potential loss of [music] principle. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please consult with a qualified adviser before making investment decisions. When I started investing in in gold and silver or saving my money, um it was because I could see the long-term trend, right? So, I put out this thing called the crash course in 2008 and I just noted that look um debasement is just the rule, right? So, the Romans took their daenerius and it was about 90ish% silver and over the next 300 years debase that all the way down to 02%. Those clever clever people had figured out how to electroplate lead with silver and they didn't have electricity. So that's pretty clever. They they had figured out a chemical reaction. So debasing is just what people do. That hasn't changed. So that was easy. Now I can clearly see the same setup where because we've had our fictitious markets for a long time. People have all sort of been conditioned that, you know, the exciting stuff is over there in tech for the moment, but we've been completely ignoring the capital requirements needed for um things like oil and gas, right? And so there was just this big um conference in London and the CEO of Exxon said, "Wow, capital is reeling in so fast." He said, "I just see shortages of of oil going forward." This is the CEO of Exxon. Probably knows what he's talking about, right? But that same sentiment is out there. But it doesn't matter. I'm sure you probably know this. The percentage allocation of the S&P that's actually energy companies. Was it like 2% something? It's 2.3. >> It's just minuscule. >> It's like minuscule, >> right? As if we don't need this stuff. That's what that's saying. You know, it's an afterthought when it's the lifeblood of all the rest that makes the whole thing happen and we've been underinvesting in it. So, welcome to the to the resource side cycles. They're long, but man, they burn hard and long when they finally go the other way. And we're going to have to put capital's going to have to get over into >> that's going to have to grow again. Just is or we're going to have dark nights and and no economy. I mean, it's just very simple to see for me because I understand the role of energy in an economy. I get it. Um but I'm surprised how few people do. >> Yes. >> Including Trump. >> Including Trump. And the weight of the information continues to build uh from the future, right? You've got what 37 to 40% of the S&P 500 going into these big names that are all just putting tremendous amounts of money into the AI trade and and yeah, it's made some efficiencies, but at this point, you know, it's creates really cool videos. Um, and it's it's a superpowered internet search. I mean, that's really the only thing we've seen. I use some for note takingaking, which is absolutely incredible, but that's more efficiency. It's not gamechanging, right? >> Mhm. >> So, um, but you look at the data that's coming out all over the place. We're way underinvested in the energy and utilities and energy production. These are energy hogs. These states that they're building these um data centers in. They've seen their their utility prices go up by 300%. So, we know where this is going. especially if it actually becomes the utility that they claim that it's going to be. Then at some point in the future, you're going to see massive increases in in energy. That's one of the reasons why I'm like, look, the weight of the information continues to build. I like to wait for momentum. We rolled out the mining strategy, you know, back at the first of the year cuz finally we started to get some breakouts and momentum in the mining space. Happened a lot quicker than I thought. I don't think energy may necessarily be that as instantaneously rewarding, but the weight of the evidence is there. So, you have to to have something that can keep you in that space from a long-term standpoint that makes sense, that's adaptable. >> Yep. And and the narrative that's going to shift, Paul, is is the the narrative is, oh, we're just super overs supplied with oil and gas in the United States. We just drill more whenever we want it. And that's going to shift to oh no we actually have don't have as much as we thought and um and now we're into sort of that scarcity mindset and it's going to be pretty fast. Uh particularly I think natural gas is my favorite thing to look at in that regard >> because even the EIA that's the energy information administration out of the department of energy US they do all the energy statistics they say natural gas output is going to be flat for the next two years. Flat little bumps you know that's their prediction. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. But if that's the prediction, what do we do with the fact that over the next 2 years, we're going to be commissioning another 12 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas liquef? Where's that 12 BCF coming from? Nobody's square in that circle at this point. I'm just I'm shocked by it. It's kind of like, isn't somebody in in a significant position going to ask a question like, did you get your 1.9 billion? What's backing our receivables? like somebody should be asking these questions and I'm always shocked that it seems to be me and you and people like us at the edge kind of going that doesn't make sense like I thought there was more intelligence baked in this system somehow >> right well hey look and first brands tells us that those in the positions of power that are making these massive deals haven't been asking a lot of questions until finally somebody did right >> well last chart on that but have you seen this um just found this on the great Marty this morning. Um and uh so it's like junk bonds were were like trending lower and lower and lower in yield for four months. Like ah everything's getting just just everything's fine but then oops you like your breakouts Paul um broke that trend line pretty hard. Now I think that's related to the first brands but um uh still things can turn around in a hurry when they finally get going the other way. They can and I watch that very closely because I as I explain it to clients, I know this is a terrible analogy, but in that space, you're loaning money to crack addicts. I mean, like that's the best analogy from a riskreward standpoint. Maybe they've changed, maybe they haven't, but I pay very close attention to high yield from that standpoint. So, >> um, people are starting to ask questions there and which trends change like that that you know, who knows? They might it might go back to a normal trend, but that's the first decision point that you have to say, "Oh, maybe now it's time to take action in certain areas, but you get more information as it comes along." So, I think that's a pretty important breakout. >> Yeah. All right. We'll keep our eye on that. And this brings us to the end of our time here today. So again, if you want to talk to Paul andor his amazing team, just go to peakfinancialinvesting.com, fill out a simple form and somebody from Paul's team will be in touch with you within 48 business hours to set up an appointment. And as always, I will tell you people absolutely love the service you provide, Paul. That's all the feedback I get. And it's just uh because you offer great a really great service. Really good. >> Thank you. >> And just helps people plan, you know, and I think we all need a plan right now. failure to plan is is a plan to fail right now. >> Correct. Correct. And it's an honor. We work hard for the people that we serve. We love what we do and we [music] pray that the Lord grants us the wisdom to help people navigate the days ahead uh prudently and wisely. [music] >> Excellent. Well, until next time, Paul, have a great day and even better weekend.