Rick Rule: I Sold 80% of My Silver — Here's Why and Where I'm Putting It Now
Summary
Precious Metals: Rick Rule is bullish on gold maintaining purchasing power over the long run and expects silver to continue outperforming, albeit less dramatically than 2025.
Allocation Shift: He sold 80% of his physical silver and redeployed half into silver miners for leveraged upside and some into physical gold for stability and liquidity.
Valuation Gap: He highlights earnings and NAV estimates for silver producers anchored to ~$35 silver, implying major upside surprises if prices near $70–$75 persist.
Inflation Hedge: With negative real yields and large U.S. debt/deficit dynamics, he expects a “dishonest default” via inflation, supporting sustained demand for gold.
Rates & Policy: Long-term rates rising despite policy suppression of short-term rates signal inflation concerns; true positive real yields would be politically and economically painful.
Risks & Volatility: He warns the gold bull market will be cyclical and volatile, with potential 30% pullbacks (even 50%) along the way.
Macro Signals: Tame copper and previously soft oil despite tight supply indicate weaker global demand, reinforcing the defensive case for precious metals.
Transcript
I happen to believe personally that gold has over time a lot further to run. And if I'm right, it is likely that silver continues to [music] outperform gold. My experience is that precious metals do well when savers and investors are concerned about the deterioration of their purchasing power in fiat currency denominated savings instruments. Those fears continue and I think they're very real. Rick Rule, president and CEO of Rule Investment Media and co-founder of Battlebank. It is so wonderful to welcome you back to the show. Great to see you as always, Rick. Really appreciate you taking the time. >> Pleasure to be back. I enjoy these sessions. So, thank you for having me back. >> Well, we enjoy them, too. And I said we were going to have you on quarterly and I kind of messed up because it's been about 6 months and we won't let that happen again. Um, Rick, we have to get you back on more regularly and this audience loves hearing from you. I do too. So, since it has been a while, man, it's been quite the year. Let's just start with the big picture, that macro view for you today. Um, what does that look like for you? What's been on your radar? What's your outlook? Where do you see things headed? And as you know, Rick, you can take all the time you need to set the table. Uh I'd say the macro views challenged uh including with regards to commoditycentric investments. The soft gold soft oil price pardon me at least the oil price that prevailed uh until the political unrest in Iran uh and Venezuela uh I think tells us that the global economy is weaker than people think it is. you see production cresting, uh, oil and gas production cresting, except for in Saudi Arabia, and you see the oil price go down. That tells you that demand is weaker than you think. You see a copper price that although we're at nominal all-time highs, uh is surprisingly tame given the fact that 7% of world copper supplies got shut down for extraneous reasons in 2025, a market that was already in structural deficit. That means I suggest in the very near term that the global economy is in tougher shape than many people believe it is. uh pricing levels are set of course by the interplay of supply and demand. Supplies are tight. Uh but it would appear that demand is weaker. Uh other aspects of the macro are challenging. Uh it would appear as though the market is getting control of the long term in interest rates. Interest rates are still in the near- term manipulated and manipulated down by the Fed and the Trump administration. It would appear [clears throat] that through what they call quantitative easing, what you and I would call counterfeiting, uh, and federal purchases of short-term debt, that government forces are still in control of the short-term interest rate. But the fact that long-term interest rates are rising while the Fed and the federal government are doing everything they can to suppress short-term interest rates tell us on a global basis. Investors are concerned about inflation and they're demanding higher returns for capital. For capital intensive businesses like mining and oil and gas businesses, this raises the cost of capital which is less good. Uh the part of the macro that the market pays attention though to though is that uh other commodity prices platinum, palladium, gold, silver, things like that are absolutely screaming. Uh absolutely screaming. My own bias is that I think that this continues and we can talk about it later in the show. But a second comment would be that although I think 2026 will be a pretty good year, it's highly unlikely it's going to be as good as 2025. Uh we talked earlier on Julia uh about the fact that I considered the gold price to be a coiled spring. Uh and the silver price to be an even more coiled spring. Well, uh, uh, an increase, the increases that we've seen in both the gold and silver prices mean that some of the tension on the spring has already sprung. Uh, and you aren't going to get catchup pricing now. You're going to get you're going to get begin to get pricing that is discounting other events in the future. And I think that's worth noting, >> Rick. So many areas I'd love to explore further. Let's stay on the precious metals. I the last time we spoke I think and correct me if I'm wrong I'm pretty sure silver was around $36 at the time and you had explained to me that silver is a late cycle mover and you had talked about like we could see a pretty dramatic move and when silver moves it does move dramatically and we would kind of know when that was happening. So is was that the move you think and now we're kind of later in that move like we're not going to see that sort of drama that we've we saw in 2025. Very clearly what I said to you Julia was that when the precious metals market narrative was justified by the momentum in gold and the generalist investor came into the precious metal space that silver began to outpace gold. And I think I told you at the time you wouldn't need me to tell you when it occurred. You have such a good memory. Yes, you did. >> It was pretty Well, I I reviewed our I reviewed our interview, too, so you couldn't trick me with anything. Uh, and we saw that move. Now, I happen to believe personally that gold has over time a lot further to run. Uh, and if I'm right, uh, it is likely that silver continues to outperform gold. I don't think that either metal is going to move with the rapidity that they moved in 2025. Uh so let's say that I think the move that we enjoyed in 2025 was as we had said in 2025 a coiled spring move. >> Mhm. >> Uh the same set of circumstances that is driving the gold price now existed in 2021 2022. It's just that the market didn't recognize it. And so the relative uh weakness that we saw in gold and silver prices in the period 21 22 23 24 I say relative weakness uh increased tension on the gold price. The set of circumstances had occurred for some time but the price move didn't occur which suggests to me that the price move is mostly making up for past sins. Mhm. >> Let's look at the future. Uh, and in this sense, we'll review some of the material that we covered in past interviews. My experience is that precious metals do well when savers and investors are concerned about the deterioration of their purchasing power in fiat currency denominated savings instruments. Those fears continue and I think they're very real. To recap them for that portion of your audience who wasn't around for our last two interviews, it goes as follows. The onbalance sheet liabilities of the US government now exceed $ 38 trillion and will very soon exude 39 trillion dollars. That's a really big number. >> Mr. Obama said it doesn't matter because we owe it to ourselves. Well, that's wrong. the spenders owe it to the savers. Uh that's a very different equation than we owe we owe it to ourselves unless Mr. Obama believes that your savings are his. But the problem gets bigger. the offbalance sheet liabilities of the US government, which is to say the net present value of entitlements, uh, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, military pensions, environmental trust fund, uh, government pensions, that number exceeds $120 trillion. And that's not the nominal number. That's the net present discounted number. So if you add those two numbers together, the onbalance sheet liabilities of the US government, the offbalance sheet liabilities of US government, that number is almost $160 trillion. To put that number in perspective, the IRS, whose business it is to know, suggests that the private net worth, combined private net worth of all American citizens is $167 trillion. That doesn't include our future income. That's just our net worth. >> Okay. >> But if you take what we're worth, $167 trillion less what we owe, $159 trillion, there's $8 trillion left over. [laughter] And guess what, Juliet? It gets worse. >> Oh, let's go there. >> The onbalance sheet liabilities the US government rather than being paid down increase by $2 trillion a year. the offbalance sheet liabilities of the US government which is to say the net present value of unfunded government promises some would say lies uh increases by two to3 trillion a year. What that suggests is that the deficit uh remembering that the surplus which is to say what we are worth less what we owe is between 8 and 10 trillion. The deficit grows that number by between four and five trillion dollar a year. And it gets a little tiny bit worse. The gross federal budget, which is to say all of the money that the government takes in before they spend it on anything, Trump's ballroom, you know, whatever. Uh that number is $5 trillion a year. So our gross federal income is $5 trillion a year. and our gross federal liabilities inc increase by between four to5 trillion a year. What that means is that the math doesn't math. Now, there would appear to be two ways out of this. The first is the way that the Argentines have always done it, honestly, a good oldfashioned default. We say to the bond holders, "Yeah, we know we contracted the money, but we ain't going to pay." And we say to the entitlement holders, "Yeah, we know you paid in for 50 years. Too bad, so sad. No money strongly to follow." That's not the American way, an honest default. I think we have a dishonest default, which is to say that we honor the net present value of our pardon me, we honor the nominal value of our obligations while we inflate away the net present value of our obligations. We did that in the decade of the 70s. In the decade of the 70s, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the purchasing power of the US dollar declined by 75% in 10 years. Meaning in 1980 it took you $4,000 to buy what in 1970 had cost you $1,000 to buy. That's the way I think that we deal with the debt and deficits. We inflate away the net present value of the obligation. And I think it's happening today. Your listeners might believe that the CPI uh is equivalent to the rate of inflation, but it isn't. It's a manufactured statistic. It's a factoid. when it's inconvenient doesn't include food or fuel. What use is that to people who drive or have lunch? >> Yeah. >> It also doesn't include tax. I believe that if any of your listeners did a thought experiment and looked at the price levels for the basket of goods and services that they consumed in 2020 and that same basket of goods and services today, gasoline prices, taxes, medical insurance, rent or mortgages. uh what you'll find is that the actual deterioration in the purchasing power of the US dollar is more like 8 to 10% compounded than the 2.9 suggested by the CPI. And here's why gold has moved. [clears throat] If you are saving in a 10-year US Treasury or a surrogate, you're getting paid 4.2% a year. It feels pretty good to get 4.2 to until you recognize that you're being paid back in a in a in a currency where the purchasing power is declining by eight. In other words, if you give the US government your money for 10 years, you give them $100,000 in year 1 and they give you back $50,000 in purchasing power in year 10. Not so good. We said earlier at the beginning of the saliloquy that gold does well when people are concerned about the maintenance of the purchasing power in their currency. You have a government guarantee that if you save and feel fiat denominated instruments right now you will lose money and that's why the gold price is moving. >> And I I suspect it continues to move for a fairly long time. Let's look at the underlying causes. What would cause people to feel more comfortable? Well, a positive real interest rate. If real inflation is 8%. Traditionally, investors have insisted on 150 or 200 basis point real yield above inflation. That would suggest a 10-year Treasury rate uh at around 10%. How would the government service $39 trillion in debt with a 10% real yield? Traditionally, first mortgage rates have traded at 100 at a 100 basis point premium to the 10-year. That would take the 30-year fixed mortgage to 11%. How would homeowners like that? >> No, [laughter] not at all. >> So, the probability that we have a market adjusted interest rate is very low. Well, okay, could we bring the inflation rate down? How would we do that? You would need to balance the federal budget. You would need to reach political accord as to how you dealt with $120 trillion in unfunded pension obligations. You would have to get old folks like Rick Rule to say, "Yeah, I realize that I started paying in 60 years ago, but I also realize that society can't afford to afford to pay me back, so I'm good." Right? Uh I don't see that happening either. The only way out that I see it is to inflate away the net present value obligations. Uh and unless we do that in conjunction with the rapid increases in interest rates that we saw in 1980 in the Reagan Vulkar years. Uh I don't see any solution to the problem. So I personally continue to own gold until the problem's been dealt with >> which is unlikely. Uh I I I would love to hear your v your listeners comment as to what they thought some other way out was. Uh I would love not to feel this way. >> Oh, I hear you. I think Rick, our viewers though, they agree with you. All right. So in that scenario then gold has a lot further to run. Where do you see it headed? What is the world you see us heading toward? Um, with this backdrop, I >> I don't know is the first part of the answer specifically. What I think is that gold will likely maintain its nominal purchasing power, its US dollar quote. So if that suggests that the dollar loses 75% of its purchasing power, albeit over 10 years, uh it appears to me to be probable that gold will double or triple or quadruple. In other words, it will maintain its purchasing power while the dollar loses its purchasing power. Will it be an exact 1:1 ratio? Unlikely. But remember in the decade of the 70s when the dollar lost 75% of its purchasing power, gold ran almost 30fold. There is uh a relationship between the two. Let me tell your listeners something else too, particularly the new ones lived through the decade of the 70s >> and a lot of them did. Yeah. >> With regards to gold, this won't be stairsteps to heaven. There will be volatility. there will be cyclicality. Uh I guarantee you and I guarantee very little that in this bull market the gold price will from time to time fall back by at least 30%. Uh you do this without taking out the bull market in 1975. I personally remember very well in that epic bull market where gold ran from $35 to $850. In 1975, uh, Congress raised the interest rate trying to deal with inflation, and the gold price fell by half. There were investors who enjoyed the move from $35 to $200, a six-fold move in 5 years. And these people became, as a consequence of that almost religious adherence to gold. And when the gold price fell from $200 to $100, those same people who be had become religious adherence to gold wish they never learned to spell it. Getting shaken out of gold, which many of them did, meant that they missed the move from $100 to $850, the ensuing move. So the point of all this is that you own gold for self-defense, but you own you understand that it will be both cyclical and volatile and you prepare yourself psychologically and financially to stand volatility where a 50 a 30% decline is almost guaranteed and a 50% decline isn't unheard of. >> It will take courage to get through the next 10 years unscathed. This episode is brought to you by VANX Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF, ticker symbol REMX. 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Rick, let me ask you this because you on silver and even gold, let's just say um both. It was a bit of a contrarian thing when you were talking about it. Now it's become more of a consensus thing, more mainstream if you will. How do you think about that today? Is it no longer contrarian? When do you want to maybe take some profits um once you see it become a bit more mainstream? Like how do you think about your allocation to those precious metals? >> That's the most important question. Of course, it's personal. You are very right to suggest that it is not as contrarian as it was a year ago or two years ago. Uh Silver didn't merely suffer from boredom. It suffered from hate. >> Oh man, they were so mean in the comment section on it. Yeah. >> Wonderful. Uh that's always when I know I'm right, by the way, when the comment section is 30 to1 against me. Uh and I bought a fair bit of silver as a consequence of that hate. uh when the silver price cleared really from 20 to 75. Uh last week I sold 80% of my physical silver. >> Wait, how many% what? >> 80 80. Uh I sold it because silver occupied a spec a speculative part in my portfolio and my speculation was at $20 there was so much accumulated hate that when silver wasn't hated anymore it could go to 50. It didn't. It went to 70. Suffice it to say, for that portion of my portfolio, it fulfilled its purpose. I redeployed half that money into the silver equities. >> Oh, okay. >> Which haven't kept pace with silver stocks. And I consider myself a pretty good silver stock speculator. I think I have durable competitive advantages with regards to knowledge over other participants. And so I thought a better storehouse of my speculative capital was the silver equities rather than silver itself. I redeployed some of the rest of the money to physical gold because for me gold represents a st a a store of value uh true liquidity uh insurance on my purchasing power. And at almost 73 years of age now uh that sort of uh stability and security is appealing to me. There are other speculators or other investors who look at their portfolio differently and they might not want to sell their silver. People whose basis wasn't as cheap as I. Uh people who consider themselves to be good momentum traders. I'm not. Uh so selling is really individualized. But I'll tell you this, Julia. Uh about 35 years ago, I learned a technique where before I make any investment, I write myself a memo as to why I'm making the decision. Uh what my underlying thesis is, uh what I think could go right, how long that would take, what I think might go wrong, uh and what the signs were that things are going right and things are going wrong. And then I tell myself what will cause me to sell both on the good side and the bad side. Every single investment I make, I write this memo and I review the memo quarterly. And it's really helped me uh as an investor. It helped me with my silver. Uh what I thought might come true came true. And my price expectations were exceeded. If I didn't sell my silver at $75, it was the equivalent of buying it at $75 because every day that you don't turn an asset into cash, in effect, you rebought it >> at least ex the capital gains tax. And I think that many of your listeners, particularly ones who have lives, you know, jobs, kids, stuff like that, uh, when they think about investing, need a much more calculating plan, a personalized plan, because you haven't really, really, really made the money uh, until you've turned that gain into some form of purchasing power. I'm not suggesting you have to store it in dollars, but the truth is that you need to make a decision at least every quarter uh as to the composition of your portfolio. And if you don't sell something, effectively you rebought it. >> That's an interesting framework to look at it too. Like yeah, there is a psychology to selling too. real quick though. So you sold 80% of your silver holdings and redeployed that into like silver equities as you point out because there's nuance in that because some people might say, "Oh, Rick Rule, he sold all his silver in 75 or whatever, but you reallocated you put it back into silver equities because you see the opportunity there." I don't know. Sometimes you have to be careful with the headlines because someone might just say, "I sold 80% of my silver without >> Yeah. What I found sadly with these interviews is that most people don't read them uh or don't listen to them, pay attention to headlines. >> So there's been a lot of social media discussion that I sold my silver. >> Mhm. >> Well, I sold 80% of my physical silver, first of all, not all. And I redeployed half that money into silver stocks. >> And are you talking about like miners? Like when you say silver stocks? Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. The miners of the shares of silver silver producers or explorers. I did that because if the current price of silver holds, uh, the net present value of the free cash flows of silver producers is going to go absolutely crazy. >> Note that I said if >> Yeah. >> But the Wall Street and Bay Street earnings forecast for silver producers are predicated on $35 silver. >> Interesting. If your earnings estimates are based on $35 silver and you sell a stuff for 75, it's almost impossible not to have earning surprises to the upside. >> Two, the valuations of silver producers, which is to say the net present value of their current cash flows, their net asset values are predicated on $45 silver. If you do the net present values of the cash flows that they would enjoy at $75 silver, they aren't higher. They're starkly higher. So when I look at it, the leveraged return that I can enjoy on silver from today's price uh makes it more attractive than holding the silver. If I buy silver at today's price, today's price doesn't do anything for me. But if I have a catch up in earnings and net present value as a consequence of a repricing of the equities from the $40 level, never mind the $20 level to the $75 level. That seems like a much better speculation to me. >> There's inherent value in the equities if they catch up to the silver price. >> I just think it's so neat. again like you're talking about selling the psychology of selling in a bull market which I think is probably really important for people to understand rotating those proceeds from physical silver into the silver miners because you're betting on um that opportunity there when you look at the silver miners or just maybe miners in general like what criteria do you look at how do you identify winners I know like this space is pretty niche too you're one of the folks who oper operates in that space that understands it. What do you look for? >> That would be an interview by itself. That's a minimum of 30-minute discussion. I wonderful question, but it isn't a question that you and I have enough time allocated to today. >> But maybe they can go to one of your um symposiums or one of your classrooms or something they can learn. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, if people want to do that, they can go to ruleclassroom.com and there's 300 hours of instructional material there, all for free. You don't have to suffer through all 300 hours. By the way, uh there's something called introduction to natural resource investing which is a 5 and a half hour uh 11 segment short case short course on how to invest in natural resource equities. >> Got it. Well, we'll send them there. Um let's bring up some other topics with you just because you're kind of the guy for various various areas. So, we were talking about like inflation and a huge component of I guess our baskets when it comes to like what are we spending every year goes to taxes. I just paid my quarterly taxes. My goodness. Um I'm sure you've seen all these wealth taxes, millionaires taxes, billionaires taxes floated. I have my opinion on it, but what's your opinion? >> Uh do you think we should punish? >> No. And I don't institutional, but yeah, [laughter] >> it seems like we punish creativity uh and productivity and we reward sloth and lethargy. >> Uh you get what you pay for. Um listen, poll after poll after poll suggests that Americans wouldn't pay tax if there was no enforcement mechanism. What that means is that what a tax really is is so society's extorting from you part of the benefit of your labor, your capital, and your productivity. Erggo uh taxation really because it wouldn't be paid voluntarily is either extortion or slavery. One or the other. One could say that because it doesn't take place over 12 months, only four months or 5 months, it's really extortion. But neither extortion nor slavery are particularly good things. So from a moral point of view really what taxes are, I think, is extortion. And extortion is probably not good. Is it good policy? Well, that's a different question. What behavior are you trying to incent? Uh are you trying to incent the creation of wealth? Are you trying to incent the creation of value for other people? Are you trying to con to incent formation which allows individual workers to employ more capital which allows them to generate util more utility which allows them to make more? I would say yes and in every one of those regards taxes are counterproductive. Uh, one might say, well, what about social values? And then you need to decide whether or not the budget of the United States in your state and your city uh reflect social values. That is, if you say, "Yeah, I understand everything that you say is true, but I feel pretty good about extorting other people uh because I feel like we need to fund the stuff that I think is important. I don't care so much about what they think. I care about what I think. Then you need to decide whether or not that mechanism is the most efficient and effective and whether or not you have the right to superimpose your needs, your goals on other people. You can tell where I stand. >> What do you think it says about the direction of where we're headed as a country? like when more and more of these kind of policies get floated and look at California like in the exodus you've seen there look at what we're seeing out of New York City especially around housing what do you say what do you think it says about the direction >> there's a couple great great quotes there one is HL Mein who says the taxpayer uh often no usually gets what they want often good and hard Uh, and I think that we will see that. The other, of course, the more positive was one is Winston Churchill who says that Americans always do the right thing when they've exhausted all of the other alternatives. >> I'm fascinated by the election of overtly woke socialists in New York City because I think we'll have the ability to see in real time over a fairly short duration, like say 5 years, how well that works. uh when you cause your tax base to leave and you increase your dependency uh like Margaret Thatcher said, pretty soon you you run out of other people's money. the tax base in New York is already so skewed to the top that as the top departs uh sometimes for Connecticut, sometimes for New Jersey, sometimes for Florida, what you see is a diminished ability to pay at the same time that you see increased demand for services. When, make no mistake, when this gentleman uh describes the services that he proposes to add as free, they aren't free. He's proposing that someone else pay for them at the same time that he's causing that someone else to leave. Uh, this is a media heavy market. It's going to be really fun to see what happens in New York City over the next 5 years. And and I think that probably the seeds of reformation in the future are set by the sins in the current. Uh I I think we'll have a wonderful chance to see over the next 5 years uh the hollowing out of the New York City economy, uh the hollowing out of the tax base and the bankruptcy of these ideas. It's kind of like its own country, too, when you think about just the impact of New York City on the economy. >> Yeah. I mean, Bernie can Bernie can be stupid in Vermont, first of all, because he didn't run the place, you know, he just speaks from there. >> But it's a little place >> New York City. Now, that's a great experiment. Yeah. >> You know, it's a great experiment. So, I uh like Doug Casey used to say, I look forward to seeing how it works out from a distance on a broad screen TV. I wouldn't want to be part of it. I'd prefer to observe it from a small rural island in Washington State where I live. >> And don't y'all bring those policies over here either when you move. Uh unfortunately, I guess so many voters have left California and come to Washington uh that uh our own policies in Washington are changing for the worse. >> Yeah. Just kind of again going back out to the big picture here in the US and maybe [sighs and gasps] we could have an honest default or a dishonest default as you put it. when you like look out may do you see examples that maybe we could is there a way to correct this like does Argentina show an example of what you could do like >> we corrected it in the 70s >> okay >> uh we corrected it five ways the first is that we got bailed out by this generation called the baby boomers uh these people came into their productive years started earning started saving started paying tax and we had a demographic boom uh unless uh younger people really truly get it on figuratively of course that demographic boom is behind us but we did a couple other things that are instructive. The first thing that we did it was dishonest but through the decade of the 70s we did inflate away our problem. Uh we kept the nominal value of our social programs while we inflated away their net present value. we uh increased the indexes by a false measure of inflation. In other words, we impoverished our debt holders uh and our entitlement beneficiaries through inflation. And we're going to do that again to be sure. The second thing that we did is as a society, we decided to make government smaller. And we elected in a landslide a guy named Reagan. Now the truth is he didn't make government smaller. He didn't uh but what he did do was he slowed the growth of government and the economy was able to grow its way out of an obligation that was shrinking in real terms as a consequence of inflation. The third thing that we did was extraordinary. Uh we allowed ourselves to be punished. Uh, Vulkar tripled the interest rate. Tripled the interest rate. And what that meant was that we went to a real yield in the US dollar. When the underlying inflation rate was 12% and the 10-year Treasury was paying 5.5, savers were losing 4.5% a year. when the interest rate went to 18% uh and the inflation rate was still 12, there was a 6% real yield on the US dollar. We still have the ability to have a real yield on money, but we would need to punish ourselves. Uh things like people would lose their homes, things like people wouldn't be able to afford consumer durables like cars. uh it would be a real challenge. The fifth thing we did that is we are certain to do again and will benefit us is that we had this incredible march of technology. Uh technology didn't just create some billionaires uh and make share prices go up. Technology allowed us to grow the economy with much less capital input than we otherwise would have done. If you look about if you look at the uh effect of productivity generated by say Microsoft or Oracle or companies like that they allowed us to do a lot more with less capital input and that's where the hope is. For all our faults, uh, US society is still a place where five or six kids can come into your garage in Sunnyvale and out pops Google or out pops Apple. What's really cool, Julia, I think, is that with the spread of education around the world, uh, and the spread of social media and the internet, this garage might be in Nairobi or Jakarta. It doesn't have to be in Sunnyvale anymore. And the way that we get out of this dilemma is to innovate our way out of it. I mean, we have to do all of the above. Make no mistake. Uh the anticipation of innovation can't allow us not to control government spending. It can't allow us not to have entitlement reforms. It it can't uh it shouldn't allow us from having a positive real interest rate. We should have a positive real interest rate. You have to compensate people for saving. But it is truly the way out. I mean, your generation needs to understand that a bunch of our dilemma is my generation voting ourselves all kinds of cool benefits and forgetting to pay for them. [laughter] We get the entitlements and you all get the bill. Uh uh if I was your age, I'd be a bit resentful over that. Uh, and I would uh begin to look >> that's why we've seen these politicians elected. >> I Well, it's a pretty stupid way. >> I wouldn't do it, but >> because what these politicians are suggesting is that we should we should uh continue the benefits and increase them without worrying too much about how we pay for them. >> Uh they would say, "Well, uh we're going to tax the rich." There's two problems with that. Three really. Uh first of all, they say the rich need to pay their fair share. Well, the top 1% of American taxpayers pay 42% of the tax. If the rich were to pay their fair share, how how might we fund their rebate? Uh the second thing is that if you look at the aggregate net worth of all American billionaires, that is to say, if you don't increase their taxes, if you steal all their money, 100%. The IRS suggests that they're worth just under $7 trillion. And the increase in aggregate liabilities of the US government is between $4 and5 trillion a year. In other words, rather than increasing their taxes, if you stole all their money, they'd solve the problem for a year and a half without dealing with the debt. >> Yeah. >> Uh >> that arithmetic doesn't work. >> That narrative, while it sounds lovely, is a false narrative. And the longer that we pin our hopes on a false narrative, the longer we go enlarging as opposed to reducing the problem. >> I I don't want your listeners to listen to this and think this is hopeless, crawl up in the corner, assume fetal position, and whine. Right? There's a guarantee you lose if you don't do this. The point of all of this, Julia, is that you have to take care of yourself. in the next 10 years because societyy's not going to be able to do it. And if all of us took care of ourselves, we wouldn't have a common problem. >> Yeah. >> Um Rick, what did you make of the I feel like the headlines kind of died down here, but uh the daycare fraud, like all that taxpayer money being wasted. What did you make of that? >> I'd like to see more documentation of that. Uh, I think some of it is, how would you say, rightest propaganda? >> Uh, it has always occurred to me. >> So, you don't you don't think it's very Wait, sorry, explain it real quick. >> I My bias is It's probably true. Uh-huh. >> My bias when I see a building that has, you know, 17 nutrition centers and 12 daycare centers and no kids is that's probably true, but I'd like to see some documentation of it. It's pretty clear that we won't get that documentation from the California government or the Washington government or the, you know, Minnesota government. It's pretty obvious that citizen journalists will have to do that. But I hope that uh as the citizen journalists present evidence of fraud to local law enforcement administration that we will discover that some of that's real or some of that's not real. My bias is that it's real, but I'm not going to comment on it until I've seen some data. >> Okay, totally fair. Um, let's go back to the Federal Reserve and at the top of the conversation you were talking about them manipulating rates. I want to just hear more of your thoughts on the Fed. Uh, my thoughts are mixed. Uh, I'm in my banking life regulated by the Fed and the lower level parts of the Fed despite my political bias which is to hate them. I've been pretty [laughter] I've been pretty impressed. impressed by their courtesy. I've been impressed by their intelligence, by their diligence. But the top of the Fed is very, very political. It's alleged, it's allegedly an independent branch of the government. Well, it's not. Uh, it's really truly not. Um, the Fed has twin mandates, which is to say control inflation uh and maximize employment. Inflation doesn't vote. Employment votes. And the truth is that artificially low interest rates at their heart. Punish savers on behalf of spenders. It would seem that more of America's voters are spenders than they are savers. So it makes perfect sense that the true political mission of the Fed is to reward the majority of the voters at the expense uh of the minority of the voters. That's the nature of the Fed. The guy who is the current head of the Well, let me let me let me say one other thing. Informally from talking to employees at the Fed, the belief of the institution is that it is the only institution of the US government that compares that cares at all about the sanctity of the US currency. They believe that Congress and the executive are spending organs, nothing else, and that it's only the Fed that stands between the US dollar and the abyss. That's the institutional bias. uh political control is exerted at the top which means that that bias is less evident at the top but even at the top I think that there's institutional um reluctance to humor Mr. Trump uh who cares much more about his policy than he does the sanctity of the currency. Um philosophically I wish there wasn't a Fed. Uh, I think the banking industry could be regulated by the FDIC or better yet the office of the comproller of the currency. And I don't think that the government or the voters should set interest rates. I think that there should be a free market discussion between savers and borrowers. Uh, but that doesn't matter. You know, that's what I think. >> How would that work? Like how would that work? And what do you think the rate would be if you just let the free market do it? Like how would the free market do it? If you let the free market do it, the government would wouldn't have been able to borrow any near as much money. [laughter] So you wouldn't have so much of this debt discussion. Uh many of the services, if that's the right phrase, that we have enjoyed over the last 50 years, we wouldn't have enjoyed. So as an example, we wouldn't have been able to make such extravagant lies uh to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security uh recipients. But the truth is if you set that aside, if the discussion was a free market discussion between borrowers and savers, and if the underlying inflation was at 8%, uh I very much think you'd see passbook savings rates at 9% or 10% and you'd see borrowing rates higher than that. uh the consequence of that is I think ultimately you would see much lower inflation rates but the truth is that the process would be less in the control of politicians more in control of the market forces but I think it would also be much more volatile uh I think unmanaged interest rates I think you'd see more volatility on managed interest rates >> more volatility yeah um at top of the conversation, you also made the case that the economy, maybe even the global economy, US economy, it's not doing as well as people might think that maybe it's deteriorating or worse. What are you looking at? What are the signs where you're seeing the global economy is weaker than people think it is? >> I'm looking at primarily my own area of interest, which is to say commodity pricing [clears throat] in copper as an example. Although the co copper price has done well in the last 3 months. >> Yeah. >> You have a circumstance where there is a supply deficit which means we're using more silver than more copper than we're producing. We're using above ground inventory and recycling uh to cover the basis in that uh you would have expected a rise in the copper price anyway. But put on top of that, you had 7% of primary copper production taken offline last year. Grassburg from of course that catastrophe. Cobra Panama where the government of Panama stole a mine from its owners. Uh Kapushi uh suffice it to say 7% of global supply in an already under supplied market came off. One would have expected a 30 or 40% price spike as a consequence of that. one got an eight or nine% price spike and one in an economy that was stronger uh with cresting US production would have expected to see stronger energy pricing but we didn't uh until the news around Venezuela and Iran we saw weaker energy pricing that tells me that near-term demand is weaker than we think it is there are other signs that are more anecdotal that scare me more. Um, one is the inability of that part of the labor force which doesn't have specific skill sets to earn an income that sustains the required standard of living in this economy. Uh, I I live in a little community where labor is pretty tight. uh an entry-level worker at Safeway bagging groceries or McDonald's is making about $20 an hour, which seems like a lot of money. Uh particularly when the local McDonald's has had to put icons on the tabs in the cash register because many of the workers are illiterate. But $20 an hour isn't enough to sustain oneself in this economy. uh so ostensibly high never mind minimum wage which doesn't come into the discussion here. You have a whole segment of the economy that doesn't have the skill sets to employ the capital that will allow them to maintain a decent standard of living in this economy. Now the outcome in the little community that I live in is inevitable. What will happen is that McDonald's will automate them away. You will have a McDonald's that doesn't employ 40 low low-wage people. It will enjoy three or four high-wage people that can manage the technology around that automation. Which is to say that the schism between skilled employees and unskilled employees, which is already extreme, will get worse. >> Almost certainly will get worse. Um there is going to be too uh I think uh a second circumstance where employees that have hither too been untouchable by technology will begin to be displaced by AI. Uh I look at what I did as a young securities analyst in my 20s. Uh and the sort of comparative financial analysis that would have taken me six or seven weeks in an industry can be done by an intelligent person even I can do it. Uh employing grock in two minutes. uh that means that the young analyst or the young clerical p person is going to be in many senses automated out of their position. >> Yeah. >> This will make society richer because we'll be able to do more with less and it will make those people who have the skills to employ AI much richer. uh it will lead to humankind being richer 20 years from now, immeasurably richer than they are today, but that will be of small consolation to the people who are currently making $80,000 a year who are about to be unemployed. So there's going to be real transition. >> And you're talking about when you say that 80,000, you're talking about the white collar worker. >> Yeah. Yeah. which I don't know like in all of the disruptions new technology um you know there are people who used to ride horse carriages you know people who worked in fields before tractors I guess this is is this the first time that you'll see like a white collar wave of disruption then >> I don't think so I mean I think uh you know when you got the adding machine you did away with a whole bunch of people who did accounting longhand >> that's true yeah that too I'm glad I don't have to do that I did not like math class in high school. >> I walk into Costco myself. Uh and while I would I would prefer that somebody checked me out, >> uh the truth is the lines are shorter at selfch checkckout. >> You know, uh so this isn't good or bad. It just is. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And we see new types new types of jobs emerge, too. >> I mean, you know, for an old guy like me, not that it matters, I I shouldn't still be working. I just can't help myself. uh for an old guy like me being able to use AI as poorly as I use it. And by the way, I'm a terrible user. Uh it's made me initi amazingly more productive. Uh really truly amazingly more more productive. Uh and that's useful. that allows me in the bank to pass on the services that we provide by paying higher interest rates to depositors and lower interest rates to borrowers, more money to shareholders. This is all wonderful stuff. It's disruptive. I should also say on AI, uh it is both more and less than people think it is. It, as Elon Musk says, it has the greatest memory in the world, but no common sense. And so you have to know how to ask it questions. >> If you ask AI about something that's a matter of opinion, what it does is it surveys the opinions of 600 million morons on X, uh, in that case AI is really uh, artificial ignorance. If by contrast you confine it to at least probabilistic fact and you confine the search ellipsoid uh I use mine for financial analysis and I confine it to um >> Edgar and Cedar uh financial databases. >> It's miraculous. It's truly truly truly miraculous. >> It really is. If you confine it to looking for uh uh anomalies between factual databases in science, be it nanotechnology, biology, geology, it's truly spectacular. Uh if you keep it away from unconstrained s uh uh searches in areas where what you're looking for is opinion, not fact. >> It's amazing because I think it opens up the universe of the types of questions we can now ask, too. like you said, it's all about like how you prompt it. Rick, we're at the end here, but before I let you go, couple of things for you. Um, can you share how the bank is going, Battle Bank, because I know we've we haven't really talked about it. I don't know if you could share an update there. And any >> Well, the parting that you'd like to leave this audience to think about. The floor is all yours. >> We're finally banking. >> Uh, in our last bank, Ever Bank, it took us 19 months from preliminary application to charter. This bank we were 54 months in counting. >> 54 months. >> 54 months. >> Okay. >> FDIC in 2024 had 122 banks in organization. They approved two. So at age 70 I had to think to myself, let me see 20 122 divided by two that's 60. Do I have 60 years left to get my bank approved? The answer was clearly no at age 70. So we bought a little bank. Uh and we are now banking. uh we will we think be able to roll out our services nationally on February 17th. Right now we're using our own money for our services. In other words, I open an account, I see that my deposits get deposited. I see that my checks cash. I see that my wires wire. You got one chance to make a good first impression. And so we're shaking in all of our systems with our own money. I'm delighted to say that we didn't waste those 54 months. We have a waiting list of over 20,000 people who have told us what goods and services they want to buy from Battlebank. So, I think our first year growth is going to be meteoric. Uh, which is one of the reasons why we're, you know, you got one chance to make a good first impression, Julia. So, [laughter] we're we're breaking in our systems on our money before we try them on your money. >> There you go. >> People in your audience who are unhappy about their current bank should check out Battle Bank. Who might those people be? Well, if you don't get paid interest on your checking account, business or personal, try BattleBank. $3 trillion of deposits in the US gets paid no interest. If you think that you want to save in more currencies than the US dollar, if you think that current currencies will be in turmoil for the next 10 years, at Battlebank, you can save FDIC insured in 20 currencies, not just the US dollar. If you believe that your IRA should be your IRA rather than merely a receptacle for annuities and mutual funds from Wall Street, if you think your IRA ought to be able to buy a duplex or an Airbnb or a subway franchise or buy private equity or crypto or gold or silver, check out Battle Bank, where your IRA is your IRA. If you like gold and silver, uh unlike most banks, we deal in it. More importantly, probably we lend against it. If you have a bunch of capital tied up in your gold and silver, but you don't want to sell the gold and silver, uh, come to Battlebank and we'll establish a credit line against your gold and silver the same way that we would establish a credit line against your house. It's called a metals equity line of silver. Uh, we invite your audience who is looking for personalized non-standard banking service to check out BattleBank at battlebank.com. >> I love it. Rick, we always love having you on. Congrats on the bank. I didn't realize it took 54 months to get off the ground. What an adventure. Congratulations. Um, we wish you all the success. I'm sure this audience will support you as well. We always love having you on, Rick Ru. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, all of your knowledge, your wisdom, helping us all learn and get better. Really appreciate you and look forward to seeing you again soon. >> The pleasure is mine. I look forward to be invited
Rick Rule: I Sold 80% of My Silver — Here's Why and Where I'm Putting It Now
Summary
Transcript
I happen to believe personally that gold has over time a lot further to run. And if I'm right, it is likely that silver continues to [music] outperform gold. My experience is that precious metals do well when savers and investors are concerned about the deterioration of their purchasing power in fiat currency denominated savings instruments. Those fears continue and I think they're very real. Rick Rule, president and CEO of Rule Investment Media and co-founder of Battlebank. It is so wonderful to welcome you back to the show. Great to see you as always, Rick. Really appreciate you taking the time. >> Pleasure to be back. I enjoy these sessions. So, thank you for having me back. >> Well, we enjoy them, too. And I said we were going to have you on quarterly and I kind of messed up because it's been about 6 months and we won't let that happen again. Um, Rick, we have to get you back on more regularly and this audience loves hearing from you. I do too. So, since it has been a while, man, it's been quite the year. Let's just start with the big picture, that macro view for you today. Um, what does that look like for you? What's been on your radar? What's your outlook? Where do you see things headed? And as you know, Rick, you can take all the time you need to set the table. Uh I'd say the macro views challenged uh including with regards to commoditycentric investments. The soft gold soft oil price pardon me at least the oil price that prevailed uh until the political unrest in Iran uh and Venezuela uh I think tells us that the global economy is weaker than people think it is. you see production cresting, uh, oil and gas production cresting, except for in Saudi Arabia, and you see the oil price go down. That tells you that demand is weaker than you think. You see a copper price that although we're at nominal all-time highs, uh is surprisingly tame given the fact that 7% of world copper supplies got shut down for extraneous reasons in 2025, a market that was already in structural deficit. That means I suggest in the very near term that the global economy is in tougher shape than many people believe it is. uh pricing levels are set of course by the interplay of supply and demand. Supplies are tight. Uh but it would appear that demand is weaker. Uh other aspects of the macro are challenging. Uh it would appear as though the market is getting control of the long term in interest rates. Interest rates are still in the near- term manipulated and manipulated down by the Fed and the Trump administration. It would appear [clears throat] that through what they call quantitative easing, what you and I would call counterfeiting, uh, and federal purchases of short-term debt, that government forces are still in control of the short-term interest rate. But the fact that long-term interest rates are rising while the Fed and the federal government are doing everything they can to suppress short-term interest rates tell us on a global basis. Investors are concerned about inflation and they're demanding higher returns for capital. For capital intensive businesses like mining and oil and gas businesses, this raises the cost of capital which is less good. Uh the part of the macro that the market pays attention though to though is that uh other commodity prices platinum, palladium, gold, silver, things like that are absolutely screaming. Uh absolutely screaming. My own bias is that I think that this continues and we can talk about it later in the show. But a second comment would be that although I think 2026 will be a pretty good year, it's highly unlikely it's going to be as good as 2025. Uh we talked earlier on Julia uh about the fact that I considered the gold price to be a coiled spring. Uh and the silver price to be an even more coiled spring. Well, uh, uh, an increase, the increases that we've seen in both the gold and silver prices mean that some of the tension on the spring has already sprung. Uh, and you aren't going to get catchup pricing now. You're going to get you're going to get begin to get pricing that is discounting other events in the future. And I think that's worth noting, >> Rick. So many areas I'd love to explore further. Let's stay on the precious metals. I the last time we spoke I think and correct me if I'm wrong I'm pretty sure silver was around $36 at the time and you had explained to me that silver is a late cycle mover and you had talked about like we could see a pretty dramatic move and when silver moves it does move dramatically and we would kind of know when that was happening. So is was that the move you think and now we're kind of later in that move like we're not going to see that sort of drama that we've we saw in 2025. Very clearly what I said to you Julia was that when the precious metals market narrative was justified by the momentum in gold and the generalist investor came into the precious metal space that silver began to outpace gold. And I think I told you at the time you wouldn't need me to tell you when it occurred. You have such a good memory. Yes, you did. >> It was pretty Well, I I reviewed our I reviewed our interview, too, so you couldn't trick me with anything. Uh, and we saw that move. Now, I happen to believe personally that gold has over time a lot further to run. Uh, and if I'm right, uh, it is likely that silver continues to outperform gold. I don't think that either metal is going to move with the rapidity that they moved in 2025. Uh so let's say that I think the move that we enjoyed in 2025 was as we had said in 2025 a coiled spring move. >> Mhm. >> Uh the same set of circumstances that is driving the gold price now existed in 2021 2022. It's just that the market didn't recognize it. And so the relative uh weakness that we saw in gold and silver prices in the period 21 22 23 24 I say relative weakness uh increased tension on the gold price. The set of circumstances had occurred for some time but the price move didn't occur which suggests to me that the price move is mostly making up for past sins. Mhm. >> Let's look at the future. Uh, and in this sense, we'll review some of the material that we covered in past interviews. My experience is that precious metals do well when savers and investors are concerned about the deterioration of their purchasing power in fiat currency denominated savings instruments. Those fears continue and I think they're very real. To recap them for that portion of your audience who wasn't around for our last two interviews, it goes as follows. The onbalance sheet liabilities of the US government now exceed $ 38 trillion and will very soon exude 39 trillion dollars. That's a really big number. >> Mr. Obama said it doesn't matter because we owe it to ourselves. Well, that's wrong. the spenders owe it to the savers. Uh that's a very different equation than we owe we owe it to ourselves unless Mr. Obama believes that your savings are his. But the problem gets bigger. the offbalance sheet liabilities of the US government, which is to say the net present value of entitlements, uh, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, military pensions, environmental trust fund, uh, government pensions, that number exceeds $120 trillion. And that's not the nominal number. That's the net present discounted number. So if you add those two numbers together, the onbalance sheet liabilities of the US government, the offbalance sheet liabilities of US government, that number is almost $160 trillion. To put that number in perspective, the IRS, whose business it is to know, suggests that the private net worth, combined private net worth of all American citizens is $167 trillion. That doesn't include our future income. That's just our net worth. >> Okay. >> But if you take what we're worth, $167 trillion less what we owe, $159 trillion, there's $8 trillion left over. [laughter] And guess what, Juliet? It gets worse. >> Oh, let's go there. >> The onbalance sheet liabilities the US government rather than being paid down increase by $2 trillion a year. the offbalance sheet liabilities of the US government which is to say the net present value of unfunded government promises some would say lies uh increases by two to3 trillion a year. What that suggests is that the deficit uh remembering that the surplus which is to say what we are worth less what we owe is between 8 and 10 trillion. The deficit grows that number by between four and five trillion dollar a year. And it gets a little tiny bit worse. The gross federal budget, which is to say all of the money that the government takes in before they spend it on anything, Trump's ballroom, you know, whatever. Uh that number is $5 trillion a year. So our gross federal income is $5 trillion a year. and our gross federal liabilities inc increase by between four to5 trillion a year. What that means is that the math doesn't math. Now, there would appear to be two ways out of this. The first is the way that the Argentines have always done it, honestly, a good oldfashioned default. We say to the bond holders, "Yeah, we know we contracted the money, but we ain't going to pay." And we say to the entitlement holders, "Yeah, we know you paid in for 50 years. Too bad, so sad. No money strongly to follow." That's not the American way, an honest default. I think we have a dishonest default, which is to say that we honor the net present value of our pardon me, we honor the nominal value of our obligations while we inflate away the net present value of our obligations. We did that in the decade of the 70s. In the decade of the 70s, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the purchasing power of the US dollar declined by 75% in 10 years. Meaning in 1980 it took you $4,000 to buy what in 1970 had cost you $1,000 to buy. That's the way I think that we deal with the debt and deficits. We inflate away the net present value of the obligation. And I think it's happening today. Your listeners might believe that the CPI uh is equivalent to the rate of inflation, but it isn't. It's a manufactured statistic. It's a factoid. when it's inconvenient doesn't include food or fuel. What use is that to people who drive or have lunch? >> Yeah. >> It also doesn't include tax. I believe that if any of your listeners did a thought experiment and looked at the price levels for the basket of goods and services that they consumed in 2020 and that same basket of goods and services today, gasoline prices, taxes, medical insurance, rent or mortgages. uh what you'll find is that the actual deterioration in the purchasing power of the US dollar is more like 8 to 10% compounded than the 2.9 suggested by the CPI. And here's why gold has moved. [clears throat] If you are saving in a 10-year US Treasury or a surrogate, you're getting paid 4.2% a year. It feels pretty good to get 4.2 to until you recognize that you're being paid back in a in a in a currency where the purchasing power is declining by eight. In other words, if you give the US government your money for 10 years, you give them $100,000 in year 1 and they give you back $50,000 in purchasing power in year 10. Not so good. We said earlier at the beginning of the saliloquy that gold does well when people are concerned about the maintenance of the purchasing power in their currency. You have a government guarantee that if you save and feel fiat denominated instruments right now you will lose money and that's why the gold price is moving. >> And I I suspect it continues to move for a fairly long time. Let's look at the underlying causes. What would cause people to feel more comfortable? Well, a positive real interest rate. If real inflation is 8%. Traditionally, investors have insisted on 150 or 200 basis point real yield above inflation. That would suggest a 10-year Treasury rate uh at around 10%. How would the government service $39 trillion in debt with a 10% real yield? Traditionally, first mortgage rates have traded at 100 at a 100 basis point premium to the 10-year. That would take the 30-year fixed mortgage to 11%. How would homeowners like that? >> No, [laughter] not at all. >> So, the probability that we have a market adjusted interest rate is very low. Well, okay, could we bring the inflation rate down? How would we do that? You would need to balance the federal budget. You would need to reach political accord as to how you dealt with $120 trillion in unfunded pension obligations. You would have to get old folks like Rick Rule to say, "Yeah, I realize that I started paying in 60 years ago, but I also realize that society can't afford to afford to pay me back, so I'm good." Right? Uh I don't see that happening either. The only way out that I see it is to inflate away the net present value obligations. Uh and unless we do that in conjunction with the rapid increases in interest rates that we saw in 1980 in the Reagan Vulkar years. Uh I don't see any solution to the problem. So I personally continue to own gold until the problem's been dealt with >> which is unlikely. Uh I I I would love to hear your v your listeners comment as to what they thought some other way out was. Uh I would love not to feel this way. >> Oh, I hear you. I think Rick, our viewers though, they agree with you. All right. So in that scenario then gold has a lot further to run. Where do you see it headed? What is the world you see us heading toward? Um, with this backdrop, I >> I don't know is the first part of the answer specifically. What I think is that gold will likely maintain its nominal purchasing power, its US dollar quote. So if that suggests that the dollar loses 75% of its purchasing power, albeit over 10 years, uh it appears to me to be probable that gold will double or triple or quadruple. In other words, it will maintain its purchasing power while the dollar loses its purchasing power. Will it be an exact 1:1 ratio? Unlikely. But remember in the decade of the 70s when the dollar lost 75% of its purchasing power, gold ran almost 30fold. There is uh a relationship between the two. Let me tell your listeners something else too, particularly the new ones lived through the decade of the 70s >> and a lot of them did. Yeah. >> With regards to gold, this won't be stairsteps to heaven. There will be volatility. there will be cyclicality. Uh I guarantee you and I guarantee very little that in this bull market the gold price will from time to time fall back by at least 30%. Uh you do this without taking out the bull market in 1975. I personally remember very well in that epic bull market where gold ran from $35 to $850. In 1975, uh, Congress raised the interest rate trying to deal with inflation, and the gold price fell by half. There were investors who enjoyed the move from $35 to $200, a six-fold move in 5 years. And these people became, as a consequence of that almost religious adherence to gold. And when the gold price fell from $200 to $100, those same people who be had become religious adherence to gold wish they never learned to spell it. Getting shaken out of gold, which many of them did, meant that they missed the move from $100 to $850, the ensuing move. So the point of all this is that you own gold for self-defense, but you own you understand that it will be both cyclical and volatile and you prepare yourself psychologically and financially to stand volatility where a 50 a 30% decline is almost guaranteed and a 50% decline isn't unheard of. >> It will take courage to get through the next 10 years unscathed. This episode is brought to you by VANX Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF, ticker symbol REMX. Rare Earths are the hidden backbone of modern technology and defense, powering everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to fighter jets and wind turbines. Van Ec recognized this early, launching the rare earth and strategic metals ETF, ticker symbol REMX, 15 years ago, well before supply chain security became a global priority. Today, China dominates the production and refining capacity of rare earths, creating real challenges for global supply chain security as these materials are essential for technological innovation, clean energy, and national security. That's why countries all around the world are racing to build their own supply chains and reduce reliance on China. As this global shift continues, investment in the rare earth ecosystem is growing rapidly. From mining to advanced manufacturing, investors can gain access to this powerful trend through REMX. Visit vanc.com/remxjiulia to learn more. Rick, let me ask you this because you on silver and even gold, let's just say um both. It was a bit of a contrarian thing when you were talking about it. Now it's become more of a consensus thing, more mainstream if you will. How do you think about that today? Is it no longer contrarian? When do you want to maybe take some profits um once you see it become a bit more mainstream? Like how do you think about your allocation to those precious metals? >> That's the most important question. Of course, it's personal. You are very right to suggest that it is not as contrarian as it was a year ago or two years ago. Uh Silver didn't merely suffer from boredom. It suffered from hate. >> Oh man, they were so mean in the comment section on it. Yeah. >> Wonderful. Uh that's always when I know I'm right, by the way, when the comment section is 30 to1 against me. Uh and I bought a fair bit of silver as a consequence of that hate. uh when the silver price cleared really from 20 to 75. Uh last week I sold 80% of my physical silver. >> Wait, how many% what? >> 80 80. Uh I sold it because silver occupied a spec a speculative part in my portfolio and my speculation was at $20 there was so much accumulated hate that when silver wasn't hated anymore it could go to 50. It didn't. It went to 70. Suffice it to say, for that portion of my portfolio, it fulfilled its purpose. I redeployed half that money into the silver equities. >> Oh, okay. >> Which haven't kept pace with silver stocks. And I consider myself a pretty good silver stock speculator. I think I have durable competitive advantages with regards to knowledge over other participants. And so I thought a better storehouse of my speculative capital was the silver equities rather than silver itself. I redeployed some of the rest of the money to physical gold because for me gold represents a st a a store of value uh true liquidity uh insurance on my purchasing power. And at almost 73 years of age now uh that sort of uh stability and security is appealing to me. There are other speculators or other investors who look at their portfolio differently and they might not want to sell their silver. People whose basis wasn't as cheap as I. Uh people who consider themselves to be good momentum traders. I'm not. Uh so selling is really individualized. But I'll tell you this, Julia. Uh about 35 years ago, I learned a technique where before I make any investment, I write myself a memo as to why I'm making the decision. Uh what my underlying thesis is, uh what I think could go right, how long that would take, what I think might go wrong, uh and what the signs were that things are going right and things are going wrong. And then I tell myself what will cause me to sell both on the good side and the bad side. Every single investment I make, I write this memo and I review the memo quarterly. And it's really helped me uh as an investor. It helped me with my silver. Uh what I thought might come true came true. And my price expectations were exceeded. If I didn't sell my silver at $75, it was the equivalent of buying it at $75 because every day that you don't turn an asset into cash, in effect, you rebought it >> at least ex the capital gains tax. And I think that many of your listeners, particularly ones who have lives, you know, jobs, kids, stuff like that, uh, when they think about investing, need a much more calculating plan, a personalized plan, because you haven't really, really, really made the money uh, until you've turned that gain into some form of purchasing power. I'm not suggesting you have to store it in dollars, but the truth is that you need to make a decision at least every quarter uh as to the composition of your portfolio. And if you don't sell something, effectively you rebought it. >> That's an interesting framework to look at it too. Like yeah, there is a psychology to selling too. real quick though. So you sold 80% of your silver holdings and redeployed that into like silver equities as you point out because there's nuance in that because some people might say, "Oh, Rick Rule, he sold all his silver in 75 or whatever, but you reallocated you put it back into silver equities because you see the opportunity there." I don't know. Sometimes you have to be careful with the headlines because someone might just say, "I sold 80% of my silver without >> Yeah. What I found sadly with these interviews is that most people don't read them uh or don't listen to them, pay attention to headlines. >> So there's been a lot of social media discussion that I sold my silver. >> Mhm. >> Well, I sold 80% of my physical silver, first of all, not all. And I redeployed half that money into silver stocks. >> And are you talking about like miners? Like when you say silver stocks? Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. The miners of the shares of silver silver producers or explorers. I did that because if the current price of silver holds, uh, the net present value of the free cash flows of silver producers is going to go absolutely crazy. >> Note that I said if >> Yeah. >> But the Wall Street and Bay Street earnings forecast for silver producers are predicated on $35 silver. >> Interesting. If your earnings estimates are based on $35 silver and you sell a stuff for 75, it's almost impossible not to have earning surprises to the upside. >> Two, the valuations of silver producers, which is to say the net present value of their current cash flows, their net asset values are predicated on $45 silver. If you do the net present values of the cash flows that they would enjoy at $75 silver, they aren't higher. They're starkly higher. So when I look at it, the leveraged return that I can enjoy on silver from today's price uh makes it more attractive than holding the silver. If I buy silver at today's price, today's price doesn't do anything for me. But if I have a catch up in earnings and net present value as a consequence of a repricing of the equities from the $40 level, never mind the $20 level to the $75 level. That seems like a much better speculation to me. >> There's inherent value in the equities if they catch up to the silver price. >> I just think it's so neat. again like you're talking about selling the psychology of selling in a bull market which I think is probably really important for people to understand rotating those proceeds from physical silver into the silver miners because you're betting on um that opportunity there when you look at the silver miners or just maybe miners in general like what criteria do you look at how do you identify winners I know like this space is pretty niche too you're one of the folks who oper operates in that space that understands it. What do you look for? >> That would be an interview by itself. That's a minimum of 30-minute discussion. I wonderful question, but it isn't a question that you and I have enough time allocated to today. >> But maybe they can go to one of your um symposiums or one of your classrooms or something they can learn. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, if people want to do that, they can go to ruleclassroom.com and there's 300 hours of instructional material there, all for free. You don't have to suffer through all 300 hours. By the way, uh there's something called introduction to natural resource investing which is a 5 and a half hour uh 11 segment short case short course on how to invest in natural resource equities. >> Got it. Well, we'll send them there. Um let's bring up some other topics with you just because you're kind of the guy for various various areas. So, we were talking about like inflation and a huge component of I guess our baskets when it comes to like what are we spending every year goes to taxes. I just paid my quarterly taxes. My goodness. Um I'm sure you've seen all these wealth taxes, millionaires taxes, billionaires taxes floated. I have my opinion on it, but what's your opinion? >> Uh do you think we should punish? >> No. And I don't institutional, but yeah, [laughter] >> it seems like we punish creativity uh and productivity and we reward sloth and lethargy. >> Uh you get what you pay for. Um listen, poll after poll after poll suggests that Americans wouldn't pay tax if there was no enforcement mechanism. What that means is that what a tax really is is so society's extorting from you part of the benefit of your labor, your capital, and your productivity. Erggo uh taxation really because it wouldn't be paid voluntarily is either extortion or slavery. One or the other. One could say that because it doesn't take place over 12 months, only four months or 5 months, it's really extortion. But neither extortion nor slavery are particularly good things. So from a moral point of view really what taxes are, I think, is extortion. And extortion is probably not good. Is it good policy? Well, that's a different question. What behavior are you trying to incent? Uh are you trying to incent the creation of wealth? Are you trying to incent the creation of value for other people? Are you trying to con to incent formation which allows individual workers to employ more capital which allows them to generate util more utility which allows them to make more? I would say yes and in every one of those regards taxes are counterproductive. Uh, one might say, well, what about social values? And then you need to decide whether or not the budget of the United States in your state and your city uh reflect social values. That is, if you say, "Yeah, I understand everything that you say is true, but I feel pretty good about extorting other people uh because I feel like we need to fund the stuff that I think is important. I don't care so much about what they think. I care about what I think. Then you need to decide whether or not that mechanism is the most efficient and effective and whether or not you have the right to superimpose your needs, your goals on other people. You can tell where I stand. >> What do you think it says about the direction of where we're headed as a country? like when more and more of these kind of policies get floated and look at California like in the exodus you've seen there look at what we're seeing out of New York City especially around housing what do you say what do you think it says about the direction >> there's a couple great great quotes there one is HL Mein who says the taxpayer uh often no usually gets what they want often good and hard Uh, and I think that we will see that. The other, of course, the more positive was one is Winston Churchill who says that Americans always do the right thing when they've exhausted all of the other alternatives. >> I'm fascinated by the election of overtly woke socialists in New York City because I think we'll have the ability to see in real time over a fairly short duration, like say 5 years, how well that works. uh when you cause your tax base to leave and you increase your dependency uh like Margaret Thatcher said, pretty soon you you run out of other people's money. the tax base in New York is already so skewed to the top that as the top departs uh sometimes for Connecticut, sometimes for New Jersey, sometimes for Florida, what you see is a diminished ability to pay at the same time that you see increased demand for services. When, make no mistake, when this gentleman uh describes the services that he proposes to add as free, they aren't free. He's proposing that someone else pay for them at the same time that he's causing that someone else to leave. Uh, this is a media heavy market. It's going to be really fun to see what happens in New York City over the next 5 years. And and I think that probably the seeds of reformation in the future are set by the sins in the current. Uh I I think we'll have a wonderful chance to see over the next 5 years uh the hollowing out of the New York City economy, uh the hollowing out of the tax base and the bankruptcy of these ideas. It's kind of like its own country, too, when you think about just the impact of New York City on the economy. >> Yeah. I mean, Bernie can Bernie can be stupid in Vermont, first of all, because he didn't run the place, you know, he just speaks from there. >> But it's a little place >> New York City. Now, that's a great experiment. Yeah. >> You know, it's a great experiment. So, I uh like Doug Casey used to say, I look forward to seeing how it works out from a distance on a broad screen TV. I wouldn't want to be part of it. I'd prefer to observe it from a small rural island in Washington State where I live. >> And don't y'all bring those policies over here either when you move. Uh unfortunately, I guess so many voters have left California and come to Washington uh that uh our own policies in Washington are changing for the worse. >> Yeah. Just kind of again going back out to the big picture here in the US and maybe [sighs and gasps] we could have an honest default or a dishonest default as you put it. when you like look out may do you see examples that maybe we could is there a way to correct this like does Argentina show an example of what you could do like >> we corrected it in the 70s >> okay >> uh we corrected it five ways the first is that we got bailed out by this generation called the baby boomers uh these people came into their productive years started earning started saving started paying tax and we had a demographic boom uh unless uh younger people really truly get it on figuratively of course that demographic boom is behind us but we did a couple other things that are instructive. The first thing that we did it was dishonest but through the decade of the 70s we did inflate away our problem. Uh we kept the nominal value of our social programs while we inflated away their net present value. we uh increased the indexes by a false measure of inflation. In other words, we impoverished our debt holders uh and our entitlement beneficiaries through inflation. And we're going to do that again to be sure. The second thing that we did is as a society, we decided to make government smaller. And we elected in a landslide a guy named Reagan. Now the truth is he didn't make government smaller. He didn't uh but what he did do was he slowed the growth of government and the economy was able to grow its way out of an obligation that was shrinking in real terms as a consequence of inflation. The third thing that we did was extraordinary. Uh we allowed ourselves to be punished. Uh, Vulkar tripled the interest rate. Tripled the interest rate. And what that meant was that we went to a real yield in the US dollar. When the underlying inflation rate was 12% and the 10-year Treasury was paying 5.5, savers were losing 4.5% a year. when the interest rate went to 18% uh and the inflation rate was still 12, there was a 6% real yield on the US dollar. We still have the ability to have a real yield on money, but we would need to punish ourselves. Uh things like people would lose their homes, things like people wouldn't be able to afford consumer durables like cars. uh it would be a real challenge. The fifth thing we did that is we are certain to do again and will benefit us is that we had this incredible march of technology. Uh technology didn't just create some billionaires uh and make share prices go up. Technology allowed us to grow the economy with much less capital input than we otherwise would have done. If you look about if you look at the uh effect of productivity generated by say Microsoft or Oracle or companies like that they allowed us to do a lot more with less capital input and that's where the hope is. For all our faults, uh, US society is still a place where five or six kids can come into your garage in Sunnyvale and out pops Google or out pops Apple. What's really cool, Julia, I think, is that with the spread of education around the world, uh, and the spread of social media and the internet, this garage might be in Nairobi or Jakarta. It doesn't have to be in Sunnyvale anymore. And the way that we get out of this dilemma is to innovate our way out of it. I mean, we have to do all of the above. Make no mistake. Uh the anticipation of innovation can't allow us not to control government spending. It can't allow us not to have entitlement reforms. It it can't uh it shouldn't allow us from having a positive real interest rate. We should have a positive real interest rate. You have to compensate people for saving. But it is truly the way out. I mean, your generation needs to understand that a bunch of our dilemma is my generation voting ourselves all kinds of cool benefits and forgetting to pay for them. [laughter] We get the entitlements and you all get the bill. Uh uh if I was your age, I'd be a bit resentful over that. Uh, and I would uh begin to look >> that's why we've seen these politicians elected. >> I Well, it's a pretty stupid way. >> I wouldn't do it, but >> because what these politicians are suggesting is that we should we should uh continue the benefits and increase them without worrying too much about how we pay for them. >> Uh they would say, "Well, uh we're going to tax the rich." There's two problems with that. Three really. Uh first of all, they say the rich need to pay their fair share. Well, the top 1% of American taxpayers pay 42% of the tax. If the rich were to pay their fair share, how how might we fund their rebate? Uh the second thing is that if you look at the aggregate net worth of all American billionaires, that is to say, if you don't increase their taxes, if you steal all their money, 100%. The IRS suggests that they're worth just under $7 trillion. And the increase in aggregate liabilities of the US government is between $4 and5 trillion a year. In other words, rather than increasing their taxes, if you stole all their money, they'd solve the problem for a year and a half without dealing with the debt. >> Yeah. >> Uh >> that arithmetic doesn't work. >> That narrative, while it sounds lovely, is a false narrative. And the longer that we pin our hopes on a false narrative, the longer we go enlarging as opposed to reducing the problem. >> I I don't want your listeners to listen to this and think this is hopeless, crawl up in the corner, assume fetal position, and whine. Right? There's a guarantee you lose if you don't do this. The point of all of this, Julia, is that you have to take care of yourself. in the next 10 years because societyy's not going to be able to do it. And if all of us took care of ourselves, we wouldn't have a common problem. >> Yeah. >> Um Rick, what did you make of the I feel like the headlines kind of died down here, but uh the daycare fraud, like all that taxpayer money being wasted. What did you make of that? >> I'd like to see more documentation of that. Uh, I think some of it is, how would you say, rightest propaganda? >> Uh, it has always occurred to me. >> So, you don't you don't think it's very Wait, sorry, explain it real quick. >> I My bias is It's probably true. Uh-huh. >> My bias when I see a building that has, you know, 17 nutrition centers and 12 daycare centers and no kids is that's probably true, but I'd like to see some documentation of it. It's pretty clear that we won't get that documentation from the California government or the Washington government or the, you know, Minnesota government. It's pretty obvious that citizen journalists will have to do that. But I hope that uh as the citizen journalists present evidence of fraud to local law enforcement administration that we will discover that some of that's real or some of that's not real. My bias is that it's real, but I'm not going to comment on it until I've seen some data. >> Okay, totally fair. Um, let's go back to the Federal Reserve and at the top of the conversation you were talking about them manipulating rates. I want to just hear more of your thoughts on the Fed. Uh, my thoughts are mixed. Uh, I'm in my banking life regulated by the Fed and the lower level parts of the Fed despite my political bias which is to hate them. I've been pretty [laughter] I've been pretty impressed. impressed by their courtesy. I've been impressed by their intelligence, by their diligence. But the top of the Fed is very, very political. It's alleged, it's allegedly an independent branch of the government. Well, it's not. Uh, it's really truly not. Um, the Fed has twin mandates, which is to say control inflation uh and maximize employment. Inflation doesn't vote. Employment votes. And the truth is that artificially low interest rates at their heart. Punish savers on behalf of spenders. It would seem that more of America's voters are spenders than they are savers. So it makes perfect sense that the true political mission of the Fed is to reward the majority of the voters at the expense uh of the minority of the voters. That's the nature of the Fed. The guy who is the current head of the Well, let me let me let me say one other thing. Informally from talking to employees at the Fed, the belief of the institution is that it is the only institution of the US government that compares that cares at all about the sanctity of the US currency. They believe that Congress and the executive are spending organs, nothing else, and that it's only the Fed that stands between the US dollar and the abyss. That's the institutional bias. uh political control is exerted at the top which means that that bias is less evident at the top but even at the top I think that there's institutional um reluctance to humor Mr. Trump uh who cares much more about his policy than he does the sanctity of the currency. Um philosophically I wish there wasn't a Fed. Uh, I think the banking industry could be regulated by the FDIC or better yet the office of the comproller of the currency. And I don't think that the government or the voters should set interest rates. I think that there should be a free market discussion between savers and borrowers. Uh, but that doesn't matter. You know, that's what I think. >> How would that work? Like how would that work? And what do you think the rate would be if you just let the free market do it? Like how would the free market do it? If you let the free market do it, the government would wouldn't have been able to borrow any near as much money. [laughter] So you wouldn't have so much of this debt discussion. Uh many of the services, if that's the right phrase, that we have enjoyed over the last 50 years, we wouldn't have enjoyed. So as an example, we wouldn't have been able to make such extravagant lies uh to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security uh recipients. But the truth is if you set that aside, if the discussion was a free market discussion between borrowers and savers, and if the underlying inflation was at 8%, uh I very much think you'd see passbook savings rates at 9% or 10% and you'd see borrowing rates higher than that. uh the consequence of that is I think ultimately you would see much lower inflation rates but the truth is that the process would be less in the control of politicians more in control of the market forces but I think it would also be much more volatile uh I think unmanaged interest rates I think you'd see more volatility on managed interest rates >> more volatility yeah um at top of the conversation, you also made the case that the economy, maybe even the global economy, US economy, it's not doing as well as people might think that maybe it's deteriorating or worse. What are you looking at? What are the signs where you're seeing the global economy is weaker than people think it is? >> I'm looking at primarily my own area of interest, which is to say commodity pricing [clears throat] in copper as an example. Although the co copper price has done well in the last 3 months. >> Yeah. >> You have a circumstance where there is a supply deficit which means we're using more silver than more copper than we're producing. We're using above ground inventory and recycling uh to cover the basis in that uh you would have expected a rise in the copper price anyway. But put on top of that, you had 7% of primary copper production taken offline last year. Grassburg from of course that catastrophe. Cobra Panama where the government of Panama stole a mine from its owners. Uh Kapushi uh suffice it to say 7% of global supply in an already under supplied market came off. One would have expected a 30 or 40% price spike as a consequence of that. one got an eight or nine% price spike and one in an economy that was stronger uh with cresting US production would have expected to see stronger energy pricing but we didn't uh until the news around Venezuela and Iran we saw weaker energy pricing that tells me that near-term demand is weaker than we think it is there are other signs that are more anecdotal that scare me more. Um, one is the inability of that part of the labor force which doesn't have specific skill sets to earn an income that sustains the required standard of living in this economy. Uh, I I live in a little community where labor is pretty tight. uh an entry-level worker at Safeway bagging groceries or McDonald's is making about $20 an hour, which seems like a lot of money. Uh particularly when the local McDonald's has had to put icons on the tabs in the cash register because many of the workers are illiterate. But $20 an hour isn't enough to sustain oneself in this economy. uh so ostensibly high never mind minimum wage which doesn't come into the discussion here. You have a whole segment of the economy that doesn't have the skill sets to employ the capital that will allow them to maintain a decent standard of living in this economy. Now the outcome in the little community that I live in is inevitable. What will happen is that McDonald's will automate them away. You will have a McDonald's that doesn't employ 40 low low-wage people. It will enjoy three or four high-wage people that can manage the technology around that automation. Which is to say that the schism between skilled employees and unskilled employees, which is already extreme, will get worse. >> Almost certainly will get worse. Um there is going to be too uh I think uh a second circumstance where employees that have hither too been untouchable by technology will begin to be displaced by AI. Uh I look at what I did as a young securities analyst in my 20s. Uh and the sort of comparative financial analysis that would have taken me six or seven weeks in an industry can be done by an intelligent person even I can do it. Uh employing grock in two minutes. uh that means that the young analyst or the young clerical p person is going to be in many senses automated out of their position. >> Yeah. >> This will make society richer because we'll be able to do more with less and it will make those people who have the skills to employ AI much richer. uh it will lead to humankind being richer 20 years from now, immeasurably richer than they are today, but that will be of small consolation to the people who are currently making $80,000 a year who are about to be unemployed. So there's going to be real transition. >> And you're talking about when you say that 80,000, you're talking about the white collar worker. >> Yeah. Yeah. which I don't know like in all of the disruptions new technology um you know there are people who used to ride horse carriages you know people who worked in fields before tractors I guess this is is this the first time that you'll see like a white collar wave of disruption then >> I don't think so I mean I think uh you know when you got the adding machine you did away with a whole bunch of people who did accounting longhand >> that's true yeah that too I'm glad I don't have to do that I did not like math class in high school. >> I walk into Costco myself. Uh and while I would I would prefer that somebody checked me out, >> uh the truth is the lines are shorter at selfch checkckout. >> You know, uh so this isn't good or bad. It just is. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And we see new types new types of jobs emerge, too. >> I mean, you know, for an old guy like me, not that it matters, I I shouldn't still be working. I just can't help myself. uh for an old guy like me being able to use AI as poorly as I use it. And by the way, I'm a terrible user. Uh it's made me initi amazingly more productive. Uh really truly amazingly more more productive. Uh and that's useful. that allows me in the bank to pass on the services that we provide by paying higher interest rates to depositors and lower interest rates to borrowers, more money to shareholders. This is all wonderful stuff. It's disruptive. I should also say on AI, uh it is both more and less than people think it is. It, as Elon Musk says, it has the greatest memory in the world, but no common sense. And so you have to know how to ask it questions. >> If you ask AI about something that's a matter of opinion, what it does is it surveys the opinions of 600 million morons on X, uh, in that case AI is really uh, artificial ignorance. If by contrast you confine it to at least probabilistic fact and you confine the search ellipsoid uh I use mine for financial analysis and I confine it to um >> Edgar and Cedar uh financial databases. >> It's miraculous. It's truly truly truly miraculous. >> It really is. If you confine it to looking for uh uh anomalies between factual databases in science, be it nanotechnology, biology, geology, it's truly spectacular. Uh if you keep it away from unconstrained s uh uh searches in areas where what you're looking for is opinion, not fact. >> It's amazing because I think it opens up the universe of the types of questions we can now ask, too. like you said, it's all about like how you prompt it. Rick, we're at the end here, but before I let you go, couple of things for you. Um, can you share how the bank is going, Battle Bank, because I know we've we haven't really talked about it. I don't know if you could share an update there. And any >> Well, the parting that you'd like to leave this audience to think about. The floor is all yours. >> We're finally banking. >> Uh, in our last bank, Ever Bank, it took us 19 months from preliminary application to charter. This bank we were 54 months in counting. >> 54 months. >> 54 months. >> Okay. >> FDIC in 2024 had 122 banks in organization. They approved two. So at age 70 I had to think to myself, let me see 20 122 divided by two that's 60. Do I have 60 years left to get my bank approved? The answer was clearly no at age 70. So we bought a little bank. Uh and we are now banking. uh we will we think be able to roll out our services nationally on February 17th. Right now we're using our own money for our services. In other words, I open an account, I see that my deposits get deposited. I see that my checks cash. I see that my wires wire. You got one chance to make a good first impression. And so we're shaking in all of our systems with our own money. I'm delighted to say that we didn't waste those 54 months. We have a waiting list of over 20,000 people who have told us what goods and services they want to buy from Battlebank. So, I think our first year growth is going to be meteoric. Uh, which is one of the reasons why we're, you know, you got one chance to make a good first impression, Julia. So, [laughter] we're we're breaking in our systems on our money before we try them on your money. >> There you go. >> People in your audience who are unhappy about their current bank should check out Battle Bank. Who might those people be? Well, if you don't get paid interest on your checking account, business or personal, try BattleBank. $3 trillion of deposits in the US gets paid no interest. If you think that you want to save in more currencies than the US dollar, if you think that current currencies will be in turmoil for the next 10 years, at Battlebank, you can save FDIC insured in 20 currencies, not just the US dollar. If you believe that your IRA should be your IRA rather than merely a receptacle for annuities and mutual funds from Wall Street, if you think your IRA ought to be able to buy a duplex or an Airbnb or a subway franchise or buy private equity or crypto or gold or silver, check out Battle Bank, where your IRA is your IRA. If you like gold and silver, uh unlike most banks, we deal in it. More importantly, probably we lend against it. If you have a bunch of capital tied up in your gold and silver, but you don't want to sell the gold and silver, uh, come to Battlebank and we'll establish a credit line against your gold and silver the same way that we would establish a credit line against your house. It's called a metals equity line of silver. Uh, we invite your audience who is looking for personalized non-standard banking service to check out BattleBank at battlebank.com. >> I love it. Rick, we always love having you on. Congrats on the bank. I didn't realize it took 54 months to get off the ground. What an adventure. Congratulations. Um, we wish you all the success. I'm sure this audience will support you as well. We always love having you on, Rick Ru. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, all of your knowledge, your wisdom, helping us all learn and get better. Really appreciate you and look forward to seeing you again soon. >> The pleasure is mine. I look forward to be invited