Rick Rule: I've Rarely Seen Such Good Opportunity In Oil & Gas Stocks

Summary

WORRIED ABOUT THE MARKET? SCHEDULE YOUR FREE PORTFOLIO REVIEW with Thoughtful Money’s endorsed financial …

Transcript

Rick, on the oil side, um when you look at the past opportunities like this that you've pre-positioned yourself for, how excited are you right now um about the oil industry's prospects on a on a scale of 1 to 10? Is is this a five? Is this a nine? Is it a three? for a 73year-old patient rich guy. Uh juxtaposing the risk to reward uh this is sort of a one one being best 10 being worst. >> Oh, okay. Good. I was I was thinking other way around. So, okay, good. >> Because the probability of it taking place is so high. >> Welcome to thoughtful money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Tagert. Oil and gas stocks have largely been ignored by Wall Street for years now as the prices of oil and natural gas have largely remained weak. But the world still runs on fossil fuels and global demand keeps rising each year. And in this industry, the cure for low prices tends to be low prices. So when will this sector famous for its boom and bust cyclical nature rotate out of bust and back into boom? Are today's low stock prices presenting a good opportunity to start dollar cost averaging into a sector that's poised for substantial future gains while paying attractive income in the meantime? For answers, we're fortunate to be joined by Rick Rule, one of the world's greatest living natural resource investors and a heck of a gentleman to boot. Rick, thanks so much for joining us today. >> Pleasure. Thank Adam. Thank you for having me back. I've enjoyed our conversations over the years. >> Thank you. Well, same here. um both on this channel and also in person. Rick, you're one of those guys. They they generally say don't meet your heroes. And I've found that that axiom uh is much more accurate more often than not. Uh but you're one of the folks that that breaks that mold. Uh you're an even uh greater gentleman in person. So anyways, thanks so much again for coming on. I appreciate uh the partnership, but also just the friendship. And I got to say, Rick, I have had um more more than I've gotten for almost anything over the past couple of months. Um I have gotten people just hammering me uh begging me to get you on the channel to talk about your outlook for oil and gas, largely for the thesis that I just mentioned there in the intro. Um so I'm looking forward to rolling up our sleeves and getting into that with you here. Real quick, um I I just want to note too, I'd like to save a few minutes afterwards to talk about um some recent trades that you have made in silver uh that you announced publicly. Um I've seen the headlines, but I I didn't get a chance to I've yet to had the chance to drill down to the details. I know from my audience that that your announcement really caught their attention. I think there's some important nuance to share there with people. So, I hope after we get through the oil and gas, we have a few minutes to talk about silver as well. >> I look forward to that. Uh it's a really interesting topic. Uh and I think it's probably instructional in the sense that uh everybody's portfolio is unique and everybody's response to circumstances is unique. Uh and so talking about silver in that context uh and also talking about silver in the absolute uh will be fun uh for the opportunity. >> Great. And then lastly, there's an announcement I want to make uh important announcement I want to make for the money audience and it relates to the logo that's there on your shirt there, Battlebank. So, we'll we'll try to squeeze that in at the end as well. Um, all right, Nit Rick. Well, look, ju just to start here, um, uh, let's not spend a ton of time on this because we we've talked about it in the past, but for those that kind of haven't heard your general overall outlook on fossil fuels, you know, we live in in a world where, you know, recent decade or so, um, they've really been kind of vilified. There's been a lot of policy worldwide, especially in the West, to get off of fossil fuels, replace it with alternatives. Um, uh, talk, if you will, just sort of about your your view of of the global demand for fossil fuels going forward. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I get the sense you don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon, and they're pretty much about as essential as they've always been. Uh even the world energy uh international energy agency no fan of fossil fuels has revised their estimate as to when peak oil demand will occur from their recent estimate of 2030 only four years from now to60. A fairly dramatic revision. Uh it would seem that the international energy agency was listening for 10 years to energy physicists like Greta Thornberg. Uh, and it turned out, not surprisingly, that those physicists were wrong. Uh, and don't get me wrong, Adam, I'm I I believe that the world is going to need a lot more of all forms of energy. I'm not anti-hydro or anti-solar or anti- wind. I am, however, uh, pro- oil. People say to me, "But Rick, uh, aren't you a dinosaur? Isn't the world changing? Uh isn't uh aren't alternative energies replacing fossil fuels? The answer to that statistically, Adam, is no. On a global basis, depending on who you listen to, we have invested, we being humankind, somewhere between 6 and 11 trillion dollar on alternative energies. That's a T. It's a big number. >> Big number. Uh, and we've reduced the market share of fossil fuels from a high of 83%. 40 years ago all the way down to 81% today. A conservative estimate of a $6 trillion expenditure has reduced the market share of fossil fuels by 2% over 45 years. So, I think that we it's important that we get that in context. Important for a couple of reasons. When Wall Street uh and in particular when the multilateral institutions uh do their net present value calculations on oil companies they are using peak oil demand occurring in 2030 and then tapering off. If you do a net present value calculation uh on an oil company, free cash flow received after seven or eight years has almost no no net present value. And you have to add back in your calculation the value of the tail, the value of the cash flow that occurs for 30 years in the case of Exxon after that 8-year time frame. uh and people doing net present value calculations today have left in no value for the tail and the tail is enormous truly truly truly enormous. At the same time uh this vilification uh of the oil industry has made oil industry the oil industry's cost of capital go up. Mhm. >> The oil companies are selling for less than they're worth and very big lenders uh are exiting the oil and gas space. The a combination of low oil prices and relatively expensive capital has meant that many oil companies are deferring sustaining capital investments in favor of returning cash to shareholders. Shareholders like cash but they ignore the fact that that cash return now is coming from what could be called cannibalization. It is estimated >> future production. >> Yeah. It's estimated that uh on a global basis if you include state-owned firms that the oil industry is underinvesting in sustaining capital by between$1 and2 billion dollar a day. >> Wow. a day. In a capital intensive business, if you starve the business for capital, over time you cannibalize the business. Uh the industry is living off capital investments a decade ago. Now we could get through 2026, 2027, some of 2028 uh cannibalizing what is a fairly fat industry. But in the out years 28, 29, 30, this underinvestment really, really, really comes back to bite. That's precisely why the oil industry experiences the booms and busts that you say because what you said in the outcome in the outset, pardon me, which is that the cure for low prices is always low prices is very, very true. at $55 oil. Uh, a bunch of the production types that led to the US production curve, uh, the shale basins as an example, aren't economic, so they don't get drilled. When you produce down the standing inventory uh, of producing wells, there's nothing to replace it until you repeat the process. So you have periods where the oil price lurches from say $50 to let's say $90 and we are coming into I think in the next three or four years uh a situation exactly like that. The opponents to my point of view say Rick you are ignoring uh a bunch of things. You are ignoring the fact that uh Venezuela you know Trump just changed the world in Venezuela. Mhm. >> Well, first of all, he didn't uh he just kidnapped their thug. There's a bunch of thug sub thugs that are still in power. [laughter] Nothing changed except for that the thug and chief and his wife is now in custody. Yes, we stole some of their oil on the high seas. We may continue to do that. But in order for Venezuela to recoup their former production levels, uh, one would estimate it would take 50 or 60 billion dollars and several years. And as the CEO of Exxon said last week, he knows a bit more about oil than our president, by the way. Um, Venezuela in its current circumstance is uninvestable. So it'll be tough tough to raise that 50 or 60 billion dollars. Maybe Trump will take it out of our federal surplus. Who knows? Uh and then people say, "Well, what about Russia?" Or or what about Iran? Those are two countries that have had desperate cash needs for 5 years, which means that they are among the worst culprits in deferring sustaining capital investments to the extent that the politics of either company stabilized country, I'm sorry, stabilized. And I'm not a geopolitical analyst, so I'm not going to tell you what the probability of that is. uh it would take years to restore their domestic production capabilities given the cannibalization that has occurred in both countries in Persia uh for politically expedient domestic social spending programs in Russia for war. Uh the variable in the world has been US shale production. Uh and there the situation's nuance too. I hope your listeners will pay attention to this next part. Uh at $60 oil with current interest rates, it is estimated that the US industry has drilled 85% of its tier one locations. Which means that with today's technology and today's cost of capital and today's fiscal regime in the United States, 85% of the locations that have driven Americans production gains have already been drilled. Now certainly if technology improves particularly around recoveries well recoveries uh more locations that are currently tier 2 locations become tier one locations but given the status quo uh given $60 oil which is higher than the quote today with today's interest rate and today's um cost [clears throat] of capital uh we have drilled 85% of our tier one locations. The longer that oil stays below 60 or 65, uh, the lower our ability to maintain the [clears throat] US production at its current level becomes. And make no mistake, over the last 15 years, the US has been the world's swing producer. We've gone from being the largest oil importer in the world to being an oil exporter as a consequence of the shale drilling. But the shale drilling [clears throat] at $60 oil is past its prime. It's important that people understand that will this sorry to interject but but how important a signal is it to you of what you just said that Harold Ham has no active rigs right now and just for folks know um he's been basically drilling in Perian I think it is >> up he he's mostly up in the Wilston basin in North Dakota >> but but basically he's been one of the most active drillers for the past several decades and he's basically saying right now how the economics are so unfavorable. For the first time in my career, I'm sitting on my hands. >> That's correct. He's traditionally run 15 20 rigs simultaneously. Uh right now, he's running none. What he's saying is that at $55, he doesn't earn his cost of capital drilling locations. He's decapizing. Make no mistake, he's raising cash, biting his time. He knows for sure that the cure for low prices is low prices. And he understands better than anybody uh how the conjunction of technologies has enabled the current boom and how you need either lower cost of capital or higher prices or a new technology cocktail. But if you take Mr. Ham uh and you extrapolate his actions across many many many smaller private parties and a and across many large independents and majors. What you'll see what you'll see is that what he's doing is indicative. Uh it's not limited to him. The US rig count the number of active rigs uh in the lower 48 has fallen like a boulder off a bridge. Uh, as I say, this doesn't necessarily impair our production in 2026 or 2027, but if you don't drill for two years, [laughter] which is what we're doing in the United States, uh, the impact in the out years is dramatic, and you can't bring that production online quickly. In other words, you can't decide to start drilling uh, and have production materially increase in three months or four months or six months. You will remember, Adam, uh, after the precipitous price decline that we experienced during COVID when the oil price went briefly to zero and set out at $20, we had a complete hiatus in drilling in the United States. And the consequence of that, the aftermath of that was $90 oil. That's the way it works. Over time, over two two or three years, uh, oil prices like $90 in cent supply increases. If you have enough drillable locations to drill, uh we have two challenges. Uh we will need to invest an awful lot of money and we're going to have to invest an awful lot of money against a dwindling supply of tier one locations. >> All right. So essentially you're saying, you know, we are setting ourselves up for a big negative supply shock. um >> correct >> to the extent that that prices and cost of capital remain more or less where they are here. Um and then that's going to manifest in much higher prices at some point. Um it's interesting uh when when the the volumes are flowing um oil companies tend to do less well, right? Uh because oil's plentiful and people are paying less for it. Oil companies tend to do better, at least stock price-wise. And correct me if if any of this is wrong, but when supply gets tight and we have to pay a lot for it. Um, so are are you anticipating that when the supply shock arrives and the price of oil spikes as a result of it that um today's oil and gas companies, oil companies, uh, their stocks will be worth more when that shock arrives? >> Yes. But >> okay, >> you need to confine your purchases today to companies that are making the ret required sustaining capital investments to companies that aren't cannibalizing their ability to take advantage of higher prices. >> Great point. >> Paradoxically, the market is favoring companies who are cannibalizing themselves and paying high dividends and buying back stock. So, Wall Street is buying precisely the kind of companies that will underperform >> in the scenario that I've envisioned. Uh, you need to confine uh your purchases to efficient companies that are making the required sustaining capital investments so that when the oil price rises, they will have the production to to fully take advantage of that circumstance. And I would suggest I haven't done the work statistically, but I would suggest that probably o only 10 to 15% of the oil companies on the investable horizon uh are maintaining sustainable sustaining capital investments. Some of these companies, Adam, are making so much money [laughter] based on historical uh capital investments. Mhm. >> that they can at once be generous with their shareholders on a current basis and still make the sustaining [clears throat] capital investments. >> Uh that's really sort of the the trifecta. >> Okay. And is this correlated with the size of the company? You have to be a big company to be doing that or is this opportunity up and down the the size? >> Ironically, you don't. Uh I advise a private family office as an example. Now, by mortal standards, they're pretty big. [laughter] But they're no Exxon. Uh this family has been active in West Texas for a hundred years. Uh and they are at once living very well. [laughter] You know, no questions as to what they might have to have for breakfast. >> Mhm. >> While at the same time, uh >> investing for the future. >> You know, investing for the future. Uh and that goes all the way up to Exxon uh which is treating its shareholders at present very well. maintains a fortress-like balance sheet uh and never mind is making the required sustaining capital investments. They're investing billions of dollars uh in new projects in Gana while buying Pioneer uh a different producer for $60 billion to increase their number of proved undeveloped locations in the Perian. So you can have the biggest of the bigs uh that are simultaneously able to be uh generous to their existing shareholders while being responsible for their future. >> Okay. So um to me and this is a big reason why I think everybody wanted you to come on here. You know this really smells like opportunity. Um it seems like a classic you know Rick rule. Um you know be early. um start building your position when valuations are lower than you think they're going to be in the future once once the phase change you think is going to occur. But it almost sounds like it's it's even better than the normal Rick rule. Like I remember you out there talking about uranium, right? And you were you were early on that. But man, were you right right when when when the ship arrived. But you didn't get paid to sit in uranium, right? where here some of these companies, as you said, are still paying you really attractive dividends while you're dollar cost averaging in and waiting for the phase change. >> That's a great point, Adam. Uh not this uranium market, but the one before it, uh 1998. I was 4 and a half years early. If you're four and a half years early at an 8% discount rate, you're not early. You're wrong. >> So, you have to consider the time value of money. uh if you get paid a nice dividend, uh you discount most of the time value of money. Uh if you put together, as an example, a package of the better Canadian producers, you're admittedly taking, by the way, Canadian political risk, which is high. Uh but you have a average dividend yield uh of around 6%. Uh if you're using an 8% of cost of capital, that 6% dividend advertises away most of the discount. >> Mhm. which is a much more attractive circumstance than the circumstance that I faced either in my uranium trade or in my silver trade where I ate the whole time value of money discount >> uh in both cases being two to four years early. Uh the other thing is uh Adam that I think is worth noting the oil and gas business is a better business than the mining business. Uh I was brought up in the oil and gas business so I have an affinity to it. But in the oil and gas business we always talked about return on capital employed. There were years in the mining business when we prayed for return of capital employed. Uh it is a bigger business. Uh it is a better business and it has on average higher quality people. uh the fact that you can uh engage in a thesis that is similar to the contrarian thesis that worked out so well for me in the mining business in a better business with higher quality people is a hell of a bonus. >> Okay, [snorts] so we're going to talk about gas in just a minute. Um but Rick, on the oil side, um when you look at the past opportunities like this that you've prepositioned yourself for, how excited are you right now, um about the oil industry's prospects on a on a scale of 1 to 10? Is is this a five? Is this a nine? Is it a three? for a 73y old patient rich guy. Uh juxtaposing the risk to reward uh this is sort of a one one being best 10 being worst. >> Oh, okay. Good. I was I was thinking the other way around. So, okay, good. >> Because the probability of it taking place is so high. >> High. Yeah. I'm not expecting a 20bagger out of my oil portfolio because I'm buying big muscular solvent companies. I'm not speculating on penny dreadfuls, but I Well, as an example, uh, Adam, let's name a name just for fun. We talked about Exxon before. >> I think Exxon is selling at about 70 to 75% of its net present value at $60 oil. I think the oil price is going to 85 or 90. Uh at 85 or 90, if Exxon is enjoying a 15% margin or 20% margin at $60 oil, >> they'll be enjoying 45% margins at $85. which is to say, I'm buying uh what I think is a company five years ago, five years from now, that will be worth two to three times what it's worth today, and I'm buying that at a 30% discount with a 2.5% yield. [laughter] The the fact that the quality of the company is so high and the probability of my being right is so high, that's what attracts me. All right. Um, well, you've certainly got my attention. I'm sure you've gotten many of the the folks here. Rick, I'm gonna We can edit this out if you want me to. But, um, one of the things I wanted to do, well, I had you here today, too, was extend invitation um, a plea if you will, if you've got the time, to come, uh, on the faculty for Thoughtful Money Spring online conference. um you've been in many of our past conferences and when you are uh you are extremely generous where you kind of open the kimono and say hey these are the companies that are on my watch list. Is that something that you'd be willing to do if you have the time? >> I'd be eager uh provided that you give me uh the time that I need to explain the companies. I want to use them as educational opportunities. In other words, tell people how they fit in my portfolio and why they might or might not fit in theirs. Uh I know I know the company names get headlines but I like to use companies uh as instructional material particularly because a name is a snapshot in time. There can be a circumstance that changes and so something that I like in January of 2026 I may dislike in April of 2026 if the circumstance changed. But provided that you'll allow me to use the names uh in an instructional manner, uh I would be honored to do that. >> Well, Rick, this is exactly why I value your uh participation so much in these conferences. So, absolutely. >> Great. I'm looking forward to it. >> Well, thank you. Um and uh folks, hopefully you are as well. Um, okay. So, um, I want to switch over to gas just because I mean, Rick, I could talk with you for four hours here. I just need to be respectful of your time. Is there anything else about the oil opportunity that's critical to discuss that I haven't thought to ask you about yet? >> One thing is the possibility of the development of new technologies. This hasn't occurred yet, but the boom in US production that we've enjoyed in the last 15 years is really the consequence of [clears throat] the convergence of several technologies. Horizontal drilling, measurement well drilling, threedimensional seismic and pressure pumping, fracking. Um, we have reached I I would say at $60, uh, the limits of our ability to continue to increase production with that cocktail of technologies. >> Mhm. >> That being said, we are very lucky in these shale formations if we extract 10 or 12 perhaps a high of 15% of the hydrocarbons in place. If we can develop some technology which allows us to do a more thorough uh harvesting of the oil in place, then the circumstance that I describe uh the opportunity that I described goes away, replaced by a new opportunity, which is to say that people who own these assets can produce them more efficiently. >> Great. This would be another shell miracle. um it would just be using a different technology than the cocktail you just described >> and and it might not be uh around uh harvesting more of the reserves. It's just that that looks like the most lowhanging fruit to me. >> Uh and that's where the big guys, the Exxons and the Chevrons are spending most of their R&D dollars today. But that could be the wild card. The other thing on the negative side is the probability that the level of government theft, which is to say taxes, royalties, fees, increases. Uh, Adam, as you know, and your listeners might not want to hear this from me, uh, I believe government's basic job is to steal, and they're pretty good at it. uh and they always like to steal from victims where their theft is disguised as being in the public good. >> Mhm. >> Uh the Greta Thornbergs and the Anhala Merkels and the Bidens and the Trudeau of the world have done a wonderful job vilifying the oil industry. >> Right. Remember, I just left California, which has the highest gas prices in the nation and is losing all of its oil companies right now. Governor Gruesome is uh in particular uh he's particularly odious. Let's just say that. Uh the California voters are beginning to get what they wanted, good and hard. [laughter] >> Okay. So, um actually, let me just ask you this on that part. So, look, I mean government um government's hand in the cookie jar will will probably always be there. But I am curious um you know under the Biden administration there were a lot of regulations and um you know additional non-market costs that were put into the oil industry. Um Trump has been very vocal about saying look I'm getting rid of all that and it's drill baby drill and you know I'm going to be the oil industry's best friend. Um is there a material difference um in the government uh you know money extraction in this industry between the current administration and the past one or is the theft just taking a different form? >> Mr. Trump u is uh a cheerleader for the oil industry. Hopefully he's reflective of the changing mood of the electorate. Uh I note however that he is no less voracious in his demands for cash [laughter] which is to say that uh he hasn't proposed anything like uh uh increasing the oil depletion allowance or lowering the royalty rate. Uh in other words, while he says kind things uh he still steals what he feels is his due. What has changed is the mood at the top in the regulatory agencies. >> Uh I have a long time >> better right >> much better. I I have a long time time friend in the Bureau of Land Management. Uh an agency among others that's regulated me my whole adult life. >> Uh and this is a guy that I would consider to be an intelligent regulator. Uh and he said, "Rick, you have two years." [laughter] Uh in prior administrations the directive from on top was obfiscate delay slow. Now the view from on top is get the lead out uh drill baby drill. So to the extent that you are going to do exploration or development in the United States in mining or oil and gas, uh we sort of feel like we have two years to get things started. Uh in the oil business, that's going to be constrained because $50 oil isn't sufficient incentive to maintain the drilling pace that Mr. Trump uh would like to see us maintain. And at a point in time when the price recovers to the extent that we would have an incentive, one wonders what the political circumstances are that we will face at that time. Right now uh if you want to get final uh approval for say a a permit from the Peran Basin to the Gulf Coast, uh notice that that's in Texas in a favorable [clears throat] local jurisdiction. Yep, >> you can do it. Uh if you want to get approval for a natural gas liquification facility or a processing facility, you can do it. And that's a dramatic change uh over the circumstance that we've existed in for the last 10 years. Similarly, right now uh you know the perpetua gold mine in northern Idaho was in permitting for 13 years. Uh it was stuck forever. uh the new regulatory regime uh got that done in about 9 weeks. >> Uh this is this is a dramatic change of circumstance. >> This this is a total tangent. I don't want to distract you too much in this, but I just got to ask and I'm for the resolution mine, the copper mine in Arizona that's taken what like 30 plus years to get permitted. Is that getting fasttracked now? Uh I don't think that there is opposition to the resolution at the federal level which there was. Uh but remember that the United States is a tripartite jurisdiction. Uh you have federal, state and local agencies and any agency any level can take lead agency status with the concurrence of the others. >> Resolution still face faces challenges in Arizona and it still faces local challenges. So despite the fact that the challenge on the top at the top of the top has disappeared, resolution still faces challenges. Now this is an absurdity. Uh this is uh a copper mine that is bounded bordered by copper mines. [laughter] It is in a polit politically stable jurisdiction which is to say the United States. In fact, in Arizona, uh it borders a town that has copper miners in it. There's power to it. There's water to it. There's roads to it. There's rail to it. And by the way, uh copper is on our critical metals list, >> right? >> This is one of the largest copper deposits on the planet, uh over a billion tons of material, and it grades 1.5% copper, three times more than three times the average grade worldwide. If we're actually concerned about providing electricity for Americans, never mind providing electricity for a billion poor people on Earth who have no access to electricity. We're going to need a lot more copper and resolution is a really, really, really high quality solution. >> Like I said, I don't want to get distracted on it. Um, but it is so fascinating. I'm just wondering, Rick, is there is there a longer discussion about resolution to be had at some point with you? >> I would be happy to have a longer discussion about resolution and I would be happy to uh invite uh the owners of resolution uh BHP uh and Rio Rio to see if they [clears throat] would come on. It might be because of the politics of this that they would duck it. Uh but the uh the development officer of BHP, Katherine Raw, brilliant woman, is somebody who I've known and worked with for 15 years. And I would love to try to get her on your show in conjunction with me and talk uh talk about the lessons to be learned from resolution. >> That would be fascinating and a huge honor. So um Rick, I'm going to I'm going to tell you that I I'll reach out to you afterwards uh to explore that further with you. But folks, if you'd like to to see that discussion, let us know in the comment section below. >> I don't want to promise that I can deliver her. Uh that'll depend on the politics of this with NBHP. I can tell you this, if I'm able to deliver her, >> she's an absolutely brilliant human being, dead honest. Uh she was on the spot board with me, or rather I was on the board with her. She's a superstar, and there's no better nobody better to talk about all of these issues with than her. She also doesn't share my somewhat maverick political point of view. She's much more mainstream. So, she would probably be kinder to the politicians than I would be. She would be a useful counterpoint to my sort of rabbid libertarianism. >> All right. Well, gosh, folks watching, if there's any way that Rick and I can make this happen, we will. And thank you for being um game for that, Rick. That that's I I'm so excited by this. Um all right. I've got to rest myself from that topic though. I want to spend the rest of the hour more talking about it with you. Um, let's over to gas. And gas, um, I mean, I'll let I'll let you educate us in any way you think best, but just real quick, I'll note. uh you know gas a little bit different story than oil um for a bunch of reasons but one big one right now is AI and the uh the electrical production capacity of the nation just here in the US but I think this is true elsewhere um is now becoming like a sovereign top priority and it seems that um yes there may be some fuels that will help in the longer run nuclear etc but in the near term it's really going to be gas that's going to be doing a lot of the heavy heavy lifting here. So there's there's that, you know, tremendous amount of new demand that may be coming online. And secondly, just to sort of show that gas can be boring until it's not. Um, in the past 48 hours, I think we've seen natural gas uh futures explode by what, by like 35% or something like that. >> Yep. Uh people don't need gas until they do. Uh uh I I heard from uh Cali Farnum that they're going to have 30 inches of snow in Memphis. >> Uh almost 3 ft in. >> In other words, much of the country is cold. >> And uh it turns out that the words of the big thinkers aren't of much use when you're cold. When you flip the switch, you want the heater to work, >> right? >> And that requires gas. Now, the truth is with or without AI, gas is on a march. Uh, at the same time that the oil prices declined, the gas prices increased. You and I started talking about this four or five years ago, Adam, where we said the cure for low prices was low prices. >> For a while in West Texas, because gas is a byproduct of oil drilling, oil producers were paying to dispose of natural gas. [clears throat] In other words, the price of natural gas was subsurface, pardon, pardon me, sub-zero. >> Mhm. >> Uh now gas >> a lot of flaring as people see with the, you know, aerial images of the gas fields. Yeah. >> Uh that incredible supply led to an amazing amount of infrastructure con construction, liqufied natural gas, gas ga gas gathering systems, gas transmission systems. We invested billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars. At the same time, the German chemical industry effectively relocated to the US Gulf Coast. >> So, we're using a lot more gas. Um, I I suspect in gas that uh one could say the easy money has been made. The hate trade is gone in gas. But the infrastructure that we have in place is going to serve the natural gas industry for the next 20 years. uh the debottlenecking that has occurred, the ability to get the gas from where it is in the Rockies uh in West Texas to where it's needed uh either on the Texas Gulf Coast or out to California or or in fact in uh LNG vessels to China and Europe. That's behind us now. That capital investment's been made. Uh and so we've put in place the structural bedrock uh of demand for natural gas for the next 20 25 years. All right. and and sorry in your continued answers here. Um it seems like especially under the new Trump administration um given that we've created these sort of gas superighways that didn't exist before, we are now using this as a big carrot out there um in our trade negotiations with other countries and and really trying to rest countries away from relationships on Russian gas and things like that. Um how material is that? like how much additional demand do you see coming from you know international players going forward for US gas? >> Uh I think the beauty that US resources have is not Trump. Uh it's the fact that we have the deepest oil and gas infrastructure in the world. We are the most reliable, the most stable suppliers. Uh I have had people in Asia tell me that they would rather have a $5 US contract than a $4 Middle East contract >> because when they contract gas from the US, they get it. [clears throat] you know, it goes from the wellhead uh to a processing facility to a pipeline to an LNG facility down to a tanker and if it's supposed to be there Wednesday, it's there Wednesday. Um there's a lot to be said for being a reliable supplier. >> Okay, I think that's a durable competitive advantage, but we can't rest on our laurels. At some point in time, that Russian gas is going to be available to the market again. uh cutter uh which controls the largest natural gas field in the world uh is busy building export trains and setting up uh stable supply agreements including pricing agreements with countries around the world. Uh the northwest shelf of Australia uh is developing an LNG hub. Uh Mosamb beek is developing an LNG hub and the Canadians have what's called linepack which is to say they produce more gas than they can actually transport. So the US should not rest on its laurels and the US should also not underestimate uh the increasing bad will uh engendered by our attempts to extr territorially impose our will on other people. Mhm. [clears throat] Um, okay. So, some good, some bad there. Uh, what do you see as the primary driver for demand for natural gas at the margin going forward? Is it AI? Is it international demand? Is it >> Well, in the US, it's certainly peaking peaking power. Uh, gas is not base load power. It's too expensive for base load power. uh but what happens is that uh demand varies through seasons and it varies day by day and there are days when there is demand that exceeds our ability to supply it from more stable sources of supply and that's where gas comes in. It comes in as a peaking fuel. the days and today is a day where surplus gas in West Texas is burned to do Bitcoin mining. Those days are numbered. Uh the big uses, the AI uses and stuff like that ultimately are going to have to be powered by nuclear. That's the only way it's going to work. But there's going to be 10 years to get there. [laughter] >> Yeah. And uh while we wait to get there, we are going to need the ability to burn natural gas to generate electricity where periodic demands exceed the supply of other forms of energy. Uh we're going to need that. You're going to need it particularly in the state that you just fled, uh California, uh which has fairly high base load demand and has done their best to shut in supply throughout the state. Uh what you're going to find is that this the California grid is going to be increasingly unstable. Um reliance on solar in much of California is not a bad idea except it has problems at night um when the sun doesn't shine and and periods like that uh are going to be supplied increasingly by battery technology and by natural gas. >> Okay. I'm curious then. So let's say we have a you know a decade of uh buildout of of natural gas um electrical production facilities. Um you know you hear a lot about uh you know data centers starting to kind of build their own you know their their own natural gas um mini power plants if you will. assume you're correct in that in 10 years nuclear really comes online in the way that that all the the um you know the the fans of it hope it does. Um what's going to happen do you think to to all this natural gas you know sort of temporary data temporary electrical uh production infrastructure will it be repurposed for something else or will it just kind of rust out there in in a mothball state? Oh, >> it is estimated by people smarter than I, and they're right or they're wrong, >> that global energy demand will double over the next 25 or 30 years. >> In the United States, we tend to look at this as a Californiaentric problem or an American problem. >> But the truth is that the world needs more of all forms of energy. [clears throat] Uh remember too that natural gas isn't just used for energy. It's used for petrochemicals. uh natural gas is a critical component of nitrogenous fertilizers. So to the extent that we want to eat which most of us do uh there is a necessity that nitrogen generated from natural gas be available to the extent that we don't want our food to spoil which most of us want >> whether we like it or not uh we will need access to petrochemicals like plastics. There are a whole bunch of utilities around natural gas that don't involve burning it. Uh it is true that most of the uses we have for it involve burning it and we andor our customers particularly in cold places will continue to use it for that purpose. >> In the United States, one would hope that if [clears throat] technologies around those data centers don't improve to make them more energy efficient, and that's what I think is going to happen. Yeah. >> Uh that the only way that we are going to be able to sustain the voracious demand for electricity in what is an already overstressed grid [laughter] is going to be nuclear power. But Adam, [clears throat] we're going to need to do a lot of stuff in this country. Uh we've made a political decision uh to favor things like wind and solar. That's okay except for when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, >> right? We, it has been estimated, interestingly, by by Citic, the Chinese sovereign wealth fund, that the United States needs to invest 8 trillion dollars in upgrading their electrical grid. >> Mhm. >> To get the power from where it is to where it's needed, uh, as the grid becomes interdependent, what happens is that the grid itself becomes a battery. Uh, you can move the power from where it isn't needed to where it is needed and use it more efficiently. But we haven't invested in the grid substantially since 1950. >> Right. >> True. A lot of our other infrastructure as well, you know, bridges, roads, all that type of stuff. But absolutely. Yeah. >> So, you know, we're going to need to do that. Uh and uh >> and teach our kids to go into the trades. And if we really really really do build out the data centers without technologies that make uh data acquisition generation more energy efficient uh the only way out is a nuclear buildout or a coal buildout. Those are the only two choices. There's nothing else that works. >> Okay. You've seen the same chart I have, Rick, that um shows the energy production capability of the US and Europe, which pretty much flat lines over the past couple decades. You know, US slowly rising. U but then you see China and it's almost a vertical stick, right? And they're like, I don't know, two and a half, three times the production we are right now. >> Um do you expect that gap to close as the US gets real serious about this or does China have a sustainable competitive advantage here? >> I don't know that. Well, they have an advantage. I don't know how sustainable it is. Uh, Chinese energy demand is going to continue to grow because there's still 150 million people in China in rural penury. >> Mhm. >> And the Chinese Communist Party has said that all of those people will be accommodated into the global economy in 20 years. which means that the growth that you've seen uh which has led to 700 million people uh being accepted into the global economy uh has more to go. Uh the Chinese also uh despite being allegedly a communist country uh have what is for investors a very attractive tax code. Uh the consequence of that is that China is continues to be in investment centric while the west is consumption centric. [clears throat] >> Adam specifically if you and I were to build a factory a typical concrete tiltup factory in China we would expense that factory against current income in the United States. We would advertise it over 33 years. >> Mhm. >> Where would you expect us to build that factory? particularly if given uh that the local administration in a Chinese municipality might approve that factory in three or four days, >> right? >> Uh and in the United States it might take 10 years. Now, if we build that factory, >> locals want you there versus not. Yeah. >> If [clears throat] we build that factory in Chongqing and in our contract with the municipality of Chongqing, we make some environmental promises that we don't keep. uh there won't be an investigation. You and I will be parked in prison. [laughter] Uh uh you know, the downside there is if you invest, you better do what you say you're going to do. Uh because if you don't do what you say you're going to do, you could experience the fate of the former mayor of Chongqing, who wasn't in fact thrown in prison. He was executed. [clears throat] >> All right. Well, look, um, uh, clearly a ton of opportunity here. Um, you said, if I took my notes correctly, you think the easy money's been made. Um, but, uh, that doesn't, I'm I'm sure preclude that there's still a fair amount of money to be made. It just might not be easy pickings. Um, where do you see the the biggest opportunity right now in the gas area? Um, and then maybe if we could do like we did with Exxon, you could pick, you know, a particular player there that that you think is well positioned or at least doing the right things. >> I think there's been pretty easy money in things like Devon and Equitable. Uh, you know, we talked about that. I don't know if you remember, but we talked about those two on your show two and a half, three years ago. >> Uh, the infrastructure investments have not now been made to utilize the resources that those countries control in an annuity-like fashion for 20 years or 25 years. equitable is a play on the Marcelus shale in the northeastern part of the US. The Marcelis backing Canadian gas out of that market. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful opportunity. Nothing in their way. Uh the Devon Devon is a play on the increasing infrastructure in the Anodarco basin in West Texas. Those investments have been made. uh those country those companies will be free cash flow machines literally for the rest of my life. >> Um in those periods of time when the gas prices spike and they will uh you'll get p spikes in the share price. Uh normally the right thing to do when you experience a price a spike in a share price is to take it. But for those who just want to sit back and clip coupons for 20 or 30 years, those are great names, >> right? And every portfolio needs some of that. >> For investors with better risk tolerance, political risk tolerance, I think you need to go north of the border. Uh I think that the Canadian oil and gas producers, particularly the gas producers, while they expose you to more political risk, expose you to a lot more upside. Uh they have many more approved undeveloped locations than we do. uh to the extent that they get rid of the political obstacles to exporting Canadian gas, there's just tremendous upside. Uh yes, they have names. Pedo Py T Bircliffe are the two premier gas centric names, but there are other names too. Tormalene uh which is an oil and gas producer. uh Canadian Natural Resources, which is sort of a grab bag of Canadian oil and gas assets. Uh Arc Energy, ARC, which I believe to be uh the best managed mid-tier oil and gas company in North America, Freehold Royalty, there's a bunch. This is not for people who aren't willing to take political risk. the prime minister of Canada, despite uh being more pragmatic than his predecessor, >> uh has said that all of his financial decisions will be made from a carbon prism, which is not something that's friendly to the oil and gas business. My hope is >> I was going to ask you about that. So, so uh what is it? Uh you know, different guy, same boss, something like that. I mean, it's pretty much a similar policy to the previous tradition. his uh his budget forecast twice the deficit of his predecessor, which is an amazing accomplishment. [laughter] >> Uh and given that he's a former banker, my hope is he's given some thought as to how he might pay for that. Uh Canada's single best industry is oil and gas. And I hope uh and he is suggesting that he sees Canada as an energy superpower. I hope that doesn't mean that he proposes a solar buildout where in the north where the sun doesn't shine. Um, and if he takes a more pragmatic view, uh, then happy days are here again. >> Okay. Let me ask you this. There's another thing that we could we could uh go off on a tangent for. So, I'll just take your 60-cond answer. There's a referendum going on right now in Alberta um for succession and it seems like a lot of Albertans would actually much prefer and I'm not a Canadian so I don't know this for sure but just what I'm reading in the the headlines um would much prefer to be the 51st state of America than then remain in Canada. Uh I is there in your opinion is is there any potentiality that that could happen and just assume for a second that it did? Uh what would the implications be? >> Well, if the it you're referring to Alberta becoming the 51st state as opposed to a sovereign nation of its own. >> Yep. >> Uh I think an increasing number of Albertans dislike Trump more than they dislike uh Carney. Barney. >> Uh, I I I think the 51st state isn't on the cards. I think the probability of the referendum passing, which is to say that Alberta votes to explore secession is fairly low. Uh, and I think that's unfortunate. Uh, in Canada, they have a system of things called equalization payments, which is where the center uh, Ontario and Quebec uh, steal money from the hinterlands, >> right? >> Which means Alberta. And there are enormous transfer payments from Alberta uh to parts of Canada that are less productive. >> Right. And sorry, I asked about I brought up the Alberta issue just because Alberta from what I read, you know better than I, but it it's where a tremendous amount of Canada's natural resources are, particularly on the energy side. >> Y certainly Alberta is what matters in the western Canadian sedimentary basin. Saskatchewan is an important producer as is BC, but the heartland is Alberta and most of the money is stolen from Alberta. You know, make no mistake. Uh, [laughter] Canada feeds in Alberta. It gets milked in Ontario and Quebec. And the Canadian suggest suggests that the excrement is dumped in the Maritimes. [laughter] >> All right. But and look, it sounds like this is relatively low probability, but but if >> I think it's an interesting I think it's an interesting uh question. You know, there there has been an ongoing secession movement in Quebec uh for 50 years. One of the problems with that is that as a sovereign nation, Quebec probably isn't solvent, >> right? >> Uh, as a sovereign nation, Alberta would be hyper solvent. >> Solvent. Well, let's assume for a moment it becomes a sovereign nation instead. Would you still expect there to be a lot of infrastructure built out between it and the US? Because a big problem of of Canada's is they just haven't built the infrastructure to bring their energy to the coasts where they can ship it to the rest of the world. So, at least I would imagine Alberta would say, "Well, then let's get it to America. That'll be our offshore." >> Alberta has a couple of infrastructure challenges. The first is to move their gas east uh to the Atlantic and the second is to move their gas to the [laughter] Pacific with LG. Uh the last challenge is to move their heavy sour crude uh to the US Gulf Coast refiners. The US Gulf Coast refiners built capacity to process Mexican food uh Mexican crude and Venezuelan crude and then that product over 15 or 20 years cease to be available to them. [clears throat] They have a desperate need of say five or 600,000 barrels a day uh which Canada could produce but you have this Keystone pipeline that needs to be debottlenecked in order to do it. uh that would require both Canadian approval uh and the federal government of Canada has said there was no business case for that because they wouldn't allow it uh and the US government uh which was anti- it. One would assume [clears throat] that if Mr. Trump was really in favor of it that the remaining local opposition, in particular, First Nations opposition, tribal opposition, uh, in the US could be ameliated simply because the federal government could forego a bit of their fee income in favor of those people who currently oppose it. >> Right. Basically buy the support. Yeah. >> Yeah. You know, you look at uh Indian reserves in Montana like Fort Peek, uh some of the most despicable remaining pockets of poverty in the United States. >> Mhm. >> Uh that could be dealt with uh pretty easily by diverting a fairly small portion of the federal throughput revenues uh to those affected people. And I suspect that you'd buy a lot of political support right now. They say, "Well, we have all the risk and we have none of the reward. Why would we sign up for that trade?" And one must be sympathetic to that. >> All right. Like I said, we could we could really tangent on that. It's really fascinating. And if there are Canadians uh watching who have perspective to share, please share it in the comment section below. Okay. Well, Rick, I got to thank you. you've done a great job in the time allotted um condensing the important salient points of all this plus giving folks a couple of names to go investigate. Um anything else about um gas or the the oil and gas sector before we we switch over to silver? I want to try to squeeze that in before we lose you. >> Well, you know, I I just want to we've talked about a lot of things uh and I want to reinforce some of the messages. First of all, the oil and gas business is a really capital intensive, really cyclical business. You have to be in it when it's hated. It's hated, but that doesn't obiate the political risk that we're going to run into it in front of us. Uh remember, too, that not all oil companies are created equal. If you like the oil company, the oil sector, it doesn't mean that you like all companies. There are corporate cultures in the oil business that are better than others. There are companies that are more efficient. There are companies that have better recycle ratios. That is to say, they're better allocators of capital than others. This is not a one-sizefits-all business. I don't believe there are any one-sizefits-all businesses. Uh, this is also a business where you're going to have to be patient. There is a class of speculator and Adam, they watch you as well as me >> that has trauma holding stock over a long weekend. >> Uh, this is not the opportunity for them. This is an opportunity. I mean I believe that this is a c certain this is an a sector where the outcome is absolutely inevitable but it may not be imminent. Uh I've come myself to like certain outcomes where the variable is time, which is to say where the an where the answer to the question always begins with when, not if. >> Mhm. >> And that's what I would say the circumstance uh around conventional oil and gas is. But the people who are listening to me wondering whether or not to take advantage of that need to ask themselves how tolerant they are for an uncertain outcome with regards to time. I have become very comfortable with that. >> Uh being patient in markets where I compete with people who are impatient is responsible largely for my outperformance. So but other people need to ask themselves whether or not they share that patience and persistence. >> That is a great point. Um which I totally share. Um, it's again one of the reasons, folks, why I think everybody should benefit from at least talking to a financial adviser because all those conversations start with helping you better understand what type of investor you are. Um, so really important. And Rick, I'll just say as somebody who has been a student of yours, um, I have I have seen your success with this um, approach and uranium is a great example of that, right? Um just this morning um I knew you were coming on this just doing my normal morning ritual of just you know checking my accounts and stuff like that. Most of my um financial wealth is managed by professional adviserss. Uh but I do have an account that I keep and manage myself and um that one's been heavily in natural resource companies um really heavy in precious metals mining companies and for many years it has not performed all that great. Nothing for me to brag about. Um but over the past 12 months I'm just saying it's a tripledigit return. You know that that that's the average return of everything in the portfolio right in 12 in 12 months. And to your point, it's where that phase shift finally arrived. I I I I had the opinion largely influenced by experts like you that this was a when, not if scenario. I just had to be patient enough for the when to arrive, right? And so I I can just say personally I have benefited from the approach you're talking about. But yeah, it might not be for everybody. So you as an investor have to figure out whether that that's appropriate for you or not. >> Okay. Um All right. Let's let's quickly get into silver and then we'll start wrapping things up. So, um, as I said, you you you announced that you made um a fairly substantial change to your precious metals holdings. Can you detail what that was and explain why you did it? >> I can uh I sold which I've announced publicly 80% of my physical silver holdings. Now, let me give you a backdrop, two backdrops. The first is that I believe that precious metals prices, including silver prices, will continue to go up for 10 years, but I believe they're going to do it at a less rapid rate than they did in 2025. >> Mhm. >> In my portfolio, gold is a savings asset. I save in gold. I maintain liquidity in short-term dollar denominated stuff. And I speculated at silver. It was a speculative asset class. I bought it specifically because it was hated and I thought that when the hate dissipated that silver would perform the way that uranium had. Well, guess what? Uh, it did. I was right. Uh, and I decided that since silver formed a speculative role in my portfolio that I had to compare it with other silver speculations. When the silver price went from $20 to 50 or $60, it had fulfilled that role. Now, I procrastinated a little bit, which was fortunate, and I got 75 or something for it. And people say, "Well, don't you think silver's going to continue to go up?" And I say, "Yeah, probably, but I don't care what I think." Uh, given that it's a speculative asset class, I have to compare it with other speculations and with the rest of my portfolio. Specifically, if the silver price holds at today's level for 12 months, if it doesn't go up at all, but it doesn't go down, the silver stocks are going to go up measurably. The estimates that people have for the net present value of silver companies is predicated on a $40 silver price. uh if you rerun those net present value calculations at $75 silver, the silver stocks are going to play a real catch-up game. >> And I believed that I could allocate half of the money that I had tied up into physical silver to the silver stocks. And if the silver was unchanged that I would get all of the torque from the silver stocks that I would have gotten from maintaining the whole position in silver and I could allocate reallocate the the 50% you know the remainder of the capital I had tied up in it which I did. Um, in other words, I consider the silver stocks to be a more efficient speculation on the silver thesis than silver itself. Two, the the performance of my speculative portfolio has been superb. And uh I decided that I wanted to derisk my portfolio a little bit. Which is to say rather than chasing alpha to the same extent that I have for 5 years. I wanted to take some profits out of the alpha sector. Although I expect alpha to outperform beta and I wanted to derisk. So some of the money that I took out of silver I put back into physical gold which is to say I transferred it from speculation to saving. >> Mhm. Uh, Adam, your younger people need to know in a bull market, you haven't made the money until you've taken the money. [laughter] >> Exactly. You got to make those paper gains actual gains. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And so I decided to do that. >> So Rick, I I your your logic makes total sense to me and it's very validating of this chart that I just put up on X yesterday. It's a uh I I talked about how uh the the precious metals mining shares are supposed to be a leveraged play on the price of the metals, right? The metal goes up, the mining shares are supposed to go up on average, you know, by some uh some hopeful multiple of that. And if you look at the gold mining stocks using GDX, uh the GX ETF versus the price of gold, that's largely played out over the past 12 months. um GDX is is up about two times what the price of gold is. Now, some are a little disappointed. They hope that the miners, the gold miners were going to be an even more levered uh play on gold. And who knows, maybe the time this has played out they will. But they were fulfilling their role of a of a levered play. If you look here at this chart, um which uses the SIL ETF versus the price of silver, um you'll you couple things. one. It's it's a bit there's some nuances here because a lot of these silver companies aren't pure play because silverber is largely a byproduct of other companies, but you'll see here over the past 12 months, their return is pretty much the same, right? That we haven't seen any levered effect yet uh from the silver mining companies. Um so it makes total sense to me, Rick, while right now at this point in the cycle, you would trade metal exposure in silver for minor exposure in silver. I suspect that the silver speculator is going to be ambushed by reality. Uh the people who are paying attention to the narrative in silver don't understand the positive impact that a higher silver price has on the net present value of future cash flows. The speculators rather than being focused on the in on the leverage incumbent on balance sheets have looked at the possibility of a silver squeeze. uh they've paid attention to the narrative around the imbalance on the comics between the silver futures and the amount of silver available for good delivery. They've looked too at a narrative around China's uh alleged ban on exports, which by the way isn't a ban on exports. It's a way to allocate uh export quotas to their friends. uh and they've looked at the disparity in pricing between physical silver in North America and physical silver elsewhere and they've decided that there was going to be a short squeeze on the comics >> and that as a consequence of that that the big silver banks were going to be driven into bankruptcy and all kinds of cool stuff. Um this is mostly horshit. Um what will happen if there's actually uh a short squeeze is that the comics remember it's owned by its dealers will declare force majour >> uh and they will cash settle that's what'll happen uh it happened in the tin market it happened in the zinc market the traders and the banks for sure will screw the speculators uh if the market gets out of balance if the market doesn't get out of balance [clears throat] the imbalance in physical supplies will be addressed. There's a bunch of silver that isn't good delivery silver. Uh it's in people's backyards, it's in coins, uh it's in vaults, it's in India. Uh right now uh that is beginning to make its way back to refiners who can turn it into [clears throat] good delivery product. So one of two things happens. Uh either uh we have a short squeeze uh in which case we go to force majour uh and the banks screw the speculators or [laughter] the market takes care of it uh by utilizing today's higher silver prices to increase good delivery supply. In either case, uh, from my point of view, uh, while I'm not sure that silver enjoys a precipitous price decline, I don't think it's going to go up as recently as it has in the immediate past. Uh and if the silver price just stays flat, just stays flat, uh I think that the high quality silver equities can generate 50 to 100% price gains in an environment where the silver price just stays flat. >> Just stays flat. And to be clear, you I think you said you sold at 75. So could silver even come down from 93 or so where it is today to 75 and you still see this appreciation? >> Yeah, I mean Oh, absolutely. Uh, and I have no idea if silver is going to go to 105 or 75 or 60. Uh, nor does anybody else by the way. >> Right. >> Uh, people have all kinds of opinions. Uh, I've watched that for 50 years. What I know for sure is I don't know. Uh so what I do know is that if stasis occurs, it never does, but it's always the best bet that the silver stocks have between 50 and 100% better leverage than silver itself does >> right now. Okay. And you know something you said when you tweeted this out or or when the word was getting out is you said, "Look, I reserve the right to change any of this uh you know, at any time in the foreseeable future." Um, so I appreciate you sharing your logic for why you've done this because developments might happen in the next couple weeks or you might change this all again, >> right? >> Yeah. And obviously folks, that's another reason to go see Rick when he comes on at the spring conference in March. Okay, Rick. Um, I I I got to wrap it up here for your for your sake. Thank you so much for giving us so much of your time here. Um, last major question for you, but we'll keep it quick. Um, so, uh, we we might have mentioned this the last time you were on the channel, but but just in case we didn't, and I I'm not sure we did because I can't remember if if Battle Bank had received its final regulatory approval or not, which it now has. Um, and you guys are in the process of actually now starting to serve as client accounts. Um I I want to make the official announcement that um just as thoughtful money has um officially endorsed financial advisors and an officially endorsed uh precious metals solution with Andy Shackman's Miles Franklin Battle Bank is thoughtful money's officially endorsed banking partner. Um, and the reason why I stick my neck out and put, you know, my brand, uh, at risk for this is so many of the audience here is is always asking me, "Hey, Adam, do you have, you know, a solutions provider to recommend in these areas?" And, you know, banks are generally like the cable companies. I mean, almost nobody likes their bank. And the fact that um you've created a bank really with the the the viewer of this channel in mind, it's really for people who are like the viewers of this channel in mind, makes this an easy decision for me, Rick. So, anyways, I want to make sure folks realize that if you want to talk uh to to Rick and the folks at Battlebank um about their solution, just go to thoughtfulmoney.com/bank. Um so, I want to make sure that URL gets up there on the screen. There's a little form you fill out. takes you probably 15 seconds and then the folks at BattleBank will be in touch with you. But Rick, what should folks know about the current status of Battle Bank as you guys are finally starting operations? >> Well, after almost 5 years in application, uh, we decided to clear the regulatory log jam by buying a bank, which is what we did. >> Okay. >> We had told us you were going to I mean, that was all part of the plan. Yeah. >> Yeah. We we bought something called Sterns Bank of Upsila, Minnesota. So, we actually are banking for the fine folks in Upsella, Minnesota. Uh we are also banking nationally for a select few accounts like mine. The idea being that we break in the bank systems with our own money before we try it with yours, Adam. >> Uh wanted to make sure that our deposits got deposited, our checks cashed, our wires wired, all those kinds of things. We're going to roll out nationally uh February 17th beginning with our wait list uh and our shareholders. I'm delighted to say that we haven't wasted the 5 years in application. We have 20,000 people who have told us that they want to do business with us and told us specifically what products and services they want to access. Why is our bank different than your bank? The first thing is that our bank is prudent. Uh we are not going to employ excessive leverage. Uh we're not going to have a mismatch uh between deposit duration and loan duration like Silicon Valley Bank or First Republic Bank. In other words, our bank is not going to go broke. It's run by a couple old men who've been in the banking business for 45 or 50 years. The second thing is that our bank is going to pay interest. Uh many people don't realize this, but they don't get paid interest on their checking account. Uh we're going to pay you interest. We have one high yield uh savings product in US dollars. Write checks, do wires, whatever you want. Interest on your interest. The next 10 years uh Adam is going to see a lot of currency turmoil. a lot of currency turmoil. >> And at Battlebank, you will be able to invest federally insured in 20 different currencies, not just the US dollar. And I suggest that's going to come in awful handy uh in the next 10 years. >> Uh another thing that is interesting about Battle Bank is at Battle Bank, your IRA is your IRA. At most banks, your IRA is a receptacle for annuities or mutual funds or CDs. Uh but a battle bank, your IRA can own a duplex or an Airbnb. It can buy a subway franchise. It can invest in private equity without the president's permission. Uh it can invest in gold. It can invest in crypto. Whatever you want it to do as long as it's legal. No, you can't invest in fental. Uh but you can invest in any legal or moral activity. Finally, uh at Battle Bank, unlike any other bank in the United States, we believe that gold, silver, platinum, and palladium is good collateral. Uh, if you've been prudent enough to build up a nice stash and you want to access the capital you have tied up in it without selling it, you can establish a credit line secured by your gold and silver. Call it a margin loan. We've been opening accounts recently for real estate developers that have large amounts of gold and silver which they don't want to sell, but they occasionally need working capital for their development business. This is a perfect use of that. M >> you access the capital uh without having to sell the underlying gold and silver. Gold and silver are good collateral, but I've learned in 50 years of servicing the gold and silver community that the people who are prudent enough to [clears throat] save in gold and silver are also very good bank customers. The probability that I have to foreclose against a prudent borrower is low. Uh and so I'm really excited about that part of the business. >> God, I can't imagine that other banks haven't already done that, Rick. It's it's >> but it's I mean it's brilliant. >> It you know it's it's a it's a community I've talked to and served for 50 years, Adam. So it's a community I'm very very very comfortable with. Uh what that means selfishly at Battlebank is that my customer acquisition cost is zero. Uh it's just wear and tear on my old my old carcass talking to my old customer. >> All right. Well, like I said, brilliant. So folks, if you are interested in either learning more about BattleBank or getting on the wait list uh to become uh one of their early customers once they're they've graduated from, you know, letting Rick pound on the system and and uh open it to the general public. Again, just go fill out the very short form there at thoughtfulmoney.com/bank. Um Rick, I can't thank you enough. um you're you're such a you you're you you're you're just such a a national treasure really in the natural resources investing industry. Your generosity with your uh just deep expertise uh is unmatched and it's such an honor to have you come on the channel here and I I so appreciate you being willing especially when I when I put you on the spot uh unexpectedly uh to come speak again at our spring conference and I think folks are going to really appreciate that. >> Well, I'm eager as opposed to willing. Uh thank you for the interesting conversations. Thank you for the friendship that we've enjoyed. Uh I look forward to uh look forward to participating in your conference. >> Same here. And speaking of conferences, um you've been kind enough to invite me back uh to your symposium in July. Um I don't know if you're yet signing up tickets for that, but if so, where should folks go to learn more about it? >> rules.com. Uh Cali can give you a link if you want. uh July 6 through 10 in Boca Raton, Florida or via liveream from the comfort and convenience of your own home. However you choose to attend, you'll have access to the recordings for a year and you'll need them. By the way, we're going to give you more information in 4 days than you can absorb in 4 days. And unlike any other investment conference I know of in the world, uh your tuition is fully refundable if you believe for any reason that I didn't earn your tuition. All right. Um, folks, uh, I I can say from having been there, it truly is a fire hose of just the highest quality information. Um, and one of the things that's I particularly appreciate about it is everyone who's there is is handpicked by Rick. Um, so it really is sort of like sitting down for 4 days with Rick's inner circle. So go uh if you're interested, go go check out realymposium.com. All right. Well, in wrapping up here, folks, please show your appreciation for Rick and all of his generosity and just leaving everything on the playing field like he always does when he comes on by hitting that like button and then clicking the subscribe button below if you haven't yet already as well as that little bell icon right next to it. Um, we haven't started officially promoting the uh spring conference for thoughtful money. Uh, we will start it soon, but we do have a link up there if you want to buy your tickets now and lock in the prices from the fall conference. Um, still TBD if we're going to have to raise prices or not uh this spring, but if you go to thoughtfulmoney.com/2026, uh you can buy your ticket for the spring conference at the last fall price, so you'll get zero inflation. Uh lastly, as Rick said many times, um you know, investing in this space, one, you really got to understand who you are as an investor. Uh and then you've, you know, really got to understand what uh what type of approach makes sense for you given your current situation, your goals, your risk tolerance, etc. Uh so highly recommend that uh you know you work under the guidance of a good financial adviser when trying to figure out uh how much exposure to have to these spaces which particular companies to go after because as Rick said these companies are not created equally. Highly recommend that you work with a professional adviser that takes into account all the macro issues that Rick talked about but also has experience investing in the natural resources space. So if you've got one that's advising you in all this great continue writing them. If you don't or you'd like a second opinion from when it does meet that criteria, then consider scheduling a free consultation with one of the firms that Thoughtful Money endorses. These are the firms you see with me on this channel week in and week out. To schedule one of those consultations, just fill out the very short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. As a reminder, these consultations are totally free. There's no commitments involved. It's just a free service these firms offer to be as helpful to as many people as possible. Rick, I cannot thank you enough. It is such a privilege and an honor uh to have you come on this channel repeatedly and share your expertise with this audience. I can't thank you enough. >> Thank you, sir. I look forward to our next visit. >> And everybody else, thanks so much for watching.