Sell U.S. Assets Buy Gold | Willem Middelkoop and Jimmy Connor
Summary
Bloor Street Capital Inc. was paid a fee for producing this event. Bloor Street Capital Inc. and its affiliates may or may not hold …
Transcript
Hi, before we get on with the interview, just a quick reminder of our virtual gold conference happening this Friday, January the 23rd at 8 a.m. Eastern time. We have some amazing speakers [music] to speak on what's happening in terms of precious metals and where the prices might be going here in the coming weeks. John Chapalia from Sprats Asset Management will speak on what he and his team are seeing in terms of [music] flows into the various spat products. We have some of the biggest and best [music] gold producers in the world including Igno, Centa Gold, Hemllo Mining, Ken Ross Gold, Oceanic Gold, and Oiscoco [music] Development. We also have Joe Cavatoni from the World Gold Council. He's going to speak on what central banks [music] have been doing. And then we're going to hear from our good friend Michael Oliver, and he's going to speak [music] on what's happening with gold and silver and where he thinks the S&P and the NASDAQ are going [music] here in the coming days and weeks. Once again, that's this Friday, January the [music] 23rd at 8 a.m. Eastern time. And I hope to see you there. If you can't join us live, you can check this out anytime on [music] our YouTube channel, Blur Street Capital. Good luck in the markets. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. How are things in Amsterdam? >> Cold and snowy. And and we don't have much snow here, so it's uh it's like uh something from the old days. >> Oh, it sounds very much like Toronto. >> Yeah. So, >> yeah. I've been to the Nether Ne Netherlands a couple of times and uh one of my favorite places was the Heg. If I was going to or if you were going to recommend another place for me to check out, where would it be? Well, it's a small country here, but uh the part in the the southern part uh we call it Lindberg, it's uh actually almost part of Belgium. That's a bit more hilly and that's different. Beautiful nature, some old castles, the Mas River. So, check it out. >> I will. Well, I will. It's going on my list. So, let's get on with it. Uh, last year was an incredible year for precious metals. Gold up 60, silver up 140%, and here we are in early 2026, and it kind of feels like it's going to continue. And before we discuss precious metals and where you think they're going, why don't we take a look at the US economy because what's happening there with both fiscal policy and also monetary policy that's really driving precious metals. And the economy looks like it's not weakening. It looks like it's very robust, growing at 2 and a half to 3%. Unemployment is ticking higher though. We've seen a definite uptrend here in the last few months. By the way, the unemployment rate in Canada is 7%. I don't know if you knew that. >> Wow. Wow. >> So, what is your assessment of the US economy? >> Well, there's not one US economy. Uh I travel quite a bit to uh the conferences, mining conferences, and when I fly in to go to Las Vegas, whatever, you know, I always take a few days extra and I I I rent an SUV and I I just drive into Nevada. I just want to see what you normally don't see on TV. And then you have all these small villages. They they look like ghost town, you know, shops closed. A and then you really learn that US economy if you look at the financials and the banks and all the paper assets and all the financing that's doing well but that's almost like well like I say the paper economy if you look at the real economy how people are doing uh they're all complaining and and this very high inflation which we've seen since 2020, but of course there has been debasement of money for for well as long as 1971. And that's really starting to hurt the people. And I think that explains why more and more people are following our strategy. That's invest in all the government can't print. I've been promoting that for the last 20 25 years. All my books are about that. and and we used to be the crazy gold bucks, but now this is getting mainstream. Look at the CIO, the chief investment officer of of JP Morgan. He he switched from 6040 60 equity 40 bonds to 60 2020 20 last 20% into physical gold. So um I think we entered a whole new era and this is what we've been waiting for. Our fund doubled in size last year. we grew from 100 million to 200 million. So let's say 250 million uh uh US and and it's just going mainstream now. >> And you touched on inflation and I got to be honest, this is one of the things that frustrates the hell out of me because even though the governments in both Canada and the US, they want you to believe inflation is under control. Anyone who shops for groceries on a weekly basis knows it is not under control. >> And when you look at the CPI, it's comprised of eight different components. The largest one being housing at 35% give or take. The followed by food at 13%. Which makes no sense because this is one of the things that's really killing us. Coffee is up over 30% year-over-year. Ground beef is up 15% year-over-year. My property taxes in the city of Toronto were up 6.9% last year. They're up 25% in the last five years. Well, I'm glad I'm glad you want to talk about that because I've been writing some books and my first book which was only published in the Netherlands wasn't came out in 2007. I had a full chapter on inflation that people shouldn't believe the official inflation numbers and it was much worse but nobody wanted to listen at that time. Now, everybody agrees that, well, we're being fooled with the official CPI number. >> And and this is one thing I always bring up with people. When you talk about inflation, you got to talk about the money supply. Of course, nobody even looks at the money supply is measured by M2. But in January of 2020, before all this craziness started, M2 was 15.4 trillion. Here we are 5 years later, it's now well over $22 trillion. That's an increase of 42%. Maybe you can just speak to that and how that impacts inflation. >> Well, when people talk about inflation, I always point to them that they should look at the broad money supply and the debasement of currency. So inflation is just let's say the outcome of all this money printing and well I think people understand more and more people are starting to understand this. So more and more people are starting to invest in all the government can't print. They go to hard assets. Uh gold, silver, bitcoin, real estate being the best of the hard assets. But everything is on fire now in our portfolio. 50% of our positions is precious metals related. The other 50% is critical metals. So copper, uranium, uh nickel is starting to move. Copper is breaking out. Lithium is turning the corner. Um even platinum palladium do well. I think zinc will follow. So the whole spectrum is on fire. So we we were up last year 70% gross return. In the first trading days of this year we're up 8%. So uh we've been waiting uh for this for a long time. We started in 2008. That was the top of the last cycle. We had an awful bare market. Uh we were always uh quite successful to take in new money. We had net inflow every year and and that's why we're very fortunate to have this pool of capital now in at the start of a new bull market and this bull market will have lags. It won't be a few quarters like in 2016 or 2020. Uh this will take years and probably decades to play out. I'm quite convinced about that. So, why don't we talk about some of the other reasons that's driving this? And and I want to talk about the Fed because they have become very dovish and they cut rates three times in the back half of last year. We have another meeting coming up at the end of January and then another one in March. But what's your assessment of what the Fed's doing and how is this contributing to inflation, especially when they're cutting rates in a relatively strong economy? It used to be very important, but I'm I'm more and more ignoring what the Fed is doing. You know, there's what Trump is doing with his administration uh now what we've seen uh in Venezuela, his new strategy to decouple from the east um to concentrate on the western hemisphere to build his own um well mining uh space. Um, I think that's much more important for us guys than looking what the Federal Reserve is saying in their press release and if two words have changed that that that was important in the past. But we will have a new fat president and that will be important and that's incoming in May this year and that's also part of the Trump administration and whether you like Trump or not you know uh uh we don't care much about politics but we care about the strategy and the policies and and the Trump administration is very transactional you know they take stakes in resource companies they just take equity stakes so we we study that a lot and and we we ignore ignore the central banker stuff because central bankers will do what they always do, print money, lower rates, um bringing in more liquidity, supports the system and the system has to be supported more and more because it's getting more and more unstable. >> I'm glad you brought up the fact that the US government has been acquiring equity positions in a resource companies MP was it MP minerals? >> Yeah. Yeah. Trilogy and also uh lithium Americas and >> there will be there will be more soon. >> All right. So why don't we talk about that? Where do you think what other sectors are they going to be looking at? Do you think they go silver? >> Uranium uranium nickel. Uh one of our largest position is nickel discovery in the US. Uh and we're quite sure they were talking with the Pentagon before they made the big discovery. Um I'm I'm I'm I'm quite sure that they will do a deal with the US administration. Uh uranium is a big one because it's needed for uh to power all the AI stuff and the data warehousing and and you in Canada you have this big uranium uh development projects by by nextGen that that's a favorite of ours. I think they will get involved some in that play because that's uh that project alone is 20% of future uranium production worldwide just one project and it's valued at sub 10 billion and I think there's still a lot of value to be found in these strategic tier one projects and companies and we concentrate with our fund especially now we grown a bit bigger we only concentrate on the tier one tier 2 projects so the real large projects because they will always be built into a large mine and they will always be bought out by major companies and now even the government gets involved. Hi, before we get on with the interview, just a quick reminder of our virtual gold conference happening this Friday, January the 23rd at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. We have some amazing speakers [music] to speak on what's happening in terms of precious metals and where the prices might be going here in the coming weeks. John Chapalia from Sprat Asset [music] Management will speak on what he and his team are seeing in terms of flows into the various spat products. We have some of the biggest and best gold producers in the world including Igno [music] Centa Gold, Hemllo Mining, Ken Ross Gold, Oceanic Gold, and Oiscoco Development. We also have Joe Cavaton from the World Gold Council. He's [music] going to speak on what central banks have been doing. And then we're going to hear from our good friend Michael Oliver and he's going to speak on what's happening with gold and silver and where he thinks the S&P and the NASDAQ are going here in [music] the coming days and weeks. Once again, that's this Friday, January the 23rd [music] at 8 a.m. Eastern time. And I hope to see you there. If you can't join us live, you can check this out anytime on our YouTube channel, Blur Street Capital. Good luck in the markets. And just as a reminder to our viewers, the US uh 20% of their grid comes from nuclear energy. They consume 45 to 50 million pounds of uranium annually, but the US produces virtually no uranium. So, it's going to be interesting to see what they do there because they do have to acquire it. >> Now, you mentioned that nickel company. What is that? >> That's a Ton Metals. Tailon. Oh, >> okay. What state is that in? >> That's in uh Minnesota. Yeah. Yeah, >> sorry. Go on. >> Uh, well, in the last few decades, we've seen this uh policy in the US that's very hard and almost impossible to build new mines. Uh, but that's totally changing now. The Trump administration is cutting a lot of the red tape and they'll make sure mines will be built. They need it for the national security. If you say you need Greenland for your national security, well, Greenland has quite a bit of commodities, but it's damn hard to build mines there, you better build it here. And there's a wonderful copper, new copper district has been discovered in Idaho with silver as well. That's under the radar for most people. I think there's some exciting stuff happening. There's some copper discoveries in Arizona. So, um, well, uh, lots happening on the good side. And so we were talking about inflation and we both agree inflation is maybe I don't know if I say out of control but it's not going away that's for sure and it's going to continue to climb. Where do you think inflation is going here in the coming year >> and let's just assume let's just assume the real number is 3%. Okay. Well, >> yeah, >> the benefit of the doubt. >> Uh I coined um um the term u superinflation. I don't like hyperinflation because hyperinflation is very rare. You know, you get that in Venezuela and Zimbabwe and the Wimar Germany. That was 100 years ago. It's quite hard to get into hyperinflation and central bankers will do everything in in including going back to some kind of gold standard to avoid that. But you can have superinflation. was super inflation that's uh well let's say inflation of over 10%. And we had that around 21 and 22 and that's that's very harmful just for the general public. And when you've had two years of superinflation and then the inflation comes down to only three or 4% it's still on top of the the double digit inflation of previous years. So people um uh every day they're doing their shopping, they notice that that that it will be harder and harder uh to buy the groceries with with the budget they have and and and so I I focus on on on actually we focus on the money growth. If you look at bankers, central bankers, if you look at the financial system, if you look at politicians, they all need to grow the system. And growing the system means growing the money supply. And there's 400,000 uh billion uh of assets looking for a safe haven for returns. And look at how small the precious metals area is. Silver is just 4 trillion, the whole silver market. and and all these markets are are so small even uranium. So you you you need little institutional money to move to these pockets of the of the industry. Uh and then you see these very strong moves upward because the mining space and the natural resource space has been depressed for such a long time. A and still the valuations we just did the study in house the silver miners the producers are still valued as low as 24 before silver broke out. Why? Because the silver price has been rising faster than their share price has risen. So the the the ounces in the ground as are still you still buy them at rock bottom valuations. And one of the I've heard you talk about the US bond market and your concern about that and this year in 2026 approximately $4 trillion of treasuries are going to be maturing. They got to be rolled over and this is one of the reasons why the government and the Fed they want to get interest rates down. So their interest payments like their interest payments are over a trillion dollars a year now. But maybe you can just speak to that. >> Yeah. >> And what you think is happening within the bond market and how that's going to impact the gold market. >> Yeah. When I give presentations, I always warn the audience that the next crisis could be a sovereign bond crisis, sovereign debt crisis. Because if you look at the past crisis, people always go back to the previous crisis which was let's say after Lehman collapsed and that was a crisis in real estate and all these uh well toxic uh products which were built by by Wall Street. But then we we rescued the system by increasing the balance sheet of central banks. A and now the central banks are really stuck because they lowered the interest rates uh and we had these negative returns on bonds a few years back. But we had um a 40-year trend since 1980 to 2020 2122. Over 40 years, we had a declining trend of interest rates and inflation and then it broke out violently in 22 23 and now we're in a new trend of of of rising uh interest rates and rising inflation. You see higher interest rates in Japan, you see it in in in Europe, in the UK, you see it in the US. So, I think the sovereign debt crisis might be next. And that's the big one because that's the 100 trillion uh dollar market. You know, there's 100 trillion in bonds, there's 100 trillion in equity, there's 100 trillion in in real estate. Uh if we take some big numbers a and half of the bond market is the sovereign bond. So if you get some accidents there, well then we need to go to the IMF and call them uh like the fire brigade to and then the IMF needs to use its balance sheet, grow its balance sheet, but that will be more money printing another layer of fiat money on top of uh well the skyscraper of of of fiat money we already have. >> When you say one the bond market is 100 trillion, is that just the US bond market? >> No, no, this worldwide. will what? >> Okay. >> And the sovereign bond market is half of that. So that's let's say 50 trillion. >> All right. >> And the US is is almost 40 trillion of that. You know, that's 38 trillion. And and and US national debt is growing 1 trillion every 100 days. And we used to have a budget deficit in US by two of two trillion. And then Trump asked Elon Musk to bring it down. But Elon Musk said, "I can't do it." you know, he he he stopped the Doge job and now the the new budget deficit could could end up being three to four tr uh trillion. And one of the things we've seen here, especially since 2022, is that we've seen investors sell US bonds and it it almost looks like they're investing that money in gold. And it looks like that trend is starting to accelerate. Would you agree with that? >> Yeah. Yeah. That that's that's um if you look at the latest figures from central banks um I think this is the fourth year in a row that central banks buy over 1,000 tons of physical gold every year. And if you know worldwide gold production is just 3,500 tons. So if central banks are fleeing towards physical gold, what message do you send to the uh general public and to high net worth investors? So you have this trend now worldwide that high net worth investors and retail investors want to own physical gold and silver. Look at the images coming from China and Hong Kong. There are long lines for these uh bullion shops and and and this is very significant because the US used to control the prices of gold and silver. They could do that because they had this very liquid future markets, the Comx market, but the price discovery mechanism has moved away from the west to the east now. So the US no longer is able to control the prices of gold and silver. That's they they follow the Shanghai gold exchange now. And this is a massive uh topic uh literally in my book. I I I wrote the big reset the war on gold and the financial endgame to show that the US has been managing or manipulating gold and silver prices and other commodity prices at least since the 1970s. And they're losing control now. and and that now we're entering a very interesting but very dangerous uh era especially for the US and that also explains why Trump administration I is doing crazy stuff like Venezuela now they they need to do something otherwise they lose it >> I read recently that the central banks own more central banks throughout the world own more gold than they do US treasuries for the first time since the 1990s >> we just crossed that time. So they used to own seven times as much in value US treasuries compared to physical gold, but they've been adding like I said for four years in a row now massive amounts of of physical gold and and quite going parabolic and and now with the increase of the value of of that gold, the amount of physical gold central banks hold worldwide is now a larger amount than their US treasuries, all their US treasuries. >> So, it's interesting. We have central banks consuming approximately one-third of all uh gold production annually. Uh we I'm sure you saw there's uh the world's largest stable coin provider called Tether. They're also acquiring gold. They acquired over 120 tons in 2025, and I'm sure they're still buying it. What are your thoughts about these non-traditional buyers coming into the gold space? Well, this is very interesting because um um in in in in the Dutch edition of the big reset uh I wrote in 2013 that for me Bitcoin is like virtual gold and and more and more people would start to move to well all the government can't print including Bitcoin the virtual gold. That was 2014. I was stupid enough not to buy Bitcoin myself because I had physical gold and silver myself. But after a few of these boom bust cycles, I I thought I'm stupid. I I I need to buy Bitcoin as well. So I started buy some Bitcoin in 2018 when it was trading around 56,000. and and and and Bitcoin is such a powerful form of of money uh especially to store your net worth is a great store of of uh wealth and it has been the fastest horse in the race and this of course the success of Bitcoin created this whole crypto space and now you have all these stable coins and because the US administration is almost in a panic how how they can keep supporting the dollar system. They now understand that the tenders of this world who are um creating all these stable coins, if they can create all these stable coins and connect them to the US dollar by buying treasuries to support their stable coin, that that's a new uh that's a great new demand for US treasuries because uh investors like uh China, Russia and many other countries don't want to don't want to buy US treasuries. ries anymore. So in a way the US needs the crypto markets to succeed now. But if you want the crypto markets to succeed, this is a form for of private money. If if you study how cryp crypto is being introduced, it's like private money. You know, central banks are not involved. So I always thought that US administration would never support really support crypto because then they find their own system controlled by central banks. But now they're joining the crypto guys. A and now we end up in a very crazy situation that private money is winning from government central bank money and and well and that's why I think we reach the endgame phase for the current monetary system centered around the US dollar which started in 1944. The US promised the dollar would be as good as gold. In 1971, they closed down the gold window. And now they need to come up with something else. And that's what I call a monetary reset. And uh the jury is still out if that will work and what we can expect next. >> So we started this conversation uh I was talking about the performance of gold and silver in 2025 and now here we are in 2026. What is your take on where gold and silver go this year? Are we going to have another massive move like we saw in 25? 25 was the start of a re-evaluation process in which the price discovery mechanism has moved from west to east. And this means that the revaluation process won't stop after a few quarters or or a few years. Um if you look at the amount of paper assets uh the 100 trillion in bonds um if you have these changes in the flow of funds like the Wall Street guys advising now to put 20% of your net worth in gold. um this this trend could have lags and it could go on for for for years and even decades. And I think we're just at the start of a whole new phase for the international monetary system in which these physical assets and especially the critical metals and the precious metals can move much much higher. If you look at the latest research, uh some uh Wall Street banks are openly talking about tripledigit silver. Um I think the Bank of America have said that at the end of this cycle, silver will be trading between 150 or 300 uh dollars per ounce. And well, this used to be crazy stuff. we we we as goldbucks were were were writing down but now it's getting mainstream and these are such small markets so I think it will surprise everybody how high this can go >> and well what's your sense like for there's a lot of investors who aren't even involved in precious metals okay like so many people are just caught up in AI and Nvidia and chat GBT right they're not even aware of what's happening with gold and silver What what's your message to somebody who hasn't gotten into the gold or precious metal space yet? >> Well, the money, >> I guess, is what I'm asking. >> Yeah. No, but there's so much money invested in all these passive investment strategies and it's all in tech. It's all in the big seven. Imagine you get a real correction there. We all know it will happen. It it should have started last year. It might start in this year. But when the bubble is is is is getting bigger and we get a correction not this year but next year it will be even worse once the correction starts and then everybody wants to go out um through the same small door and and and then more more of that money will start to the space which brings good returns which is gold and silver now and commodities. So um you have these long cycles you know real estate has been going up for decades. Uh the value of bonds have been has been going out up between 1980 and 2020. So these are cycles of 40 years and and if you want to do the full cycle it's 80 years and I think um commodities bottomed out around 2015 2016. Now we had a retest in March 2020 for the commodity space. Uh look at the valuations. March 2020 was another low and now we're just starting to move up and this could be a decade long uh rally, a decades long bull markets in in hard assets and and commodities and gold and silver. So you're not too late. You're not too late. >> And do you have a target price for gold and silver one year? I always had 5,000 gold uh for starters, but well, we reached that one. Uh >> I always had $100 for silver. Well, we almost reached that. Um I was I was I was um called by by a girlfriend, a pre former girlfriend. I almost married her 40 years ago. I'm an old guy. And I advised her to buy gold uh in the 1980s. and she found me that that uh the value of her gold and silver holdings was was was up crazy and she was very happy. But um it it it told me that, you know, we're still so early in this game. Who who were in gold and silver in the 80s and 90s and nobody nobody. And now everybody's starting to react and and and everybody wants to jump the train, but everybody's waiting for the correction. And this is very interesting. Everyone's waiting for the correction and the correction is not coming. So gold and silver will will come down one day and and decline 20 10 20%. But I think the corrections will be pretty shortlived. And and what's my ne next target? Because that's that was your question. Uh I I told her we'll see at least a double from here. So let's say silver $200, gold $10,000, but I might be too conservative. >> And well, I'm given the move that we've seen in gold and silver. What's your assessment of equity valuations? Like if we look at the largest gold producers, New Pneumont, Bareric, Igno, are they do you have any sense of what gold price they're factoring in? >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, they all went up over 100% last year, so everybody thinks they're expensive now. Look at their price earnings ratio. I think that's that's a that's that's an honest uh method of valuation. Uh Bareric and Newand are are 10 11 12 on forward earnings. Um look at Apple. Uh the tech guys, the tech investors always say Apple is cheap because the PE price earnings ratio is 25. Well, if you call that cheap, how cheap is 10 10 to 12? And and what does Apple own? Of course, you have a great network effect, but they don't even own the factories. And look at what the Newmans and Barracks own. They own all the ounces in the ground which still need to be revalued. So, there's so much more uh there's so much upside based on the current valuations. Another metric we use, we look at what's the valuations of the ounces in the ground. We we are specialized to invest in the junior space. So, the explorers who make the discovery, the developers. So they have a negative cash flow. It's very hard to value it. But you can look at the valuation of the ounces they discovered in the ground. We still buy gold ounces in the ground valued at 304 $50 per ounce. Of course takes a lot of time and energy and money to get it out of the ground. But this is a rock bottom valuation. This is just 1% of the gross metal value. and we buy silver um which still in the ground valued at at well pennies to the dollar 10 20 cents for an ounce of silver. So I expect we expect a real strong and long revaluations of the ounces in the ground. And another example is the producers the gold and silver producers they were up over 100% last year 140% on average. the expiration companies who finding the nuances in the ground. They were up only 40% last year on average. Uh so there's there's so much more of a re-evaluation to be expected and this tells us we're in a very early phase of this whole uh recovery process where you have this new bull market. >> So I want to summarize a lot of the uh themes that you've discussed here in the last few minutes. And when we look at the US economy, you do have concerns. You think there's a bifurcated economy. A lot of We hear this from a lot of people. There's people that are doing very well, people that aren't doing very well. Uh you're very concerned about inflation. You So let's just assume it's currently at 3%. You see it going to 10%. Do you see that happening this year in 2026? If you study past cycles of inflation, uh let's look at the the late 1960s or the early or the 1970s, you many major trends, they show three waves. We even saw that with COVID, you know, you get these three waves. and and and we had the first wave [snorts] of inflation after COVID and then you know it died down and central bankers say they brought it under control but it's still three 4%. And that's the official rate. So it's probably 67. But I I'm afraid for the next phase, the next wave of inflation, which might start after we need to uh stimulate the economy because there's another crisis and then the real money printing start because there's a sovereign debt crisis. A and then you get the big wave of inflation, the double-digit inflation. Uh and then people will really get spooked and they really start to flee towards all the government can't print and then they will learn they can't um put in new orders for silver bars or gold bars because you know the system is jammed or maybe even they can't they're not allowed to buy it anymore and then they look for other uh hard assets and and then they discover the u the the equities is related to gold and silver because you can always buy them and then they discover that the valuation is still so low P of 10 but then the valuation will go to 20 and 30 and 40 because that's h what's happening in what happens in a bull market. So I think we're very early in this spiral, you know, where all these um events leads to uh secondary and tertiary effects. And we're just at the start. People are just starting to wake up. >> And so your message to investors is that you got to get long hard assets, gold, silver, uranium, lithium, copper. >> Well, I I have my own u portfolio. I've been using that for the for the last 20 years. And that's that's what I do not for the fund but for my own uh net worth and the family. 25% in real estate, you know, it's money outside the financial system. You just put it in well in bricks. You know, it's there. Then 25% in physical gold and silver. Money outside the system. You know, minimalize the number of doors between you yourself and your net worth. then 25% in in in equities. Um well um that that's the most risky part maybe. Uh but you can do well when stocks go up. Uh and then 25% we keep very liquid. Uh I always said cash but I I I changed that to Bitcoin. So let's do Bitcoin because it's fast horse in race. It's virtual gold. You can also keep that outside the financial system. So when the financial system has a big accident, banks might close, stock exchanges might close, you always have the best part and the largest part of your [clears throat] net worth will be outside the system and you still be able to do well in every um scen scenario. >> Well, William, this has been a great discussion and I want to thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us today. If someone would like to learn more about you and your services or or follow you online, where can they go? Um, you can follow me on Twitter. I'm quite active there. I'm a former journalist, so I like to to still put out stuff. Um, I um can also you can also check our website of our fund, Commodity Discovery Fund. You can also find a free um version of the big reset, the PDF. It can be downloaded for free. And and we're open for international investors as well. We have around 2,000 high net worth investors mainly from Dutchsp speaking countries, but we're open to anybody who wants to talk uh to us about hard asses. >> Once again, thank you. >> Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Sell U.S. Assets Buy Gold | Willem Middelkoop and Jimmy Connor
Summary
Bloor Street Capital Inc. was paid a fee for producing this event. Bloor Street Capital Inc. and its affiliates may or may not hold …Transcript
Hi, before we get on with the interview, just a quick reminder of our virtual gold conference happening this Friday, January the 23rd at 8 a.m. Eastern time. We have some amazing speakers [music] to speak on what's happening in terms of precious metals and where the prices might be going here in the coming weeks. John Chapalia from Sprats Asset Management will speak on what he and his team are seeing in terms of [music] flows into the various spat products. We have some of the biggest and best [music] gold producers in the world including Igno, Centa Gold, Hemllo Mining, Ken Ross Gold, Oceanic Gold, and Oiscoco [music] Development. We also have Joe Cavatoni from the World Gold Council. He's going to speak on what central banks [music] have been doing. And then we're going to hear from our good friend Michael Oliver, and he's going to speak [music] on what's happening with gold and silver and where he thinks the S&P and the NASDAQ are going [music] here in the coming days and weeks. Once again, that's this Friday, January the [music] 23rd at 8 a.m. Eastern time. And I hope to see you there. If you can't join us live, you can check this out anytime on [music] our YouTube channel, Blur Street Capital. Good luck in the markets. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. How are things in Amsterdam? >> Cold and snowy. And and we don't have much snow here, so it's uh it's like uh something from the old days. >> Oh, it sounds very much like Toronto. >> Yeah. So, >> yeah. I've been to the Nether Ne Netherlands a couple of times and uh one of my favorite places was the Heg. If I was going to or if you were going to recommend another place for me to check out, where would it be? Well, it's a small country here, but uh the part in the the southern part uh we call it Lindberg, it's uh actually almost part of Belgium. That's a bit more hilly and that's different. Beautiful nature, some old castles, the Mas River. So, check it out. >> I will. Well, I will. It's going on my list. So, let's get on with it. Uh, last year was an incredible year for precious metals. Gold up 60, silver up 140%, and here we are in early 2026, and it kind of feels like it's going to continue. And before we discuss precious metals and where you think they're going, why don't we take a look at the US economy because what's happening there with both fiscal policy and also monetary policy that's really driving precious metals. And the economy looks like it's not weakening. It looks like it's very robust, growing at 2 and a half to 3%. Unemployment is ticking higher though. We've seen a definite uptrend here in the last few months. By the way, the unemployment rate in Canada is 7%. I don't know if you knew that. >> Wow. Wow. >> So, what is your assessment of the US economy? >> Well, there's not one US economy. Uh I travel quite a bit to uh the conferences, mining conferences, and when I fly in to go to Las Vegas, whatever, you know, I always take a few days extra and I I I rent an SUV and I I just drive into Nevada. I just want to see what you normally don't see on TV. And then you have all these small villages. They they look like ghost town, you know, shops closed. A and then you really learn that US economy if you look at the financials and the banks and all the paper assets and all the financing that's doing well but that's almost like well like I say the paper economy if you look at the real economy how people are doing uh they're all complaining and and this very high inflation which we've seen since 2020, but of course there has been debasement of money for for well as long as 1971. And that's really starting to hurt the people. And I think that explains why more and more people are following our strategy. That's invest in all the government can't print. I've been promoting that for the last 20 25 years. All my books are about that. and and we used to be the crazy gold bucks, but now this is getting mainstream. Look at the CIO, the chief investment officer of of JP Morgan. He he switched from 6040 60 equity 40 bonds to 60 2020 20 last 20% into physical gold. So um I think we entered a whole new era and this is what we've been waiting for. Our fund doubled in size last year. we grew from 100 million to 200 million. So let's say 250 million uh uh US and and it's just going mainstream now. >> And you touched on inflation and I got to be honest, this is one of the things that frustrates the hell out of me because even though the governments in both Canada and the US, they want you to believe inflation is under control. Anyone who shops for groceries on a weekly basis knows it is not under control. >> And when you look at the CPI, it's comprised of eight different components. The largest one being housing at 35% give or take. The followed by food at 13%. Which makes no sense because this is one of the things that's really killing us. Coffee is up over 30% year-over-year. Ground beef is up 15% year-over-year. My property taxes in the city of Toronto were up 6.9% last year. They're up 25% in the last five years. Well, I'm glad I'm glad you want to talk about that because I've been writing some books and my first book which was only published in the Netherlands wasn't came out in 2007. I had a full chapter on inflation that people shouldn't believe the official inflation numbers and it was much worse but nobody wanted to listen at that time. Now, everybody agrees that, well, we're being fooled with the official CPI number. >> And and this is one thing I always bring up with people. When you talk about inflation, you got to talk about the money supply. Of course, nobody even looks at the money supply is measured by M2. But in January of 2020, before all this craziness started, M2 was 15.4 trillion. Here we are 5 years later, it's now well over $22 trillion. That's an increase of 42%. Maybe you can just speak to that and how that impacts inflation. >> Well, when people talk about inflation, I always point to them that they should look at the broad money supply and the debasement of currency. So inflation is just let's say the outcome of all this money printing and well I think people understand more and more people are starting to understand this. So more and more people are starting to invest in all the government can't print. They go to hard assets. Uh gold, silver, bitcoin, real estate being the best of the hard assets. But everything is on fire now in our portfolio. 50% of our positions is precious metals related. The other 50% is critical metals. So copper, uranium, uh nickel is starting to move. Copper is breaking out. Lithium is turning the corner. Um even platinum palladium do well. I think zinc will follow. So the whole spectrum is on fire. So we we were up last year 70% gross return. In the first trading days of this year we're up 8%. So uh we've been waiting uh for this for a long time. We started in 2008. That was the top of the last cycle. We had an awful bare market. Uh we were always uh quite successful to take in new money. We had net inflow every year and and that's why we're very fortunate to have this pool of capital now in at the start of a new bull market and this bull market will have lags. It won't be a few quarters like in 2016 or 2020. Uh this will take years and probably decades to play out. I'm quite convinced about that. So, why don't we talk about some of the other reasons that's driving this? And and I want to talk about the Fed because they have become very dovish and they cut rates three times in the back half of last year. We have another meeting coming up at the end of January and then another one in March. But what's your assessment of what the Fed's doing and how is this contributing to inflation, especially when they're cutting rates in a relatively strong economy? It used to be very important, but I'm I'm more and more ignoring what the Fed is doing. You know, there's what Trump is doing with his administration uh now what we've seen uh in Venezuela, his new strategy to decouple from the east um to concentrate on the western hemisphere to build his own um well mining uh space. Um, I think that's much more important for us guys than looking what the Federal Reserve is saying in their press release and if two words have changed that that that was important in the past. But we will have a new fat president and that will be important and that's incoming in May this year and that's also part of the Trump administration and whether you like Trump or not you know uh uh we don't care much about politics but we care about the strategy and the policies and and the Trump administration is very transactional you know they take stakes in resource companies they just take equity stakes so we we study that a lot and and we we ignore ignore the central banker stuff because central bankers will do what they always do, print money, lower rates, um bringing in more liquidity, supports the system and the system has to be supported more and more because it's getting more and more unstable. >> I'm glad you brought up the fact that the US government has been acquiring equity positions in a resource companies MP was it MP minerals? >> Yeah. Yeah. Trilogy and also uh lithium Americas and >> there will be there will be more soon. >> All right. So why don't we talk about that? Where do you think what other sectors are they going to be looking at? Do you think they go silver? >> Uranium uranium nickel. Uh one of our largest position is nickel discovery in the US. Uh and we're quite sure they were talking with the Pentagon before they made the big discovery. Um I'm I'm I'm I'm quite sure that they will do a deal with the US administration. Uh uranium is a big one because it's needed for uh to power all the AI stuff and the data warehousing and and you in Canada you have this big uranium uh development projects by by nextGen that that's a favorite of ours. I think they will get involved some in that play because that's uh that project alone is 20% of future uranium production worldwide just one project and it's valued at sub 10 billion and I think there's still a lot of value to be found in these strategic tier one projects and companies and we concentrate with our fund especially now we grown a bit bigger we only concentrate on the tier one tier 2 projects so the real large projects because they will always be built into a large mine and they will always be bought out by major companies and now even the government gets involved. Hi, before we get on with the interview, just a quick reminder of our virtual gold conference happening this Friday, January the 23rd at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. We have some amazing speakers [music] to speak on what's happening in terms of precious metals and where the prices might be going here in the coming weeks. John Chapalia from Sprat Asset [music] Management will speak on what he and his team are seeing in terms of flows into the various spat products. We have some of the biggest and best gold producers in the world including Igno [music] Centa Gold, Hemllo Mining, Ken Ross Gold, Oceanic Gold, and Oiscoco Development. We also have Joe Cavaton from the World Gold Council. He's [music] going to speak on what central banks have been doing. And then we're going to hear from our good friend Michael Oliver and he's going to speak on what's happening with gold and silver and where he thinks the S&P and the NASDAQ are going here in [music] the coming days and weeks. Once again, that's this Friday, January the 23rd [music] at 8 a.m. Eastern time. And I hope to see you there. If you can't join us live, you can check this out anytime on our YouTube channel, Blur Street Capital. Good luck in the markets. And just as a reminder to our viewers, the US uh 20% of their grid comes from nuclear energy. They consume 45 to 50 million pounds of uranium annually, but the US produces virtually no uranium. So, it's going to be interesting to see what they do there because they do have to acquire it. >> Now, you mentioned that nickel company. What is that? >> That's a Ton Metals. Tailon. Oh, >> okay. What state is that in? >> That's in uh Minnesota. Yeah. Yeah, >> sorry. Go on. >> Uh, well, in the last few decades, we've seen this uh policy in the US that's very hard and almost impossible to build new mines. Uh, but that's totally changing now. The Trump administration is cutting a lot of the red tape and they'll make sure mines will be built. They need it for the national security. If you say you need Greenland for your national security, well, Greenland has quite a bit of commodities, but it's damn hard to build mines there, you better build it here. And there's a wonderful copper, new copper district has been discovered in Idaho with silver as well. That's under the radar for most people. I think there's some exciting stuff happening. There's some copper discoveries in Arizona. So, um, well, uh, lots happening on the good side. And so we were talking about inflation and we both agree inflation is maybe I don't know if I say out of control but it's not going away that's for sure and it's going to continue to climb. Where do you think inflation is going here in the coming year >> and let's just assume let's just assume the real number is 3%. Okay. Well, >> yeah, >> the benefit of the doubt. >> Uh I coined um um the term u superinflation. I don't like hyperinflation because hyperinflation is very rare. You know, you get that in Venezuela and Zimbabwe and the Wimar Germany. That was 100 years ago. It's quite hard to get into hyperinflation and central bankers will do everything in in including going back to some kind of gold standard to avoid that. But you can have superinflation. was super inflation that's uh well let's say inflation of over 10%. And we had that around 21 and 22 and that's that's very harmful just for the general public. And when you've had two years of superinflation and then the inflation comes down to only three or 4% it's still on top of the the double digit inflation of previous years. So people um uh every day they're doing their shopping, they notice that that that it will be harder and harder uh to buy the groceries with with the budget they have and and and so I I focus on on on actually we focus on the money growth. If you look at bankers, central bankers, if you look at the financial system, if you look at politicians, they all need to grow the system. And growing the system means growing the money supply. And there's 400,000 uh billion uh of assets looking for a safe haven for returns. And look at how small the precious metals area is. Silver is just 4 trillion, the whole silver market. and and all these markets are are so small even uranium. So you you you need little institutional money to move to these pockets of the of the industry. Uh and then you see these very strong moves upward because the mining space and the natural resource space has been depressed for such a long time. A and still the valuations we just did the study in house the silver miners the producers are still valued as low as 24 before silver broke out. Why? Because the silver price has been rising faster than their share price has risen. So the the the ounces in the ground as are still you still buy them at rock bottom valuations. And one of the I've heard you talk about the US bond market and your concern about that and this year in 2026 approximately $4 trillion of treasuries are going to be maturing. They got to be rolled over and this is one of the reasons why the government and the Fed they want to get interest rates down. So their interest payments like their interest payments are over a trillion dollars a year now. But maybe you can just speak to that. >> Yeah. >> And what you think is happening within the bond market and how that's going to impact the gold market. >> Yeah. When I give presentations, I always warn the audience that the next crisis could be a sovereign bond crisis, sovereign debt crisis. Because if you look at the past crisis, people always go back to the previous crisis which was let's say after Lehman collapsed and that was a crisis in real estate and all these uh well toxic uh products which were built by by Wall Street. But then we we rescued the system by increasing the balance sheet of central banks. A and now the central banks are really stuck because they lowered the interest rates uh and we had these negative returns on bonds a few years back. But we had um a 40-year trend since 1980 to 2020 2122. Over 40 years, we had a declining trend of interest rates and inflation and then it broke out violently in 22 23 and now we're in a new trend of of of rising uh interest rates and rising inflation. You see higher interest rates in Japan, you see it in in in Europe, in the UK, you see it in the US. So, I think the sovereign debt crisis might be next. And that's the big one because that's the 100 trillion uh dollar market. You know, there's 100 trillion in bonds, there's 100 trillion in equity, there's 100 trillion in in real estate. Uh if we take some big numbers a and half of the bond market is the sovereign bond. So if you get some accidents there, well then we need to go to the IMF and call them uh like the fire brigade to and then the IMF needs to use its balance sheet, grow its balance sheet, but that will be more money printing another layer of fiat money on top of uh well the skyscraper of of of fiat money we already have. >> When you say one the bond market is 100 trillion, is that just the US bond market? >> No, no, this worldwide. will what? >> Okay. >> And the sovereign bond market is half of that. So that's let's say 50 trillion. >> All right. >> And the US is is almost 40 trillion of that. You know, that's 38 trillion. And and and US national debt is growing 1 trillion every 100 days. And we used to have a budget deficit in US by two of two trillion. And then Trump asked Elon Musk to bring it down. But Elon Musk said, "I can't do it." you know, he he he stopped the Doge job and now the the new budget deficit could could end up being three to four tr uh trillion. And one of the things we've seen here, especially since 2022, is that we've seen investors sell US bonds and it it almost looks like they're investing that money in gold. And it looks like that trend is starting to accelerate. Would you agree with that? >> Yeah. Yeah. That that's that's um if you look at the latest figures from central banks um I think this is the fourth year in a row that central banks buy over 1,000 tons of physical gold every year. And if you know worldwide gold production is just 3,500 tons. So if central banks are fleeing towards physical gold, what message do you send to the uh general public and to high net worth investors? So you have this trend now worldwide that high net worth investors and retail investors want to own physical gold and silver. Look at the images coming from China and Hong Kong. There are long lines for these uh bullion shops and and and this is very significant because the US used to control the prices of gold and silver. They could do that because they had this very liquid future markets, the Comx market, but the price discovery mechanism has moved away from the west to the east now. So the US no longer is able to control the prices of gold and silver. That's they they follow the Shanghai gold exchange now. And this is a massive uh topic uh literally in my book. I I I wrote the big reset the war on gold and the financial endgame to show that the US has been managing or manipulating gold and silver prices and other commodity prices at least since the 1970s. And they're losing control now. and and that now we're entering a very interesting but very dangerous uh era especially for the US and that also explains why Trump administration I is doing crazy stuff like Venezuela now they they need to do something otherwise they lose it >> I read recently that the central banks own more central banks throughout the world own more gold than they do US treasuries for the first time since the 1990s >> we just crossed that time. So they used to own seven times as much in value US treasuries compared to physical gold, but they've been adding like I said for four years in a row now massive amounts of of physical gold and and quite going parabolic and and now with the increase of the value of of that gold, the amount of physical gold central banks hold worldwide is now a larger amount than their US treasuries, all their US treasuries. >> So, it's interesting. We have central banks consuming approximately one-third of all uh gold production annually. Uh we I'm sure you saw there's uh the world's largest stable coin provider called Tether. They're also acquiring gold. They acquired over 120 tons in 2025, and I'm sure they're still buying it. What are your thoughts about these non-traditional buyers coming into the gold space? Well, this is very interesting because um um in in in in the Dutch edition of the big reset uh I wrote in 2013 that for me Bitcoin is like virtual gold and and more and more people would start to move to well all the government can't print including Bitcoin the virtual gold. That was 2014. I was stupid enough not to buy Bitcoin myself because I had physical gold and silver myself. But after a few of these boom bust cycles, I I thought I'm stupid. I I I need to buy Bitcoin as well. So I started buy some Bitcoin in 2018 when it was trading around 56,000. and and and and Bitcoin is such a powerful form of of money uh especially to store your net worth is a great store of of uh wealth and it has been the fastest horse in the race and this of course the success of Bitcoin created this whole crypto space and now you have all these stable coins and because the US administration is almost in a panic how how they can keep supporting the dollar system. They now understand that the tenders of this world who are um creating all these stable coins, if they can create all these stable coins and connect them to the US dollar by buying treasuries to support their stable coin, that that's a new uh that's a great new demand for US treasuries because uh investors like uh China, Russia and many other countries don't want to don't want to buy US treasuries. ries anymore. So in a way the US needs the crypto markets to succeed now. But if you want the crypto markets to succeed, this is a form for of private money. If if you study how cryp crypto is being introduced, it's like private money. You know, central banks are not involved. So I always thought that US administration would never support really support crypto because then they find their own system controlled by central banks. But now they're joining the crypto guys. A and now we end up in a very crazy situation that private money is winning from government central bank money and and well and that's why I think we reach the endgame phase for the current monetary system centered around the US dollar which started in 1944. The US promised the dollar would be as good as gold. In 1971, they closed down the gold window. And now they need to come up with something else. And that's what I call a monetary reset. And uh the jury is still out if that will work and what we can expect next. >> So we started this conversation uh I was talking about the performance of gold and silver in 2025 and now here we are in 2026. What is your take on where gold and silver go this year? Are we going to have another massive move like we saw in 25? 25 was the start of a re-evaluation process in which the price discovery mechanism has moved from west to east. And this means that the revaluation process won't stop after a few quarters or or a few years. Um if you look at the amount of paper assets uh the 100 trillion in bonds um if you have these changes in the flow of funds like the Wall Street guys advising now to put 20% of your net worth in gold. um this this trend could have lags and it could go on for for for years and even decades. And I think we're just at the start of a whole new phase for the international monetary system in which these physical assets and especially the critical metals and the precious metals can move much much higher. If you look at the latest research, uh some uh Wall Street banks are openly talking about tripledigit silver. Um I think the Bank of America have said that at the end of this cycle, silver will be trading between 150 or 300 uh dollars per ounce. And well, this used to be crazy stuff. we we we as goldbucks were were were writing down but now it's getting mainstream and these are such small markets so I think it will surprise everybody how high this can go >> and well what's your sense like for there's a lot of investors who aren't even involved in precious metals okay like so many people are just caught up in AI and Nvidia and chat GBT right they're not even aware of what's happening with gold and silver What what's your message to somebody who hasn't gotten into the gold or precious metal space yet? >> Well, the money, >> I guess, is what I'm asking. >> Yeah. No, but there's so much money invested in all these passive investment strategies and it's all in tech. It's all in the big seven. Imagine you get a real correction there. We all know it will happen. It it should have started last year. It might start in this year. But when the bubble is is is is getting bigger and we get a correction not this year but next year it will be even worse once the correction starts and then everybody wants to go out um through the same small door and and and then more more of that money will start to the space which brings good returns which is gold and silver now and commodities. So um you have these long cycles you know real estate has been going up for decades. Uh the value of bonds have been has been going out up between 1980 and 2020. So these are cycles of 40 years and and if you want to do the full cycle it's 80 years and I think um commodities bottomed out around 2015 2016. Now we had a retest in March 2020 for the commodity space. Uh look at the valuations. March 2020 was another low and now we're just starting to move up and this could be a decade long uh rally, a decades long bull markets in in hard assets and and commodities and gold and silver. So you're not too late. You're not too late. >> And do you have a target price for gold and silver one year? I always had 5,000 gold uh for starters, but well, we reached that one. Uh >> I always had $100 for silver. Well, we almost reached that. Um I was I was I was um called by by a girlfriend, a pre former girlfriend. I almost married her 40 years ago. I'm an old guy. And I advised her to buy gold uh in the 1980s. and she found me that that uh the value of her gold and silver holdings was was was up crazy and she was very happy. But um it it it told me that, you know, we're still so early in this game. Who who were in gold and silver in the 80s and 90s and nobody nobody. And now everybody's starting to react and and and everybody wants to jump the train, but everybody's waiting for the correction. And this is very interesting. Everyone's waiting for the correction and the correction is not coming. So gold and silver will will come down one day and and decline 20 10 20%. But I think the corrections will be pretty shortlived. And and what's my ne next target? Because that's that was your question. Uh I I told her we'll see at least a double from here. So let's say silver $200, gold $10,000, but I might be too conservative. >> And well, I'm given the move that we've seen in gold and silver. What's your assessment of equity valuations? Like if we look at the largest gold producers, New Pneumont, Bareric, Igno, are they do you have any sense of what gold price they're factoring in? >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, they all went up over 100% last year, so everybody thinks they're expensive now. Look at their price earnings ratio. I think that's that's a that's that's an honest uh method of valuation. Uh Bareric and Newand are are 10 11 12 on forward earnings. Um look at Apple. Uh the tech guys, the tech investors always say Apple is cheap because the PE price earnings ratio is 25. Well, if you call that cheap, how cheap is 10 10 to 12? And and what does Apple own? Of course, you have a great network effect, but they don't even own the factories. And look at what the Newmans and Barracks own. They own all the ounces in the ground which still need to be revalued. So, there's so much more uh there's so much upside based on the current valuations. Another metric we use, we look at what's the valuations of the ounces in the ground. We we are specialized to invest in the junior space. So, the explorers who make the discovery, the developers. So they have a negative cash flow. It's very hard to value it. But you can look at the valuation of the ounces they discovered in the ground. We still buy gold ounces in the ground valued at 304 $50 per ounce. Of course takes a lot of time and energy and money to get it out of the ground. But this is a rock bottom valuation. This is just 1% of the gross metal value. and we buy silver um which still in the ground valued at at well pennies to the dollar 10 20 cents for an ounce of silver. So I expect we expect a real strong and long revaluations of the ounces in the ground. And another example is the producers the gold and silver producers they were up over 100% last year 140% on average. the expiration companies who finding the nuances in the ground. They were up only 40% last year on average. Uh so there's there's so much more of a re-evaluation to be expected and this tells us we're in a very early phase of this whole uh recovery process where you have this new bull market. >> So I want to summarize a lot of the uh themes that you've discussed here in the last few minutes. And when we look at the US economy, you do have concerns. You think there's a bifurcated economy. A lot of We hear this from a lot of people. There's people that are doing very well, people that aren't doing very well. Uh you're very concerned about inflation. You So let's just assume it's currently at 3%. You see it going to 10%. Do you see that happening this year in 2026? If you study past cycles of inflation, uh let's look at the the late 1960s or the early or the 1970s, you many major trends, they show three waves. We even saw that with COVID, you know, you get these three waves. and and and we had the first wave [snorts] of inflation after COVID and then you know it died down and central bankers say they brought it under control but it's still three 4%. And that's the official rate. So it's probably 67. But I I'm afraid for the next phase, the next wave of inflation, which might start after we need to uh stimulate the economy because there's another crisis and then the real money printing start because there's a sovereign debt crisis. A and then you get the big wave of inflation, the double-digit inflation. Uh and then people will really get spooked and they really start to flee towards all the government can't print and then they will learn they can't um put in new orders for silver bars or gold bars because you know the system is jammed or maybe even they can't they're not allowed to buy it anymore and then they look for other uh hard assets and and then they discover the u the the equities is related to gold and silver because you can always buy them and then they discover that the valuation is still so low P of 10 but then the valuation will go to 20 and 30 and 40 because that's h what's happening in what happens in a bull market. So I think we're very early in this spiral, you know, where all these um events leads to uh secondary and tertiary effects. And we're just at the start. People are just starting to wake up. >> And so your message to investors is that you got to get long hard assets, gold, silver, uranium, lithium, copper. >> Well, I I have my own u portfolio. I've been using that for the for the last 20 years. And that's that's what I do not for the fund but for my own uh net worth and the family. 25% in real estate, you know, it's money outside the financial system. You just put it in well in bricks. You know, it's there. Then 25% in physical gold and silver. Money outside the system. You know, minimalize the number of doors between you yourself and your net worth. then 25% in in in equities. Um well um that that's the most risky part maybe. Uh but you can do well when stocks go up. Uh and then 25% we keep very liquid. Uh I always said cash but I I I changed that to Bitcoin. So let's do Bitcoin because it's fast horse in race. It's virtual gold. You can also keep that outside the financial system. So when the financial system has a big accident, banks might close, stock exchanges might close, you always have the best part and the largest part of your [clears throat] net worth will be outside the system and you still be able to do well in every um scen scenario. >> Well, William, this has been a great discussion and I want to thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us today. If someone would like to learn more about you and your services or or follow you online, where can they go? Um, you can follow me on Twitter. I'm quite active there. I'm a former journalist, so I like to to still put out stuff. Um, I um can also you can also check our website of our fund, Commodity Discovery Fund. You can also find a free um version of the big reset, the PDF. It can be downloaded for free. And and we're open for international investors as well. We have around 2,000 high net worth investors mainly from Dutchsp speaking countries, but we're open to anybody who wants to talk uh to us about hard asses. >> Once again, thank you. >> Thank you. It was a pleasure.