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Can Gold Keep Rallying? · Merryn Talks Money

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Merin Talks Money, the podcast in which people
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Speaker 2: who know the markets explain the markets. I am merin
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Speaker 2: Somerset Web. Now in this episode, we are going to
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Speaker 2: focus on gold because of favorite metal keeps hitting new highs.
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Speaker 2: We are recording this conversation on Wednesday, October. The gold
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Speaker 2: has now been rallying for five days on the up
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Speaker 2: to day because the US government has just begun its
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Speaker 2: latest government shut down. But it's not just the last
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Speaker 2: five days. Gold is up more than forty eight percent
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Speaker 2: this year. It's on track for its biggest annual gain
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Speaker 2: since nineteen seventy nine. It's been supported by central bank
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Speaker 2: buying by rising holdings across the board gold back exchange
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Speaker 2: traded funds as a federal reserve has resumed cutting interest rates.
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Speaker 2: On Bloomberg data, monthly flows into gold etf so I
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Speaker 2: should be clear in September we're the largest in three years.
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Speaker 2: So what is going on here? Will it last? Should
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Speaker 2: you be buying it? Should you be selling it? How
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Speaker 2: does it fit into your portfolio? We have got today
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Speaker 2: the perfect guest for all this, Dominic Frisbee. He's a
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Speaker 2: friend of the show. Lots of you will have heard
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Speaker 2: me talking to him before. Is the author of the
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Speaker 2: investment newsletter The Flying Frisbee and also author of the
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Speaker 2: book we are going to talk about today, The Secret
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Speaker 2: History of Gold, which tells the epic and fascinating tale
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Speaker 2: of the world's oldest and most treasured currency. Dominic, welcome back.
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Speaker 3: Thank you very much for having me, Maren. It's always
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Speaker 3: a pleasure to talk to you.
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Speaker 2: It is always a pleasure for me as well. Now, Liisen,
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Speaker 2: I have been reading your book. I love it. I
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Speaker 2: strongly recommend it to all our listeners. That's full full
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Speaker 2: of while everything you need to know about gold, honestly,
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Speaker 2: but lots of stories, great toy storytelling about the history
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Speaker 2: of gold, the way in which gold is embedded in
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Speaker 2: our economies, our culture, and pretty much everything else. So
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Speaker 2: I don't want to dwell too much on gold history
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Speaker 2: through our civilizations today because we know everyone is feeling
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Speaker 2: fairly here and now about gold. But I did want
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Speaker 2: to start by talking about some of the things that
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Speaker 2: you say in your introduction about the nature of gold.
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Speaker 2: It's physical nature, the thing that makes it what it
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Speaker 2: is to us.
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Speaker 3: Well, it is the most incredible metal when you think
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Speaker 3: about it, that it never loses it shine and depending
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Speaker 3: on your narrative, whichever way you look at it, gold
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Speaker 3: was here before the Solar System, and when these stars
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Speaker 3: exploded and all the dust was sent out into outer space,
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Speaker 3: that was how heavy metals were created. And then you
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Speaker 3: think about the fact that you cannot destroy gold. It's
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Speaker 3: incredibly malleable, but as I say, you can't destroy it.
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Speaker 3: And then you think about the fact that it was
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Speaker 3: invented before the Earth. Well, that means that that little
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Speaker 3: bit of gold around your finger, around your neck is
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Speaker 3: older not just than the Earth, but than the Solar
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Speaker 3: System and shining all that time, and it will be
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Speaker 3: shining long after humankind has shuffled off its mortal coil.
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Speaker 3: And so one of the lines I say in the
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Speaker 3: book is to touch gold as the closest you will
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Speaker 3: ever come to touching eternity.
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Speaker 2: I love that line. I love that line now is
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Speaker 2: just before we started recording Dominic for You or I'd
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Speaker 2: I was reading that line to Moses, our producer, and
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Speaker 2: we were both feeling slightly awestruck by the idea.
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Speaker 3: It's a lovely thought. And if you sort of type
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Speaker 3: in eternity into your ai app as we all do
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Speaker 3: every day, and it designs a picture of eternity. Eternity
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Speaker 3: would be clouds and ethereal and celestial and all these
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Speaker 3: kind of things. It wouldn't be a dull, inert, lifeless metal,
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Speaker 3: but that's exactly what it is.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, there is. There's another line in the introduction, or
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Speaker 2: a couple of lines that is also just sums the
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Speaker 2: whole thing up. In the Egyptian Museum in Kaira, there's
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Speaker 2: a golden toothbridge, a gold wire used to bind teeth
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Speaker 2: and dental implants, made of a four thousand years ago
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Speaker 2: that is still in such good shape you could pop
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Speaker 2: it in your mouth today. Yeah, genuinely and destruct.
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Speaker 3: It really is, as Spandau Ballet so famously sang.
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Speaker 2: And also crucially pretty.
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Speaker 3: Yes, well, I think that's the lure of it. And
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Speaker 3: you know, there's three functions of money. One is to
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Speaker 3: be medium exchange, one has to be store of wealth.
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Speaker 3: The other is to be a unit of account. And
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Speaker 3: of course we all here in the UK we use
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Speaker 3: pounds as our unit of account, but it's actually a
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Speaker 3: rotten unit of account because the pound changes. The pound
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Speaker 3: has lost forty percent of its purchasing power just since
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Speaker 3: twenty twenty. I find that incredible. But it has you
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Speaker 3: need a constant unit of account. But of course we
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Speaker 3: use pounds and dollars of our unit of account because
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Speaker 3: we have to declare our taxes in pounds and dollars.
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Speaker 3: But really gold is a much better unit of account
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Speaker 3: because it never changes. It really is constant, has some
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Speaker 3: industrial use and teeth, but it's minimal in the grand
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Speaker 3: scheme of things. It's useless, and yet it's pure wealth.
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Speaker 3: And so Peter Bernstein's line is great line. Nothing is
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Speaker 3: as useful and as useless at the same time. It
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Speaker 3: was the first metal we ever use used, but we
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Speaker 3: used it for the same reason we use it now
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Speaker 3: as jewelry to adorn ourselves.
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Speaker 2: I mean, it's relatively abundant, but if it was easy
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Speaker 2: to get hold of, an easy to find and a mine, etc.
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Speaker 2: Then it wouldn't necessarily be as valuable it is. So
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Speaker 2: part of it's allure is not all the things that
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Speaker 2: you've already described, but scarcity.
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Speaker 3: Right, yeah, absolutely, and quite interesting stat for you. If
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Speaker 3: you look at world gold supply and you plot a
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Speaker 3: chant of population growth on the same chart, the two
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Speaker 3: have grown at exactly the same rate throughout history, which
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Speaker 3: is all the natural law advocates say, you know, it's
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Speaker 3: natural money. The only time when that correlation got out
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Speaker 3: of sink was in the gold rushes and in the
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Speaker 3: second half of the nineteenth century, so when gold supply
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Speaker 3: per capita increased by a little bit, went from about
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Speaker 3: a third to two thirds of announce per capita. But
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Speaker 3: apart from that, the two have grown, and they still
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Speaker 3: grow at the same rate today, world mining supply and
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Speaker 3: world population growth, so there's as much gold per person
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Speaker 3: as there always has been.
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Speaker 2: Okay, Dominic, I hope that we live long enough, you
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Speaker 2: and I to see what happens when the global population
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Speaker 2: starts falling.
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Speaker 3: Well, the declines in Europe are being offset by the
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Speaker 3: growth in Africa and Asia.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but that won't last forever. There will come a
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Speaker 2: point when global fertility, not just European and developed world fertility,
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Speaker 2: is such that the global population declines. And if that
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Speaker 2: happens and the goals apply continues to go up bout
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Speaker 2: three percent a year, then the whole thing might change.
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Speaker 2: But that's maybe another part.
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Speaker 3: I think it's it's not a concern of ours. It's
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Speaker 3: still going to be shiny and lovely.
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Speaker 2: Okay, good, let's skip through quite a few thousand years
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Speaker 2: then and we can accept and you can go and
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Speaker 2: read in the book about how gold is always money,
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Speaker 2: always has been money, accepted as money by everybody. And
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Speaker 2: then you have incidents where the idea of gold itself
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Speaker 2: and currency become separated, right, and that's where things get tricky,
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Speaker 2: and the most well known an example of that would
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Speaker 2: be the Roman Empire.
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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, by currency, I think we mean medium of exchange.
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Speaker 3: The Romans, I use the word currency. Gold was never
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Speaker 3: so much currency as in medium of exchange in the
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Speaker 3: way that silver and copper and nickel and other metals were.
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Speaker 3: For the simple reason is there's just so much wealth.
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Speaker 3: Like if you imagine a two p coin today, if
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Speaker 3: that was gold, it'd be about a quarter of an ounce,
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Speaker 3: it'd be about seven hundred quid, you know, in a
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Speaker 3: two p piece, And so it's just unrealistic to use
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Speaker 3: that for day to day transactions. You might use it
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Speaker 3: if you were buying a you know, a race horse
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Speaker 3: or a house or something, you know, a nice suit
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Speaker 3: or something, you wouldn't.
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Speaker 2: Use say that, but at this rate of flat right
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Speaker 2: it Pratt is going to cost seven hundred quick quite soon.
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Speaker 3: And while the Romans famously debased their coinage and by
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Speaker 3: the way, quite an interesting thing about the decline in
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Speaker 3: the fall of Roman Empire is that, like most business
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Speaker 3: models sort of prior to the twentieth century, war was
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Speaker 3: a very effective business model because you conquered, you plundered,
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Speaker 3: and then you taxed, so you know, it was very
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Speaker 3: lucrative for kings and that's why they did it. But
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Speaker 3: what's interesting is that the Roman Empire actually stopped expanding
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Speaker 3: around about the time of Trajan and Hadrian. That was
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Speaker 3: the point of the maximum of the Roman Empire, but
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Speaker 3: the sort of decline of its money didn't really get
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Speaker 3: going until about two or three hundred years later under Diocletian.
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Speaker 3: So how was the Roman Empire able to expand itself
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Speaker 3: over those two or three hundred years if it wasn't
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Speaker 3: conquering and plundering. And the answer is it kept its
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Speaker 3: money supply going through incredible mining operations in the north
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Speaker 3: of Spain, and it was only when the mines depleted
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Speaker 3: that suddenly the acceleration in the debasement of Roman coinage
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Speaker 3: took place. So, you know, I think there's been something
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Speaker 3: like two hundred different reasons offered for the decline and
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Speaker 3: fall of the Roman Empire, ranging from alien invasion to
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Speaker 3: climate change to too many hot baths. But the depletion
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Speaker 3: of its mind supply is not a reason that's commonly offered,
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Speaker 3: but it was actually a huge factor.
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Speaker 2: Okay, just explain that a little further. Explain the connection
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Speaker 2: how the currency was debased and how the separation of
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Speaker 2: means of exchange from the value of gold came about.
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Speaker 3: Funnily enough, the gold coins didn't get depleted in the
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Speaker 3: way that the silver coins did.
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Speaker 2: The silver coins were the ones that were consistently clipped.
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Speaker 3: So the silver coins went from being completely pure to
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Speaker 3: under Nero, they got mixed. I think they were like
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Speaker 3: ninety percent pure something like that, and it was under
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Speaker 3: Diocletian and then that they went from like fifty percent
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Speaker 3: to twenty five percent to no silver at all and
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Speaker 3: that and that was when they had sort of very
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Speaker 3: strong inflation. What they did with the gold coins is
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Speaker 3: the gold coins actually maintained their purity, but they just
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Speaker 3: made them smaller, So they just got increased inly small
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Speaker 3: So by the time of Diocletion, the gold coin had
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Speaker 3: been the allus, and he replaced it with the solidus,
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Speaker 3: which was about half the size of the aureus, as
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Speaker 3: your aureus had originally been in the first century. And
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Speaker 3: then the solidus became the gold coiner of the Byzantine Empire,
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Speaker 3: and the Byzantines thought that they were Romans, even though
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Speaker 3: we don't deem them as such, and the solidus became
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Speaker 3: the sort of the go to, the equivalent of the sovereign,
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Speaker 3: the sort of the go to gold coin of the Mediterranean. Interestingly,
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Speaker 3: the Italian word soldi for money comes from the soliders.
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Speaker 2: And of course if you were to dig one of
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Speaker 2: those up today, it would look exactly as it did
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Speaker 2: then it does.
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Speaker 3: I've got one on my desk. I'll see if I
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Speaker 3: can hold it up to the camera, shall I?
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Speaker 2: Okay, hold it up, let.
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Speaker 3: Me just see it.
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Speaker 2: And those of you who have video can now see this.
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Speaker 2: I'm fraid we haven't got full video. We will have
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Speaker 2: coming soon listeners, by the way, coming soon, but we
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Speaker 2: will but this clip up on YouTube. Assuming he eventually
10:49
Speaker 2: finds that those of you who can't see Dominic he's
10:51
Speaker 2: rummaging around in his desk because he's got so much
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Speaker 2: extremely valuable stuff and his does that he currently can't
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Speaker 2: find the five thousand quid coin.
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Speaker 3: It's actually beautiful, this gold coin. This is so This
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Speaker 3: is a Justinian solidus from six hundred AD. And you
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Speaker 3: can buy these for not much more than their gold
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Speaker 3: content they wear. This would be about four or five grams.
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Speaker 3: It's a lovely little coin.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd pay capital gains tax on that though, wouldn't you?
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Speaker 3: You do, but you don't on beautiful gold sovereigns. I've
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Speaker 3: got one of those up here as well. The sovereigns
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Speaker 3: aren't is a nice though, because the sovereigns so the
11:27
Speaker 3: sovereigns have been mixed with a little bit of copper,
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Speaker 3: so they've got a slightly redishue. This is a Queen
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Speaker 3: Elizabeth sovereign. I've got one of Victoria as well, and
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Speaker 3: you could see the solidest. They're kind of similar size.
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Speaker 3: The sovereign's a bit heavier. But you know, whoever's in
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Speaker 3: charge makes the gold coin that becomes the coin of
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Speaker 3: the world, whether it's the Romans or the British or
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Speaker 3: the Americans or doesn't really matter.
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Speaker 2: So if you would about a sovereign like that today,
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Speaker 2: as I just said, they're technically legal tendency. You don't
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Speaker 2: have to pay capital gains tax on them. How much
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Speaker 2: of a premium would you pay over their.
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Speaker 3: Not that many? Five percent something like that, maybe a bit.
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Speaker 2: Okay, So anyone who's been holding a good number of
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Speaker 2: those and has made preciable capital gains will be extremely
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Speaker 2: peace of themselves.
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Speaker 3: They will. And I mean I remember writing for Money
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Speaker 3: Week back in two thousand and six, and we were
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Speaker 3: telling people to buy sovereigns back then. So they've done
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Speaker 3: incredibly well.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure lots of people listened.
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Speaker 3: Right, I've got a question for you, actually, Marin, if I.
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Speaker 2: May, i'll have his works Dominic.
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Speaker 3: So you remember the incredible bull marketing gold from two
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Speaker 3: thousand and one to twenty eleven, and it ended with
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Speaker 3: gold at nineteen hundred an ounce and the Greek debt crisis,
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Speaker 3: and everyone at that time was thinking gold is going
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Speaker 3: to be some kind of official money once again. It
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Speaker 3: really looked like and then I remember you sold or
12:47
Speaker 3: you wrote that you'd sold some of your gold at
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Speaker 3: sixteen or seventeen hundred dollars an ounce. So you did
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Speaker 3: what everyone did dreams of doing. You were very good.
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Speaker 3: You got out within ten percent of the top. Yeah,
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Speaker 3: and that's that's the secret. Can you get out within
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Speaker 3: ten percent of the top? What made you do that?
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Speaker 3: And how close to the top are we in this bullmarket? Now?
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Speaker 2: This is literally not the way this works. Stuff.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, well I'll add to what you say.
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Speaker 2: Okay, I cannot remember I cannot actually talking to a
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Speaker 2: group of finance people the other night about exactly this
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Speaker 2: and why it is that as a journalist or someone
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Speaker 2: like you and me who covers markets endlessly, how it
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Speaker 2: is that you finally come to the point where you say, well,
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Speaker 2: this is going to change or this is going to change.
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Speaker 2: And the answer and for it is instinct. That's all it.
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Speaker 1: Did.
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Speaker 2: You know, you're taking in so much information all the time,
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Speaker 2: and as you know, your brain works in so many
13:38
Speaker 2: subconscious ways. I can't tell you what made me say
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Speaker 2: then I think we're done here. But that must have
13:44
Speaker 2: been just the constant inflow of information creating some conclusion.
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Speaker 2: How do I feel now? I mean, you know, like
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Speaker 2: you like, it's really toppy, like things gone very far,
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Speaker 2: very fast, all those kinds of things. But then I
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Speaker 2: also look around and I see now this debt crisis
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Speaker 2: that will inevitably catch up with the developed world being
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Speaker 2: closer than I've ever felt it as before.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean at the moment, the narratives that are
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Speaker 3: driving this bull market is central bank buying. That's been
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Speaker 3: the big narrative that's been going on since twenty fourteen.
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Speaker 3: But it really accelerated when America confiscated Russian US dollar
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Speaker 3: assets and basically every pullback to the fifty day moving
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Speaker 3: average has been bought and it's just been a relentless climb.
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Speaker 3: And retail has only really got involved in the last
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Speaker 3: six months maybe, And in fact Germans Germany big second
14:34
Speaker 3: biggest retail market in the world I believe, actually can't be,
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Speaker 3: it must be the third biggest, must be China, US
14:39
Speaker 3: then Germany anyway, big retail market. What about India oka fourth?
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Speaker 3: But German retail investors have been next sellers, which is
14:47
Speaker 3: just unusual until this year. And it's retail that usually
14:52
Speaker 3: drives mining, and gold mining has not really got going
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Speaker 3: until about a year ago, and so it's lagged gold
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Speaker 3: and as I say, but the narrative has been central
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Speaker 3: bank buying.
15:02
Speaker 2: Right, Well, we need to go back a bit, We
15:03
Speaker 2: need to go back, Okay, we need to go back
15:05
Speaker 2: and talk about this turn in central bank buying. I mean, obviously,
15:09
Speaker 2: the big central banks have always had lots of gold,
15:12
Speaker 2: and it's one of the things that we've talked about
15:13
Speaker 2: over the years is everyone goes, wow, gold, no one
15:15
Speaker 2: needs gold anymore. Gold is over, et cetera, et cetera.
15:17
Speaker 2: Gold is nothing, it'll never have value, etc. And we've
15:19
Speaker 2: still gone, well, hang on a tick. If gold is nothing,
15:22
Speaker 2: how come the central banks still holds so much of it?
15:25
Speaker 2: You know, how come they keep these reserves in gold
15:27
Speaker 2: If gold is an absolute nothing. Of course it's not nothing,
15:30
Speaker 2: it's real, and you should watch what central banks hold.
15:34
Speaker 2: And then the amount that central banks hold started to
15:37
Speaker 2: rise and rise and rise. So let's talk about that.
15:40
Speaker 2: What happened there? What made the central banks, Chinese Central
15:43
Speaker 2: Bank in particular, start saying, do you know what, we
15:46
Speaker 2: don't have enough gold. We're going to really add to
15:48
Speaker 2: our reserves in massive volume.
15:51
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the reasons that central banks
15:53
Speaker 3: held on through the eighties and nineties is they probably
15:56
Speaker 3: just didn't know what else to do with it and
16:00
Speaker 3: just leave it. And of course one of the reasons
16:02
Speaker 3: that Gordon.
16:03
Speaker 2: Got adminertia, are you honestly suggesting that central bank policy
16:06
Speaker 2: is a function of admin inertia.
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Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the reasons they didn't sell
16:12
Speaker 3: is they didn't know what else to do with it,
16:13
Speaker 3: and there was no one of the reasons. There was
16:16
Speaker 3: all sorts of reasons why Gordon Brown sold, but one
16:19
Speaker 3: key reason is he thought Switzerland was about to sell,
16:22
Speaker 3: because Switzerland was about to come off the gold standard
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Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety nine, and he was one of the
16:26
Speaker 3: front run Switzerland. And of course Switzerland never sold, but
16:31
Speaker 3: in any case, it was only I'm going to say
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Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, that kind of period.
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Speaker 3: Then gold reached ten percent of central bank holdings and
16:41
Speaker 3: that's when the turn came. So in the bear market,
16:44
Speaker 3: you know, twenty fourteen twenty fifteen, gold was in a
16:46
Speaker 3: bear market. And if you go back and you look
16:48
Speaker 3: at China in particular, China was became a net seller
16:52
Speaker 3: of US treasuries. It's been reducing its holdings of US treasuries,
16:56
Speaker 3: not of US dollars, but of US treasuries ever since
16:58
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. Just at the point that it began growing,
17:01
Speaker 3: its central banks became net buyers of gold. And by
17:04
Speaker 3: the way, China does not declare its real goal, that
17:07
Speaker 3: it's understated its reserves by a factor of at least
17:10
Speaker 3: five for reasons that we can come to in a moment.
17:14
Speaker 3: But by earlier this year gold had gone over ten
17:18
Speaker 3: years from ten percent of central bank holdings to twenty percent,
17:22
Speaker 3: so it had doubled. Meanwhile, it overtook the Euro as
17:26
Speaker 3: a percentage of central bank holdings, and it overtook US treasuries,
17:30
Speaker 3: and the US dollar meanwhile fell below fifty percent. It's
17:33
Speaker 3: now and I think forty eight, forty nine percent something
17:36
Speaker 3: like that, maybe even a little bit less. And so
17:40
Speaker 3: you know, goal's at twenty percent now, a little bit
17:42
Speaker 3: more than twenty percent. There's no reason why it'll fact
17:44
Speaker 3: it'll be more because of the rising gold price increases
17:47
Speaker 3: the amount effectively, even if they don't actually buy more.
17:51
Speaker 3: But there's no reason why that shouldn't be forty percent
17:53
Speaker 3: in another ten years.
17:55
Speaker 2: Why is any reason it shouldn't be forty percent.
17:57
Speaker 3: There's two reasons, this process of de dollarization. So there
18:03
Speaker 3: are lots of countries they might not necessarily be enemies
18:06
Speaker 3: of the US, although in some cases they are, but
18:10
Speaker 3: and they might be you know, big trading partners of
18:12
Speaker 3: the US, like China is a big trading partner at
18:14
Speaker 3: the US. But they must be looking at their portfolios
18:17
Speaker 3: and seeing what happened with Russia and thinking America could
18:21
Speaker 3: just confiscate our dollars at any time if we do
18:23
Speaker 3: the wrong thing. So we're just in America's power. So
18:26
Speaker 3: we need another asset that doesn't put us in America's power.
18:29
Speaker 3: And of course that asset is gold, because it's nobody
18:31
Speaker 3: else's liability, it's wealth in and of itself. And that's
18:34
Speaker 3: the attraction of gold. And the big accumulators of gold
18:38
Speaker 3: have all been countries along the Silk Road in the
18:42
Speaker 3: Shanghai Cooperation Organization, so China, India, Russia at one point,
18:47
Speaker 3: although they've stopped buying, and then all the various Stans
18:50
Speaker 3: to Jikistan and kyrgyz Stan and all these stans. They've
18:54
Speaker 3: been the net buyers Iran as well. And some of
18:56
Speaker 3: those are actual enemies of the US, but some of
18:58
Speaker 3: them are not exactly strong allies of the US. And
19:01
Speaker 3: so it's all part of this process of de dollarization,
19:04
Speaker 3: and there.
19:05
Speaker 2: Isn't something else they could use instead. This is GOLDI
19:09
Speaker 2: what I.
19:10
Speaker 3: Mean they could use the Euro potentially, then you've got
19:13
Speaker 3: to deal with the EU. The yuan isn't internationally tradeable
19:18
Speaker 3: in a way that the dollar is. It's just not
19:20
Speaker 3: really possible with the yuan. So what else do you use?
19:23
Speaker 2: And you wouldn't necessarily want Yeah, and you don't want
19:25
Speaker 2: to use a currency that you expect to be and
19:27
Speaker 2: floated away as a direct result of the high levels
19:30
Speaker 2: of debt. Did GDP rats across Europe?
19:32
Speaker 3: And well, well that too. And now we've got this
19:35
Speaker 3: new thing, which is a really interesting development part of
19:39
Speaker 3: the same story, which is this idea of Triffin's dilemma,
19:44
Speaker 3: which is this notion that the country that issues the
19:48
Speaker 3: reserve currency of the world will inevitably run trade deficits
19:52
Speaker 3: with the rest of the world. And the Biden administration
19:55
Speaker 3: did not get this, but the Trump administration very much
19:59
Speaker 3: seems to. And we all know how Donald Trump wants
20:01
Speaker 3: to reshure US industry, you know, the russ belt and
20:05
Speaker 3: revive American production and all of that, and he talks
20:07
Speaker 3: about it, and we know that the weaker US dollar
20:09
Speaker 3: and tariffs are all part of that. But the reserve
20:13
Speaker 3: currency status that other countries have to work to earn
20:17
Speaker 3: their dollars, whereas America can just print them, means that
20:20
Speaker 3: America will inevitably become an exporter of US dollars. And
20:24
Speaker 3: this has led to the mass financialization of America and
20:27
Speaker 3: also its radical decrease in production because other countries are
20:31
Speaker 3: way more competitive. And if America genuinely wants to get
20:36
Speaker 3: producing again, and you know, it is much more than
20:40
Speaker 3: just rhetoric. In the case of Trump, he genuinely believes it.
20:43
Speaker 3: But Vance has actually called the US dollar reserve status
20:49
Speaker 3: attacks on American producers, and Bessant obviously gets this as well,
20:54
Speaker 3: the Treasury Secretary. So if America is to get producing again,
21:01
Speaker 3: it has to sort of sacrifice or have a managed
21:03
Speaker 3: decline of the US dollar as global reserve currency. And
21:07
Speaker 3: there seems to be and this is the Luke Groman argument,
21:10
Speaker 3: there seems to be a genuine acceptance that this is
21:13
Speaker 3: going to happen. So if the US dollar is no
21:15
Speaker 3: longer going to be the reserve currency it once was,
21:18
Speaker 3: what can replace it? Well, there isn't an alternative, As
21:21
Speaker 3: we discussed the Euro, the U are and they're just
21:23
Speaker 3: not viable alternatives. And so gold is the most obvious
21:26
Speaker 3: alternative because it's neutral. And meanwhile, America has lots of gold.
21:32
Speaker 3: Let's just assume that the eight thousand tons it says
21:34
Speaker 3: it has a there, and it can probably get more
21:37
Speaker 3: if it needs to. And China has imported and produced
21:41
Speaker 3: something like forty thousand tons over the course of this century.
21:44
Speaker 3: It's an extraordinary number. America has eight thousand tons. Forty
21:48
Speaker 3: thousand tons of gold has made its way to China
21:51
Speaker 3: this century, either through imports or through production. China's been
21:54
Speaker 3: the world's largest producer since two thousand and seven. It's
21:57
Speaker 3: also the world's largest importer. Now it has encouraged citizens
22:00
Speaker 3: to buy gold. But you can also assume that a
22:02
Speaker 3: lot of US gold has made its way into the
22:05
Speaker 3: People's Bank of China and other state bodies. And so
22:08
Speaker 3: when China says it has two thousand tons and or
22:11
Speaker 3: two and a half thousand, but you know that forty
22:13
Speaker 3: thousand tons has made its way to China over the
22:16
Speaker 3: course of this century, you know that that's just an understatement.
22:44
Speaker 2: Now established that gold is still extremely significant in the
22:47
Speaker 2: global economy, and at this point it underpins everything. Is
22:50
Speaker 2: there any sense that we might end up with a
22:53
Speaker 2: new gold backed currency.
22:55
Speaker 3: I don't think so I think it's unlikely. The gold
23:00
Speaker 3: standard of the nineteenth century we used gold sovereigns, we
23:03
Speaker 3: used American gold, American gold dollars and so on, and
23:07
Speaker 3: so gold actually circulated and people held gold. But in
23:12
Speaker 3: the gold standards of the twentieth century, when we went
23:14
Speaker 3: back onto gold in nineteen twenty five, in the UK,
23:17
Speaker 3: gold had been pretty much withdrawn from circulation, so there
23:21
Speaker 3: was we weren't handling gold. And similarly, Americans, it was
23:25
Speaker 3: made illegal for Americans to own gold in nineteen thirty two,
23:28
Speaker 3: so there was no gold in circulation even though the
23:31
Speaker 3: country was nominally on a gold standard. It's like going, oh,
23:34
Speaker 3: it's a library, but you can't use the books. It's
23:36
Speaker 3: just not a real gold standard if ordinary citizens aren't
23:38
Speaker 3: holding gold, and that's one of the reasons those gold
23:41
Speaker 3: standards failed. It was bogus. But in any case, today
23:45
Speaker 3: we just don't use cash anymore. We don't use physical cash,
23:50
Speaker 3: so we're not going to be handling gold or silver
23:52
Speaker 3: or any other metal on a day to day basis.
23:54
Speaker 3: Money is digital, but that.
23:56
Speaker 2: Doesn't that doesn't mean we can't hold bits of paper
23:59
Speaker 2: or digital money that represents the actual gold. Yes, you
24:03
Speaker 2: can same effect as a gold standard.
24:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that would be a payment system built on
24:09
Speaker 3: top of gold as a store of wealth.
24:11
Speaker 2: Exactly.
24:12
Speaker 3: Yes, you could have it, and it would take quite
24:15
Speaker 3: a lot of designing, and it would involve a lot
24:17
Speaker 3: of trusted third parties, at which point you know gold
24:21
Speaker 3: isn't value in and of itself. You're relying on the
24:23
Speaker 3: third party thing. We would probably work for a bit
24:25
Speaker 3: and then it would stop working because of the trusted
24:28
Speaker 3: third party issue. But in any case, I just don't
24:31
Speaker 3: see governments doing it, because our governments today were at
24:34
Speaker 3: fifty percent give or take of GDP as government, and
24:37
Speaker 3: it would involve relinquishing so much power and breaking so
24:40
Speaker 3: many promises. If governments were to limit the amount of
24:44
Speaker 3: money they create by the amount of gold they have,
24:46
Speaker 3: and it would involve such an upward revaluation of gold
24:50
Speaker 3: short of a major, major crisis, I can't see it happening.
24:54
Speaker 2: Will you explain why it is that it is not
24:57
Speaker 2: possible for governments to run massive deficits while having a
25:02
Speaker 2: sound money system like that. I know a lot of
25:05
Speaker 2: our listeners will know this, but some will not quite
25:07
Speaker 2: understand how this works. If you have a system where
25:09
Speaker 2: you have a gold bag money. It's not really possible
25:12
Speaker 2: for the state to run at fifty percent of GDP
25:15
Speaker 2: forty percent of GDP well.
25:16
Speaker 3: Because you can only issue as much money as you've
25:18
Speaker 3: got gold to back it, plus what you can loan
25:21
Speaker 3: against it, and so that just limits the amount of
25:24
Speaker 3: money that can be created. And so over the course
25:27
Speaker 3: of the nineteenth century, even though the Britain was on
25:29
Speaker 3: a gold standard, it was probably we only had gold
25:32
Speaker 3: backing for maybe thirty thirty percent of the money we printed.
25:35
Speaker 3: At times of crisis it went down to about fifteen
25:38
Speaker 3: and just coming out of the crisis it would go
25:40
Speaker 3: to about fifty. So the paper pan was never fully
25:43
Speaker 3: backed by gold. But if the US had to fully
25:47
Speaker 3: back every US dollar on issuance with gold, with its
25:50
Speaker 3: gold reserves of eight thousand tons, the gold price would
25:53
Speaker 3: be I can't remember the exact number, but it's like
25:55
Speaker 3: ninety thousand dollars something stupid, and.
25:58
Speaker 2: The deflationary collapse would be appalling.
26:01
Speaker 3: Governments would go bust. All the economies that's built around
26:04
Speaker 3: governments that relies on government would just cause so much upheaval.
26:08
Speaker 3: No politician would voluntarily do it unless their hand was
26:11
Speaker 3: forced by a crisis.
26:13
Speaker 2: Okay, well let's talk about now and how as we
26:16
Speaker 2: women And we started this conversation back at the beginning,
26:19
Speaker 2: but let's go back to it. The gold prices we
26:21
Speaker 2: said in our introduction. As you know, it's been massive
26:23
Speaker 2: and anyone who's had some gold on their portfolio, I
26:26
Speaker 2: hope all listeners have had will find that they're feeling
26:28
Speaker 2: quite rich at the moment. But how does this look
26:32
Speaker 2: to you? I mean, obviously, we still have the central
26:34
Speaker 2: bank demand. I think that's going to carry on for
26:37
Speaker 2: a while. We have rising retail demand, we have these
26:40
Speaker 2: flows into ETFs, and a growing recognition across the board
26:43
Speaker 2: that maybe you should have some gold in your portfolio.
26:45
Speaker 2: I sat on the train between Edinburgh and London the
26:48
Speaker 2: day before yesterday. I sat for four and a half
26:52
Speaker 2: hours on a train next to two men who discussed
26:56
Speaker 2: their gold portfolios for the entire Oh my god, I
27:00
Speaker 2: mean and really loudly, by the way, really loudly. I've
27:03
Speaker 2: tried to change seats, but there wasn't anywhere to go to.
27:06
Speaker 2: I haven't sat next to people talking about their gold
27:09
Speaker 2: portfolios quite so eagerly for well a good long time.
27:13
Speaker 3: That is a topic indicator.
27:14
Speaker 2: But still we have the retail buiers, the mining socks
27:17
Speaker 2: have started to follow, silver has started to follow. You know,
27:20
Speaker 2: all the signs that you're getting towards the end of
27:24
Speaker 2: the cycle are there. But at the same time, there
27:28
Speaker 2: are way more reasons to hold gold now than perhaps
27:32
Speaker 2: there have been at any point in our careers, in
27:35
Speaker 2: these levels of debt, This knowledge that it is inevitable
27:39
Speaker 2: that this debt across the rest and world has to
27:42
Speaker 2: be differently inflated away because there is no other way.
27:46
Speaker 2: All these things that we've talked about a lot on
27:48
Speaker 2: this podcast, And everyone who hasn't listened to last week's podcast,
27:51
Speaker 2: please do go back and do that. Becaill give you
27:53
Speaker 2: more of a sense of quite how close we might
27:56
Speaker 2: be to full blown crisis. With that kind of thing
27:59
Speaker 2: in mind, it still doesn't feel like it's quite time
28:03
Speaker 2: to be selling your gold.
28:04
Speaker 3: I agree to use the baseball analogy. I'm going to
28:08
Speaker 3: say about three different things, and I might sound like
28:11
Speaker 3: I'm contradicting myself, but I am. In the end, we'll
28:13
Speaker 3: get there.
28:15
Speaker 2: My patience is endless with you, dumblic It is absolutely fine.
28:17
Speaker 3: Thank you.
28:18
Speaker 2: Carry on.
28:19
Speaker 3: Charlie Morris and I both put a target seven thousand
28:21
Speaker 3: dollars gold by the end of the decade, and given
28:25
Speaker 3: what's going on with central banks, and given what's going
28:27
Speaker 3: on with d dollarization, and given what's going on with
28:30
Speaker 3: Triffin's dilemma. As I explained, I just don't think that's
28:32
Speaker 3: an unrealistic target. And we just shy of four thousand.
28:36
Speaker 3: It's not even double where we are now. But you know,
28:39
Speaker 3: mining shares, leading silver, leading retail getting involved. That is
28:43
Speaker 3: a sign that this bullmarket has evolved. The bullmarket if
28:48
Speaker 3: you think of bullmarket in nineteen eighty that ended, you know,
28:52
Speaker 3: for most of the time it went from like thirty
28:54
Speaker 3: dollars to around about four hundred, and then on that
28:56
Speaker 3: last spike it went from four hundred to eight hundred
28:58
Speaker 3: and fifty. And there's about three things going on at
29:01
Speaker 3: the Russia had invaded Afghanistan, there was the Iranian hostage crisis,
29:05
Speaker 3: there was the crisis in the bond markets. And it
29:08
Speaker 3: went to eight fifty the day after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated,
29:11
Speaker 3: and it was a real proper blowoff top at the
29:13
Speaker 3: end of a bull market only went to eight fifty
29:15
Speaker 3: for one day, But at that point America had only
29:18
Speaker 3: left the gold standard for nine years. It was only
29:22
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one, and so gold was still strong in
29:25
Speaker 3: people's minds. And in nineteen seventy one, leaving the gold
29:28
Speaker 3: standard was temporary, remember they said it was temporary. So
29:31
Speaker 3: it felt like America had to go back to gold.
29:36
Speaker 3: And then in twenty eleven we talked about it already,
29:38
Speaker 3: the Greek debt crisis, it felt like gold was coming
29:40
Speaker 3: back again. So, for reasons I've already explained, unless there's
29:44
Speaker 3: a full bone crisis, I don't see us going back
29:47
Speaker 3: to a gold standard because we don't use gold in
29:50
Speaker 3: that way anymore. No politician would volunteer it because they'd
29:54
Speaker 3: all bankrupt themselves. But if that narrative gets really strong,
29:58
Speaker 3: stronger than it is now, then that's another topic indicator.
30:02
Speaker 3: But I think that narrative has got a way to go.
30:04
Speaker 3: One narrative that you've talked about two or three times.
30:06
Speaker 3: You've mentioned the debt crisis, the inevitable debt crisis. That narrative,
30:10
Speaker 3: I mean, it's always around lurking, but it hasn't really
30:12
Speaker 3: got going in the goal bullmarket this time. So to summarize,
30:17
Speaker 3: I would say to use the American investors always like
30:20
Speaker 3: to do this. Which baseball innings are we in? I
30:24
Speaker 3: think as for physical gold, I would say maybe six
30:28
Speaker 3: of nine, maybe even seven.
30:30
Speaker 2: Thank you for adding of nine there. I appreciate it.
30:34
Speaker 2: I don't know what you're talking about.
30:36
Speaker 3: But for mining and silver, and I want to talk
30:37
Speaker 3: about silver in just a sect, but for mining and
30:39
Speaker 3: silver only three or four. Then the bullmarkets aren't as
30:44
Speaker 3: mature yet. I'm getting letters from my broker, emails from
30:47
Speaker 3: my broker every day. Such and such a company is
30:49
Speaker 3: raising money. Such and such a subscription is oversubscribed. These
30:52
Speaker 3: companies could not raise money a year ago. So that's
30:55
Speaker 3: a topic indicator in itself. In silver's forty six, it
30:58
Speaker 3: could quite easily all end. And with silver at fifty dollars,
31:01
Speaker 3: that's what i'm in. Twenty eleven, silver went to fifty
31:04
Speaker 3: three months later gold was exhausted. It could quite easily
31:06
Speaker 3: do that again. But if sil you know, fifty is
31:09
Speaker 3: the old high nineteen eighty, twenty eleven. But if silver
31:12
Speaker 3: goes through fifty, it could get silly.
31:15
Speaker 2: All right, let me ask you about seven thousand dollars.
31:18
Speaker 2: You and Charlie both having a target around there, and
31:20
Speaker 2: I know that the big investment banks are sort of
31:21
Speaker 2: slightly moving their targets up, you know, four thousand, little bit,
31:25
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera, as they do. How do you
31:28
Speaker 2: get there? How do you value gold? I mean, I
31:31
Speaker 2: know that people are always coming up with new ways
31:33
Speaker 2: to say, well, it's too low, it's too high, based
31:35
Speaker 2: on it relative to stock market capitalizations, relative to house prices,
31:39
Speaker 2: relative if there's relative to that, relative to how many
31:41
Speaker 2: suits you can buy, et cetera, et cetera. But how
31:44
Speaker 2: do you get to seven thousand? What is the valuation
31:47
Speaker 2: calculation there? Or are you simply putting your finger in
31:50
Speaker 2: the air.
31:50
Speaker 3: I'm pretty much putting my finger in the air. Charlie
31:52
Speaker 3: will be able to give you a metric. But I
31:54
Speaker 3: just I look at all those ratios, Like the gold
31:58
Speaker 3: to oil ratio is already done. Like gold is way
32:02
Speaker 3: over value competitive. It's like the most expensive relative to
32:05
Speaker 3: oil it's ever been. If you look at gold relative
32:08
Speaker 3: to the DOO, you know, the S and P to
32:10
Speaker 3: gold radio or the DOW to gold radio, it's got
32:12
Speaker 3: a bit further to go, you know. Still within this,
32:15
Speaker 3: like if you look at the long term ratio, there's
32:17
Speaker 3: like a confidence band around the ratio, and it's still
32:20
Speaker 3: within the confidence band, and at points of extremity at
32:23
Speaker 3: the ends of bull and bear markets, it goes beyond
32:25
Speaker 3: that band, so that that's still got a way to go.
32:28
Speaker 3: Gold to US and UK houses. It's expensive, but it's
32:34
Speaker 3: not nineteen eighty expensive, so that could still go. That's
32:36
Speaker 3: got a bit further to go.
32:38
Speaker 2: Now, listen, there's something else that you write about in
32:40
Speaker 2: the book when it comes to gold, about a possible change,
32:42
Speaker 2: because one of the things that we always say, in fact,
32:44
Speaker 2: you said the very beginning of the podcast, we're going
32:46
Speaker 2: to come back to silver. By the way I know
32:47
Speaker 2: you want to, we will come back silver. One of
32:49
Speaker 2: the things you said at the very beginning is that
32:50
Speaker 2: it's both really very useful for us a sort of
32:53
Speaker 2: wealth acceptable also absolutely useless because it's not in much
32:57
Speaker 2: a tiny bit of gold and every phone and that
32:58
Speaker 2: kind of thing. But we're really talking time, tiny quantities.
33:01
Speaker 2: And then the end of the book you have a
33:02
Speaker 2: chapter headlined will industrial demand change the future for gold?
33:06
Speaker 2: And you talk about that. So, just to set you
33:09
Speaker 2: up for this, at the moment, around fifty percent of
33:11
Speaker 2: annual gold demand comes from the jewelry industry and that,
33:13
Speaker 2: by the way, is also the store of wealth industry. Right,
33:15
Speaker 2: we bote lots of cultures and us as too. We
33:17
Speaker 2: buy gold jewelry for a resenter show off our wealth,
33:20
Speaker 2: but also to store our wealth crucial. So that's that
33:23
Speaker 2: another twenty three percent of investment demand, which is just
33:26
Speaker 2: a different kind of store of wealth demand. Right, it's
33:28
Speaker 2: investment demand and jury demand a kind of the same thing.
33:31
Speaker 2: Twenty one percent last year from central banks, and then
33:35
Speaker 2: just six percent industrial. But you begin to make the
33:39
Speaker 2: case here that that may change.
33:42
Speaker 3: Well, yes and no, I mean I pretty much industrial
33:46
Speaker 3: demand in the costry.
33:47
Speaker 2: I'm going to set you up for I'm not going
33:48
Speaker 2: to set you up for this stuff so beautifully. If
33:50
Speaker 2: you then say well, yes and no.
33:52
Speaker 3: The exciting story where the big growth in gold use comes,
33:56
Speaker 3: and it's quite nice and symmetrical and ironic if you're
33:59
Speaker 3: a store retailer is in outer space, and as we
34:04
Speaker 3: go further and further into outer space, we're going to
34:06
Speaker 3: need a lot more gold. They use gold to coat spacecraft,
34:09
Speaker 3: for the equipment, to coat astronauts' visors for the very
34:14
Speaker 3: reason we talked about, you can't destroy it, and when
34:17
Speaker 3: you're in out of space, you need something that you
34:19
Speaker 3: can't destroy. And so there is a huge potential industrial
34:23
Speaker 3: demand for gold as the outer space industry grows. But
34:27
Speaker 3: it's got to grow a lot bigger than it is
34:28
Speaker 3: today to have a meaningful impact.
34:31
Speaker 2: Okay, but it's fair, all right. You know, you talk
34:34
Speaker 2: about a little nanotechnology, and then there's rather interesting one
34:37
Speaker 2: a Canadian company you talk about here, totten Pass is
34:40
Speaker 2: called a permanent digital storage drive constructed from solid gold
34:43
Speaker 2: that requires no energy and has no movable parts. Digital
34:46
Speaker 2: data is written on the drive by the way of
34:48
Speaker 2: a protracted light diffraction process. This technology allows for the
34:51
Speaker 2: permanent storage of precious digital data, therefore eliminating any future
34:55
Speaker 2: dependence on the Internet. That sounds to be like a
34:57
Speaker 2: book just in gold.
34:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's kind cool, or your your bitcoin seed
35:03
Speaker 3: phrase or something, but yeah, very precious informat, or maybe
35:08
Speaker 3: just your holiday snaps.
35:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, what a waste of mine.
35:12
Speaker 3: Anyway, I think gold's future is exactly what it's past
35:16
Speaker 3: has been. Store of wealth. Demand for it goes up
35:20
Speaker 3: when everyone's worried, and demand for it decreases when everyone's happy.
35:25
Speaker 3: And I've told you this story before, but the expression
35:28
Speaker 3: put ten percent of your net worth in gold and
35:30
Speaker 3: hope it doesn't go up. I thought was an old
35:33
Speaker 3: Wall Street saying, and I googled it and it turned
35:36
Speaker 3: out the person who coined it was me, But.
35:38
Speaker 2: I thought it was me.
35:40
Speaker 3: Do you hear it of me? But it's a great saying.
35:42
Speaker 3: And I don't think it's a bad maxim to invest
35:45
Speaker 3: in gold buy.
35:46
Speaker 2: No, it's not. I mean we still say to everybody,
35:48
Speaker 2: whether you thought of it or I did, and I
35:49
Speaker 2: suppose I'll give it to you, you must have. We
35:51
Speaker 2: still say to people, hold wed a lot and hope
35:53
Speaker 2: it goes down.
35:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's insurance. That's gold is insurance. That's that argument.
35:59
Speaker 3: In five or two is time if you had one
36:01
Speaker 3: hundred pounds worth of gold or one hundred pounds, one
36:03
Speaker 3: hundred pounds worth of gold will buy you a lot
36:05
Speaker 3: more than one hundred pounds will buy you in ten
36:07
Speaker 3: years time.
36:07
Speaker 2: Of that, I'm sure, man, I think everyone would be
36:10
Speaker 2: pretty certain of that. Actually, even if even if gold
36:12
Speaker 2: were to have a massive price crash, we still know
36:15
Speaker 2: it's going to be worse than a pound in a decade, right,
36:17
Speaker 2: almost from that bit of misery you wanted to talk
36:19
Speaker 2: about silver.
36:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, this fifty dollars mark in silver, it's such a
36:24
Speaker 3: huge line in the sand. It was a high in
36:26
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty and silver went from fifty dollars all the
36:30
Speaker 3: way to three or four dollars, meander around there for
36:32
Speaker 3: twenty five thirty years. Then in the late part of
36:35
Speaker 3: the naughties it went back to fifty dollars again. Couldn't
36:37
Speaker 3: get through, and it went back to about ten dollars,
36:39
Speaker 3: and it's been creeping up ever since. Here we are
36:42
Speaker 3: as we speak, silver's forty five dollars, maybe forty seven dollars.
36:47
Speaker 3: Even it looks like it's about to test that fifty
36:49
Speaker 3: mark again. If you're a chartist and you like chart patterns,
36:52
Speaker 3: head and shoulders and all that kind of stuff, it's
36:54
Speaker 3: done a massive cup and handle pat pattern over the
36:57
Speaker 3: last fifty years. And a cup and handle pattern is
37:01
Speaker 3: a very bullish pattern. If it can break up above
37:05
Speaker 3: that fifty dollar mark, and if it does, it projects
37:08
Speaker 3: to a price of easily one hundred dollars an ounce.
37:12
Speaker 3: And so the big question is does silver get through.
37:15
Speaker 3: My guess is it'll fail at the first attempt and
37:18
Speaker 3: maybe get through on the third or something like that.
37:20
Speaker 3: But if it gets through it potentially catapults, and everyone
37:23
Speaker 3: gets so insane about silver and all these false you know,
37:27
Speaker 3: with solar panels, and it's going to be money again,
37:30
Speaker 3: and it's in every phone, it's every computer, and silver, silver, silver,
37:33
Speaker 3: And there's a shortage, and we haven't consumed the goal,
37:35
Speaker 3: but we've consumed all the silver, and the silver gold
37:37
Speaker 3: race is going to go back to the historical average
37:39
Speaker 3: of fifteen and all these arguments, and on the back
37:42
Speaker 3: of all of those silver could go to one hundred
37:44
Speaker 3: dollars quite easily, and that would be a major, major
37:49
Speaker 3: blowoff top and time to roll your gold and silver
37:52
Speaker 3: assets into something else. But I have to say I'm
37:56
Speaker 3: even tempted. If I was full out risk taker, I'm
38:00
Speaker 3: leaving all all my money on the table until one
38:02
Speaker 3: hundred dollars silver. That's that's the time to get out
38:04
Speaker 3: of precious metals. But the cautious dominic Frisbee, the wise
38:09
Speaker 3: money pincher, is like, take a little bit of your
38:12
Speaker 3: money off the table at fifty dollars.
38:14
Speaker 2: Let's go back to the ordinary retail investor, our ordinary
38:18
Speaker 2: listener who's been listening to us for a while and
38:21
Speaker 2: thinking I should buy gold. I should buy gold. I
38:23
Speaker 2: should buy gold, or should buy selver, maybe seven Press
38:25
Speaker 2: metals or god, maybe I should have some uranium and
38:28
Speaker 2: maybe leave that for another podcast. They haven't got any
38:31
Speaker 2: exposure to precious metals right now, what do they do.
38:36
Speaker 3: Well? The problem with bull markets is you never feel
38:40
Speaker 3: that you own enough of the underlying thing. And I know,
38:44
Speaker 3: you know that's the psychological thing. And so you know,
38:47
Speaker 3: even me overweight gold and silver, don't feel like I
38:50
Speaker 3: own enough gold and silver at the moment, and I'm
38:53
Speaker 3: looking around, So that in itself is a bad sign.
38:57
Speaker 3: I just think in order to buy and invest in something,
39:03
Speaker 3: you have to be persuaded of the story. So the
39:07
Speaker 3: first thing I would go and do is listen to
39:10
Speaker 3: podcasts like this, like you and I talking other people
39:12
Speaker 3: talking about gold. Read some books.
39:14
Speaker 2: Can't imagine which book would be suitable.
39:17
Speaker 3: But just read it and inform yourself, and try and
39:19
Speaker 3: listen to people who aren't insanely one way or the other.
39:24
Speaker 3: Try and listen to people who are sensible about their subject.
39:27
Speaker 3: And you know, the first thing I would do is
39:29
Speaker 3: literally educate yourself. And then if you're persuaded, as I say,
39:33
Speaker 3: I believe one hundred pounds worth of gold will buy
39:36
Speaker 3: you a lot more than one hundred pounds in ten
39:38
Speaker 3: years time, and so your first place to start is
39:42
Speaker 3: with physical bullion. Sovereigns are a good place to start
39:45
Speaker 3: because you don't pay that big a premium over the
39:48
Speaker 3: gold content. The capital gains free when you die. If
39:51
Speaker 3: you never sell them, you can you know, pass them
39:53
Speaker 3: on to your heirs. And it's money that is, it's
39:58
Speaker 3: unlike any other investment because it's outside of the system,
40:02
Speaker 3: and there's a beauty to that. Interestingly, I think Morgan
40:05
Speaker 3: Stanley put out a think they've gone from the sixty
40:08
Speaker 3: forty to sixty twenty twenty twenty percent gold. Did you
40:12
Speaker 3: see that? Yeah, that's a big evolution.
40:15
Speaker 2: Well, it's massive. I mean twenty percent is that you
40:18
Speaker 2: don't very often see, you know, establishment institutions telling you
40:22
Speaker 2: you'd have twenty percent of your portfolio in gold. I
40:25
Speaker 2: guess they've been listening to the podcast.
40:27
Speaker 3: They must have been. But to I mean, they've halved
40:29
Speaker 3: their bond allocation.
40:30
Speaker 2: I think more interesting is that they've got that. I
40:32
Speaker 2: don't know what the gold allocation was before, but I
40:34
Speaker 2: would say much closer to five, closer than nothing. Massive.
40:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that, and then once one bank does it,
40:40
Speaker 3: the others follow.
40:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if that means that there's an awful lot
40:43
Speaker 2: of wealth management portfolios that will follow that, you've got
40:47
Speaker 2: a huge level of demand coming through from retail.
40:49
Speaker 3: And what tends to happen in bull markets is is
40:52
Speaker 3: you see how much gold you get for your money,
40:55
Speaker 3: how little gold you get for your money, and you
40:57
Speaker 3: just automaticly think, well, silver's better value. People buy silver instead,
41:03
Speaker 3: and that's why silver sort of lags and then it leads.
41:06
Speaker 3: But I just don't think there's anything wrong with having
41:08
Speaker 3: even at these high prices. You know, high prices usually
41:12
Speaker 3: lead to higher prices. Goes against your instinct. Do you
41:15
Speaker 3: want to wait for a pullback? But then when there's
41:17
Speaker 3: a pullback, everyone gets scared and you don't buy for
41:19
Speaker 3: that reason, you don't catch the low. The normal thing
41:22
Speaker 3: that follows an all time high is another all.
41:25
Speaker 2: Time high until it doesn't one day.
41:28
Speaker 3: Until it doesn't. But does it matter when you've got
41:30
Speaker 3: physical gold unless you really need the money for something else.
41:34
Speaker 3: It's as good a way part your capital as anything else.
41:37
Speaker 2: All Right, I think we will leave it there dominant
41:39
Speaker 2: be Is there anything that we haven't mentioned that we
41:42
Speaker 2: really should have.
41:43
Speaker 3: We haven't talked about bitcoin, but we'll do that another day.
41:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not going to talk about bitcoin because this
41:48
Speaker 2: was our gold podcast. Good, So no bitcoin today, although
41:52
Speaker 2: I'll just tell me there's anything changed in your view
41:54
Speaker 2: on bitcoin.
41:55
Speaker 3: No, there's no buzz around it at the moment. The
41:57
Speaker 3: buzz is around gold and silver mining, and bitcoin is
42:01
Speaker 3: digital and gold is analog. It's gold is the most
42:04
Speaker 3: analog asset there is. It's physical and analog, and we're
42:08
Speaker 3: in a digital world where all the value is digital.
42:11
Speaker 3: But gold is pure wealth and people have It's inspired
42:16
Speaker 3: people to do some of the most amazing things in history.
42:20
Speaker 3: It's like the three great motivators of food, sex, and wealth,
42:24
Speaker 3: and gold is pure wealth. And people have discovered continents,
42:28
Speaker 3: they've taken incredible risks, they've made scientific breakthroughs. Incredible things
42:33
Speaker 3: have come about as a result of this greed for gold.
42:38
Speaker 3: But also terrible, terrible actions have been done as a
42:41
Speaker 3: result of this greed for gold. And there, I suppose,
42:44
Speaker 3: is the yes, another contradiction at the heart of this
42:48
Speaker 3: amazing metal.
42:49
Speaker 2: Tom Nic, thank you, that was absolutely fascinating.
42:53
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
43:03
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this week's Marin Talks Money. If
43:06
Speaker 2: you like our show, rate review, and subscribe wherever you
43:09
Speaker 2: listen to your podcasts, and keep sending your questions or
43:11
Speaker 2: comments to Merrin Money at Bloomberg dot net. John and
43:14
Speaker 2: I are super keen to have another question and answer session.
43:17
Speaker 2: You can also follow me and John on Twitter or x.
43:20
Speaker 2: I'm at Marinus w and John is John Underscore Stepic.
43:23
Speaker 2: This episode was hosted by Me Maren zumset web produced
43:26
Speaker 2: by Someersadia Moses, and sound designed by Blake Mabels and
43:30
Speaker 2: Aaron Caspers. Special thanks, of course, as usual to Dominic
43:34
Speaker 2: Frisbee and again go and buy Dominic's book. It's really good.