Addison:
Welcome to the Wiggin Sessions. This is your host, Addison Wiggin. We're still surviving and
thriving
in the
post pandemic economy. Today I have with me, Jeff Clark, a noted author, and a long time expert
on precious
metals, gold, silver, and platinum. Welcome, Jeff. It's funny, we were just remarking that we've
known each
other for a long time and have never met face-to-face. And the pandemic hasn't helped, but I've
known you for,
I
don't know, 10 years, at least.
Jeff:
Well, I read your book. One of them back in 2008, I believe, on the dollar.
Addison:
It was the Empire of Debt. That one got out there.
Jeff:
Yeah. That's it. So I've read that book. I've known you for a long time, and followed you, and had a
lot of
great
respect for you. So yeah, it's odd that we haven't met after all this time, so I'm glad we are.
Addison:
We're always in the same circles. That's for sure.
Jeff:
Yeah.
Addison:
One thing I do want to talk about today is your connection with the Hard Assets Alliance. But
before we
get
to that, I would like to get your views on the disconnect that's happening in the economy right
now. The
economy, as we're speaking right now. Unemployment benefits at the federal level or at least the
supplemental
have come to an end. That's going to have an impact probably on consumer spending. We just
pulled the troops
out
of Afghanistan. So there's kind of a concern. There's uncertainty over there. The economy at
large hasn't
shown
any signs of a real recovery since all the lockdowns are in place. There's confusion over
whether the Delta
variant is going to cause another wave of lockdowns, which we can scant afford at this point.
With all that
confusion, the stock market continues to go up. I wanted to give you an opportunity to fill us
in on your
point
of view on the macro vision of how the economy works.
Jeff:
And gold and silver continue to be weak in the midst of all that, which was surprising to some. But
how I look
at it
is, you probably know John Hathaway over at the Sprott.
Addison:
Yes, of course.
Jeff:
He manages the Sprott Gold Equity Fund. I just talked with him last month. And I said, "By the
way, what's
your
take
on all this? Why are gold and silver not higher?" Because there's a lot of very real issues
going on in the
world.
There's a lot of uncertainty. And it's uncertainty that normally drives gold and silver, right?
That's not
happening. I think to a large extent, his answer was, and I actually wrote it down. I thought it
was very
true.
He
said, "The biggest headwind is people are very comfortable with the current investment climate.
So until they
get
worried, they won't feel the need to look at gold." And I think that's true. As long as the
stock market is
going
up, right or wrong, good or bad, doesn't matter. If the stock market goes up, the mainstream
community, I
believe,
is going to remain invested there until they're compelled to come back to the gold and silver
markets.
I was at a conference in Vancouver right before COVID hit. So this would have been like January
of 2020. And
one of
the companies hosted a dinner for a bunch of analysts and I was there. And so I got to talk to a
bunch of
hedge
fund
guys. And the overwhelming answer for them when I asked them, what do you think about gold and
silver, and
mining
stocks. And they're like, "Well, that's good and fine. And there will be a reckoning someday."
It was very
interesting. These are mainstream hedge fund guys. And even they acknowledge that the system as
it is, is
unsustainable. It can't last this way, it can't go like this forever. They acknowledged that.
But they also
said,
"Look, we have to dance while the music's playing." Meaning they have to be where the returns
are right now.
They're
kind of like a company that has a quarterly report. They have to have good quarter reports every
quarter,
right?
They don't want to lose customers, they don't want to lose clients, capital. So they have to
report good
results.
So they are going to stay with whatever is working at the time, which right now is the stock
market. And so
they're
there. That's where all of them are. Now there's obvious implications there. You need to be
invested in gold
and
silver before the next event happens, right? And if all these guys go rushing to the exit door
and there's
thousands
of them, millions of them, and the door's this big, it's not going to work. There's implications
there. But I
think
that does, to a large extent, explain why the stock market keeps going up and why gold and
silver remain weak.
Until
they are forced to come over, back over to the gold and silver and mining stock market, that's
what we're kind
of
left with. And so we can look at all the different issues that are out there that could drive
them back.
And some people are going to say, hey, look, there's enough issues that gold and silver should be
flying
right
now.
Well, again, a lot of it is, they're going to stay over there until they're forced to. So when
that next
reckoning,
that next breakdown comes, however, you might want to describe it. I think that's when they'll
come over. And
by
the
way, I have some good information on that. I went back and looked at all the different runs in
gold and
silver,
the
different spikes. Silver especially, as your audience I'm sure knows, is very spiky. It tends to
be dormant
and
then
spike. It looks like a print out of an EKG machine. If you look at a lock, your price of silver,
right? It's
just
dead, and then it spikes. And then it's dead, and then it spikes. It's done that for 50 years.
So I went back
and
looked at all those, and the average run in the gold price is 40% before there was a major
correction. And the
average run in silver before there's a major correction is 150.4%.
And those runs, those spikes, they only last, on average, seven and a half months. So that's
useful
information
to an
investor because you know that, okay, first of all, it's not unusual for them to be dormant for
a period of
time.
And then they're going to go on a run. Then they're going to go on a spike. Whenever something
bad happens,
that's
what they do. This is history. This has been demonstrated over and over again for at least 50
years. So you
have
to
be prepared as an investor before that happens. Because if you just say, well, I'll wait like
these hedge fund
guys.
You say, I'll wait until they break out or whatever. Well then, it's too late. You have to have
your fire
insurance
before the fire. It's the same thing. If you wait, you're going to pay more, the price is going
to be higher.
You're
going to be uncertain as to when you should jump in. The premium is going to be higher.
Because when demand goes up, and demand goes up when prices run, it happens every time, the
premiums go up.
So
you're
not only going to have to pay more for a price, you're going to have to pay a higher premium as
well for
actual
bullion, if that's what you want. Same with the mining stock, those things will jump and they're
even more
volatile
than gold and silver. So the implication there is you have to be prepared for it. The first
thing is this is
normal.
The second thing is when mainstream comes back over, these gold and silver, this whole industry
will go on
another
run. That run will probably not be small, it'll probably be big. Again, 40% and 150% on average
for them. And
the
mining stocks of course have leveraged that. They go on a big run. So we have to be prepared for
that.
And here's the thing. It's coming. The next run is coming. Think about it Addison. When you wrote
your book
back in
2008, all the crises that were going on at the time. And here we are, however many years later,
we still have
crises
all the time. Every two or three years, there is a major crisis. Another one is going to come.
Especially when
you
throw in the fact of the irresponsible, monetary behavior of most central banks around the
world. The massive
deficit spending, the unpayable debt, the list goes on. I'm sure you've talked about it a lot.
Addison:
You would think that the pandemic was enough. Because generally those spikes come about when
there's
some
kind of exogenic crisis or something that happens outside of the market that makes people react.
But the
massive
government response from around the world, since it was a global pandemic, everybody went into
printing mode.
And that's another thing that has puzzled me about this, is that generally when central banks
are getting
trigger happy.
Jeff:
That's a good way to put it.
Addison:
They put a lot of money in the system that generally finds its way into hard assets. It finds
its way
into
real estate, it finds its way into precious metals, it finds its way into things like timber and
other
commodities that can hold their value over a long period of time. That hasn't happened.
Jeff:
Well, a couple things. First of all, it actually did happen in 2020. If you look at, gold sold off
and silver
in
March, along with the market, when there's a panic, when there's a waterfall sell off, sell
everything. When
there's
that environment, gold and silver are going to sell off. But if you look at when they sold off to
their high,
and it
only lasted five months from March to, I believe August. Gold rose 40%, it actually hit its average.
It rose 40%
in
five months. Silver rose 140% from March to August. So there was a response. I think investors again
got used to
it,
things calmed down, the stock market started going back up again. And that's where we're at today.
But the
second
thing is I just look at the environment and we're just right for some other type of event. And I'm
actually
nervous
about it.
Addison:
Right. One of the attitudes we use is that you can identify all of the things that are likely
to
happen.
Problems that arise in the market or the economy. You can identify a lot of the things that are
potential
disasters, right? It's the ones that you can't identify. The pandemic, the way that came in, it
just disrupted
everyone's lives. You could probably forecast that if you were an epidemiologist, but people
that are just
watching the market or trying to manage their own money, nobody would have predicted a global
pandemic. That
looks like it's not going to be over for a full maybe two and a half years. Like if you knew
that in March of
2020, that we'd still be under duress in the economy because of the lockdowns in September of
2021, nobody
would
believe you. I wouldn't have believed you. I'd be like, "No way. That can't happen," but it
did.
Jeff:
Actually, here's a good point about that. I went back and looked at all the crises that we've had
since the
'70s, and
roughly half of them were Blacks Swans. Roughly half of them weren't predicted. Nobody was out there
saying,
"This
is going to happen." Half of them were black swans. So you can't be prepared. And again, it's
buttressing that
fact
up with our current environment. When you buttress the fact that half of them are Black Swans with
the kind of
environment we have now, we're ripe for it. We really, really are. So when you put all that
together, it really
drives how compelling it is to own bullion right now, to have serious, significant exposure to gold
and silver
right
now.
Addison:
Yeah, and a fairly stable price.
Jeff:
At a fairly stable price, right.
Addison:
So would you say those Black Swans, like the pandemic, were sort of a 100 year outlier, but
the crises
between the 1970s and now, were they the genesis of the spikes that you're talking about in gold
and
silver?
Jeff:
Yeah. A lot of them were, yes.
Addison:
Yeah. Can you give a few examples of ones you're thinking about? Because gold had already
risen quite a
bit
after the tech crash leading up to 2008 and then it kind of fell with everything else, and it
wasn't until
maybe
2010 that it started going back up.
Jeff:
Right. I think it was, you could look at different things like the ... not a lot of people know
this, but the
invasion of Afghanistan back in 1979. I believe it was. Or was it 1980? Somebody out there will
know the exact
date
of that, but that actually led to gold and silver's ultimate spike. I think it might've even
been the day
before.
And then gold, silver just spiked big time. Nobody really saw that coming. And I forget the
guy's name. He was
reassuring, "We're not going to invade. We're not going to invade," and of course that's what he
did. It's
something
like that.
It's something that people aren't necessarily expecting and it happens. And if it's bad, that
usually leads
to
a rise
in the gold price and silver follows along. So I think my point is that half the time these
crises you don't
know
they're coming and you can't really prepare for them other than having a meaningful exposure to
gold and
silver.
Addison:
Part of what we're discussing is sort of group think. And this is one of the things I find
fascinating
about
markets in general is that when many people, many investors, individual investors hold an idea
in common, then
it's usually not true. It has no validity. And so I, just in the people that I correspond with,
the readers or
with different analysts and stuff, almost to a person, people are anxious and believe that the
market is going
to go down, and what does it do? It goes up.
Jeff:
Right, right. So they could be right for a while, but it's the old adage. You get too many people
leaning to
one side
of the boat and what's going to happen? So eventually there's a correction and an equilibrium is
established
again.
And there's usually an overshoot. That's why gold and silver shoot up so high in these runs if
there's an
overreaction. There's too many people on that side and they all come running back to the other side
of the boat.
Addison:
Yeah. Well also another way of describing it is what Jim Rickards calls the avalanche theory.
We know
that
there's a ton of global debt and we know that the economy is underperforming. We know that the
stock market is
over-weighted. We know a lot of the tension and pressure points that could lead up to something
happening
drastically fairly quickly. What we don't know is what's going to trigger it. And that's the
snowflake, the
final snowflake that triggers the avalanche.
Jeff:
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Addison:
And I think part of what we do as analysts is we try to figure out what that final snowflake
could
be.
Jeff:
The great thing is, in my humble opinion, Addison, you don't need to know what the snowflake is going
to be.
You just
need to know that there is an avalanche that's going to come. I don't see how we could escape
without an
avalanche.
And your portfolio's at the bottom of that hill, so you have to be prepared.
Addison:
Well, let's talk about portfolios. I think this is important for people to realize. It's
one of those
things
that you feel like you already know, but it's worth discussing over again. Let's talk about
the difference
between the physical bullion, owning coins, and this would apply to silver as well as gold.
Paper, which is
the
Perth Mint or something like that. Something that is backed by gold, but with a sort of
black box formula
behind
it. How much gold is really there? And then like ETFs and those kinds of things that you can
trade, like the
GLT.
You can trade that, and it goes up and down more or less in tandem with the gold price
itself. But
there are
nuances to owning each, and my preference is just to own bullion and do it through Hard
Assets Alliance,
because
that's the easiest way to do it. But, talk about the difference between the different forms
of owning gold
and
silver.
Jeff:
The main difference between owning the real thing and any kind of paper product is counterparty
risk. That's
your
main risk when it comes to bullion versus any type of paper product, whether it's an ETF, a
fund, whatever.
And
that's something I personally want to avoid. Gold and silver, gold especially is going to be ...
the buck
stops
there. The last man standing, the last person standing. So if you put it in the banking system,
well, you've
just
taken what is the most secure asset in the world and added a layer of risk to it. If things get
really bad, by
owning a paper product, you have exposure to the gold price. You can protect your portfolio with
exposure to
the
gold price, but you may need the physical metal to protect your actual lifestyle.
That's if things get bad, if things get really nasty and whatever the next crisis is, wherever
the blow up
is,
especially if it's a monetary one, you may need the actual physical metal at your disposal in
order to
function
for
a period of time in a society that's doing poorly or at risk. So why add a layer of risk to my
gold and silver
when
I can just own the real thing? And the great thing about Hard Assets Alliance, as you probably
know, is you
can
get
institutional pricing as a retail investor and store it at the same place as institutions do.
Even some
central
banks use it. So you're getting probably the best physical product you can get, and you've got
it out of your
house.
So I like having exposure to physical. And I think there could be a point where having price
exposure is not
enough.
You may need more than that. You may need the actual physical. So I could go into this in a lot
of detail.
I've
written a lot about it, but one of the banks that uses, that stores for GLD, I'll leave unnamed,
they have had
so
many legal problems so many accusations of fraud so many guilty verdicts of fraud that I look at
that and go,
"You're actually going to store your gold with this bank?" It's unbelievable to me.
So I've just added the counterparty risk, and now one of the worst banks to be accused of fraud
on top of
that?
No
thank you. I'm not going to do that. So I like avoiding the counterparty risk. Having price
exposure at
certain
points in time is fine, is good. That may be good enough, but given the environment we've been
talking about,
what
we think could very well be ahead. Again, you may need the physical, at least I'm personally
more comfortable
holding the physical.
Addison:
Well, that's an interesting thing because we've been writing about this for, jeez, I've been
writing
about it
for 20 years, and we get a lot of comments like, "I agree with you philosophically, but I don't
know what to
do
next." So how do you lead somebody through the process of not layering on risk or just getting
people to buy
bullion and be happy with holding it as effectively insurance against calamity?
Jeff:
I mean, you're right. I'm not trying to sell it, but Hard Assets Alliance is a very easy way to
do it. Just
open an
account and it's no different than opening a bank account or a brokerage account for that
matter. You open the
account, fund it just like you would a brokerage account and then buy, and then you have
physical metal that
you
can
take delivery on anytime, and it's whole products, it's not partial products. You're not buying
one small
piece
of a
400 ounce gold bar. You're buying whole products that you own, are in your name and in your
title. So you own
the
real thing. It's yours.
So that's an easy way to do it. I think why you need to own gold is a bigger discussion, but
that's what
we've
been
going over here, but I think it's easy enough today ... 20 years ago, it wasn't as easy to do
this. Hard
Assets
Alliance didn't even exist 20 years ago.
Addison:
Yeah, you're one of the original Alliance members.
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great concept and you have people that are ... and you probably know the
story behind
it.
There were some hedge fund guys. There were people even at Goldman Sachs and things like that that
wanted to buy
some physical gold and they looked around. And so these are smart guys, right? First of all, and
second of all,
they
were looking at the fact that, wow, there's a lot of risks out in the economy, in the market right
now. We want
some
exposure to gold. They couldn't find it. All they could find was a paper product. They go, "No, this
isn't good.
We
want the actual physical product." That was the birth of HAA. That's how it came about. And then
Alliance people
like yourself that came along and joined. So it's a great product because you're not just buying a
paper
product,
you're buying the actual physical metal, stored right along with institutional investors. So it's
great.
Addison:
Yeah. What do you make of Peter Thiel, his fund Palantir, investing in gold? He's one of the
early
investors
in PayPal, and Musk sold a bunch of Bitcoin as well.
Jeff:
Right, that's interesting, yeah. But then again, it goes to the volatility and people jumping in
and out of
it.
But
what's interesting is it's not getting reported a lot in the mainstream, but we are seeing
institutional
investors
increasingly taking a position in gold. And, of course, central banks are still net buyers of
gold, they still
are.
They're buying more this year, on pace this year, than they were last year during the panic of
COVID. So
there's
a
lot of support out there, on the institutional and central bank level, in gold.
And also, I'll point out family offices. So a family office, as you probably know, is a broker
who has just
10
clients, but they each have 10 million or 50 million or 100 million dollars to invest, and so he
just has
those
10
clients. And you're seeing a lot of family offices actually not only inquiring about gold, but
buying it.
We're
seeing it, HAA is seeing it as well. The usual investors are calling them instead of HAA calling
out to them,
so
there's a shift underway. It's not well well-known, especially in mainstream circles, but it's
happening. And
you
have to ask yourself why are these really smart people, with lots and lots of capital to invest,
coming to
gold
now,
a year after COVID first struck? Why are they doing that?
We're seeing sales at Perth Mint. At the US Mint, sales are higher now than they were last year.
We're seeing
withdrawals, by the way, from the Shanghai Gold Exchange. Withdrawals of gold are continuing to
rise, but the
withdrawals of silver have spiked this year already. They're already higher this year than they
were last
year,
again during the panic of COVID. The withdrawals of silver, physical silver, and that metal
doesn't come back
onto
the market.
So all of this is happening a year after COVID first struck, so you have to ask yourself why is
this going
on,
what
do they see? And they're hedging their risk, that's what I think they're doing.
Addison:
Against the rise of the stock market.
Jeff:
Exactly, exactly. I think the higher the stock market goes, the more critical it is that you have
a hedge.
And
maybe
the higher it goes, the bigger it's going to fall, right? The old adage, right? That might mean
you need more
gold
than usual.
We did a long-term study on how much gold is ideal for a portfolio. We went all the way back to
1968, the end
of the
London Gold Pool. We did a study on how much gold in a stock bond portfolio, so a 60/ 40 stock
bond portfolio,
from
then till now, what was the ideal mix of throwing gold into there? So we started throwing in
amounts of gold,
and
noticed that the return kept going up every time we added another 3% of gold to the portfolio.
And we found
that
the
ideal mix was 25% gold. So you would equally reduce your amount in stocks and bonds and yes,
gold does hedge
bonds
sometimes. There've been periods, crisis events, where gold has actually performed well and
bonds have not. So
yes,
gold can even hedge bonds.
Addison:
Well, that's definitely true when the central banks are driving down interest rates.
Jeff:
Exactly, right, right. So that long-term study showed that the ideal balance for your risk and reward
for gold
in a
portfolio is 25%, over the long run. So I look at that and go, "Well, I see more risks today than
normal, than
average, so maybe I need to have a greater weight to gold and silver." And that's not advice to
anybody, but I'm
just saying for me and my portfolio, and what I think is likely ahead, I want to be overweight gold
at this
point in
history. But anyway, that long-term study shows that.
Addison:
As long as I've been writing about it and reading about it, institutional investment in gold
has been
the
holy grail. Everyone always says once the institutional investors get involved, then they start
driving the
market up. But it also, at the same time that it's rising, adds more stability to the price.
It's less likely
to
show the characteristics of a spike, because it levels up rather than spiking.
Jeff:
That's a good point, yes.
Addison:
And it still feels like we're in the early days of that. There is some institutional
interest, and some
of it
gets reported. I think it was just kind of an anomaly, the Peter Thiel thing. Palantir's
investment in gold
made
a big deal because everybody views him as a tech investor. But maybe put it in terms of
percentage points, to
what extent do we want to see institutional involvement in the market? And I'm sure it depends
on each
institution, each bank or fund, but as an overall percentage of the gold market, how do we know
when we've
reached that point where the gold price is just going to level out at some higher point, instead
of viewing it
as a spike in the market?
Jeff:
What do we call the top, is that what you're asking?
Addison:
No, no. I meant if it's leveling up, how do we feel confident that it's not actually a
spike?
Jeff:
Oh, yeah, right. Well, because the price will be going up. And what I mean by that is demand. When
institutions
move
in, they have a lot of capital, as you know. That demand will drive the price higher, and it will be
sustained.
Addison:
Yeah. Well, I guess that's really the root of my question. For the average individual
investor who's
looking
at gold as a hedge against something going wrong in the market and losing a chunk of their
retirement or
something, what are the hallmarks of a sustained institutional involvement, versus just a rising
price on
speculation? Because we have seen spikes in gold and silver.
Jeff:
Yes. Silver especially is spiky. That's its DNA, it spikes, and then it gives most of it back.
Gold, you're
right, is
more sustained, it's less spiky, but it still can go on a run. I think if you see a spike in
gold, that might
be
an
indication that, okay, it could pull back and might cool off here and that sort of thing. That
may not be a
sustained thing. There could be an exception to that though, as I say that, because if you get
into some type
of
mania, like you had in 1979, it's going to run for a while. Most manias run for a year or so on
average.
But the more spiky gold is, I think that that's a clue to tell you that there could be a
pullback. The nice
slow,
steady rise in gold is probably from just increasing demand from large investors. And that's an
important
point
too,
by the way. I did a study about a year ago and I actually wrote an open letter to Warren Buffett
and said,
"You
need
to buy some gold," because he doesn't like gold, right? He did buy gold stock last year.
Addison:
He bought most of it.
Jeff:
Right, right.
Addison:
Bought the company,
Jeff:
I looked at the cash balance of Berkshire Hathaway, and then I looked at the balance value of all the
registered gold
at the Comex. And he could buy it all with less than 10% of his cash, the registered gold at the
Comex. So when
you
look at that fact... Now he's not going to do that, but my point is, he's certainly not the only
fund out there.
When you look at the hundreds and hundreds of institutional investors out there and how much capital
they have
and
then how small the gold, and especially silver markets are, when they start to come in, it's going
to be a
sustained, strong uptrend in the price. It's going to be big.
Addison:
Like you've been saying, you want to be in position before that happens.
Jeff:
Absolutely. I mean, that's what I've been doing. I bought gold this summer. I bought silver, I think
on three
occasions, just on these big down days that it's had. I want to accumulate. I'm still in
accumulation mode for
myself personally, so that's what I've been doing. I have a reasonable degree of confidence that
what's coming
is
going to be good for gold and silver and that'll be good if I own gold and silver.
Addison:
Yeah. Well, from where we are now, I won't quote a price because this will end up dating
itself. So
where we
are now with some institutional interests coming into the market, how high do you see gold and
silver going in
the relative short term... before a crisis hits?
Jeff:
The breakout levels are pretty well defined if you look at a chart. It's going to be gold's high
there, little
over
$2,000, whatever that high price was that it hit last year. And for silver, it's pretty clear that
the breakout
level is 30. So once you see the price break out from those levels, regardless of the reason, then
we're
probably
off to the races for both of them. A run to $2,500 gold would be completely unsurprising. A run to
$50 silver,
I'd
probably bet on it once it breaks through.
Addison:
And so that's consistent with the 40% spike and the 150 spike in both.
Jeff:
Yeah. Exactly. But again, they could be bigger. Back in the seventies, that spike in silver was over
700% in 12
months. So it depends on what's happening at the time, the environment, right. Why are people
buying, and the
bigger
the reason, the bigger the run.
Addison:
Okay. We've talked a little bit about Hard Asset Alliance. If I were interested, talk a
little bit
about how
easy it is, but then also what would be a good strategy. One strategy to use that we've written
about a lot is
just take a little bit month by month, make sure your account is funded, and then almost as if a
savings plan,
just put it in to buy gold and silver. Then you are well-positioned if calamity hits.
Jeff:
Right.
Addison:
That's kind of the advice we've been giving. I mean, we publish newsletters on all kinds of
things,
options
and long and short plays, all kinds of stock market advice. But as part of that, say 25%, gold
strategy, we
recommend people use Hard Asset Alliance and just take a portion of whatever you're investing
and tuck it
away.
And then you're kind of a dollar cap cost averaging yourself into a good position as insurance
against
something
really bad happening.
Jeff:
Yes. And that sounds like you're describing the MetalStream Program. I like that program because
it's an
automatic
investment thing. They'll automatically buy a certain dollar amount that you select of gold or
silver every
month at
the same time every month. It's a great way to, not just accumulate, but dollar cost average,
right? So that's
what
I've been doing. I have a comfortable amount. So I just jump in there and buy more when there's
a big down day
or a
big correction or something like that. That's what I do.
But I think this is the time to accumulate. There will come a day where it'll probably be too
late or you'll
be
paying a lot more. You want to be prepared before the crisis. So this is the time to be doing
that very thing
and
accumulating. I have my IRA at Hard Assets Alliance. It's great. It's easy. I really like it.
Again, it's
institutional pricing at institutional vaults. So it's been a great program for me.
Addison:
Yeah. I really like the MetalStream Program just because, as you said, you can sort of set it
and
forget it,
and you're working your way... Without even thinking about it, you're working your way into a
good
position.
Jeff:
And they have business accounts, trust accounts. They're one of the few out there, gold accounts that
you can
use as
a UTMA account. So that might be appealing to someone who's got grandkids or something like that
coming along.
So
they really have the complete package, they really do.
Addison:
All right, Jeff. Well, I do read your commentary that gets published at Hard Asset Alliance.
Is there
another
way that you'd like people to get in touch?
Jeff:
Well, I do work beside Mike Maloney at goldsilver.com as well. We do some videos together. I pretty
much do my
own
writing, but it shows up both at GoldSilver and Hard Assets Alliance. If someone wants to follow me
on Twitter,
they
can do that @TheGoldAdvisor. That's about gold and silver, but it's a lot about my own personal
mining stock
picks.
That's what people like there, so that's what that ends up being. But those are several way-
Addison:
We have a lot of readers that are interested in speculating mining stocks. When we hosted our
event in
Vancouver, there were a thousand people in the room all clamoring for mining and gas and oil
stocks and stuff
like that.
Jeff:
Right, right. It's fun. That's my training wheels as an analyst there at Casey Research way back in
the day. So
I
really enjoy it. It's fun. My portfolio did very well last year. So I've been buying a lot recently
on the
weakness
because the miners are, ugh, dramatically undervalued regardless of how you compare them to gold, to
the
S&P, to
their own price history, to the amount of free cash flow they have right now. They're dramatically
undervalued.
Addison:
Yeah. The way I've been viewing that is that, especially during the pandemic, people have
just been
overweight and over interested in technology. Technology is everything. So it's biotech because
of the
vaccines.
It's a new technology for making your life easier in your home because everyone's stuck there.
They see what's
in front of them and they're like, "Oh, that looks like a good investment, and then they start
poking around.
They're not looking for mining stocks.
Jeff:
No. But I do.
Addison:
But mine stocks move because that's where all the stuff that comes from to make those
things.
Jeff:
Yeah. And look how small they are. If you looked at just the primary silver miners, just their market
cap, it's
smaller than the cash balance of Apple. So Apple Computer could buy every single share of every
single primary
silver producer and still have cash leftover. So again, it's back to your idea of when institutional
investors
come
calling, when they come flooding in, it's going to be dramatic. It really will be. I'm betting on
it. Let's put
it
that way.
Addison:
Yeah. All right. Well, Jeff, it's good to finally meet you face to face even if over
Zoom.
Jeff:
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like I said, I've been a big fan, Addison. It's great to meet you finally. So I'm
sure we'll
meet
at a conference or something. I'll be at a conference called the Silver Symposium later this month
too,
actually. So
I'll be speaking there if anybody wants to check that out.
Addison:
Yeah. Where's that being held?
Jeff:
That's in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. It's at the very end of the month. I think if you just search for
Silver
Symposium,
it'll pop up there. That's going to be a lot of fun. They're kind of revitalizing the old Silver
Summit idea,
bringing that back again. If you like silver, that'll be a fun event.
Addison:
Great. All right. Well, thanks again, and we'll talk to you soon.
Jeff:
Great, Addison. Thank you, man. Let's do it again.
Addison:
Okay.
