[Music] [Music] I'm Charlotte McLoud with invest.com and here today with me is Le CEO of independent Speculator decom thank you so much for being here always glad to be on the show with you sh yeah really good to be catching up with you in person after our last conversation back in I think November so this time around we're we're here at v i and where I thought we could start is with one of your you're on stage a number of times today but with your your presentation this morning
which was very well attended it's about the Trump trait and I think as we sit here literally on the eve of inauguration day that's that's a topic that everybody wants to hear about so what could you tell us about that so the short version is you know whether you love Trump or hate him the one thing I think everybody can agree is he's an agent of change right to put it nicely if not of chaos so you know this might happen that might happen there'll be tariffs there'll be responses to the teror who knows how all
that will play out what we do know is that there will be disruption that there will be volatility so you want to brace for volun ility gee this isn't a great Revelation Lobo how's that really helping us and where I went with this was really something that my mentor Doug Casey taught me you know from early on is and that's to make volatility to your friend and you know one way of looking at this is you know who knows what will happen X Y or Z but if there's something that for besides the immediate term besides the
short-term volatility there's something you want to own then that volatility can give you a buying chance like if if you're in a gold and there's some great Gold stock that you always wanted and it's gone up because Gold's been at nominal all-time highs well you know we saw gold wobbled significantly after the election so depending on what Trump does on day one and week one month one we could actually see big volatility in gold and that could give you a chance to back up the
truck for that stock that you missed um things like that that that's how I see that you know Trump you know he's going to do this people say he's going to do that you maybe he will who knows what the consequences will be but the one thing we do know is that he's going to upset a lot of Apple carts and like Doug teaches us volatility can be our friend yeah I think that's a good one to go into just ahead of what's happening tomorrow and I think it it works there's going to be a lot of things happening
and hopefully we have you back to to talk after Trump has been in office for a little while longer and we have a a clearer picture so good to get that for now though so I I also want to get your help on another current event unpacking the recent CPI data that we got so a lot of talk about core CPI and and seeming optimism around that but you're talking your weekend newsletter about how essentially that's that's a cherry-picked way of looking at the numbers so what are let me jump in is
Cherry pit that that's BS I mean really I mean the core rate the supposedly more important core rate it came down by one1 of 1% like the smallest Notch that it could possibly Notch is what it came down but if you look at the chart it's flight line I mean it went up you know it's not going anywhere that's your definition of sticky inflation it's multiple months it's just going sideways the noise in the last print it could have easily been you know a half of a tenth would have been rounded up the
other way right so it's I'm not big on conspiracy theories but it's hard to see a situation like that where the headline number goes up you know CPI the FED says that they care more about pce that's the preferred measure and you know and they look at you know like super core you know all this stuff but at the end of the day and pile said this in his last conference the goal actually remains CPI that is the inflation number and they're supposed to get that number down to 2% they may care
about the other ones but the goal is to get CPI down to 2% and it's been doing this since last September like how do you ignore that and focus just on this really insignificant movement fluctuation in the so-called core rate so the headlines should have been core remains stubbornly you know you know sticky and headline CPI Rises that would have been a more honest headline so it's it's it's hard for me to see this as an accident where just about everybody says Oh yay cor CPI went
down how do how you know it's understandable why uh you know what what was it Hillary's phrase you know the undesirables it's it's understandable why the undesirables don't trust the media when this is the kind of reporting we get so I I don't mean to rant but the the takeaways here are that inflation is sticky this matters as Commodities investors as metals and Mining people you know this matters that sticky inflation is bullish for Commodities it's particularly bullish for you know
the key industrial uh metals like copper and one more thing they will say oh it's just a bump on the way down to 2% that would be more credible if it was just in the US and everybody else was still beating inflation but it's not we've seen an uptick over the last couple months around the world in Del leading economies so I don't know if you've interviewed Michael Howell with his Global liquidity thesis it's like ly Alden with her fiscal dominance thesis all of these things to me seem related
so you know the fact that governments around the world responded in similar ways and the fact that we're seeing this Resurgence and inflation around the world makes it very difficult for me to accept that oh this is just a bump on the road for the us and we're headed for 2% easy peasy you know I think the FED is in trouble yeah yeah and of course I was going to ask you to extrapolate on what does that mean for inflation which we've talked about now and the FED moving forward in 2025 so in trouble what do what does
that look like it looks like you know if I'm right and if inflation is going to continue going back up then they really should according to their principles they should be raising rates uh that's not what they're guiding they're talking about maybe posit a little bit longer maybe you know there won't be as many rate Cuts as as previously anticipated uh you know I'm not the only one who to suggest that there might be hikes on the table but it's not coming from the Fed
so it's it's not just that they're stuck because they gave this guidance though I think that is an issue and I think for Powell and his legacy if he has to flip and go back to raising rates after kind of taking a Victory lap and we're on our way to 2% and you know uh I think that's a problem for him but let's say he's man enough to say yep I made a mistake I'm going to have to flipflop you know he he doesn't want to be Arthur Burns he wants to be Paul vulker but he's he might have to do an
Arthur Burns here and and uh let's say he does that what does that do to the federal budget you know we've got Elon and Vic who want to trim trillions of dollars for the federal budget that you could almost say what good does that do when the debt payments are already more than the military spending the debt payments are already a trillion dollars and they're going like that they're going vertical uh so if po has to raise rates to fight inflation again you know that that is a rock and hard place you
know it'll be really interesting to see what they do now now maybe oh that's the other thing is is poell has also stressed how well we have you know historically low unemployment well a that's not true if you look at the the new unemployment number it looks like that but they're comparing to 50 years ago when the number was closer to what we now call the U6 number which is twice almost the current unemployment rate right so they're saying that we have this historically low unemployment number how
how does Powell tell the US and the world that no we're going to ignore higher inflation even though we said 2% was goal number one uh because we're worried about the labor market which is their other mandate which is that historically no unemployment numbers like those things don't fit if unemployment was Skyrock well then you know he'd get a j j a get out of jail free card um now we have an excuse but as long as they're maintaining this fiction you blow out job report oh yeah
everything's fine on the unemployment front then how does he how does he raise rates and if he doesn't you know we got 1970s all over again we got Rising inflation we're not I mean Rock meet hard place I think that's exactly what the Fed is right now um very interesting for anybody invested in anything real Commodities large but I think particularly for monary medals right and yeah let's take a look at gold so gold liked what it saw seemingly on on Friday we got back above 2700 of course we don't know what we're
going to see tomorrow we have Trump coming in but but any any thoughts on Gold's path forward in 2025 what can we say yeah well I I'm very bullish uh as you know from our last interview I'm still uh sticking with my copper as being my top bet for 2025 but that doesn't mean I don't like gold or silver anymore I just see more potential uh upside there and and think about it you know gold did fantastic in 24 pulled a hockey stick right to ask for gold to do another hockey stick
after that and that's a big ask right so but that's you know so it's it's difficult for me to say you know just raah rahah for for for buy by byy gold because you know when when we're at that kind of level that said these things that we're talking about are and should be very bullish for gold which gives which gives rest a really interesting thing right now like right now as we're speaking this this thing that you mentioned gold responded positively to CPI that's the opposite of
what's it been doing for years because gold doesn't pay interest right so if if anything that smacks of higher inflation you know it hints that the FED will be tighter which is seen as bad for gold but that's not what happened this time and it wasn't just this time we saw the same thing with PPI and you know the the labor report too it's really interesting to see gold in the last couple weeks has started acting like an inflation hedge should now it's not enough of a track
record for me to say yeah Gold's going off to the moon and especially again after the hockey stick last year I I I hate to be the ran on the prey but you know that's my thing um but it's very bullish I it's really interesting and if in fact these Comics Traders and E people who sell gold every time there's High inflation if they got the memo that no gold actually is an inflation hedge and you know these higher inflation prints are bullish for gold if if that's what's happening
now it's hard not to get pretty excited about gold this year okay okay so maybe but and by the way silver trans gold so okay okay and in that case gold and silver stocks are they on the shopping list currently yes they are but I think and people might have been cheering what I just said and to give them a chance to throw Rotten Tomatoes at me here I got to say I mean you've probably heard it from my mentors you know raik and Doug over the years about how you know silver is such a tiny Market when when the market
decides to allocate there we get stupid valuations or Doug's famous phrase about it's like the contents of the Hoover Dam trying to fit through a garden host right we've been waiting for this flood tide to raise all the ships um we have data now from 2024 where gold hit nominal alltime high after nominal all-time high and the stocks basically did nothing I say basically I should maybe say on average did nothing that's much more accurate and that's important because the better stocks actually did
well if you were a stock picker and you had the right ones in your portfolio you did much better than gold did okay maybe not as well as Nvidia but that's a whole another thing right uh but there were also companies that failed to deliver that had political problems operational problems margin problems that didn't make good use of the higher gold situation that we were in and so actually I think the markets worked fairly well the better operators got rewarded the you know the more successful discovers the people building
their minds on time on budget and so on they did well they did great the ones who didn't deliver didn't do so well you lump all those together on average the stocks did nothing so the answer to the question is you know I'd like to believe that oh Rising tide and everybody get excited you know we could see $3,000 gold this year and what headlines would that generate and you know if the rising tie lifted All Ships you wooo uh uh you know the it should be great but the immediate data that we have from 2024 is
that didn't happen and we had records and you know silver h a 12E High not all-time high but still 12E high and and the rising tide didn't not with doll ships so sorry dear audience what I'm saying is right now the evidence is that we are still in a stock Pickers Market I wouldn't buy an ETF and I wouldn't just buy the whole sector I'd be very careful about which stocks I picked yeah well I know I know you're typical riging on the parade person but I've heard from a number of people over
the last week or so not just here about you know this whole Rising tide lifts all boats in Gold idea and and people seem to be thinking okay maybe even moving forward when we get $33,000 gold or something that's just something that won't happen this time what do you what do you think about that well that's kind of what I'm saying it's always happened before so that's the expectation that it will but what if it doesn't let me put it this way my friend in Mentor Doug Casey is famous for say many things but
one of his sayings was that you these crappy little mining stocks are the most volatile Securities on Earth and that's why we like them they you know these huge swings can make fantastic profits from lows to highs by low so high and so on but we live now in a world where you know Bitcoin can fluctuate more in a day than gold will in a year um so in a market like that if you're a gambler and you're chasing momentum you know why bother with you these crappy mining stocks when you can you can in a
day or in a week make the money it might take you a year to make with mining stocks so I'm not saying that Bitcoin is eating gold as much be very clear about this I'm not saying you know gold 2.0 has rendered gold 1.0 upset that's not what I'm saying I'm saying that in terms of Market momentum of Manas with other things going on in the world and some of them being even more volatile than mining stocks maybe this time is different that regard you know we we'll see I I'm not saying it won't happen I'm
just saying I wouldn't bet the farm that it will happen therefore I want to pick the stocks that I think have the right stuff you know whether or not the rising tide of the S ships okay okay thank you for making that point clear so as as you said now as you said in November I think everybody knows that for 2025 the highest confidence trade is copper so I told you I would bring more more copper questions and I know you're just now Fresh Off The Copper out panel here so I think first and foremost you said during
the previous conversation we had you weren't rushing out to buy copper stocks although it's the highest confidence trade so is it time now to start picking them up well I was close to pulling the trigger in December actually there was you know that copper was down some of the stocks were down you know great companies making money nothing wrong with it you know and it copper dipped under four bucks which I mean come on it's not like 07 cents in the 1990s it's four bucks it's not a bad price but the
stocks were down and I was tempted in fact I had an idea to sell puts on one company and the stock dropped so much that before I could act it was already at the price at which I would have been put but I didn't pull the trigger because we've got Trump shock incoming you know as we're recording you know we literally have Trump tomorrow we we'll see what he does with his executive orders and I remember the last time he did this um copper took it on the chin mining stocks were at large had a bad
year in 2017 when Trump you know really ratcheted up the trade let's not say trade work but you know the trade friction with China uh that was bad for Industrial Minerals it wasn't no great for gold either either it was it was a rough start to 2017 and you know the P doesn't have to repeat itself you may or may not even much I don't know but but that data tells me to be very cautious about assuming that copper will go like this and the funny thing is though that despite this Copper's actually had a
pretty good start to the year it's uh up to 414 I think today so you know not a huge move but I think a 5% will or so from the recent low and in the face of incoming tariffs and disruptions and who knows what will happen and oh and by the way the retaliation to the tariffs uh you know it it's interesting so the answer to the question is I don't know what's going to happen but there's a sub there's a significant chance that near-term volatility will create really great buying
opportunities so if I could buy something that I like now and get it for 20% 30% off next week why would I do that now now the flip side will be well you know like why would I not wait well the answer would be well what if it's 20 or 30% higher next week I don't I I don't think that'll happen like if the if there's less disruption here than I expect I think we may see a more steady increase over the year ahead I I don't see anything coming out of the White House that's going to send you know
copper to five bucks the next day or something that that's just incredibly unlikely so I'm I'm I'm weighing the odds and I think the odds are that I'll get there's there's there's a reasonable shot at really great shopping opportunities in the near term and then we'll see what the tariffs are what the responses are what this specifically implies for each metal you know does Trump exempt copper because it's a critical minor he could do that right we don't know so so we'll just see
um so but don't get me wrong right so I'm I'm I'm I'm waiting I'm hoping for this buying opportunity and if I don't get it I miss the bot boohoo you know those still be tons of money to be made over the year ahead and frankly in Copper many years ahead the supply constraint is so huge so intractable I I've said this before I think to you they know I see this as actually like a multi-decade thing and I've been waiting actually for a couple years to deploy into this and I
think that we're getting there now so I'm pretty excited okay this is the Lobo equivalent of pounding the table you know that you don't give it yeah yeah this is pretty pretty excited for for you so all right so copper I was going to ask you you know when would you know that it's time to buy which I think we've covered so I know I know you don't name names but can we talk about what types of copper stocks interest you could be you know what stage or other other contributes well you know partly it
depends on your your own marching orders your own investment time Horizon your risk appetite and so on but I think it's it's interesting that the biggest and the best in the space are are relatively on sale I said Copper's had a good start to the year but it's not soaring or anything and many of these stocks are well off recent highs so that's that's I can't quite call it a no-brainer but it's it's kind of close if you're bullish on copper and the best names in
the business like you know who knows which Little Junior is going to make a big discover nobody knows that not even Rick R not even Doug Casey certainly not me right that that's a much more if rather than when question but if you have a a continuously profitable producer that has growth on tap or maybe has made a new acquisition and and it goes on sale your risk for that is very small now maybe it doesn't have 10 bagger potential if it's a big company but you know I'll take a double
or a triple with much less risk you know rather than swinging for the bleachers on a 10B all the time so I think that's the easy answer is you know look for great companies for on sale now the next thing would be you know that I love the pre-production swees up so if there is somebody that's been moving the copper project along and now they're close to that that would be really interesting to me and then I'm you know I'm very risk averse I don't like generally speaking prediscovery exploration but if there's
somebody moving a copper Discovery along I think in this day and age that's really important this is really one of the main takeaways from the copper panel we just had here at the show was that you know the majors this consolidation the there's a lot of m&a going on these companies are buying each other out that doesn't bring any new copper to the market you know me you know company a buying Company B doesn't produce one more pound of copper it just gets rid of some GNA um so you know we haven't had enough
investment in the space we haven't had enough discoveries permitting is extremely difficult where's the new copper going to come from and now I know that Discovery is hard this is the hardest part of the game the early part of the Lan curve that's that's the trickiest but I think we're going into a stage where that is so necessary we need these new discoveries and there we just don't have them that for the people that can deliver that there's going to be big money to be made there okay and I think
I think I've got one more question on copper and this is uh price price in 2025 you mentioned we're off to a good start for the year who knows what's really going to happen but you know there's this idea Dr copper it's the Bell weather for the e does that does that still hold your is that kind of an old yes well it so that's good news and bad news you know the bad news is if you see weakness in the global economy which we do you know the Europe is in all kinds of trouble uh China miraculously
somehow pulled off its Target of 5% growth at the end of 2024 they say but we also know that in that last quarter there's a whole bunch of you know the the trade deficit went huge because of all these people trying to front run the Trump tariffs and things so who knows how much China's economy was goosed by Chinese companies trying to get ahead of those tariffs and things I don't know but be that as it may you know 5% is half of what China's growth used to be and you know they you know they've had
stimulus after stimulus it's if a western country had 5% growth we'd be cheering champagne right yeah but for China that's kind of like me you know not so bad right so you look around the world and there's plenty of reason to be concerned about Dr copper the the answer to this in my view and I think this is why I was wrong about the undeniable recession in 2024 is ly alden's fiscal dominance the the fiscal policy and we see this in China it's happening in Europe too it's
happening in the US you know those money helicopters that liquidity that Global liquidity is there um so here's the thing I think that makes copper go up this year and copper is still relatively cheaper than gold or silver or uranium my other favorite Ms that's why to Copper is my top pick but you'll need to be careful again this Rising tide thing um in that world Copper's going up but so is energy costs so is your steel your tires everything it takes to mine and stuff is going up
too so you're still going to want to be a stock ER I think here in other words just because the metal goes up doesn't mean the companies will be any more profitable you've got to pick the best ones yeah you it seems like that's that's certainly a theme for for this year ahead okay we're getting toward the end I will I'm going to throw in one question on uranium as well just because I was thinking back to this time last year there was a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about uranium at this
conference and you unfortunately for some people accurately rained on on that parade so I'm curious about your your approach to uranium right now and also how your exposure to the sector has changed over time so when we had that moment last year were you were you selling some uranium stocks at that time How would how has that changed no I didn't sell at that time I did sell some U but because it was the time to sell the story it wasn't because of the market or the price I added some as well you know I
bought the dip and I'm looking to buy the dip more okay so this is me being really excited here um the demand story has been there all a along and it's been ratcheting up all along but lately it just seems like man it's gone from every week there's some new source of demand for Uranium to almost like every day like every day I see some story or in some new design something gets approved some countries moving ahead it's just wow and at the same time you know a difference between a year ago
and now a year ago he had just gone up to 106 we had a hockey stick and it wasn't rocket science for me to say Hey you know a building for correction here wouldn't be a surprise now we've had the correction and the demand hasn't gone away the corrections already in and here's here's the thing that it's not just oh it's gone up so correction is likely it's gone up and it incentive new production people started bringing mines out of mothballs they started building
projects with low costs so there was reasonable actually for investors in the market to say well maybe as Rick rule says high prices are curing high prices it was reasonable people to say well if all this low hanging fruit gets picked maybe we'll have too much uranium the next year or something maybe we'll overdo it well that was reasonable a year ago today that's not reasonable basically everybody is delayed find over budget or under producing uh the big question really is uh our friends here in Canada
who promised two big ramp ups with high output and we the report card is yet to come in on exactly how that's going but basically everybody else even in Kazakhstan the world's largest and lowest cost producer officially moved the goalpost they were tired of missing their target so they move the target so they wouldn't have to miss anymore you know and and other companies in the US and around the world in Australia they've been delayed they've been behind they're like well we'll only
produce this much this year as we ramp up and so on so this is important you know it was reasonable a year ago to say well gee all these miners they're mining more they're bringing these Minds back up online but now we can say almost all of them have run into trouble it's not happening or it's not as much and not as fast as everybody feared meanwhile the demand just keeps going like this you know not not to put everything back on Trump again or anything but if he does end the war in Ukraine as he said he would in 24
hours maybe not 24 hours if that happens and Ukraine remains an independent country they've already contracted to build a score of new reactors I mean they they're really gungho all of Eastern Europe is so we could actually then see those plans for a whole bunch of reactors not just in China not just in bricks but in Western allies moving forward so it's it's really exciting I mean I as I always say absent a major nuclear incident um it's it's hard to see anything in the
resource sector that looks less or looks sorry looks more certain to me the the only reason why uranium is not my top pick for this year the way copper is it's because copper is relatively cheaper you know uranium at 75 80 bucks you know that's that's not the bargain based so but the probability of it going up I think is extremely high and again the better companies that are actually doing it building their minds on schedule or on budget or you know meeting their targets I think they're
going to be rewarded and not somewhere not inevitably not imminently I mean this year and okay one more one more go ahead what what would what could possibly be we've had so many Supply demand side factors piling up what what could possibly be that upboard trigger for Uranium yes well the restarts are a big deal you know Japan has been working on that the thing about a restart as opposed to say oh we approve a new small modular reactor design it's just a design it'll be 10 years before somebody builds one
and you know when will they stay but the restarts they create immediate demand so that is something that's happening now you know even the US is looking at even the US is looking at restarting that plant or that reactor at Three Mile Island like that's a that's such a jaw-dropping event for something like that true sign of the time so so a revamping of the restarts is a big deal uh peace in Europe would be a big deal um you know Europe's largest nuclear power plant is idled right now you start
that up again and that's a a substantial source of demand there uh but there's also supply issues like I was saying you know company after company has been reporting delay or cost overruns or just flat out you know slashing of of guidance of how many pounds are going to be able to to bring to the market as they start up so I'm not sure that's really priced in yet I mean I'm I'm looking at spot prices down and I'm thinking you know somebody hasn't gotten a memo here I mean
it the if if anybody was worried about a flood of supplying they shouldn't be now Okay Okay so we've got still a number of things to to keep an eye on all right I'll I'll wrap it up there unless you had any final thoughts that you want to share yeah just one more thing on this Trump trade this isn't really the trade but I think everybody should remember that only Boolean physical gold and silver that you can hold in your hand it's not a speculation it's not an investment it's insurance it's safety
it's physical wealth that you can belong with no counter party risk no short right and in volatile times that's not a bad thing to have some allocation to that safety okay I think a good place to wrap up on thank you very much for the time really good to have you here thank you sh of course and once again I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing news.com and this is loo crate thank you for watching if you like this video make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to our Channel we'd also love
to hear your thoughts so leave us a comment below [Music]
Post a Comment