I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is Grant Warden, a retail investor and returning guest to the New Orleans Investment Conference. Thank you so much for being here. Great to have you. >> Yes, nice to be here. Thank you so much. >> Really good to have you here. And we're we're doing something a little bit different this time. you had approached me yesterday thinking that maybe a retail investor approach might be a good perspective to have on the channel. So,


we're going to we're going to see what we can talk about today. I thought maybe we start with a brief introduction to yourself and any takeaways you can share from the conference so far. >> Absolutely. Thank you so much. Yes, I did stop by because I've been to this conference and some other ones and been admiring you and the work you've done on this channel for years and years. But what I realized, of course, is for other retail investors out there is that you're talking to people who are money


managers and analysts and economists and people who are really in this business full-time, but I thought it would be helpful to share with your viewers a retail perspective, someone who's just another investor out there like they are. So, my experience really started about 5 years ago when I got introduced to alternative investments in general and specifically precious metals and mining. It's not for everybody, of course, as we know, and that's something that has been repeated from many of your


guests on this channel, but specific to this conference, this is a a great introduction for people who maybe are thinking about the precious metal space or mining in particular to come here and learn about some of the fundamentals, the drivers. And getting the exposure to the speakers here is tremendous because they do have the insight. But I think that it's it's nice to understand what someone like me is doing because other people can resonate with with that and understand it. >> So what was the trigger for you? You


mentioned you you started to look at alternative investments, precious metals about 5 years ago. What made you think this is something that I need to do? >> Well, part of it is because I do have a finance background. I was a financial planner for many years, but learned all about stocks and bonds and and that was really it. So everybody out there watching this knows that if you go to your mutual fund company online, you can't even get gold and silver typically. Maybe within an ETF, but a


lot of these alternative investments are not available. So diversification is something you learn about in day one of financial planning school or economics and college or something like that. And regardless of the industry that you're in or the asset class that you're in, you always want to focus on diversification. So I was thinking there must be something out there more than just stocks and bonds. So what is it? But I think the key driver for me Charlotte was really the debt. That's something


that a lot of people here have talked about. It's been going on for many years. Anybody who's seen a chart of the money supply realizes that we're on a completely unsustainable path. And it's amazing to me that the word unsustainable has doesn't mean anything anymore. We we've become completely desensitized to that. But uh just Jim Biano was speaking just 10 minutes ago when I was listening to his talk and he showed a couple graphs about the current debt and the projected


debt and it's something I think is really going to drive this country in the ground. >> So you you started to hear and learn about this and you thought all right I need to I need to do something. I'm wondering when you started to look at getting into gold and silver how did you approach it? because I think you're right that sometimes the people that I speak to or that you hear from at these events start at a pretty high level and they assume that you already know how to do that. So, how did you really start to


do it? >> Yeah, that's a great question. I'll give kudos to a couple of the people, both of whom are here and both of whom honestly I I met last night in person at at the bar. So, it was it was a wonderful evening. The first one is Mike Maloney from golds.com. Mike is a legend in this business as you know, been around for 50 years doing this and for those of you who haven't checked him out online, please check out his channel on YouTube. He does videos all the time and I've learned so much


from him about several things like the difference between money and currency. He talks about this and had to correct somebody yesterday as a matter of fact because we don't print money, we print currency. He talked about how to value everything in gold. This was a real gamecher for me and maybe for some of other others of you watching out there is as an American, I've always measured everything with the US dollar being my benchmark. But when you flip that and you look at how other asset classes are


valued relative to gold as the benchmark, it explains things like how the US dollar has lost 99 whatever percent of its pings purchasing power over the last you know so many years really since 1971 since we went off the the gold standard. So that's one person Mike Maloney. The other one is Adam Tagert. He runs wealthy on and thoughtful money. Hopefully some of you know him as well. If not, check him out. And what Adam has done, I think, is he has really democratized this industry in a way where he's given so much exposure


to retail people like me to a lot of insiders out there just like what this conference does and what you do as well is you bring these experts to uh explain the insights and the the mechanism and the plumbing of the financial system because most retail investors don't really understand that. So, I could go on about lots of other luminaries here, but those two are one of my favorites. >> I think those are those are two great ones to mention. I really enjoy both of them as well. And I wonder if you can


talk a little bit more about your your macro views on the economy. I think one of the things we were talking about before we turned the cameras on is how your average person can can really feel what's going on in terms of inflation, etc. And maybe maybe again some of the the people who are experts in this sector they're they they might be a little bit above that. >> They are. I think so too. My macro view is pretty pessimistic. Honestly, a lot of that is predicated on the debt as I


mentioned earlier. But in general, there's a lot of talk out there in circles like this about things like shadow stats, not the real statistics the government provides, but there's really a separate set. Most of the people watching quality know that the official government calculations for the CPI have changed pretty dramatically. And if you use the other the old ones that they use, I forgot when they changed them, then the current rates of inflation would be actually much much higher. In fact, back to Mike Maloney,


as you probably know, he loves to call the CPI the CP lie instead because it's not a true reflection of what the the prices are. But to your point, yes, I mentioned to you yesterday that I think a lot of people who are on this channel and speakers here, honestly, they they're high income individuals and they go to the store and if um you know, a pound of beef goes from $5 to $6, they don't really feel it. they simply don't have the same uh the impact is not the same for these people as it as it is for


a lot of people out there who are just going to their nineto-5 and you know struggling to save for retirement and kids education and other things that occupy most American families. So having a chance to talk to you is giving people some awareness of the the real impact. So, someone like myself, you go to the grocery store, that's the most common example, and a can of soup goes from $3 to $329, and you think, "Oh, no big deal. It's 30 cents." Well, that's 10%. One of the things I think about as an


investor is both relative value and absolute value. Cuz something goes up 30 cents and you think, "No big deal. That's the absolute increase." But relative to what it was, that's a 10% increase. And of course, you multiply that by everything in your basket and suddenly it's a lot more money. Another aspect I think people don't think about much other than the the obvious of what you buy every day are things like taxes, insurance, you know, I would ask everybody out there watching, do you


expect over the next 5 years that your utilities will go down or go up? Do you expect your homeowners insurance to go down or up? car insurance, umbrella insurance, all these other ancillary costs that maybe don't factor into your monthly budget are a big factor when you look at them in aggregate and it's it's really hurting people. >> Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And it's good to get that more on the ground perspective. So, I'm curious, you've you've been looking at this for the last 5 years.


Are you can you share what your portfolio looks like right now? What changes have you made? How have you tried to adapt it to the current circumstances? >> I will. Well, I'm happy to do that. And I I'll give people a cautionary tale because this is a good reminder of this business, which is many people, you know, Rick Rule included, uh he's probably the most quoted person I think here. So, I may give a couple quotes of Rick's as well, but some of you may know that he says that for every investment


he's made, which has been a doubled or triple or quadruple, it's been down 50% at some point in time. So, you want to be prepared for wild fluctuations. When you look at gold and silver mining stocks, they're extremely volatile. They can be very sexy, as you know, and we have to think about a lot of things related to what I would call investor psychology. This is something really important to me. Jay Martin from VRC talks a lot about this. You probably have spoken to many of your guests about it, too.


But it's thinking about what's my time horizon, what's my risk tolerance, what are the asset classes that I know something about. And back to your question about my own portfolio is it's not exclusively in gold and silver. It's I have a fairly large percentage in the precious metals because I believe in the story, if you will. What's the long-term arc of precious metals? And as you well know when you look at any one asset class you have to look at that as a microcosm of the entire macro sector which is why you


focus so much on macro first and then individual asset classes second. So where are we going not only as a country? Where are we going globally? What's happening with the other central banks for example? What's happening with the debt problem in other countries as well? Major industrial countries typically. So you want to have this macro backdrop as you talk about to really frame your individual investment decisions but I mentioned earlier about diversification which you learn early in any kind of school that you go to. So


within the mining sector I'm diversified among producers and developers and explorers and then I have other investments in real estate and general stocks and bonds as well. But I'm really playing defense a bit right now because uh it's once you've accumulated a certain amount, I think you shift a bit more protecting what you have and not really trying to make a whole lot more. And I think we're still in a very volatile situation right now. >> Yeah, I think I think anyone would agree


it is quite volatile right now. And I'll ask you a little bit about your your long-term views for precious metals because one thing I've been talking a lot about at this particular conference is knowing when to sell. A lot of people are taking about how they took profits when gold and silver prices went up a couple of weeks ago. So what is your end goal? I guess when it comes to the stocks, I imagine you'd want to hold any physical metal for the long term. >> I do. Yesterday there was a panel


discussion around the I forgot which one it was honestly but the the question was I think Rick Rule facilitated that one and he asked everybody where are we in the cycle and many people use the baseball analogy of early innings middle innings kind of a thing and all the panelists agreed that we're in the early to middle innings of this bull market cycle some people talked about a a cyclical bull market versus a secular bull market and the distinction between those two. So I believe that as well. If you look back


over the last 5 years or so, you can see that even though the last 12 months have been extraordinary for gold and silver stocks relative again to where they were a couple years ago, they're still fairly dramatically undervalued. So what's happened in the gold and silver market is this idea of a a rising tide floats all boats. Many companies at all levels of the food chain have really benefited from the debt primarily the weaker dollar uh central banks buying lots of other drivers that you and your


guests talk about all the time but I am a long-term have a long-term horizon. I think that's also something important Rick Ru talks about that too is you know people don't have the attention span of of a weekend he says sometimes so if you are able to make a commitment into this type of asset class you need to be prepared for you know multi-year uh but to add to that comment about taking profits which you said is it's not just set it and forget it. You have to actively look at what's happening


with individual companies and sectors and be willing to trim as another speaker talked about yesterday and just be aware of what are your goals, what are your intermediarate needs for example for liquidating something. And then last comment, you asked about the the physical gold versus the the equity side and I agree with most people who say that you always want to start with physical. So, I do have some vault storage of actual gold and silver, which is kind of nice. If anybody out there has never held a 1 oz


gold or silver coin in your hand, you should do it one time because there's a certain heft to it, isn't there? It's it's it's really heavy and it's shiny and it speaks to this idea of, you know, what is money? Mike talks about that a lot and uh something that will give you some personal perspective on gold and silver. >> Yeah. Yeah. If you if you hold if you hold it, I think I think you'll like it and you'll probably want to have some more. Well, this has been really useful.


I think I've enjoyed getting your perspective. I'll let you get back out onto the show floor unless you had any final thoughts that you would leave people with. >> I do have a thought that I touched on earlier I think is really important for people to think about and that's this idea again of investor psychology. Uh I actually would like to talk to Brian London and I want to suggest a a panel discussion with him. I think would be instructive again more for the retail crowd is to have a panel of people and


say what was an investment you made where you lost a bunch of money and what did you learn from that because most successful investors out there at some point in time in their investing career have lost a lot of money. They've made some really bad decisions or sometimes things just don't work out despite your best intentions and your due diligence. But if you are committed to this, you have to be prepared for that. It's a a roller coaster ride and you're going to get burned sometimes, but having the the


mental fortitude, having the conviction, having the ability to make good prudent decisions and put the odds in your favor of things is uh I think a critical component. So, I'll I'll leave with something that you've I'm sure articulated to your uh audience before, which is the best investment that you can make it really is in yourself because once you have it up here, nobody can ever take it away from you. Well, that is a great place to end and I would love to see that panel. I hope you


suggest it to Brian. Maybe we can get that next year. Thank you so much for coming on to talk. This is very nice. >> Thanks for having me. >> Amazing. And once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Grant Warden.