[Music] I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing news.com and here today with me is Rick Ru proprietor at rule investment media thank you so much for being here pleasure Charlotte thank you for having me back of course always good to be catching up with you it hasn't been too long but lots to cover I thought we could start we're we're here at pdac and I saw you I think do a tweet on social media saying you brought your checkbook here so I wonder if could give me an idea what's on your shopping list right
now I'm impressed with the fact that we're beginning to see pretty good exploration results that don't have any Market follow through uh I like it when the mood is bad and the reality is good uh you and I have talked before Charlotte about the fact that when people buy Financial Goods they take leave of their senses they're much better at buying physical Goods when somebody goes to buy a coat for winter they shop around for bargains when people buy Financial assets they don't
seem to do that and uh I I prefer being able to take advantage of other people's mistakes and people are making mistakes right now yeah hopefully hopefully nobody who's watching but we'll we'll see so we've talked frequently about your due diligence strategies but I thought we could go into it a little bit since we're here with all these companies down on the show floor what's what's the first question that you ask a company before I even ask them I look at who the people are what you find is that
some people are serly successful and most people are serly unsuccessful the point of the game is to hang out with serly successful people so if I don't know somebody or I don't know somebody who will vouch for somebody I don't care I didn't get around to asking the first question yes on occasion there's a drill hole in a setting that catches my fancy and I come to learn more but the truth is that my my first Criterion for small companies is all people yeah I wondered if you were going
to work that into it I thought I could get around it with the first question but no so we always start with people good to know so let's let's talk about gold I think it's attracting a lot of attention right now although it's it's come down from the the heights we seen earlier you've told us many times that we shouldn't really be hoping for a higher gold price because it probably means that something is going wrong in the world so what are people reacting to right now that has sent gold up so high
something's going wrong in the world it isn't that gold is going up it's that the purchasing power of the dollar is going down I I said in a previous interview Charlotte that when people ask me when the price of Gold's going to go up I scratch my chin sagely and I say 2000 in 2000 it was 250 bucks an ounce now it's what 29 so it's up Sevenfold it's gone up 8% a year for 25 years compounded that's up I think it's going to go higher yeah because I think the arithmetic around the US dollar not
relative to other currencies but relative to real things is going to go down uh I'm afraid literally afraid that gold is going to go much higher because the circumstance that causes it to go much higher is unpleasant for the rest of our lives and your life and my life are pretty good what what is I know you don't like to do price predictions but what is much higher look like for you because it's starting to feel like really anything could be on the table I wouldn't be surprised over time to see another
digit um you know so $110,000 plus this is not a price projection but you know the last time that Savers lost faith in the US dollar was the 1970s and in the 1970s the purchasing power of the US dollar over 10 years declined by 75% not coincidentally the gold price went from $35 to $850 uh my belief is that the next 10 years the US dollar will lose 75% of its purchasing power and I'm not trying to say that gold will go up 30 fold but if the US dollar losing 75% of his purchasing power it makes absolute sense
that gold would go up for for can you talk a little bit more about how this time right now is comparable to the 1970s because I've only been here for half a day and I've already heard that multiple times from different people so what are you seeing else that matches up uh I I'm laughing because of course you weren't born in 1970 so that it's an honest question which makes me laugh uh I think there are several similarities in the early part of the 1970s we were coming off a pretty good time from the end of World
War II to the commencement of the 1970s the 50s and the 60s were boom times the nifty50 people buying the dips all that kind of stuff people were underinvestigated lot of hubris but there were underlying weaknesses in the US economy uh eerily similar to today we've come off the period 1982 uh to really 2022 we had a 40-year period of really benign economic climate falling interest rates strengthen the dollar so we could export our problems the us could to other countries uh and there's 40 Years of
accumulated hubris uh I think I've get me wrong I'm not one of these gloom and doomers I don't think that the US Treasury Market's going to go away I don't think the US dollar is going to go away I think that the benevolent climate that we've existed in is going to change and I think it's going to change for about 10 years I think unfortunately that'll be very good for gold because I think it'll be bad for the US dollar I think it'll be good for other commodities for
other reasons largely uninest underinvestment in those Commodities I think for the pdac the the pdac 10 years from now will look very different than it looks today uh very very very different interesting interesting okay and interesting for me as well because my first pdac I came to was 10 years ago so to look 10 years into the future very interesting okay going back to Gold so there's been a lot of m&a in this sector it seems like it's heating up are we likely to see more of that as the year continues and and what
type of deals could we see I I certainly hope we see more uh the recently announced deal where Equinox is taking over caliber uh makes in a sense no synergistic sense but it makes great scale sense a larger company has greater trading liquidity which means that that's a higher share price we us it has a lower cost of capital in a capital intensive business so amalgamations make sense from that point of view they make sense also because if the merger structured right you lower the general and administrative expense relative to
free cash flow and relative to assets management the industry has way too much GNA exps I think you're also going to see strategic mergers I think you're going to see companies take over companies that have projects which are synergistic to their existing projects and I think that you're going to see bigger companies take over smaller companies because bigger companies have a lower cost of capital than smaller companies do all of this is good it adds efficiency to the sector it adds
liquidity to the sector and it adds hope to the sector all of those are good okay okay good to get your your take on the Equinox calier Beal I will say I talked to Ross Bey in January at VC he kep the very straight face when I asked him if there was anything coming up I'll I'll add a reader or Vier question Sor here I do know I like to do and it's on the note of Po's m&a so this person thinks there's a a take out coming for D2 Goldfield and they're wondering if they could get your take on on who the
Takeover company could be I I suspect that anybody that takes I hope that any body that takes them over is taking them over with the view to participating in the larger hole which is to say the other part of the posit which is you know uh being developed by G mining uh my belief is that that is ultimately one system and that it will ultimately be one 10 million ounce mine whether the merger takes place between G2 and G mining or whether an amalgamation with goldfields trying to get into the project or somebody else
is an open question but that deposit is merely bisected by an artificial line on a map and it should be developed in terms of infrastructure in terms of energy in terms of processing facility as one deposit okay going to move on to a little bit of a different direction away from bull Rouse so when we La spoke it was just uh after Trump had been inaugurated I believe so we didn't we didn't know quite what he's going to happen but you told us previously if people were optimistic about any
substantive good coming out of Washington they should maybe rethink that so what are your thoughts so far on on Trump's in efforts to make improvements especially the things like efficiency I uh I think most of what Trump has done so far is theater uh I did read his book The Art of the deal for people who want to get to know more about Trump you should learn about Trump in his own words how uh not a pleasant book uh Mr Trump believes very differently than me he believes in every trans action there's only one winner I
believe in a good transaction there's two winners uh so on the face of it uh I'm not a trump fan uh in terms of reducing the size of the US government that has to happen I look at the Republican budget from a week ago and it's very obvious that while they talk spending they don't do spending and I think that's problematic a different book that your audience should read to understand Trump and his impact on the world is a book called the Triumph of politics by David Stockman he
was the director of The Office of Management D budget in the Reagan years and he talks about how the political Ro process derailed deregulation in the United States and it did it very very very quickly this most recent budget where there was only one Republican that voted against it will tell you something about their seriousness with regards to to reducing spending which is to say they are not series okay okay yeah I'm good to good to get your take on that I also want to ask he well all all of this
talk going around about auditing of gold in Fort Knox I'm curious I'm curious to get your take on that especially because you said a lot of what Trump has done so far as theater yeah well and what Trump is proposing as theater he says oh I should go and take a look I don't care if he takes a look or not I don't te care if he takes a video there are proper procedures for auditing gold at Sprat every year we had to audit billions and billions and billions of dollars worth of gold we know how to do
this the American people deserve an independent audit on the on the gold at Fort Knox and they deserve a title opinion there are legitimate questions to whether that gold has been hypothecated there are other questions as to whether it exists at all now my own particular belief is that it probably exists but the truth is Rick ru's belief in 350 is good for a cup of coffee at Starbucks there needs to be an audit and there needs to be an audited title opinion on that gold we need to know how much is there and we need to
know what ours and what do you make also of this talk about monetizing the gold that's going right just yeah okay tell me these are people who use too many narcotics uh if you monetize the gold the fed's balance sheet looks better but it doesn't solve the problem which is debt let's say that I loaned money for US Treasury and let's say that the US Treasury decided not to pay me I'm going to go present a bill and collect the gold when they have the guns government has a monopoly on extortion on violence
and on fraud monetizing the gold is accounting trickery because nobody has access to it it put bluntly it's fraud yeah it's okay very very Ticky and on our related note I think I'm going to bring it another question from one of our viewers which is why isn't the Chinese government truly transparent when they state or show their gold Holdings and reserves considering the state of their their fallen currency and sing economy I'm not sure that the Chinese government is transparent uh the Chinese government
is forthcoming with information whether or not that information is factual is a different question I've been a China Watcher for a very long time I consume information about China and I give them as much credit for veracity as I do my own government which is just say none let's go back to the us about what happens to the US economy under Trump cuz in in various previous convers ation do you have expressed surprise at its resilience so how do you feel now and going forward I think that'll be
interesting if he actually is able one thing he could do very well is improve the regulatory environment United days uh I look at what Elon Musk has done at X whether or not you like quitter as a service he's doubled the transactional volume on quitter and he's reduced the headcount by 80% if you you could take some of the US Agencies and take away the political process uh he could really improve the US economy whether he's able to do that or not is a very very very different Servo States I don't know whether he'll
be able to do it right now there is a lot of divisiveness in US politics and I think that's good the idea that government is fighting with itself so much that they can't pay attention to me is probably a very good thing the IDE that Congress is fighting with each other and fighting with the president means they can't cooperate to reduce my freedom and reduce my wealth so unlike the rest of my country which wants to Prevail against the other side the Republicans want to whoop the Democrats
or the Democrats want to whoop the Republicans I want the Democrats and Republicans to leave me alone and the fact that they're fighting with each other is probably on balance a very good thing for me it keeps them from being able to do anything and all of All I Ask of them is to do nothing well and so there's the fighting there and then externally the US is having the conf I guess with with various countries I was going to ask you about a t situation I'm afraid to bring it up because it seems to change almost
on a daily or weekly basis how do you see that playing out and I guess with the particular focus on on the mining industry I'm libertarian and I'm anti-tax tariffs are taxes whether Mr Trump cares to admit it or not Terrace or taxes if you're anti-tax he can't be Pro Terror uh so let's get that out of the way the idea that you would pick fights with the whole worlds as opposed to pick fights one or two at a time seems tactically stupid to me uh I liked the political slogan in Turkey be Eran many friends no
enemies uh that would be my idea of a good Pine I I think partly Mr Trump likes theater I think also that Mr Trump believes that his political power stem com from voicing the frustrations of some of his constituency so I think a lot of what's going on as theater I happen to believe it's harmful theater um as I say my own foreign policy were there to be a rule policy uh it would be many friends no enemies to the extent that people were legitimately taking advantage of us that's a very different
circumstance but I would suggest to you that there are certain areas where Canada as an example enjoys uh competitive advantage over the US you can ship goods cheaper there are other circumstances like the Quebec dairy industry where the Canadians deserve to get spanked uh you know that part's true but the truth is that you don't I mean the idea as an example that America's fentol problem is a consequence of Canada suggest that Mr Trump uses too much fentanyl uh it's just an absurdity yeah
yeah theater does seem like a good way to fo it and you know speaking of Canada so we've got we've got our leadership change coming up here I know you've been very vocal and critical of mort Carney on on Twitter or X as I guess they're calling it now what are your main concerns there uh I I think Carney is a competent Trudeau I didn't like Trudeau's policies but at least he was ineffective uh carne is very different uh it said on on X that Trudeau was a puppet of the wef carne is a
puppeteer there's a very different level of threat from a puppeteer and a puppet uh carne's hugely confident hugely competent Carney doesn't believe in smaller government he doesn't believe in individual liberty it's interesting to me that he's running for change uh change from a government that he was part of for 10 years that's extremely shrewd the incumbent running for change uh it tells you something about what I would consider to be the vanality of the human being make no
mistake he's an extremely bright extremely competent human being I would prefer a leader that had his preferences to be incompetent not competent okay and we'll we'll keep checking back with you as we see this all play out I want to bring it back to the resource sector I always like to hear where you are putting most of your research effort so what are you looking into right now as SS of opportunity boy it it it feels like a target-rich environment to me uh I feel I feel like gold the commodity maybe not in two
weeks maybe not in two months certainly in two years and much more in 5 years I think the gold price is much higher if you believe that you believe that silver will catch up that there will be a slingshot uh and the equity prices don't reflect that so uh that's a place to start uh there are also some great discoveries right now that the market is paying attention to the market is looking for momentum as opposed to reality the idea that I can buy reality to a discount is a very attractive thing to me there are also
some Commodities where there are potentially worldclass discoveries that the Market's paying no attention to because the Commodities themselves are boring people uh I was at the Bravo Booth here as an example PGM deposit really spectacular Discovery and because platinum's out of favor nobody cares centaura is a nickel Discovery I think a worldclass discovery people don't care about nickel they don't like Brazil so they aren't paying attention to centures wonderful set of circumstances uh
Sovereign would be another one uh uh meteoric a rare earth Discovery the idea that there are potentially world scale deposits that nobody cares about because the commodity is out of favor is just as good as it gets for me know I have a much longer Horizon I'm looking to deploy reasonable amounts of money into something that I feel as a Speculator over five years could be a 10 bagger or a 20 bagger and there's five or six of those out there right now so I'm I'm pretty excited yeah you got lots
to do I wanted to ask about the critical minerals angle as well and you know pretty much anything can be a critical mineral today depending on where you look but I'm talking about the smaller ones that we seem to see coming up when we get into these tariff situations and things like that um are those a destraction right now are there other things you should focus on and not get bogged down in that mostly I want bigger markets and mostly I want stuff that's out of favor I walk down the aisles here
and people say Rick do you care about tungsten and my thought is well not if you talk about it you know um not not if you're a Carney Barker saying tungsten and you know four months ago you were in vadium and before that you were in crypto and before that you were in pot uh if a commodity is hot I'm gone I don't want to know a commod is not hot I care about so I I care about rare Earths because the market hates it um I care about vadium in the sense that I care about the vadium oxide battery as an
example but I don't see many vadium deposits that excite me uh I like Rare Earth because I see a couple Rare Earth deposits that do excite me okay okay that makes sense and before I let you go I promised I promised that I would ask you about battle bank and where you're at how that's going we didn't wear the shirt today but we'll talk about it anyway there will be an announcement two days from now three days from now on Wednesday uh detailing the fact that battle bank is buying an existing Bank
we've been trying for four years to get our application approved by the FD I see um we're paying too much for this little bank but what we're doing is buying time at 72 years of age time is valuable so you will see an announcement on Wednesday that allows us to shortcut the regulatory procedure because we're buying an existing bank with a national Charter okay well we'll wait for that and certainly we'll hope I think we will publish this before then so people will have time to get ready for that all
right any final thoughts you would leave people with well simply that I think if you're patient and if you work hard you're coming into a very good time in a resource space uh I I would encourage people I've I view I've reviewed thousands and thousands and thousands of portfolios and I know what people do wrong they buy stuff that's trendy and they have too short a Time Horizon if you as an example think the gold price is going to go up understand it may take two years or 3 years or four years or 5
years for that to happen if you're buying into a strategy that can take 5 years and your tactics are that you're afraid to hold stock over a long weekend you're not going to succeed so there needs to be consistency between the time it takes for the thesis to play out and the time that you expect to hold the stock usually you also leave us with an offer that people can take you up on absolutely Charlotte to the extent that your viewers like what I have to say about natural resources and they want to
personalize it go to my website rinv media.com list your natural resource stocks and I personally will rank them 1 to 10 one being best 10 being worst I'll comment on individual issues if I think my comments might have value please no tech stocks please no pot stocks please no crypto natural resource stocks rinv media.com very good and we'll of course we'll add the link in the video description if so people can can click on it we'll thank you very much we'll let you go now this is great thank you
of course and once again I'm charl cloud with investing news.com and this is cool [Music]
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