I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is Matthew Pikenberg, partner at Von Griars. Thank you so much for being here. Great to have you back once again. >> It's great to be back. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, >> of course. Of course. And we we're here at VRIC and it's a great time to be talking about what's going on in the precious metals market. We've got a lot to get into, >> but where I thought we could start is with gold. It's getting so much


attention. It's close to 5,000. Maybe by the time we post this, it will be over 5,000. I don't want to >> I don't want to make any guesses at this point. >> But you've you've emphasized in our previous conversations. It's it's not about gold being a bull market. It's fiat money that's in a bare market or >> so I'm wondering what can you tell us about how gold is saying that fiat bare market is progressing? Yeah. No, it's it's fascinating because there are so


many forces affecting the gold pricing, including obviously the debasement of the currency to monetize debt. And and with gold reaching so many all-time highs, we can't even keep track, honestly, in 2025 and already going into this year, and we're barely into it. And it's not necessarily um a positive thing to see gold move this quickly, this high. It's certainly fantastic for those who've been farsighted and thinking about this. Even for us, the move has been pretty quick and exponentially. The


scope and the rise and the speed of it is fascinating. It's shocking but not surprising. And it does go back to this larger concept of the historical trends, the fourth turnings, the great takings, whatever you want to call it, but it's just history in motion. And I think what's fascinating about 2025 and and going into this year, there's been so many headlines uh about the world, whether it was Doge, whether it was US A, whether it was Liberation Day and the tariff wars, uh whether it was the


Genius Act and Stable Coin, Venezuela towards the end and into this year, they're all very important themes that also affect prices in all asset classes, in particular gold, which loves chaos, and there's been plenty of chaos. And those again I'm not trying to dismiss them but those are the headlines and those are the themes of the year and the Japanese carry trade and what that means or the comx for gosh sakes the LBNA banks in in London in the London exchange what's happening in St.


Petersburg or Shanghai. again all relevant to the gold and we'll talk about we can't talk about all of them but I think all those current headlines are really interesting because the real driver is still what happened in 1971 and what's happening with debt since then when we took away the gold chaperone in 1971 we were able to debase our currency to monetize debt it's very simplistic and that debt has grown from 2 3840 billion in 1971 to 38 trillion today public government debt simplifying a lot despite all those


headlines that simple fact is really what's explaining the momentum now and you can say why did it take this long I think 2022 was the turning point but what I'm trying to say is the larger reason is central bank buying and the reason central banks are buying is they prefer a real money hard asset solution as a store of value over the once sacred US 10-year Treasury and the mighty green back world reserve currency and Why now? Why suddenly, as I and many others wrote in 2022 when we started the sanctions,


whatever you think of them or Putin or Zalinski, when you weaponize a world reserve currency, there was a seismic watershed shift in the trust in a US IOU, which was already highly indebted and now weaponized. And so that was a turning point. So when you don't trust what was supposed to be the sacred world reserve currency in the same way you did in the past, you're going to buy less of it. you're going to use less of it. We saw all the themes of 2022 with dd dollararization and the bricks and they


were very relevant. What it boils down to is less demand for that sacred IOU. The US, love it or hate it, lives on debt, not productivity, not tax receipts. It gets most of its money from issuing IUs that the world used to buy. They buy less of it and they're moving away from it. That explains uh the gold price really in detail. It's a lot of nuances, but when the world saw 2022 weaponization world reserve asset, they simply stopped buying the US Treasury in the same way and they tripled their


purchases of gold. Central banks are buying over uh a thousand tons, you know, 1100 tons. So that's a key driver. What's also happening now is because of US debt. Um there's there's 25% of Uncle Sam's IU's mature this year at 3.75% Fed funds rate rates. That's expensive. They're going to have to cut rates and print more money to monetize that debt to, you know, perpetuate the extend and pretend pay the interest rates and roll that debt over. That money is not going


to come from tax receipts and productivity. So that means the Fed's going to be dovish. I think they'll expand the balance sheet significantly from the QE that began in December. So when you expand the balance sheet, expand credit, expand the money supply, you debase the currency, gold rises as does silver. So that's my answer. Lots of things, stable coin, Doge, USA, debt, tariffs, distrust, very important. The Genius Act, very important, but again, it still comes back to the fundamental


underlying problem that's been there for decades. And it's funny, I was talking to Ronnie Sturflow this morning and we're all in the space. Every week, month, year, we're trying to come up with a new story, but it still comes back to the original story. And in in Ronnie's company is called incrementum because there's an incremental destruction of currency. What we've saw in the last year has been an exponential destruction of that currency and was reflected in the gold price. And to your


original point, gold is rising not because its properties have changed, but because the purchasing power, trust, faith, and respect for the US tenure and the US dollar has changed. >> Yeah, you're so right. There are all these events that are stacking up contributing to this gold narrative. And I know we don't have time to go into everything as you said, but I did want to pick up on what you're talking about in terms of the Genius Act and stable coins. This is something that you


mentioned downstairs in your presentation this morning and I think that one is important to pull on just because >> the headlines go by so fast people forget them but this is this seems really important. So can you unpack that? >> Yeah, there is so many headlines and it's so hard to just find the lighthouse in the fog. >> Stable coin is many things but in simplest terms um stablecoin makes sense for a desperate government which doesn't have a lot of buyers of its debt. So the


brilliance and the deviousness of the stable coin and the genius act was we're going to create an electronic dollar which you can get in Istanbul, you can get it in South America, you can get it anywhere and it's very efficient, very um quickly uh transferable and much faster than the swift system. So you get an E dollar. The issuers of that stable coin are fintech companies like Tether or Circle Internet or big commercial banks like JP Morgan. And it's a very smart way of creating demand for the


dollar which is otherwise unloved and demand for the US Treasury which is otherwise distrusted because there is a a need around the world to have those dollars in an efficient form. What is hiding behind the surface of this efficiency and transparency and speed is well the issuers of that stable coin get your dollar and then they invest in US treasuries which is by law what they have to do. Well, you get the e dollar, they get the treasury yields because they've invested in tra they get the


yield or billions and billions of dollars. What is fascinating and what I was trying to suggest is really revealing the the darker secret here is the the issuers of those stable coins are taking their profits after selling the dollar story and the US Treasury story. They're taking their profits and they're buying large amounts of gold. And again, it's watch what they do, not what they say. And I do understand the intelligence of it. is brilliant in a sense to create more synthetic demand.


You know, with this E dollar, it's still just a dollar. It's still just as debasable. It's not stable because it's tied to a treasury can have huge moves. But it it does create more demand and it does create a direct source to US treasuries, which Uncle Sam needs desperately right now after weaponizing a dollar. But the irony is again the resources and the revenues of that are being put into real money. They're trying to sell paper currency or electronic currency as something viable,


but what they're really doing with the profits is going to something they trust more than the dollar, which is crazy. And that's just one more thing for the audience to think about. There's so many things to think about, but it just proves that there's a reason central bankers are stacking gold at record levels. There's a reason the BIS is making gold a tier one strategic asset. There's a reason Morgan Stanley's um recommending 20% allocations. the bond king, you know, Jeffrey Gunlack says


25%. So, it's still a small allocation. The world hasn't caught on, especially in the west. Um, which is fine, but that's just more tailwinds from the retail side. When that median allocation goes from 0.5% to 2%, that'll be a 4x increase in demand. So, there are lots of tailwinds for gold. And I want to repeat though and say again, that doesn't mean gold only goes up and to the right. And it doesn't mean that all of us on the gold camp say, "Don't worry, there's no risk." There's still


momentary vol volatility. There's still retracements in the gold price. But the secular direction of gold. I can't find a strong case for how any paper currency is going to be superior to it. But that doesn't mean there won't be pullbacks and that doesn't mean um there isn't still volatility in the space. But we've been so used to the last year and the first month of this year just being so extraordinary that people are starting to worry if they they've missed the


boat, you know. >> Yeah. I I almost think that's the top question that is getting asked here at the conference. We've seen these huge moves in gold and silver and people are wondering all right is is this the top or how does it proceed from here and of course >> you're more interested in the wealth pres preservation angle but do you have any any thoughts on pricing for gold and silver other than it will go up and down? >> No, it's it's an absolutely fair question and in my career in Switzerland


obviously with clients all over the world we get it asked every year. I remember when gold was at 1,600. People thought this a little too high. Gold at 1,800. Gold at 24 2500. It's a fair question. When it broke the marginal line years back, am I overpaying? When it got to 3,300, am I overpaying when it So again, it's a fair question. And the way to answer that is is many by there's different answers for different people depending on what they're i f there's if they're speculators and they're looking


to get in and out and make a trade and arbitrage and that's very difficult to do. if they're wealthpreservation thinkers and they have the fundamental understanding of why gold is a better store of value to save in over a long time over long periods of time generational legacy of fighting inflation better than the narrative of the dollar or the Australian Canadian American whatever on a technical side even the technicals which we really don't look at because our me our mentality isn't trade in trade out with


silver it's a little different we can talk about but with gold look and and this is something Michael Oliver has done great research on and and we we track. There have been in my lifetime, not when I I was still just out of diapers, but in in 1979 to 19 actually, no, for gold it would have been 1976 where you have these technical bare troughs in gold and then when it breaks um when it basically it you you track this bare trough to its bull high, the next bull high, the first one 1976, there was an 8x move and there was


another one in 2001 where we had another 8x move and when you from a bearish trough to a bull high. What we just saw in 2015 was the last bare trough. This is technical but since from that period in 2015 when gold was at 1050 to end of last year at 4500 that was only a 4x move despite all the headlines. So technically speaking we're only halfway into another potential 8x move even at these prices. Um so that is a possible tailwind for more gold fundamentally speaking and past the technicals which are important certainly


for many. Um the the it's hard to believe that we're going this way but the debt is going that much higher. We spend in the US the home of the world reserve currency. We do one trillion in new debt every 100 days and we don't have the GDP and the tax receipts for that. That's not just math or just number memorization. It's absolutely it's ab the ramifications of that are massive and if we have to roll over a whole new 25% of our debt in the next 12 months we don't have the productive for


that either. So we have to debase the currency to monetize the debt. The gold price as shocking as it is isn't really the real question. It's as shocking how much we've insulted the US population the world population who trusted the US dollar since 1944 and 1971. That's the shocking number. It's not the gold and silver price and the gold price in particular. It's what we've done to neuter this dollar over so many decades. In 1971, John Connelly said, "It's our


currency, your problem. We can explode our inflation. You have to buy our oil in this. We're going to repress the gold price on the comics. We're the dollar. No one can touch us." That was probably true in the 70s, but this is 50 years ago. And now we our karmic destiny of taking that debt far too far. It's now our currency, our problem because people don't trust it anymore. And so the gold price is revealing that. That's the fundamental reason. The technical reasons are important, too. So I do


think gold's going to go much higher. There's also the gold revaluation discussion. That's a very different topic. It could go to 20,000. I'm not here to sell that story. I'm just saying it's shocking. It's not really the gold price that's shocking. It's what's happening to the dollar. And and I also want to repeat too anyone who's been in the space and anyone who wants to be credible in the space cannot just say it goes straight line from here. And I


remind that between 71 and 1980 when gold went from 35 to over 800, midway through that bull market, it had a really bad 75 and 76. So that can scare long-term investors out if they're not prepared. Um I I think another reason, but again, if you have faith and the conviction of why you own the gold longer term, you can weather that storm as Egon has done for decades. The other big change I think between in last year, I'll stop, is just the COMX, its power to perpetually short uh the gold price


and the silver price has gotten significantly weaker because there's just so much more demand for that gold and that silver outside of those exchanges that they don't have the actual metals to to prosecute the type of price fixing they've been doing for decades. And I think that ComX is meant to be intentionally complex. It's not making the headlines. And certainly for people outside of the metal space, they don't know what that even means. Futures contract swaps. understandably, but


that's a watershed change what happened this year on the Comx. And again, if you're if you're unless you're really in this space, you're not going to see that. That's a huge move as well. The ability to put a boot to the neck of the gold price and the silver price changed dramatically in 2025. 2005 in the summer, there was no gold. There was 100% gold out of the comics for delivery. That's never happened. And I've been in this market for years. I've never seen that. Usually, it's 1%. 100%


because counterparties trust that gold more than paper money or paper gold. And so, just another massive sign. But again, I'm not saying gold goes to 10,000 this year and don't worry, you don't have to worry. That's all I'm saying. You have if you're a longerterm investor, this is very clear signs. >> Great, great context as usual. And I think it gives us a good pathway to go over and talk about what is going on with silver because it's had this huge breakout especially in the last couple


of months. And as you're mentioning, the reasons for it are not necessarily easily understood, especially if you're outside this industry. So when you're looking at silver, how would you break that down? What is driving this move? >> Yeah. No, it's the question dour right now because silver's been moving as it tends to do in a gold bull market, it tends to outpace and outperform and it is. It has in terms of percentage returns and again there are technical and fundamental reasons for that. Um you


know the technicals when you when you look just at the charts and this is important for some listeners. You know, when you have a gold ser a gold silver ratio range and whenever silver breaks out of that range as it did in in 1979 1980, it had a 5x move after that. It did the same thing in 2010 and 2011. It's gold silver ratio range. It broke out and it went to 2 and a halfx in 7 months. We just did that in November of 25. The gold silver range range low and high. It it technically broke that. So


technically that was a huge signal for a bullish signal in silver. the fact that there was a 60-year cup and handle formation. The technicals will understand that and it broke that too. So those are technically very bullish signs for silver. I think fundamentally the the fundamentals still matter. We have a fiveyear supply deficit in silver. Okay, we've had that for years wide this year. We can talk about like silver rip this year, but I think that supply deficit matched with rising demand from AI, electric vehicles, uh,


solar, nuclear, there's been a perfect kind of peanut butter and jelly moment of really tight supply and extremely high demand. Those were another reasons fundamentally for this. And again, going back to the ComX, the silver market in London seized in October. It just seized. They didn't have the metal to deliver. that was a sign that there's counterparty risk there. That the folks that used to churn and burn and lever on those markets wanted their silver. That tightened the supply even more. So the


comics was not able to do its daily 8830 a.m. short. People think that's exaggerated. That's what they do. It's what they do. And so the combination of those fundamentals, in particular, the comics losing the London exchange and the comics losing its ability to legally and artificially suppress silver uh helped get freer price discovery. So a lot of those factors come into play. And you know, look, there's there's no doubt that silver, even if you look at things like in relation to the M2 money supply


of 1980, we should be at $900 silver. I'm not saying that. I'm saying you could pick your data. That's crazy. But even inflationadjusted silver should be much higher than it is today. So there's a bold case for silver of course. But I'll say and believe me my short answer is silver will go meaningfully higher but silver is much more volatile. It's that speedboat next to the juggernaut. You have to you have to look at this as Egon says it's not for widows and orphans. Its volatility is very strong.


It could shake people out. You can trade it up and then trade it down and miss and miss your exits. It is more of a trade um than it than gold is in terms of its monetary metal. Gold is only a monetary metal. Silver is a monetary and industrial metal, but the demand on the industrial side is huge. The demand on the monetary side is getting larger. And the ability to fix that price on the COMX is getting smaller. So those are good signs. But I again um I see a secular much higher gold price in this.


I'm not price targeting because we're measuring that in fiat. That two 300 is not shocking. But on the way up, just remember 1980 gold went from 50 and then down to five for a long time. I don't think we're in the 1980s anymore. I think the situation is very different. But for those who are in, they call it the poor man's gold. It's a smart man's insurance. It's it's a way for more people to get into precious metals, but it is more volatile than gold. It is more of a mix of monetary and


industrial, not pure monetary. So, it's more volatile for that reason. But remember, you know, if you're going to go in there, at some point you have to exit. And that's very hard to do. At some point you have to I personally convert my my silver to gold at the right moment. Some people want to go into mining. There's a lot of alpha in mining. But again, don't just think that silver will track gold and outrun it and still keep going north. It can it can shake out a lot of investors on the way


up. So you have to know why you're in it. And you have to know when to get out. It's not a price point. It's a ratio point. Gold silver ratio's gone to 30 and 11. Uh could it go could it go tighter? Could it go? You have to pick your ratio. When did you buy? Did you buy when the ratio was at 80, at 100? Did you buy at 50 like today? So, you can't give a single answer to any one particular investor. It all depends on how much um return they've already have, how much they're satisfied with, how


much risk they're willing to take. That's a very personal question. Very personal. >> Yeah, I think it would be good to talk a little bit more about that because I'm seeing a lot of posts online right now because we've got silver at triple digits for the first time. That seems to have been for a lot of people. All right, I'm going to sell at least some of it right now. That's what I've told myself. So, anything further you would say on exit points for silver. >> Look, again, if you take your slug, if


you made a good profit and you sell at 100, if you bought at 20 and you sell at 100, you're not a fool. Even if it goes to 300, do you really have to feel bad? At what point do you have no one can call the top or the bottom? I've never seen anyone do it in any asset class. If you have high conviction, I mean, I think G I think the miners are gonna do very well, but at what point will I exit? I won't wait for my maximum price. I'll I'm looking for my return. The hardest thing about speculating or


trading any asset is knowing when to get out. And that's just from my trading days. So, to your question, uh these people that are seeing triple digit silvers, if they if they bought at 50 or 60 or 20 or five, what is enough for them? and how much risk can they tolerate. If they're willing to to tolerate even more risk and try to go farther, that's up to them. And if they have more wealth and they can afford that risk, but if you're ending retirement or entering retirement, you've made a good 2x return, I would


not be ashamed at all to sell at this point. If you have conviction for 300 and you can afford that, go further. Again, it's it depends on each person. I'm not trying to deny the question and I'm also not trying to evade the fact that there's still volatility. I would never say that these medals go up into the right and that you can trust me on that because then I'm not giving fiduciary advice. I'm just selling a book. And I think uh people have to have as much knowledge as they can on the


technicals and the fundamentals to give them the faith to decide at what ratio they want to get out. If they want to get out and buy gold, that's up to them. They want to get out and buy miners. A lot of guys who know the space well like Rick Wool, are just selling their silver now. They've made a good profit and they're going to go for more alpha in a mining space that'll probably go two to 3x up. But again, it's still risky. So, no easy simple way to answer that one question, Charlie.


>> No, that's that's fair enough. And I think it's important for people to hear because a lot of the time I think investors want to just be told what to do, but it is very personal. >> And just before I let you go, maybe we take a a bit of a step backward from the metal because >> when we talked here at this event last year, you're talking about an appalling contrast between the real economy and what was going on in the markets. And I think we still continue to see warning


signs in the economy. Markets still continue to go. I think we talked also about the concentration and the large AI names. So how do you see that developing this year? >> Yeah, I mean look AI as we talked about last year was 80% of the returns in the S&P were AI >> and um look it is an appalling contrast between not just the markets and main street but between valuation and price, earnings and price, book value. I mean by every metric this market is grotesqually overvalued but you can


still make a very strong case for a bull market and and and that's what's so distorted and what is primarily distorted and what would be a bull case and there's some bare cases too but the bull cases starts sadly with the Fed or the central bank because if a central bank is dovish markets are very pavlovian if they're going to keep rates low or they've already priced in two rate cuts for this year and they've already started basically QE in December of last year those are typically obvious


dovish tailwinds for an already grotesqually inflated market by every metric. So yes, this can go to frothier new highs. The other thing is that you know look with all these massive amounts of Fed debt that has to be that goes to maturity this year and has to be paid or the interest has to be paid that probably makes the Fed even more doubbish. So bad news is good news. In other words, as if so that's a very simple way of looking at the markets and and so I don't want to say I see a raising market but I technically because


I think the Fed is what drives the market you can be bullish right now. The other thing that's happening is is Trump's tax cuts from 2025 there's a because and getting into all the provisions but there are three big tailwinds for those tax cuts but that basically means well in starting in April going into June there's going to be a lot of refunds coming in. So that's over 1.4 4 trillion and then there's going to be starting in July July August a great deal of tax motivated


repatriation of funds about 2.4 four trillion from overseas into the US. And finally, by Q4, because of the Trump tax cuts, um we're looking at a lot of capex advantages, tax advantages to do capex investments in publicly traded companies. That's over four and a half trillion, right? And new cash flows coming into an already grotesely overvalued market. So, those are bull cases for this market. Um what's interesting to me is on the bare side is the markets are still very vulnerable to


rising rates unless the Fed can try and control them. they can't control the long end. If the 10 year, 20 year, 30-year really spikes in yields, that could be an uhoh moment. If we have an official recession by the NBER for any reason, that could be a real tail or headwind for the markets. And I think the fact that, you know, guys like uh Warren Buffett, not just the Buffett indicator, which measures market cap to GDP, which is grotesely overvalued, it's the highest ever. The fact that he's 300


billion plus in cash, Berkshire Hathway's never been this deep in cash. From a deeply intelligent, respected risk asset investor, that's an indicator in and of itself. Of course, there's Michael Bur who's called 10 of the last three market crashes. He's nervous. Um, you can make fun of him, but he basically is saying, I no longer can understand these markets, so I'm going to get out. And I think finally the other ta headwind cases, bare cases for this market is private credit is really


horrible right now. Um there's a lot of reasons why private credit like private equity is is got a lot of um off the balance sheet hidden risk that's not being reported as tier one. It's tier three assets. So we don't really know the defaults going on there. It's a nondisclosed class of borrowers. There's no FDIC insurance for that. There's no Fed support for that. There's rising indications those are defaulting private credit areas. A lot of the borrowers can't pay the interest. So they're doing


what's called pick payment in kind that they don't even have the cash to pay their interest. So there's real risk in the private credit sector. AI is clearly overvalued. There's circular financing going on there. It doesn't mean AI can't still be irrational longer than than markets can you know understand. But I think between and then there's subprime. 20% of America is subprime credit. And we all know how risky that is. So private credit, subprime and AI are highly risky. the Bur indicator, the


Buffett indicator, um, and these rising rates and recession, those could all be very negative. But again, all those signals notwithstanding, all the overvaluation notwithstanding, if the Fed's going to keep things dovish, this market could still go up despite all rational metrics. >> Well, I think we are going to have to wrap it up there for this time. I've got to get you back out on the show floor, but thank you so much for for taking the time to go through all these different facets of the market. Always really


interesting. >> Well, thank you. It's always a pleasure every year, >> of course. And once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Matthew Pipenberg with Von Griers.