[Music] I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is John Fenick, portfolio manager and consultant at Fenick Consulting. Really good to have you here. Thanks for being here. Hey, thanks a lot. Nice to see you again. Really good to see you. We've got a lot to go into today. Gold tariffs, maybe a little bit of China, critical minerals. where we're going to start before we start getting into everything there is you've got a couple of conferences coming up. So, we'll talk a


little bit about the details there before we jump into everything else that's on the agenda. Sure. Thanks a lot. Uh so, uh last year we did two successful conferences, one of which was in Fort Lauderdale, uh Florida at the Four Seasons on the Ocean there. And I decided to do it a bit earlier this year in May. Number one, to avoid the hurricane risk. Uh, and number two, because I thought gold was going to 3,200 by June, as you know, and we talked about that in December and again in January on your show, and uh, my


target's been hit already in April. So, uh, I'm excited about that. Now, I've got to think of a new target. Um, we'll get to gold in a minute, but um, this conference in Fort Lauderdale is exceptional. Um, the Four Seasons is only three years old. Um, it's a beautiful hotel. So if you have the interest as a client to attend a conference, this is a great starter conference. It's not the, you know, 200 companies that you'd see at Pedak or 150 at V-Rick. I mean, this is 30 or so


companies at each event. More of a boutique kind of setting where you can meet the CEOs and actually talk to them for a significant amount of time and get a better understanding of whether or not you want to invest in that company. um these are not going to be uh that small in the future I don't think because gold and silver and copper are all starting to move and there's a lot of interest on both the investor side as well as the generalist side people that are investors in other sectors right


technology healthcare finance I see a lot of people coming to me that I've never talked to in years that are just like hey tell me why I should be buying gold stocks why is bareric and pneumont so cheap compared to the price of gold I mean I'm getting these texts like literally every other day. Um, and so then the other component would be Atlanta. We we decided to do conferences back to back Charlotte so that uh CEOs that were attending the Florida one could jump on a plane literally the next


day and go to Atlanta with a completely different set of clients. Um, that's going to be at the former Ritz Carlton um which is the Whitley Hotel in Atlanta, Buckhead May 14th through 16. So, we hope that if you're an investor, you'll come. And we hope if you're listening as a company or IR rep, encourage your company to come. I mean, this is the time to go for it. You know, we've all spent marketing dollars that have gone into a black hole in the past. Um, this is not that time. You have to


get out there and tell your story. Okay. So, we will have links for both of those events in the video description so people can check it out. And now we'll we'll get on to talk about what's happening with gold. So very exciting times as you already said and your 3200 target as you mentioned has already been hit and and even passed. So you said you're still thinking about what your next target is, but I I have to ask so what what's your thought process there? Any initial thoughts that you can share?


Well, we were on your show probably five times last year and I told you my target was 2790. So we came within an inch of the actual high. Uh that brought in a lot of new followers. Uh, we, you know, beat the GDX handily last year by 15 16%. That brought in some new followers. I just posted my first quarter. We posted a 40.77% first quarter. Uh, that's going to bring in more people. So, we're really excited and and feel fortunate to be where we are right now. Um, I don't like predicting gold, you


know, that uh more than a year out. But, um, I will say that let's look at what the big banks are doing, right? because that is a theme that you and I discussed in January and again in March at Pekk and I said contrary to a lot of my peers that this was good news. A lot of people was say were saying oh this is really the top look at all these you know banks saying 3,000 gold it's over. It's never going to get to 3,000. Well dead wrong. Um we're in a different paradigm now. This is a different environment and the


big banks to their credit were seeing this unfold. Right? You saw UBS go to 3200 gold a couple weeks ago. Bank of America two weeks ago with the 3350 for next year. Um that was followed up by UBS just last week upping from 32 to 3500. And now today uh Goldman Sachs, one of the big boys, goes to 3700 gold. I mean this is big news because these these firms run so much capital and have so much influence. No matter what you think of them, you have to follow the tape. that old saying of, you know, if


you if you see this happening, you have to get on board in some respect and have exposure to gold in some way. That doesn't mean go out and buy gold bars. It means look at gold equities and how cheap they are relative to the price of gold. And we've been talking about this on your show for gosh, two years now. And it's frustrating, but it's actually getting better. A lot of our gold names are starting to respond. You know, we own Agnico, AEM, that's doing great. Um, you know, a lot of the larger producers,


even midsize producers are starting to really outperform and I think a lot of the gold explorers, which we may get to in a few minutes, are going to do extremely well in this environment. It's just a matter of time. We definitely will get to some of those smaller names in the gold space. We'll we'll touch on how they're doing. Before we go there, just a little bit more on the gold price. So, we talked about the upside here and what the big banks are seeing and you can kind of extrapolate from


there if that's what what they're saying. Where is support for gold right now? Because I know things don't go up in a straight line. Even last week, we saw a little bit of a pullback that quickly recovered. So, what are you seeing there? Great question. So, if you look at what happened in November of last year when Donald Trump got, you know, the win, right? Gold, I believe, hit around 251 on a spike low and then literally pulled like a COVID kind of V-shaped burst higher. And it hasn't


looked back. I mean, it hasn't even come close to 2500 ever since then. So, I always encourage clients to look at November, December for bargains, right? You're always going to see volatility in those two months because of what we call tax loss selling. Um, but last year was a double whammy. It was the Trump win, which meant euphoric things for Bitcoin, tech, and everything else. And our sector got killed because people were selling conservative assets in favor of risk assets. And now that is completely


flip-flopped. You know, you can see it on GDX or GDXJ, which are the two big ETFs in our sector, right? GDX has broken out. GDXJ has broken out. Um, man, I mean, I I had a 60 target on GDXJ for like May, June, and it's already hit and and and it's just shocking but wonderful at the same time. I mean, this is exactly what we want to see. We want to see the miners start to perform alongside of gold. Um, and so to to answer your question on on current support, I think that 27 to 2,800 level is going to hold. Um, that's


sort of where I I've drawn a line in the sand. 2600 was the previous support level that we were talking about, but I think that 27 to 2,800 range is very, very comfortable right now. For silver, um, I think that 26 is that big line in the sand. And I I personally feel 27 to 27, maybe even 28 is that line in the sand for me. So whenever silver dips below 30, which it did recently, we went out I bought more physical silver because the gold to silver ratio, which is an ounce of gold divided by an ounce


of silver. Um that ratio is 102 as of last Friday, which is nuts. You know, silver should not be trading this poorly versus gold or gold should not be trading this well against silver. One of those two has to fix itself. I think we're in a kind of environment right now where gold's not just going to go back to 2600 or 2700 to to fix the ratio. I think what's going to happen is gold will stay above that 2,800 level and silver will catch up, meaning, you know, it'll ascend from this 31ish kind of


level back to 34 and test that 35 level, which is huge. Um, which is where we failed just recently. Yeah, I think it makes a whole lot more sense for silver to catch up versus gold come come falling down. Okay, so looking at gold's price drivers right now, we know from our previous conversations that gold has a lot of factors in its corner, but we've got this added tariff element that's really going on right now. So, can you help maybe separate how much of gold's move is due to tariffs and share


your thoughts on that situation? I couldn't tell you exactly, of course, but I can say that gold has benefited from all of this tariff talk, right? Um, and and the beauty of it is that this is not over by a long shot. I mean, we were calling last year for Trump to get in China's face in a big way. And he's done that. And it's the it's the headline of the last two weeks. You know, it started at 10%, then it went to 20, then it was like 34 or some random number, and then China retaliated, and now it's in the


hundreds of percent. It's it's ridiculous. I mean, it's like two small children um going at each other, you know. Uh it's it's it's it's fun to watch as a gold investor. It really is because this just underscores how far apart the US and China are on many issues. And um I don't think that resolves itself quickly. and gold. You know, Charlotte loves fear and uncertainty. Those are the two things that really drive it in past rallies. This time, the table is set. I mean, it


couldn't get much better than this. Um, and I wish it were different. I mean, I don't wish for this environment to be where it is globally, but we're here. And so, as an investor, sometimes you have to stand back and kind of assess, is my portfolio built for three years ago or is it built for right now? you know, and I would argue that a lot of investors out there are still doing this when it comes to tech and other risk assets, and this is not going to be your year. Right. And before we turn the


camera on, you're talking about this concept of investor versus investment returns that I think ties into what you're saying there. If you want to expand on that a little bit. Sure. Um so coming from the asset management world we used to preach to people that if you're in the market on big up days that really contributes to your overall you know investment performance investor performance I should say and if you conversely are not in the market on those days you're going to do better


right because you're not you want you want to have like an approach that that is balanced and most people aren't balanced meaning they're either like the set it and forget it type where they're just going to buy by by no matter what and they're not going to change their allocation. Um those people will get whipsawed in this kind of a market I think because holding what you held a couple years ago to do well this year is not going to work necessarily. But the people that are looking to trade a bit more and be more


active in their portfolio um while adding like you know um safe haven type assets like gold, silver, you know related stocks etc. I think it'll do much much better. So the the the the um example that we were using off camera was Apple right because Apple stock is known by everyone. There was a period of time uh just last week where we assessed that Apple on the trailing five days was down 23% in 5 days. I mean that really happened. And as an investor, if you're looking at that closely, right, you're


not just the type that looks at your investment account once a quarter or something, you're getting scared. You're like, "Hey, I just lost, you know, quarter of my money in a stock in 5 days that everyone knows it's the household name in tech." So, you may have sold that day down 23%. We call that realizing a loss, right? And then now you see it go up huge, you know, and and you're going to chase it back in. But then Trump may say something about tariffs and the stock drops again in May, right? And you're


down again and then you might sell again in panic mode. So we call this kind of whipssaw type trading and it's exacerbated because back in previous corrections like 089 or 2000 to 2003 we didn't have all this um global wealth and we also didn't have all this algorithmic buying and selling you know so we've been arguing that the the pace of things the velocity of things is going to be too much for investors to handle and you just got a taste of it the last few weeks. Yeah, I think there


are so many ways that people can can make mistakes right now by doing exactly how you've laid things out there. Just to be a little bit more looking at the stock markets, general equities, do you see how do you see this playing out? Do you see more pain there? Because we've seen some recovery after, you know, the big falls last week. What do you see coming just to spell it out for people? Well, um I don't see good things for the broad market going forward because some technical levels got got hit there


pretty hard. Um yes, they've recovered. I mean, the NASDAQ I wouldn't even say the word recovery is probably not the correct word because the NASDAQ one day last week was up 12% pretty much on the nose in one day, which I I'd have to go back and look in history to see when that ever happened. But um that was predicated by Trump saying, "Hey, things are getting much better on the tariff front." Right? Do you believe that? Because I don't I really don't you know I I really don't think they're getting


better. I think they may improve slightly from the chaos that was created, but I don't think that they're resolved in any way, shape, or form. What's going to happen now is that a bunch of countries that are smaller are probably going to come to the table and deal with Trump because they have to, right? I mean, like, it's oppressive to not do that, but if you're a China, yeah, they're digging in. I mean, like, their rhetoric is not, "Oh, yes, let's let's talk and let's let's figure this


out." Come on. I mean, it's I mean, you can just look at CNBC and figure it out for yourself as an investor. This is not going well. So, I continue to have a zero weight on the broad market. I don't have any money in the the Russell 2000, the NASDAQ or the S&P like in terms of the actual indices themselves. You know, I have money in Pneumont, which is part of the S&P, right? But like very few stocks um in the broad market would I even consider right now, you know, unless they're completely trashed, and


there are some. But, you know, for me, I'm more of a commodities guy. I'm looking at metals, mining, energy, all that kind of stuff every single day. And there's so much value here still that I don't need to look at the frog market for value just yet. You know, I want to see depressed prices. Uh really depressed and we're not there yet. Yeah, absolutely. I understand what you mean there. So, let's take a look over at what's going on with the gold companies you follow. So, you gave a little bit of


update on some of the larger ones, but of course, you have companies further down the the food chain that you're watching. So, any any updates you would share? Sure. Um, there's a couple that I mean there's still some that have not not barely even moved here with gold's ascent and that really intrigues me because it's only a matter of time before these things start to move in my opinion. Um, 1911 gold is the first one that I'll I'll mention. Um, that's AUBF in the States. AU MB in Canada. Um,


you know, Sean and Gary are trying to build something there in Canada that could go into production by 2027. And when you're looking at the gold price now at 3,200 plus, let's say you go to 2,800 in two years, right? Let's say we have a correction and that's where you're at when you go into production. Well, their cost of pulling gold out of the ground is nowhere close to that. It's much much lower. So when you look at the the type of companies that are going to be producing in a very high


gold price environment, that's really bullish for a stock like that. You know, I went back and looked at 2011 2012 and the price action on that stock drove it to a billion dollar market cap Canadian back then in the previous big rally. Right now it's I think like 20 or 25 million, I don't know, 30 million market cap. It's it's insane. It's like a fraction of what it was with gold at 1500. You know, gold's double the price yet the stock has completely just been cratered. So, we look for opportunities


like that because it's not going to last forever. You know, we're not suggesting that the stock goes back to a billion dollar market cap. We're just saying that if you're at 25, you could easily go to 100 in a in a 32 33 $3400 gold environment very easily because you're going to see what we call a sector rotation, Charlotte. So, people are going to start giving up on tech. They're going to give up on biotech. These things that have made them a lot of money in the last decade. They're


going to be looking for new opportunities, which is why I said that about my conferences. We're getting applications. I'm reading them. I'm approving them from people that are saying, "Hey, I buy I own a lot of gold in my vault. I own a lot of silver coins. I don't know anything about gold and silver stocks. I'm interested in learning more." And I look at what their net worth is, and it's pretty impressive, right? They're they're they're buying they may have had coins


handed to them by a grandfather or something like that and now they're intrigued to to learn more about gold stocks which is awesome. That's what we need more of more generalist interest in our sector. So moving away from 1911 gold um I would say uh US gold uh USA is one we've talked about in your program. Stocks really done well um since November when they got their permit um in Wyoming. So, great name, great listing, only 12.2 million shares out. Uh, we love that. So, stock really can


move in an uptrend. Um, a new one for us that we just started last week because I like to try to give your listeners some new stuff is Contango or uh CTG in the states. It's on the New York Stock Exchange. Um, I think that stock has a shot to be included in the Russell when it rebalances on April 30th. That's just me thinking out loud. But why I say that is that the Russell when it rebalances looks at one key metric and that metric is size of the company market capitalization. So right now that market


cap has to be around I think around 125 to 135 billion as we record this. And that stock is getting really close to that market cap size, right? Because it's moved up about 10 15% in the last couple of days. So once you if they if it does get there on April 30th and that snapshot in time, they will be included in the Russell 2000. And why is that important? Well, they only have 12 million shares out just like US gold. So if you have 12 million shares out, and I've talked to management, I know where


the shares are held, right? If you look at their website, Contango Wars website, you can see BlackRock, Vanguard, like these companies are not selling those positions. Then you look at the CEO and and his position. He's not selling in that position. The stock's too too much of a value stock. So, you know, how are you going to buy into the stock as the Russell, right? You're going to have to pay up because that stock's going to move hard, you know, to the upside. Um, and that's the thing that um, I think a


lot of investors miss is that when you have a small amount of shares outstanding like US Gold or KGO or has, you can basically in an up market like this move much faster than people expect. So, that's one we just added because they're a producer in Alaska. Uh we like Alaska, we like Wyoming, you know, we like everything US um right now given the backdrop um uh that we're seeing and and Trump being very supportive of our sector. Okay, really good updates there and always appreciate the the new name for people to consider.


And as usual, we'll put the names and the tickers in the video description so that people can know exactly what they are. Okay, so that that covers us on the the gold stock side. Before I let you go, we will be doing a more, I think, complete and usual longer interview in just a few weeks. But before I let you go, I want to at least touch on critical minerals and the special situations angle because I think that's something that's really coming to the four now as we have this trade war really develop,


especially with China and and with the US looking to find more of its critical minerals from within itself. So, anything you would share on that note? Yes. So, we've been saying um for a long time, over two years now, that this situation in Critical Minerals is getting much and much worse for the US because they really took their eye off the ball there at some point. Um, you know, let's not even point fingers about who was wrong and who was responsible for that. Let's just say that the US is


far behind China in this this race in the critical mineral space. And you can't fix that overnight. It will not get fixed in 3 months, 6 months. it's going to take years for us to catch up. So, what I'm seeing uh Charlotte from my CEO is I talked to, you know, 8 to 10 a week minimum is that these guys and these women are basically saying to me, "Hey, we spent a lot of time with our our people in Washington. I've spent time with the local government in my state." Um, everyone is much more


supportive now than they were even six to 12 months ago. the Trump regime has really put a fire under like this this concept of you probably heard the news in March. I mean, he literally said publicly to his staff, "Get me all of this information on these critical mineral deposits in the US. I want this on my desk within 10 business days." It's like, whoa. I don't I don't remember a president like saying that out loud. I know Biden did something like that back in like 21 or 22, but it


was like a 40page, you know, 40th page like story, you know, wasn't wasn't front and center. And and that's where I think the environment has really shifted is that now this is like being talked about by everyone because it's on the front cover of magazines and CNBC and whatever, right? is like getting a better understanding of who has these minerals that are going to make our make our lives uh even sustained the way they are, right? Like when you're when you're talking about a Tesla battery, a lot of


that Tesla battery is nickel, copper, silver, things that you know our companies that we talk about are finding and will find if they're an explorer or developer, right? So to that end, um we continue to buy critical mineral stocks. You know, we talked about American tungsten, I think, once on your show. Um, it did extremely well. Uh, the ticker is DM RF in the States, TU NG in Canada. Uh, just today they announced a new CEO. I haven't even had a chance to talk to him yet. He sent me an email.


Um, I would say that, uh, they are very well positioned to get DoD grant money. Um, and the reason I say that is because if you look at their website, they're telling you so much in their presentation deck, right? Like they're not hiding it out there. If you know how to read these things, you can kind of read through the tea leaves and say, "Okay, this is this is a company that's based in Idaho with a past producing mind that can probably get started in production again in much faster time


than than the world expects, right?" And why do I say that? Well, the White House is literally going to companies, and I'm not going to name who, but they're they're going to certain companies and they're saying to them, "Hey, how much is this going to cost to get that thing that you've mentioned in your news items that you're trying to get?" Right? Whether that's a 43101 or a pea, how much is that going to cost? Right? That's question one. The second question


is, how much money is this thing going to take to build into production? Right? Which could be a huge number, as you know, could be over hund00 million. But these companies are gladly sharing this information with these representatives because they want funding, right? They want to get to the finish line and they want to get it done faster than it has taken them, right? And I think that's going to happen. I I really do. I I think that things are going to get accelerated um for an American tungsten much faster


than people expect. So, we really like that stock. I talked to a specialist as well who I won't name either, but this guy is is bright and he's done some work for me on Power Nickel, uh, PNPNF, which you and I, you know, both know Terry Lynch. Terry and I had a short problem in that stock last year where it wasn't, you know, it was heavily heavily shorted. And this gentleman did some research behind the scenes to kind of identify how much of that was actual short interest and how much of it was


naked short interest. And Terry and I always say publicly, we don't have a problem, you know, with short interest. If you want to bet against the stock, go for it. But we do have a problem with making short interest because it's not a level playing field. The average client has no idea how to compete with something like that. The reason I say this is because I just got the report from the guy today and on American Tungsten, it's a 51% uh short interest over the blended last five months. meaning that half the


volume you see of the stock is short, which is crazy. Um, and so there's a lot of people betting against the stock right now, which I love because they're going to be wrong. You know, uh, tungsten in general is such a short supply mineral. The US produced zero in 2023 and zero in 2024. Like, this is a US project. Explain to me how this wouldn't get fasttracked on a Trump in a Trump world. I mean, I just don't understand how people would bet against it. and I just don't think they


understand what they're betting against. So, as an investor, we love taking the other side of that trade. Um, I've talked to you about Guardian Metal Resources, GMTLF, in the past. We still own that. In fact, we increased our holding in that in Q1. Um, um, I just mentioned, you know, Power uh, Nickel, which has changed its name to Power Metallic. Um, that's PNPNF um, in the States. Terry does a great job. He's going to have a bangup year. um he continues to hit in the copper space. Copper is one of those kind of in


between commodities, right? It's not precious, but it's also in short supply, so it trades well. Copper's having a fantastic year, and um I think people should take a closer look at that stock because Terry plans to drill a lot. He just put out a press release saying that they're going to move from three rigs to six rigs. Um when I met Terry two years ago, he had like one rig, you know? I mean, now you've got six rigs on the project. you're hitting, you know, a lot more about the actual project than you


did. Those are all very bullish things. Okay, really good to go over those. Those special situations which maybe as time goes on are be going to become a little bit less unusual. So, good to go over those ones. Again, we'll have the tickers and names in the video description. Anything final you would add, final notes of interest or things investors should be thinking about right now before I let you go? The only thing I'll mention is that I still think there's a lot of people out there that are watching this from the


sidelines. And that's a huge mistake. Things are going to move much faster than you expect. And if you don't believe me, just pull up some of the stocks we talked about today and look at these charts. Take 10 minutes to look at the charts. They're moving really, really fast. And you're not going to be able to keep track. Um because the the moves that I'm seeing on certain days are 8, 10, 12% moves in one day. and and you're going to miss things by by not taking action and at least putting some


bids out there. So, my my encouragement to people is don't buy a full position if you don't feel like it. Buy something though because you want you want to make some money in this market and then I think you're going to get, you know, the the bug, whether that's a gold or silver bug, I'm not sure, but you're going to get the bug to continue to buy more stuff in a hot gold market. And um I think this is the time to go for it. Um the the backdrop looks amazing. Okay. Well, I think that's a perfect note to


end on and as I mentioned, we'll have you back very, very near in the future to go over developments in these sectors again. Thanks a lot, Charlotte. Of course. Thank you so much. And once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is John Fenick with Fenic Consulting. 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]