[Music] I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing news.com and here today with me is Jan Martin CEO of Cambridge host and host of the J Martin show thank you so much for being here great to have you it's good to see you again Charlotte really good to be talking to you as well we're doing our yearly catchup ahead of the Vancouver resource investment conference which is coming coming up very soon in January so of course we're going to get into all the details on that so people can know what's coming but before we go
there I want to ask you about your sense of sentiment in the resource sector right now because we're coming off such an interesting year and heading into 2025 looks like that is going to probably be even more interesting if possible yeah no no doubt this decade isn't it I mean it's been defined by chaos and uncertainty and frankly I have no reason to believe that going to slow down um you know really nothing's changed in terms of my my macro thesis on commodi Charlotte you know I point to
three things uh the same three things that a lot of people point to which is geopolitics matters more than it ever has right my entire life has been the era of globalization we've departed that now we're in the next thing and that new thing is going to take many years to shake out but in the interim it's uncertainty uncertainty that's just what it means right countries that used to share resources aren't sharing them like they used to and when the supply of something becomes uncertain the price of
that thing goes up and that's fueled a lot of the commodity prices that we've seen um and the second thing is um is uh is starvation of capital like we've just gotten through 12 years of of lack of investment in the sector and so these two forces buting up against each other makes for a very bullish case and um you know and then the third just forecasting future demand I like to lean on copper as my kind of primary because it's a good just barometer um and when people forecast the copper price and copper
demand often they gravitate towards you know maybe what AI might do what El electric vehicles might do what Renewables might do and and find these anomalies in the forecast that may shoot the price up to the moon and maybe that'll happen like I don't know or they'll take the other side of the BET and say we're headed for a globally coordinated recession and demand's going to right so maybe that'll happen too I don't know but when you deal with those uncertainties the smartest thing you can
do is just look at the past like we could look at 50 years of copper supply and demand fundamentals and in that 50 years since like 1970 forward we've had massive globally coordinated recessions we've had massive technological disruptions like those things have occurred many times in that 50-year bracket yet if you look at the decade over over a decade supply and demand Dynamics they're very consistent we add about 3 to four million metric tons per decade despite recessions despite the dawn of the
internets and Smart Technologies and all the stuff that might happen in the future has happened in the past and demands actually pretty consistent three to four million metric tons per decade the you know the opportunity there for investors is that production always met demand in 1970 in 198 80 1990 2000 it was very consistent they grow in the same increments until about 2015 and then demand kept going and production kind of halted around 19 20 million metric tons back to our starvation of capital if you don't invest in new
resources you do deplete what you have but the world's going to keep growing and so now this ocean is is opening up right in that case in coer you can take that blueprint and apply it to Silver and nickel and many other Commodities but that's kind of my base case what I'm focused on right and these are things that I'm sure are going to be expressed at VC and we'll get into that but before we go there I wanted to ask how you are arranging your portfolio in light of all these circumstances maybe things that
you've heard that are interesting to you that because I know that you're always out there talking to experts as well yeah I mean I've been in this business for 15 years and I think as a result of that I can be a bit more aggressive in this industry than maybe others should be and I I just say that because you know investing is risky it's hard and it takes a lot of work and you should gravitate towards where you have a competitive advantage and I really live and breede this business and so you
know I am comfortable in markets like today when you know mining equities are very hated um I understand and have I guess I have confidence in the cyclical nature of it and so I'm more comfortable moving into this industry today than a generalist investor might be and I totally get that right um it's very easy to say you're a contan investor to actually be one's a completely different scenario um but because this is where I've lived for the last 15 years this is what I know I have a higher degree of
conviction in the cality and I understand the patience that can be required when you jump into an undervalued asset class you hope it turns around in six months but it might be two years you know and so I'm very patient right now I have a very barbell portfolio meaning I am really only in in super stable uh purchasing power protected assets Cash Cash equivalents gold real estate and then on the other side is kind of the other side of the risk Spectrum so I'm in development companies later stage exploration
companies mid-tier producers lots of mid-tier producers right now mid-tier and Junior producers in the precious metals okay I think that's that's really useful to go into and the other thing I want to pick up on just from your three themes that you're mentioning at the beginning is that dir of capital that we're seeing I'm wondering can we talk a little bit more about that and we know that the business is Cy cyclical it's what we've been talking about just now when do you see that rotation perhaps
coming back toward the resource sector finally yeah it's the million-dollar question right well here's what I would say like look at look at an indicator like a Warren Buffett he's now sitting on uh 300 billion do in treasuries right he owns like 4% of the US Treasury Market so you know you could say oh he's clipping like 15 billion in uh yield each year just by doing nothing it's a pretty good bet but the other side of that is that for the first time in an over 80-year investor career he's not
bullish on the generalist Equity Market anymore and that's notable right but you're seeing that Trend like actually occur across a lot of the major investors that we sort of know as mainstream personalities they're just drisking they're taking cash off the table the next move isn't certain yet and I'm not going to speculate on what they might do but I would speculate that they're going to look for yield they're going to look for companies with cash flow they're gravitating away from
speculative tech stocks and into utilities Industrials and cash and cash equivalents as long as they pay well so when will the market rotate I don't know I'm not sure but um I was chatting with you know actually a mutual friend of ours Danielle dear Tino booth just yesterday and she was walking me through this piece of research showing that the US Equity Market has only been this overvalued relative to the underlying assets for 1% of time that the equity Market has existed so that's to say you
could hang on for that last 1% maybe right or maybe it's time to rotate out and just park yourself in the sidelines I think right now is a great time to be patient like you don't have to make any moves right now I think the equity Market's crazy overvalued it could still run for six nine months so like you know we we see this right it often occurs where bubbles inflate way bigger than you think they can but they do it all the time right so but do you want to be the last one holding the back and can
you afford to be like that's the other part of this right can you afford to be the last one hold in the back so I think right now it's a it's a very good time to have that stable side of the barbell really buffed out be patient patience is of to the best trade it's the least exciting one but often the smartest I think it's the smartest right now you've got time because we're going to see some race shuffling I don't know when we're definitely going to see it yeah I know
the the when question is always very unfair so thank you for going down that path and I think I'm hearing a similar message from many people I just got back I was telling you from the New Orleans investment conference and many people there were telling me you know all right we've had the election we still have to wait for Trump to be inaugurated many things going on there's so much uncertainty so that makes a lot of sense to me so looking over to VR I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the
people that you're bringing on to talk about all these topics that are top of mind for you right now I was just looking at the list of speakers I see a lot of familiar names and some new ones and I'm sure there's more to be added as well yeah certainly I am so excited about this year's agenda um there's really like three uh buckets of of uh content that we're going to cover and at the highest level we have a major focus on geopolitics this year geopolitics matters more than ever and it's my firm
belief that when you really dive in um into these hot Wars and conflicts that we see proliferating the globe often and I would say always what you find is a battle for resources at the core of it right when you really identify who the true stakeholders are what their real incentives are it always comes back to territory and the resources within that territory and so I've armed our agenda this year with a lot of geopolitical analysts in idual like Colonel Douglas McGregor Dr pipa malgren Dr Pascal Lota
who you might not be familiar with but he's a genius when it comes to analyzing geopolitical situations I'm very excited to have those three headline in the event this year one step down from geopolitics we get into macro finance and so this is like kind of as a consequence of the direction the world's going how are central banks reacting and how does monetary policy respond and so in that bracket you'll see individuals like David Rosenberg uh Danielle D Martino Booth uh and then some more like
trending into ours like Grant Williams you know and Brent Johnson and these individuals who really cover macro um exclusively and then the third tier down is capital allocation into the industry that that we focus on right which is the mining business and so um in that tier some familiar faces the Rick rule Adrien day Frank juer Ross Bey I try to find a collection of you know investors and Company Builders right because often the company Builders just have a great uh uh check on how Capital could be allocated
should be allocated because they're doing it I mean Ross is often the biggest shareholder of his own companies he always has his wallet where his mouth is um all in this year I think we have 80 keynote speakers that were flying in and so it's a very comprehensive two days we have the one main stage and six perimeter stages so it's it's quite jammed but um I'm I'm very excited about this agenda I think it's probably the most exciting and most comprehensive uh that we've ever built
in our company history I'm very very pumped I'm really excited as well and it sounds like definitely you've got so many highlevel topics to cover and then that should help us make those smaller decisions as well on on the resource industry I have to ask when it comes to Commodities are you seeing any themes emerging in terms of what might be discussed I would think just from what you've been mentioning we might see more of a focus than usual on the critical minerals angle but but you tell me you
know it's it's really all over the map this year that's a really good comments and i' i' um I'd expect some of our you know our our more granular Capital allocator speakers you know the lobbo Tigers and the the Brent Cooks to really get into that and where they're put in their cash right now um you know I think if there's a central theme this year it's on um it's on resource Wars that's what it's coming down to is you know like companies like um like Indonesia
suddenly more in play than ever as the world's largest nickel exporter and where they decide to place their Alliance will make a have a big impact on the rest of us and so you know that's that's been the core focus and within that absolutely it's it's like um big focus on who controls the copper who controls the nickel who controls the antimony the Cobalt um all of these metals and so from from that lens therefore you know who's controlling the goods that we need to build the high
Innovation future we've all been promised okay yeah I think it sounds really good I'm definitely excited as I've said a number of times already before I let you go any final thoughts let us know the details we'll have a link in the description for the video below that people could use to sign up what would you what would you leave investors with yeah I mean last comments uh Robert kiaki is is very excited to deliver uh fundamental investor education this year you know in the past
he's come and really gotten into the gold sector this year year he is on a mission to educate new investors to the space I think he's seen a lot of activity in the last few years that's convinced him It's Time to Get Back to Basics and just good Financial education and stewardship and so we're doing a big feature with uh Mr kiaki which I'm very excited about he's always fun to have on stage and this year's a bit of a different spin bigger Focus I'm very keen to uh to uh run through that with
him you know this is a unique event Charlotte because we are we're funded by the industry which means that general admission for investors is actually free you do have to pre-register you can't just show up you have to pre-register VC media.com or Cambridge house.com and get your your ticket um but general admission is complimentary for anybody who wants to show up and get educated about how to allocate capital in this space if you want to meet the keynote speakers if you want to have a drink
with Robert kosaki or Rick rule Colonel Douglas McGregor you know on on all these individuals that we're bringing you can pick up a VIP ticket and then you get a front row seat you get all your meals taken care of and you get the most coveted event which is the Kyo speakers cocktail party at D6 Lounge at Park Casino which is super fun um but that's available but um yeah that's it I mean if there's if there's an additional piece is that we are putting a um a lot of focus on early stage investor
education this year so Robert's helping out big time with that we've actually got a few more features right in line with that and we just produced the commodity University so if anybody is like brand new to the sector and you're like I I believe in the commodity thesis I don't know where to get started uh we built a 10 chapter video course for anybody who is brand new and uh it's at the commodity university.com and it covers the absolute fundamentals for anybody who's just shown up to the
sector and wants to understand what economic indicators impact the gold price the nickel price what should you pay attention to how do you begin thinking about allocating Capital assessing risk and all of these things that sounds perfect so we'll have both of those links then in the video description people can click them and hopefully we'll see lots of people new and old at the show I'm really excited I can tell you I'm here in Vancouver of course and I I see the bus ad so that's
when I know it's getting close so thank you so much for being here great to have you and we'll see you next month I appreciate you Charlotte thanks very much of course and once again again I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing.com and this is J Martin 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 [Music] below for
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