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 [Music] I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing.com and here today with me is Frank Holmes CEO and CIO of us Global Investors thank you so much for being here great to have you as always ho ho ho it's great to be with you happy season yes so nice to be wrapping up the year with you yeah maybe have to change my hat you know that it's it's Santa Claus time and I'll put on go gold I love this I love this always enjoy the hats and this is the perfect way to begin the conversation we're

going to start with gold if we look back to our last conversation all the way back in August you were telling us that in the next 12 months it would be pretty easy for gold to get to 3,000 and definitely the price action we've seen since then makes it look like that could happen so I want start by asking heading into 2025 are there any adjustments you would make to your gold price expectations no not really you know it's amazing the US dollar has put on such a big rally uh since the election of

President Trump to come back in office um but gold has pretty well held itself uh and and that's pretty telling rates are going to fall um we're going to have basically negative real interest rates the world is still the G20 are using mmt modern monetary Theory to try to stimulate and pump their economies so that thes is not going away the bricks battle against the US dollar with China and Russia uh leading the charge um and and the only way they can get any credibility is to be buying more gold so

I think the thesis of central banks uh I see the thesis of rising GDP in India the largest most populated country in the world now and the correlation with Rising GDP per capita in India is highly correlated to Gold demand for love for jewelry for wedding Seasons so I think it's a perfect scenario for the fear trade and the love trade gold trades the $3,000 okay I think that's a good beginning for us and many different paths that we want to go down today I think let's start by looking a little

bit more closely at Trump and what his presidency could mean for gold because I'm seeing a lot of different questions among investors there so we have people thinking okay he's going to be good for the markets the economy and also concerns about his tariffs potentially being inflationary so what are your further thoughts on how Trump in his second term could impact the gold price I think it's really interesting how he swept through um in in most of the states and a lot of the thoughts he had

uh it's because he focused on the middle class and the working class ver versus the other the Biden and then Harris they focus on the rich we're going to take it away for the poor and redistribute wealth Etc it was a complete different scenario and the middle class and the working class are greatly concerned about inflation they are greatly conf concerned about being marginalized uh by all the Dei to uh all these acronyms we have uh ESG um and so what you're seeing is not just in America I was reading that the

London Stock Exchange has lost 88 big mining companies of being delisted from there they don't want to be there because it's so problematic with all these regulations with ESG um and so I think that we're going to see a a streamlining of regulations I think that Trump uh was significant was having the brainchild of uh his vice president Vance uh and I also think that was really critical was Elon Musk uh and how they're going to be able to take 70,000 regulations and run them through

Ai and find out is it really a law or regulation by Congress if it's not uh they're going to streamline all those rules and regulations and that historically has Unleashed entrepreneurialism is Unleashed free market and and economic uh Prosperity so I think it's very positive for it is he going to print money absolutely you've got to remember the budget in America 60% is basically can't touch it it's entitlements is Medicare Etc that's not going away so what are they going to

focus on is the other 40% um so I think that the the money printing is not going to go away but I think it's going to get under control and I think that you're going to see um a streamlining of regulations will probably help U within the inflation we living with because the more regulations is highly correlated to more inflation okay it'll certainly be interesting to see how that plays out and talking about Trump's relationships I also want to ask you you started to talk about China at

the beginning how do you see Trump's relationship with China developing as he takes office because China is facing a lot of uncertainty internally and externally with with Trump coming so thoughts on that you know it's it's a very important question because uh China uh under the leadership of she been basically nothing but a big military buildup the economy has been imploding the currency's been falling um the only credibility for his currency really is to be buying gold uh and and and so when

you see that um I think that someone like a trump uh will all of a sudden become bit of a neutralizing factor uh on on China want to try take over Taiwan um and I think the the jury's out remember he's got two years so president Trump before you have the the the Congressional elections you're going to have two years of controlling the Senate and Congress and the administration and a lot has to happen in those two years so I I remain bullish I think it's very different that uh uh previously here was

in in France and then he's all of a sudden in South Texas watching Rockets take off with Elon Musk uh then he's at the Army uh football game you know going to a being shown there with Vance and Elon Musk on on the TV screen for American it's like hockey is in Canada football American football is so big here and there is the leadership uh watching a football game so I I think that all science it was military football game college military uh I think all those things are important signs of of China slowing down on their

military uh attack what we have to be really careful of is what China's been doing in Africa and what they've been doing in South America and Latin America uh how they've uh influenced uh from Venezuela now into Colombia the big New Port they have in Peru um the biggest gamblers at the casino they tell me in Lima are Chinese uh the big time gamblers which I get a choc out of but I I think their influence wrote Latin America that's something to watch and for gold bugs that's something to watch

and how what is America going to do regarding South America which is so close to our doorstep and what's going to happen in Africa because China is trying to lock up not just gold but other strategic minerals so I I think that this will probably you know see Supply restrictions and that will mean price Rising right you you're so correct there in terms of China and the influence on Metals mining not just in China but all around the world that we're seeing of course the processing side as well just a small follow-up

question there do you think that Trump will have any luck in bringing those Industries back into the US I think there's no doubt a big push for that um the chip act uh has developed and some bringing chips back into America America and Samsung is here and uh but it really never took off the way they expected because so much was consumed with uh uh EPA ESG and Dei and all these other acronyms rather than manufacturing high quality chips uh I think under the stewardship of uh of trump and Elon Musk

you're going to see a big push in this direction and and I think that that's pretty positive I think assets in America that are in minerals are going to become more valuable um because of of of just the rule of law but also what happens if if frictions continue with with China and what they're doing in in uh in supporting Russia in fighting Ukraine um talking to a three- Star General today uh who's commenting how that North Korea is soldiers are not doing well they have they're not as

educated they're not as um um military savvy so the Americans are able to see that um now North Korea is losing facei uh with their soldiers so you don't realize that these important dynamics that are taking place on the world scene and the geopolitics of Putin um they're not they're not going away so I think that uh military spending will pick up uh in Europe uh you'll see the countries like Germany they're all ushering in more conservative governments um there's a backl against the Green socialist

movement because all it's done is harmed Innovation it's harmed productivity this carbon tax has gone against farming like kill a million cows to stop them from from flula and uh you know just like silly policies that have been taking place there's a swing back uh to that sort of conservative that means more military spending and that impacts the fear trade that impacts gold uh because when governments have to go and spend more money like this it means they have to continue spending money on

military support and and I don't see that going away with NATO uh I think that Trump will put pressure on Europe to continue to to actually spend what they're supposed to be spending the best ally is Poland uh the rest of the country is still way behind but they're going to have to print money to ignite their economies um and and all these parts are really key for the element of gold yes and you've told us many times about the fear trade which we tend to see in the west versus the love trade

for gold which we tend to see in the East and I want to go back to what's going on in China because we know that that's such an important buyer of gold especially in the first part of 2024 we saw people at the retail level coming in and buying in China and elsewhere in Asia for gold so with the economic issues that China is facing is that love trade over there going to suffer in 2025 what are what are your thoughts I don't think so much in in in China but it's really important to watch what is the

GDP per capita growth in India what is the GDP Capital Growth in Indonesia uh in Thailand Vietnam uh the Middle East there is this High correlation to the love trade uh of rising GDP per capita for about 60% of the world's population okay I think that helps us remember that this is it's truly global but just to go back to the us for a little bit so we are always closely watching the FED when it comes to gold and we've got one more fed meeting in 2024 that's coming later this week we'll

get the results there and I think very widely expected that we'll get another 25 basis point cut so if we look Beyond this meeting that is this week into 2025 I think you said at the beginning of this conversation we'll have rates coming down what are you seeing from the FED I I think they're they're really in a tough place where they are and and but they realize that uh credit card debt is all-time high real estate um is the biggest multiplier effect for job creation people don't realize that $1

going into housing construction and then the sale of that house equals about $112 that's all that dollar turns over and over government construction uh building a building is $4 so you're getting of a bigger magnitude and those interest rates are really a key factor for housing uh to get that going again uh and they get people to feel better about the credit card but you know what really shocks me Charlotte is is the airline industry all this negative news towards them but United Airlines is up

130% this year who would ever think that yeah 130% and and who would ever think that all the planes are packed they're sold out and if you look at flights for next year there's no discounts like it used to be I'll book nine months old to plan my holiday uh there's no discounts and if you don't book now by the time you get close to that time it may go up uh we used to have pre-co two and a half million people flying now it's three million a day coming in through the us so we have an interesting

that if you have all this credit card debt and there's all this negative news on the on the on the global economy how come the planes are all packed how come more people are flying something else is happening and it's to recognize that economy is is sort of resilient and I think there's tremendous hope there's tremendous hope and everyone in the world is watching Trump differently than they did when he was first elected um and what will we be able to do with all these policies uh such as mentioned

earlier a lot the regulatory burdensome and open borders um all that stuff is going to end and and I think that people are saying good we're going to have a stronger economy rates are going to come down and I think in six months we'll get a better flavor but that doesn't take away anything for the demand for gold Costco has continued to sell gold Walmart's into selling gold uh and what's really interesting to me as the demographic research that came out from Costco is that it's a lot of

professional Asian and Indian women that are the buyers of the gold at Costco they are in Silicone Valley they are are in in telecommunications they're in all these medical business Etc and they just buy gold it's just part of a cultural Affinity that so I think that we're we're in a wonderful bull market for gold okay okay very interesting and I think you're right we're definitely in what feels like a wait and see period for the next month couple of months or so as we wait for Trump to come in so

just just one more final point on the US you mentioned this economic Outlook what do you see coming are we going to get that soft Landing that the FED has been trying so hard to engineer yeah I I think there'll be a s I think there'll be a soft Landing um and and I think that I'm really hopeful that the AI and all the 100,000 h100 chips that Elon Musk has just plugged in for those listeners AI is called large language models and that means it can take millions and millions of regulations rules Etc and all of a

sudden look where there duplications and triplications and eliminate them by coming back with a new strategy uh you can never do that with human beings there's not enough people to turn around to to look and cross analyze but now with these Nvidia chips they'll be able to do that so they'll be able to streamline to make the government more eff effective and efficient so I think that that's really positive for the stock market uh what we witnessed as a big backlog of IPOs taking public uh

many merges and Acquisitions were stopped Jeet blue was stopped from buying spirit and then spirit all of a sudden gets into financial problems uh it's going to change um these Dynamics are going to change for can do will do business okay so that's what's going on with the stock market there what about gold stocks we have to take a look at gold stocks so gold has been on the move for sure in 2024 you see a good picture coming for gold in 2025 gold stocks are moving maybe not as much as people might

like what do you think are we going to have more of an outperformance from them in 2025 and of course we we can take the time to talk about the goou ETF and how that fits in here I I think that there's some really interesting Dynamics to place with this Bitcoin ETFs and how they competed with everyone and how fast they grew um there was data point shared with me last week that 1.8 billion dollar left the GDX last year so that was selling up gold stocks the only gold stocks really to get the big bid were

the most liquid names that hedge funds would come into at Nik EO barican and numont those three garnered a disproportionate number of fund flows the other ones that had good fund flows if you look at what they call unbalanced volume were those that had free cash flow yields so those 40% % of the you under 90 some OD gold producers I follow around the world 60% of them have free cash flow yields if we go back 10 years ago it might have been 20% so it it it's a much stronger industry the Quant world

will go to where there's a free cash flow yield and a growth Dimension to it so I think that gold stocks are deeply under Valu and I think they'll get that reset button as gold trades higher we will get that 3 for one of sort of return gold goes up 1% gold stocks that have free cash flow yield or growth Dynamic they're going to go up 3% now if you own a Gold stock that's lagging that has big reserves it's probably going to get taken out because that's the fastest and easiest way for a major to be able

to get more reserves so the money will be made on knowing who has the most reserves per share uh and that's the same thing we've done this Quant research and all the explorers and and those stocks that seem to get the biggest bump and Rise is when you look at each each quarter how many shares are standing and how many reserves even if they probable reserves not proven probable those stocks actually perform better and and I think the cheapest gos uh Assets in the right now are actually on the stock market in Exploration and

development com uh companies listed in Canada uh it's much cheaper to go pick those off than to go and do Grassroots exploration in Latin America America yeah I think that that makes a lot of sense so that tells us where the gold stocks might be going next year and which ones we should be focusing on so one more topic before we move on from precious metals I have to make sure to ask you your thoughts on Silver so silver we know lags behind gold historically and then it outperforms what are your thoughts on Silver heading

into 2025 of course it's got its precious side but it's also got its industrial side which I think people worry might might weigh on it a little bit I think the premium physical silver is still much higher than what the spot price reflects uh if we look at the spot silver and you try to go buy silver at Kito it's much higher that premium has not gone away and that is a reflection that the retail World continues to buy coins and and I don't and I think that's very positive for silver as a investment

um I think the industrial use for silver will only stays strong uh leaders like Elon Musk are very big into solar and solar needs silver uh and I and I think it all begs extremely well for silver and I think the leverage for silver like I said earlier gold goes up 1% gold stocks go up 3% gold goes up 1% silver goes up 3% silver stocks go up 6% so you will deal with silver stocks the way you have to deal with crypto mining stocks uh they just have that much bigger DNA of volatility because there's two demand components to it

there's a much stronger in in industrial demand for silver especially in in the green economy um renewable economy I don't think that's going to go away I I think that it's just going to be more thoughtful of how money is being spent in that direction okay and one small followup there on Silver when you look at the silver stocks which of course are going to outperform even more than the gold stocks are you looking for the same types of companies as you are in Gold the companies with the free cash flow

yield and the large reserves I I think that the big reserves is really important that they'll get bought by other silver producers um it's different Dynamics uh for the silver companies but the higher that they have a free cash flow yield um the the stronger the bid comes into those stocks and and what's interesting is most of them are coming out of Latin America where the currencies are weak relative to the US dollar so I think that's an a really important embedded hedge uh that

countries in Latin America will continue to see their currencies uh remain weak against the US dollar um what people don't realize Charlotte is in 2002 Argentina basically uh oppressed all people that had US dollar bank accounts they gave you $3,000 with the pesos for your $10,000 and those $3,000 with the pesos today are worth $30 they have decimated your money to even to this day you can't have US dollar bank accounts in many countries and people are freaking afraid what keeps Argentina going their city

buas is so beautiful US Dollars there's $25 billion dollar in mattresses and pillows and and what you what you learn is that this this um stable coin called tether uh which is $145 billion they have 300 million wallets or investors in that US dollar and they don't ear interest on it there's no interest they just want to have US dollars so when we leave North America um we don't realize how how difficult it is in Africa uh in South America having a bank account having US dollars so I I think that

Dimension is really important to appreciate um in in all those countries yeah I think that's something that people might not necessarily know it's so different from how it is here in North America so really good to go into that and now I think we've covered gold and silver pretty well let's take a look at Bitcoin so you've been talking to us about Bitcoin for years at this Chang my hat now yes it's time for a new hat through your connection with Hive and of course you've been a proponent of

Bitcoin and now we see Bitcoin really really on the move of course gold has moved this year but Bitcoin is taking off so I have to ask you what are the main drivers there is this all to do with Trump optimism what else is driving Bitcoin right now well government policies are always a precursor to change like we talked about interest rates falling um there is monetary and fiscal policies government policies are A or B monetary fiscal monetary are interest rates and money supply fiscal is tax and spending regulations

basically uh the tax and regulations are goie together and and so you can see where the directions are well president Trump is said that he is pro Bitcoin as a reserve asset and that is a game changer now we have some people saying we should sell the gold and only own Bitcoin um and I don't think that that's going to happen but I do think that more uh central banks around the world are going to start to look at Bitcoin as a reserve uh and if 2% Black Rock says to own Bitcoin should be 2% of your

portfolio like I've always advocated 10% in Gold um it means that there's pent up buying um if we go back in history I remember that the regulatory world was always anti- our gold funds anti- gold stocks they're all bad until the GLD came out in 20034 that time period and all of a sudden the regulatory World changed towards gold because now there's a gold ETF I think with the Bitcoin ETF that's going to happen again I think that sort of that that change is going to take place what Bitcoin has is so competitive

regarding gold is that it's much easier to open an account to get Bitcoin than it is actually by physical gold uh the under President Obama there was got choke point1 .0 and they went after all the coin dealers uh to take away their bank accounts then they called choke point 2.0 and they went after anyone in crypto um and and Congress gets upset with that because they never wrote a law to do that it's just the the the White House feels that they have the right to go and set and and set jur set new rules and

regulations well when we look at Bitcoin it has two 20,000 validators nodes all over the Work World working 247 you don't have 20,000 gold analysts you don't have 20,000 gold exchanges you don't have that magnitude and so it makes it pretty competitive if Bitcoin continues to grow as a store of value like gold is um and it's easier to move around the world and it's all about private property rights so coming back to Argentina they took away your private property rights They confiscated your US

dollars so people want to be able to say these are mine socialists do not want and Communists are anti any private property rights free markets are all about private property rights human rights are connected to private property rights so Bitcoin and all the Bitcoin ecosystem done a wonderful job explaining that all over the world and these conferences are packed with it uh you can see the bloggers and and what's interesting to me is that there's more Ms memes you can sh around and see more

conversation I was on talking to a group of CEOs and and they don't have a um a Instagram account for the corporation uh they don't have for themselves they they don't have Twitter uh they have someone else doing it for them they're oblivious oblivious when you turn around and take a look at every crypto mining company or anyone that's in that ecosystem is fully aware of Reddit and how the story is used and told they are fully cognizant of Tik Tok their Instagram and Twitter now X um and so I

think that that it's sort of left a lot of these um gold world has to get caught up to what the social media and sites like yourself and the education you're providing is so powerful because they're not going to get it on CNBC they are not going to get this on Bloomberg TV uh or BNN in Canada uh they're going to get it from following you Charlotte and and it becomes so the Bitcoin world has gone to these other platforms to seek out information to get insight and they're both very similar gold is decentralized

Bitcoin is decentralized both are both portable property rights and and the difference is you can wear your gold and it looks beautiful you can't really wear your Bitcoin unless it is gold and and you but it's easier to move Bitcoin to turn around to sen it anywhere in the world and it will become portable wealth it's not so much money as like something like they call it digital money really is digital gold it's portable wealth and we're seeing as more people are acknowledging governments are not

turning away from mmt they're going to continue to print the money Bitcoin is all of a sudden become every day talking with black rock talking about it and educating people and now they say 2% for asset allocators that means it's only going to grow and it's remember it's C at 21 million coins there's still over 100 million ounces of gold produced every year so that Supply is still coming out if it's not recycled it's from mines and operating um if you if I would love to see more of the gold

mining Executives start if they have free cash flow to hold their gold don't sell it because it's too cheap they should take a lesson from what Hive does Hive holds as Bitcoin our Bitcoin is up our our Holdings are up 67% year-over-year and it's now worth $300 million I mean it's it's amazing to see well I believe Bitcoin is cheap and inexpensive relative so I also believe in Gold both are alternative asset classes both are decentralized and both are preservation of against money Printing and should own

both so many really good points there thank you so much for going into that and just a little bit more on bitcoin you mentioned Bitcoin is cheap right now we should have both of them but Bitcoin is looking cheap right now I have to ask you you know the price potential here we've seen such a run in 2024 what are you looking at do we need to see a pull back before we go higher what do you think it's it's there's a law there's a mathematical law based on exponential math called meta's law and

and and it talks about the adoption and as as the numbers adopt linearly and the price Supply is the supply is limited then prices grow exponentially and and that's what's really important to recognize the same thing with gold Discovery if you have a company with 10 million 10 million uh shares outstanding and has a 10 million ounce discovery that stock goes up exponentially it doesn't go up linear it's an exponential move so it's really important to recognize that that that's

that's really in So when you say to yourself okay there's 8 billion people the money supply is going to continue to grow um uh what will be the different types of asset class of more and more people are concerned about their preservation of wealth and they want it to be pourable I think that Bitcoin can go to a million dollars I I I really do and I think that makes gold worth $10,000 um but the the adoption process because it's C at 21 million is important now if you go go to buy today ,000 of Bitcoin

with pay with PayPal or you going to do it at Robin Hood in the US well they're going to sell you what's called a Satoshi and every Bitcoin is worth a 100 million Satoshi and one Satoshi is worth 0.007 cents well at one penny that means bitcoin's worth a million a 100 million pennies is a million dollars for Bitcoin wow can that happen absolutely because some of these Satoshi have unique numbers and we at Hive have been offered $10 for them so we had a basket we were offered a quarter million dollars just because of

the special numbers that there's only that number 64 and that was on the date of something important happened so if you can find the date of the the of the election well someone will say that Bitcoin on the election of trump is more valuable that's all to say and it's like an andyw warhall piece of art and now I can attach a photo of President Trump on that Satoshi and that Satoshi which is worth 007 cents is all of a sudden worth $10 it that's the magnitude where things can grow exponentially with the adoption

okay that is a Nuance that I had absolutely no idea about so very interesting to look at that as we are getting toward the end of the conversation here I want to finish with a question that I'm asking to most people and I think it's fun so if we look ahead to 2025 what do you think the best performing asset will be and I think this is an especially good one to ask to you because most of the people that I speak to are focused on metal sector but you have a little bit of a broader take I think data

centers I think that the best some of the best performing Bitcoin miners uh it's only because they have electricity and and people in need with Nvidia chips can't find the electricity so they come in and core scientific a year ago is 50 Cents and it goes to $15 because of electricity and and and they can FastTrack the building of those data centers for the AI boom so the AI boom if you miss Nvidia being early then the real stable part are going to be data centers uh and and we you hear some some

promoters talking about making the biggest data center in Alberta uh the federal government Canada's talking about it Etc just those companies that have access to electricity that's stable uh are going to become the best performers which I think okay that's that's definitely an interesting one as well thank you for that and before I let you go any final thoughts you would leave investors with we've had definitely an interesting 2024 and 2025 looks like it's going to be quite

something yes and just be optimistic is so important because if you're so pessimistic then you will miss the next great move the great opportunity that's taking place in front of us uh because you're was too busy looking for the glass being half empty look for big half full don't be naive but stay optimistic you'll stay healthier and wealthier okay what a great point to wrap that up on thank you so much for going over what happened this past year what we were looking forward in 2025 and of course

hope to have you on again next year to discuss some of these things again and me happy holidays of course happy holidays and once again I'm Charlotte McLoud with investingnews [Music] 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]