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 I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is Jeffrey Christian, managing partner at CPM Group. Thank you so much for being here. Always great to have you >> Charlotte. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. You always have really good questions and best of the holiday season and best wishes for next year for you right away. >> Yes, of course. And to you as well and and no pressure. Hopefully, we have some good questions and answers in this interview. As with all the other ones,

>> I thought we could start by taking a little bit of a look back at 2025. It's been an exciting year for gold and silver prices. We've been talking about what's going on throughout the last 12 months. I'm wondering if you look back, were you expecting to see quite such big rises in the gold and silver prices this past year? We were expecting sharp increases in the prices, but quite frankly, not as high as as it is. You know, silver almost touched $70 today. We were thinking that

it could get up into that $4550 range uh by the end of the year. We do expect we have been expecting higher prices uh but we thought that they might not occur or emerge or evolve until 2026 or so. Um, and you know, with gold, I think we were talking about 4,000 as a possible peak, and we got up to 4,477 today. So, I think the the prices have have risen uh for gold and silver in line with what we expected, but they have been much more forceful. >> Yeah, I think this is a theme that I've

been hearing from a lot of people as we get to the end of the year. Many people were bullish on gold and silver, but the extent of the price rises has maybe been a little bit surprising. So when you take a look at that, what has allowed that to happen? What has allowed this more intense movement than people may have been expecting? >> I think it's actually very simple. You know, I mean, we've done a lot of econometric modeling over the next last half century. And and by the way, you

know, 2026 is CPM Group's 40th anniversary. We left Goldman Sachs and set up a CPM group in 1986. But our econometric models of the precious metals, gold and silver markets are investment demand drives prices. Prices drive mine production, secondary recovery and fabrication demand. And we've seen that. And then you say, so what drives investment demand? And investment demand there are some investment demand that is based on the gold and silver supply and demand fundamentals. people say, "Oh, there's a

deficit. I'm going to buy or or the market's tight and I'm going to buy or solar power is going to use a lot of silver, so I'm going to buy." Uh or not. And uh but most of the investment demand is stimulated and driven by economic and political and financial market concerns. And and you know, we were looking at the beginning of the year at what we expected to be a hostile economic and political environment and it has been more hostile than we expected and that is the simple true truth about why

prices have exceeded everybody's expectations this year. It's you know the world has been in much worse shape and much more dangerous shape. The risks are greater. The anxieties on the part of everyone you know financial investors, financial advisors, companies having to make capital uh investment decisions. The anxieties have been much greater than we thought and then I think most people expected. Well, and you're you're talking on a global scale when you mention this. Is that correct?

>> Yes, absolutely. You know, one of the interesting things that we've seen over the course of 2025 and really 2024, too, is is the universality of it. You know, a lot of people focus on the political and economic dysfunctionality that you're seeing in the United States. And there's there are reasons for that. You know, we're 22% of the global GDP. uh where 60% of of of monetary reserves and 70 to 80% of uh private sector financial wealth is US dollars. So there's a reason to focus on the US

uh to some extent but the reality is that like the political problems have been universal the same nivism and nationalism and resource nationalism and dis domestic disun uh union and increased social uh constraints and and and hostilities that has been going on in Europe. It's been going on in various Asian countries. It's been going on in Russia. It's been going on throughout the EU. Canada is relatively um calm uh by stand you know comparison but even Canada has has had issues over

the course of the year and and I think that it's very important to understand this is universal in terms of domestic dysfunctionality but then there's also the international political uh dis disunion too you know with increased hostilities between the United States and just about every country except Russia. Uh and and um perhaps even Russia, you know, uh there there there's there's much greater international political and economic stress than a lot of people expected expected this year. Yeah. We had

expected it, but we thought it would take longer to unfold. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think it's important to highlight for people that this really is happening at the global scale, but we probably should hone in on the US at least a little bit. I know we've been talking about the worsening economic outlook there and the potential for a recession. So, is that something that you see in the cards in 2026, that recession that we seem to have been waiting for for quite some time? We have, you know, we had been for

several years projecting a a relatively severe recession sometime between 2025 and 2027. And we are still projecting a recession, but we have reduced the severity of how how much economic activity will contract in the United States and elsewhere. And we've also rolled it back. So, you know, if you go back 12 months ago, we said perhaps by the second half of 2025 or early 2026, you might see a recession. If you go back, you know, and then three months on, six months on the middle of this year, we were saying, okay, maybe it's

going to be first half of 2026. And now we're saying maybe it's the second half of 2026. And you know to explain part of it is that if you look at the big beautiful b uh budget bill a lot of the worst aspects for the econ for the US economy you know in terms of cutbacks on entitlement payments and and mil uh support and support to governments support to corporations support to state governments. A lot of that stuff that was passed in the big beautiful budget bill is not scheduled to come into

effect until the fourth quarter of 2026 or the first half of 2027. The Republican control Congress said these things are going to be devastating to people, the lack of income, the higher uh costs of living, etc. and we're going to pass the bill now because we might lose the bi-election in November of 2026, but we're going to try to give ourselves a chance to win the bi-election by passing the bill and saying we're these bill the these these economic stringencies don't go into effect until

after the 2026 election. So, you know, it that's one of the reasons why things uh have ruled forward and why the economy has done better than a lot of people thought because a lot of people say, "Oh my god, they're cutting out the the these payments to people. Oh, they're they're slashing uh in uh government uh support for various research programs at universities and private corporations and and government cor uh offices and and state agricultural bureaus. But a lot of that stuff doesn't get put into

effect until after the November elections. I think that addresses a question that many people have which is why has it been able to continue on quite so long. All right. And so in this scenario, what do you see as the Fed's path forward in 2026? I think based on the last meeting, we see increasing descent. We know that we have a new Fed chair coming in next year. What are your thoughts on what we could see there? >> Well, there are a couple things. You know, first off, the Fed has been held

hostage by fiscal policy for the better part of 40 years. And and so the Fed has it has what it would like to do, which is to control inflation and push it down and stimulate employment. Those that that's what it's chartered to do. But it hasn't been allowed to do that for much of the last several decades because it's had to pay attention to this massive these massive fiscal deficits that had to be financed and that meant keeping in interest rates lower than they would otherwise like them to be. So the Fed

has been somewhat hamstrmed by fiscal policy and that's going to continue. But then you have a new Fed chairman coming in and we don't know who it's going to be, but we know who's the number one ch uh choice uh right now that's being tipped to toward and he's an economic idiot for one of a better word. You know, it's really scary. And you know, I the way I put it is this. From 1950 to 1971, we had William McJesme Martin uh as the Fed chairman. And he was, you know, they say he was raised to be the

Fed chairman. His father was a banker and he was, you know, he was he was pointed toward uh national banking from early childhood and and he did an remarkable job in the post-war period. And then he stepped down in 71 and we and and Vulkar came in in 79, October 79. And we had eight years of really bad management at the Fed. They were political appointees like the one that we're probably going to get next year. They didn't know what they were doing. They cowtowed to the presidency. And and I if you look at that period

1971 to 1979, you had two bouts of inflation of 12% and 14%. You had two really severe recessions. you had all kinds of economic uh and financial problems that were going on at the time. And part of that had to do with deregulation of a wide variety of industries and economic sectors that had been regulated since the 30s and and that deregulation led to some readjustments. We got off of the dollar gold standard and there was a readjustment that that occurred 1970 really 1967 to 1975 you might say you know um but part of it

had to do with really incompetent management at the Fed you know and the Fed is a human organization so the quality of the Fed rests heavily on the quality of the people running and I'm very much concerned about what we're going to get going forward. >> Yeah, I think those concerns are increasing the closer we get to that transition time. And so, keeping in mind what you've been seeing here, what is your outlook for inflation then in next year and and the years to come if you want to go that far ahead?

>> We think it's, you know, the Fed and then others are going to be very hardressed to get inflation down to about 2%. You've got a wide variety of economic and political developments that are going to cause inflation to remain high. You're going to probably see, well, you have been seeing rising unemployment uh since April of of of this year. And it's probably going to get worse, especially 12 months from now when when the big beautiful budget bill starts kicking in and you start seeing even

larger layoffs than we've seen over the last four months or so. uh and and we haven't seen them because they haven't been reported. Uh you know, and it turns out that oh yeah, we actually do have numbers, but the government the the administration doesn't want us to release them because they're so bad. You know, uh so we think that unemployment's going to be worse. Economic activity overall is going to be worse than expected. You know, we do not expect 1.8 or 2.2% uh real GDP in the United States in

2026. We think that the Fed is going to be having to keep interest rates low and not fight inflation as much as it would like to because of the need to stave off uh a more severe recessionary conditions. >> And all of these all of these factors that you've been mentioning, these are positive for gold, but there's there's a lot of things that are in gold's corner right now providing those tailwinds. What else would you pull out for 2026 as key factors to watch for the gold price?

>> Well, I think yeah, you know, okay, the first thing is the overall economic outlook and that is very key and you know the expectation is that there will be some continuation of economic activity as there has been over 2025. uh as the year progresses, economic growth will be harder to accomplish and that'll be positive for gold, right? Uh at the same time, you will see some very large tax cuts uh and and refunds for the wealthy in the first half of the uh 2026, which will go into the stock

market. And so that will keep the stock market rising for a while. But if you disagregate the the stock indices, you'll see it's a handful of very speculative companies that have been driving the indices higher, you know, companies involved in AI and crypto. And crypto is a joke. I mean, it's really a scam. Uh and and AI is far less effective than people say. you know, people who are involved with some of the best AI uh developing corporations tell us that 80% of what they're generating isn't accurate. Now, that has

two problems. first off is it gives everybody bad information. But the second thing is people then make investment decisions and financial and economic decisions based on bad information which can worsen any economic problems that that emerge. So I think that that's a problem. But you do have a very vulnerable stock market and you see that in investor attitudes and investor trading volumes and you see it in the gold and silver prices. One of the reasons why people are moving into gold and silver is because they have

done very well in the stock market. They have a lot of nice profits in the stock market, but they're extremely nervous about those profits disappearing overnight if should the stock market enter a major downward trend. >> Yeah. Yeah. A couple of points I want to follow up there. Do you see do you see such a major downward trend coming for the stock market? There's so much talk about this AI bubble potentially bursting. What is your outlook there? >> I I believe it will burst. You know, I I

saw somebody saying, you know, the the New York Stock Exchange is going to fall 90%. I don't buy that. Uh but, you know, if you look at when the internet tech bubble burst, the New York Stock Exchange fell about 40 45%. And NASDAQ fell about 80 85%. So, I would think that you're going to see something like that in the worst case scenario. You know, you could have it, but it's always important to remember they sprung back and they moved to a new bubble eight years later. You know, that bubble burst

in 2001 and the the housing bubble didn't burst until 2008. So, you know, you had seven years of recovery in the stock market. So, but yeah, I we do expect that you're going to see at some point a major ratcheting down in the stock market, but that probably will only occur after the economic uh environment grows more hostile. You know, a lot of things get carried forward in a a rising economy, but when the economy plateaus or starts to weaken a all those guys who are doing fraudulent things, the frauds come. You

know, you could do a fraud as long as the economy is growing. But when somebody says, "Wait a second, I think I take my profits out." The house of cards falls. You know, but it's not just fraud. It's also just misrepresentations and all sorts of other things that will be going on that you just can't maintain when you get into an economic downturn. >> Right. And the other point you mentioned, these people have made a lot of money in the stock market. Now they're starting to think maybe I should

go over to gold and get some protection there. To what extent do you think gold is becoming more mainstream at this point? I don't know that it's becoming more mainstream at this point. There has been really since the well we've seen in in the early 80s I use the term the democratization of the gold market. uh and it really started in the 60s in Europe and then the United States in 75 and then Japan in 79 uh 80 and then India in the 80s and China in the 90s you've seen deregulation

of of the gold market and you've seen an upward shift in the investment demand curve so more investors are more interested in gold and there's also been a lot of innovations you know if you go back to the 1970 if you go back to 1979 if you wanted to buy stock you might pay a $100 commission to buy a 100 shares of IBM you know now a lot of things are commission free or the commission is $5 or less you know so uh that's changed but in the gold market you've had the rise of the ETFs you've had the rise of

bullion coins 1979 1980 you had the krugaran it wasn't until the mid 80s that the maple leaf and the eagle came along. And it wasn't until later in the 80s that the the purse mint uh started generating gold coins and the filmonic in Austria came later. So you've got gold coins, you've got gold coins that are more readily available. You have easier ways of going about buying uh coins and and and other things. You have ETFs. uh there's a lot more sophistication in terms of overall

investment assets. You know, if you go back to the 1980s, maybe 35 to 45% of the money financial assets in the United States were managed by professional managers and the rest were in managed by individual investors. Today I think institutional fund managers probably manage about 80% or more of the money under management. So you have a more sophisticated and ready ready to diversify group. So there's a lot of things that have made it easier for more people to invest in gold. That said, I think the attitude toward gold remains

something of a sideline. So I don't know that the attitude toward gold has been mainstreamed but there has been an increase in it. >> That's an interesting perspective. Do you do you see that mainstreamization of gold coming or do you think it stays as it is? I think, you know, we've written some things recently and we just produced a report uh last week uh a market commentary that Silver Corp uh actually paid, you know, uh a sponsorship fee to h to help us distribute it called the

gold and silver renaissance 25 years on because in 2000 we said this is going to happen. There will be an upward shift uh in the investment demand curve for gold. then central banks will get into it and then silver will join and all of that's happened and it's been going on for 25 years and our our thesis was in in the year 2000 that the economic and political environment going forward would be much more hostile than it had been previously and as bad as things were in the 70s we thought that you know

and in the 60s and 70s and 50s you'd have one or two years of political and economic problems people would buy gold, then things would get better and they'd buy less gold. Uh, but we said going forward, starting in 2001, we would see a much more persistent demand for gold, more investors, more types of investors in more parts of the world buying more gold at higher prices for a longer period of time. And where you used to see these one or two year spikes, we said this is going to go on for decades.

And we're 25 years, we're a quarter of a century into that gold and silver renaissance where investors have rediscovered the value and wisdom of having some of their wealth in gold and silver. And we don't think that we're halfway through that period. So we see this continuing for a long period of time. >> Okay. Okay. So this is a much longer trend toward that that we need to keep in mind then. And I want to Oh, yeah. Go ahead. >> There two sides to the equation. On the

one hand, as I said, there are all kinds of mechanisms that make it easier for people to invest in gold. Uh, and there are people buying more gold. I mean, we saw, you know, 35 million ounces or more of gold bought this year. Uh, and we're probably going to see even more next year if we're right on uh our outlook for the economy. But the other thing is, you know, okay, gold's doing well, silver's doing well, investors are buying it, but the world economy is not doing well. And even while stocks and

bond bond prices have risen sharply uh and and and stock prices have risen sharply on an index basis even though they're rising there's a lot of concern anxiety and dissatisfaction and worry in that market. So the shift to paying positive attention to gold and silver is partly because gold and silver has a positive have positive stories, but it's also partly because other assets don't have positive stories. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah, I see what you mean there. And I want to make sure that we touch on

the gold price as well. It's been a record setting year for gold. And I think after it started to it had that October rise, people were really expecting we'd see a bigger and longer correction than we actually ended up having. And it's I believe it's at record levels right at this moment as we speak. So is this sustainable? What do you see coming for the price next year? >> Yeah, we see higher prices and yeah, gold gold today, you know, we're we're speaking on I guess the 22nd of

December. Gold is about $4,466. Silver got up to like $6953 for the March contract. So, we're at record prices. Uh they're higher than we thought they would be by the end of this year. Uh because the interest has been more intense on the part of investors. Um and our expectation is that the prices will rise further next year because as we go through that menu, and I only mentioned two things when you asked, well, what's going to what's been driving this? Well, I didn't even get

into international political issues or domestic political issues or domestic social dis, you know, social uh lack of cohesion uh and disscent and divisions. Um we think that 2026 is going to be a more hostile environment than 2025 and that will cause investors to buy more gold and silver. So, we're seeing we're expecting gold and silver prices to spike higher than they are today at times during 2026. And yes, you know, after the spike in in October, a lot of people including CPM group thought that there would be some

period of time where the prices would come down. We thought it would be like in the first half of December. It didn't really happen. there was a very you know prices basically moved sideways instead of uh seeing profit taking that tells you that those investors that are shorter investors who came rushing into the market over the last nine months and and since midocctober they haven't left you know they haven't said okay that was a great run let me go back to Nvidia they've said that was a great run but I

just have this feeling that there's something more coming down the tracks >> yeah yeah interesting to see that mindset even from the people who may have been coming in more recently to the space. And so we talked about gold. You mentioned silver as well and spike higher for silver in 2026 as well. For silver, the move that we're seeing in silver for you, is it more is it related to following gold higher or is it more related to silver specific factors in terms of this move? Uh it's probably

more related to silver specific factors but again it's basically investors and you know silver had been lagging gold and in the price increase and that reflected the fact that you had a lot of disenchanted investors selling their silver. So net purchases of silver by investors as a group was lower than it than gross. Yeah, you saw you saw rising gross silver investment, but there were people selling into the higher prices which kept the price down. And you actually got to the point, you know,

until August of this year, you got to the point where refineries had so much of this 90% 99% silver investment products, 1 oz, 10 ounce, 100 ounce being sold back to them that they had to melt down, recast as a thousand ounce bars, and in many cases refined to get it up to good delivery standard. So that you know a you know a refiner will buy 100 ounce bars or 10 ounce bars but the refiner sells thousand ounce good delivery bars and it needs to refine it up to good delivery standards and recast it as

thousand ounce bars. They were so backed up that they stopped buying silver scrap their traditional sources of material. They they were saying to their traditional customers, we can buy this stuff, but we got to pay you a deep discount and it's going to be months before we have outturn because we're so backed up. That started to disappear at the end of August. And that's when the silver price really took off, you know. So, it was it was partly strong investment demand, but it was also a sharp dimmonition of investors

selling. stale bull investors, disenchanted s investors selling. It's the same mechanism that we saw in 1979 and in other periods of time like 200 to 2004 where the price of silver had been depressed to some extent because investors were selling and then one day the investors as a group said hey I think if I wait until tomorrow I'll get a higher price and tomorrow the price was higher and they said I think if I wait till tomorrow I'll get an even higher price. And that's the same

mechanism that we've been seeing really since late late August of this year. Investors who were disenchanted, they had bought during the Wall Street silver scam or some of them had bought in 2011 at the peak and they've been holding it at a loss and all of a sudden they say, "Hey, I can get my money back." And then they say, "Wait a second. If I wait, I might actually be able to turn a profit on this." Yeah. Yeah. You can really see how driven by investors this move is.

And that brings me to another point I wanted to bring up with you. I know you do a lot of work to dispel misconceptions in the silver market for investors and probably especially for people who might be new to the market. So is there anything key that you would highlight there right now that you are seeing? >> Well, I think that you're seeing several things. You know, first off, there's no big deficit in silver. there is a surplus which is being more than absorbed by investors you know but in

terms of newly refined silver coming into the market there's plenty as I said the smelters and refiners are backed up with it there's plenty of new supply coming in u and fabrication demand is off on a global basis it's probably off about 3% but if you look at key markets like India fabrication demand might be off 35 40% this year partly because of the higher price So there there isn't a gigantic deficit. There are spot shortages in London due to strong investment demand and in India

due to strong investment demand while fabrication demand's off. People are buying bullion coins and bullion medallion medallions as much as they can and they're really complaining because the government's putting in u import duties to try to quell the the purchase the demand for gold and silver in India right now. So um but you know you got spot tightness you don't have a big short tightness you don't have uh a lot of other issues. It's interesting because you know China a couple weeks

ago uh announced that it was putting in increased uh strictures on silver exports and the reality is they've always had uh strictures on on silver exports all I mean I started the business in 1970s and they had uh strictures and people would say well China you can't export silver and then I found out that yeah you can no you can't But the Chinese government can and the Chinese government was se sell selling excess silver month after month in the 70s 80s and onward you know the idea that oh all of a sudden China saying you

can't export silver or there export restrictions and limits they've always been there. >> Yeah. Yeah. The the China news that was one point that I was hoping you'd mentioned. So glad we went into that one. And then okay so for silver no deficit but I wanted to ask a little bit more about the location of silver because we do seem to have had market dislocations this year due to silver being there but not necessarily in the right location. So is that a theme you see continuing next year?

>> Yeah, I think it is. You know, but it's it's amazing because if you look at the misinformation, like last week we were just measuring and stuff like, oh, 27 million ounces or 50 million ounces of silver has disappeared from the comx depositories. Well, it hasn't disappeared. Yeah. It's gone to England which is where it came from four years ago you know and you can see the LBMA data and you can see the comx data and there is a big surge of of there was a big decline in silver in London

and there was a commensurate rise in in the in the New York market because the arbitrage you know the price of silver was higher in New York then the arbitrage reversed because London had shipped so much silver out both to New York and also to India. The the Arab reversed and people were they were air freighting silver back to London. So you saw about 50 60 you know it went from 530 million ounces down to about 450 million ounces. You saw a lot of silver go back come out of COMX registered depositories and go back to

England or off to other places where it wasn't there. There was also a trend on the part of investors saying, "I want my physical silver and I don't necessarily want it in a comx registered depository. I'd rather have it in a non-registered depository where it doesn't show up in statistics." Uh, so you were seeing some of that going on too, you know. But then there were somebody, you know, I saw some thing online and it's like, oh, Comx depository holdings of silver have fallen 90

million ounces in the last few years. That's not true. You know, the 530 million ounces was like four months ago, you know, three months ago, and that was a record. And at 460 million ounces, we're still, you know, three, four times higher than we were for most of the last 40 years. So there's plenty of Comx silver still in the COMX system. and and but you have these promoters just and saying anything, you know, and quite frankly, the people who are involved in the core silver market are making money handover fist

and they don't mind if part of the reason why they're making money handover fist is because a lot of investors are believing inaccurate information and buying silver and gold. >> Yeah. Yeah. it gets very tricky when it comes to these these silver market nuances. So, thank you for going into that and I think it gives us a nice pathway over to platinum because I remember when we talked about 6 months ago, you were saying a similar thing where with platinum in terms of how you look at the market, you're not seeing

the deficit there that others in the market are also seeing, but we have had this big rise in the platinum market. So, I'm curious about your outlook for that metal as we move forward as well. >> Right. When we look at platinum and palladium, most of the price increase since June seems to be coming from investor buying and inventory building on the part of industrial users and semifabricators who had allowed their inventories to fall very low because there was always plenty of platinum and platium around

and the price was the prices of both metals were just moving sideways for years. Well, for platinum from 2015 until this year, the palladium rose, but then it came back down after uh after 2023 and you know 2024, first half of 2025, it was moving sideways. So in industrial users of these metals said, I don't need to hold inventories because there's plenty around and the price is not going to move sharply. That changed after late May into June and they started buying but most of the buying

was investment demand and you saw about 66,000 ounces net purchases of platinum ETFs since then and you've seen about 370,000 ounces of palladium ETFs since then and but it's really investment demand that's been driving it. you know, there has been some strength in in fabrication demand and you know, the announcement this morning that the EU uh was giving up the go, you know, we never had in our long-term projections the idea that the EU would get rid of petroleum powered vehicles technologically,

economically, mechanically, thermodynamically. It just wouldn't work. you know, you're um and so we never built that into our models. And a lot of the companies that we know in the platinum industry also said, "No, that's not going to happen." Yeah. It's like in the early 80s, the California Air Resource Board uh passed a regulation that by the early 90s, 10% of the vehicles being sold in California had to be zero emission vehicles. and the auto industry said what will happen

is all of the auto dealers in California will move to Nevada and Utah if you do that in Arizona. So they suspended that regulation. It's still on the books, but it's never been put into effect. Yeah. And so when the Europeans start saying, "Well, we're going to get rid of diesel vehicles by 2035." We say, "No, you're not. You know, that's not going to that's not going to happen. And you're a politician. you will have retired by 2035. So it won't matter that it didn't

to you personally, you know, that that that was not accurate portrayal of the future. So we're not surprised by that. A lot of people in the industry are not surprised by it. But again, you have a lot of new investors in platinum and platium since June who were saying, "Okay, gold's rising sharply. Silver's rising sharply. Gold's at a record. Silver's headed towards platinum and platium are dead in the water. it's time to cycle some money into them. And then you had these marketing people come

along and say, "Oh, there's a shortage of platinum, there's a shortage of palladium." And even if there isn't a shortage of palladium, there could be in the future a shortage of palladium if South African production falls and if the Russians decide to stop exporting the palladium that they need the foreign exchange earnings so badly from exports. Um you started seeing investors come in and that's really what's been driving that. And we've been wrong. We thought

that they would catch on to what was really going on and back out by now and instead they've continued to add to their platinum and palladium holdings driving the prices up further. >> That's that's very interesting. So again very driven by investor sentiment and yeah it does feel a little bit precarious in terms of what then comes next for the prices for platinum and palladium. So, is there anything we can say with certainty about where they go in 2026 or are we kind of waiting to see

how investors feel? >> Precarious is the right word. You know, we always, you know, people always say, why don't you or any other legitimate commodities analyst include invest uhment demand with fabrication demand. And we always explain that wise investors want to know what's the the core or you know there's different terms people use the primary balance of newly refined metal versus fabrication demand because they want to invest in something that's being used. Yeah. When an

investment when fabricators buy platinum or silver or or anything, they put it into a product and it's no longer refined platinum that can be resold on a moment's notice or on a whim. And the fabricators have installed capacity and businesses that they have to run and they need the platinum and platium and silver and gold to run those businesses. So they're not going to disappear. Therefore, fabrication demand is a much better thing to have absorbing your metal because it's it ceases to be refined

metal that can be resold immediately. Investment demand is much more spurious. You know, investors don't have to buy. They don't even have to be in the market, right? So, for investors to come in and say, "A, I want to buy." Uh, it's a two-step process. A, I just discovered that palladium exists. And B, I mean, we've actually had people say that to us, you know, I heard there's a metal palladium. Uh, tell me about it. And then, oh, I want to buy some, you know, within the same conversation. Um,

investment demand is much more precarious. It can come and go in the dark of night, you know, and and so it's it's when you're when you have prices rising sharply because of investment demand, it's a much more treacherous thing to be bullish, dangerous thing to be bullish than if you have a primary or fundamental tightness of fabrication demand versus total supply. Now that said, platinum and platium total supply balance relative to fabrication demand has gotten much tighter and platinum may

be in a significant deficit next year for the first time in several years, which is probably why you're seeing the platinum price twice double what it was eight months ago. >> Okay. We'll we'll be sure to check back in on those ones heading into next year. And as we're getting toward the end here, I know that usually or sometimes you choose a word to represent the year ahead. So, I wonder, do you have one for 2026? >> Yeah, I haven't picked it yet this year. Thank you for reminding me. Uh but, you

know, I think it's going to be a pretty dangerous year, uh a treacherous year. Uh we do think that you'll see further record prices for gold and silver and possibly for platinum. I'm not sure about palladium because it has a long way to go to get back to its record. Uh but we're looking at a very hostile economic and political environment next year and um we think that that's going to keep metals prices strong. >> All right. Well, I'll come back to you next time and we'll find out what the

word is. Any final thoughts or advice for investors heading into the new year? >> I think, you know, our view is you should be long these metals from a long-term investment perspective, but you have to have a realistic view of how high they can go and how high they can stay because, you know, there's one thing to pick a spike uh and then there's another thing to say what's the long-term sustainable price. You know, everyone knows that silver rose to $50 in 1980. They don't know that the annual

average price was like $21 that year. Yeah. And everyone knows it rose to $50 in 2011, but they don't know that the annual average price was like $35 a year, you know. So, you look at the gold price or the silver price today, you look at the gold prices. Wow. It's at a record $4,400. That's right. And through November, the average was 3,800. So, you know, we'll have an average price that probably will be over. Well, I'm not sure where it'll be. It'll be higher than 3,800 for sure. But people

will say, what are you talking about still? You know, gold was only $4,000. It's $4,500 right now. It's like, well, yeah, but this you're talking about a daily price versus an annual average. And the annual average is important for mining companies and smelters and refiners, industrial users and jewelers and you know uh and others. >> Yeah, I think that's important context to remember. So, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on to go over what's happening in the precious metals market.

We'll be sure to check back next year and see how these trends develop. Well, yeah, and thanks for having us on and having me on and have a good holiday season and best wishes for 2026, >> of course, and you as well. Once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Jeffrey Christian with CPM Group. 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.