[music] I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is Mike Bologna, founder of golds.com and author of two best-selling books on precious metals, a guide to investing in gold and silver and the great gold and silver rush of the 21st century. Thank you so much for being here. >> We thank you for having me. Yeah, >> really good to be having you here and meeting you for the first time and we're at the New Orleans Investment Conference. We've reached the end of the


second day. I wondered if you could start by sharing any key takeaways you've had as you're out on the show floor. >> Well, there is an excitement at this conference, but it also shows, you know, they typically get uh about this size crowd. Even though this crowd is very excited and sophisticated and uh they've they've seen some spectacular profits lately because most of this crowd is invested in gold and silver. Uh but uh the fact that this isn't a 100,000 people uh says that we are nowhere near


the top of this market. There will come a day uh where the public does come rushing in. Uh we've seen uh the public rushing in and trying to buy precious metals in India, Southeast Asia, and Australia, but it didn't happen in North America. It didn't there's a little bit in uh more Eastern Europe, but not as much in Western Europe. People aren't lining up at coin shops uh like they did back in 1980. Um if you uh there's there's a lot of history in both of my books. Uh but the last one, the great


gold and silver rush of the 21st century, uh it was four years of paying two research assistants full-time for four years and uh researching and writing that thing. And in it I I revisit through articles in Time magazine and so on uh the bull market of the 70s and I show some of the differences between the 70s and today you know and there's this saying in the financial markets when when people say well this time it's different and then it never is. It's always just history repeating. Well with precious metals


though this time it is really really different. Um, in the bull market of the 70s, um, in the USSR, uh, gold was illegal. There were no markets. If you could buy gold from another person, it didn't affect the worldwide spot price because there was no exchange. Uh, same thing with, uh, Ma, China. Uh, India didn't have an exchange. Uh, and and there was, uh, taxes and controls on coins and bars. uh gold was is still a very popular wedding gift, but it wasn't investment coins and bars. And then you look at Africa and


South America and how incredibly poor they were back then. Uh in the United States, it wasn't legal for Americans to own gold until the first day of 1975 and for Australia the first day of 1976. And so uh really it was only Western Europe, not Eastern Europe, but Western Europe and Canada driving the gold price. And then in 1975 the US joined the party. 1976 Australia. But still it was only 10% of the world's population with the increase in the population of the planet uh since then and then the


fact that today it's every country on the planet except North Korea. They're the only ones that can't like invest in in gold and silver. And there are now exchanges all over the planet. There's exchanges in China, in Russia, in India, and you know, they're everywhere. And so, um, there's basically 18 times more people that can come chasing gold and silver this time around. And when I wrote the book, uh, summer of 2022 is when, uh, this data came from. There was the OECD said that there was 55 times


more currency on the planet, national fiat currencies. Well, we've we've recalculated that since then, and it's closer to 80 times more currency. So, you're talking about 18 times more people with 80 times more currency coming chasing a pile of gold that's only twice the size that it was back in 1980. And I don't know. I think the pile of silver is actually smaller than it was back in 1980. So, um, I'm looking for some pretty spectacular prices. And then you've got things like u mainstream


banks uh Morgan Stanley uh recommending uh to go from a 60/40 portfolio 60% stocks 40% bonds to 60% stocks for 20% bonds and 20% gold. So they're saying sell half of your bond holdings and convert them to gold. This is just like a whole new world. This to me signals the beginning of the third and final phase of a bull market and that is where you have the greatest uh amount of gains in the shortest period of time. So we should be seeing some fireworks coming. >> Well, and let's let's talk a little bit


more about where you see this gold bull market going in terms of prices and developments along the way. I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention just the sheer number of more people that there are now versus back then. >> Yeah. Well, like I said, it was the for the first half of that bull market, it was just Western Europe. Canada was a very small population, but they did participate. Uh but uh yeah, the US didn't join the party until the first day of 1975. And it's interesting, uh


you know, Roosevelt had made gold ownership illegal back in 1933. and um uh but I believe it was 73% of the gold coins in circulation were not turned in. They remained illegally in private hands. And so uh when gold became uh legal to own in the United States first day of 1975, it had gone from $35 to just under $200 an ounce by the end of 74. the first day of 1975, it started to fall. And I believe that's all these people that were sitting on uh the coins that were passed down from their father, their


grandfather, whatever. Uh and and they had been sitting on them for 50 years, not able to sell them because they were illegal. And so uh all these Ellis came out out of uh from hiding. And at the same time, uh there was a bare market in stocks that ended and stocks started recovering. And so, uh, gold went from just under $200 an ounce down to 103. It lost almost 50%, uh, over the next, I believe it was, um, 18 months or so. It was, uh, uh, toward the end of 76 that it bottomed at 103, but then it turned around and the


intraday high was actually uh, $873, not the $850. $850 is the close. Uh the intraday though 873 coincidentally the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 873 points at the same moment. So it was a 1:1 ratio Dow gold. >> Yeah. >> Very very interesting. And if you if you look forward into this golden silver cycle, what is what is the price potential that you're seeing there? >> Wow. Um this is a very difficult thing because uh I do believe that there is a giant crisis heading towards us. Um if you


look at like the 1929 that was a stock market bubble only real estate was not in a bubble. Gold was fixed. It was uh $2067 an ounce. Uh and then you go to 1966. Stocks were in a bubble and they corrected uh from 66 to 1982. The Dow Jones bumped its head on a thousand points and couldn't break through from 66 to 82. And during that time we had raging inflation. Company profits went up the number of dollars that they were in. So all the price earnings ratio the PE all the ways that you can measure uh


whether a stock market is in a bubble or not uh they it it corrected and stocks became severely undervalued by 1982. Then we went into uh the tech bubble in 1999 2000 and stocks were extremely overvalued and then crashed and we ended up with you know each one of these crashes and corrections. I I don't know there's not that many people that recall the the uh 1970s but the raging inflation we had and then the double dip recession that we had at the beginning of the Reagan era. There were some


pretty tough times even though we didn't have a major stock market crash. Uh we had this slow grinding correction in with the NASDAQ bubble. We had a major stock market crash that ended up in a recession. Uh but real estate was not overvalued. Then we get to the global financial crisis. Stocks were not overvalued. They were back down in the fair value region because of the NASDAQ crash. And it was real estate that was in a bubble. Today we have historic bubbles in real estate, stocks, and bonds. Uh and and I mean there's only


the only way that you can measure stocks that doesn't show them in the largest bubble in history. It shows them in the second largest is PE ratios. But every other indicator uh shows stocks being more overvalued than at any point in history. And then uh when you look at commercial real estate and residential uh same thing, it's the most over more overvalued than we were in 2007. And so it's going to be a crash of all of these asset classes against gold and silver. Uh one thing about bubbles is


they can't go forever. you when when the economy starts out balanced and you've got one sector of the economy growing so much faster than the whole rest of the economy. And you know your audience can feel that a couple of years ago the uh stock market the the markets in general sort of detached from the real economy. the real economy is not doing that well well and uh but stock markets, real estate, uh stuff seems like it's gone insane. And then the national debt uh just and it isn't just the US, it's all


over the planet where countries are are uh spending their way into oblivion. >> So we have all these bubbles lining up as as you describe them. And I I don't know if it's possible to say this, but what what could be the trigger that starts us off toward this this crash scenario that you're looking for? >> I think uh the uh tariffs that have been imposed are perturbing the world economy enough. It's just taking a little while for it to happen. uh what we you know right now everybody


is betting on the AI bubble uh that that is going to be so huge that there's nothing to worry about. I I uh just think there's going to be this uh giant correction. Uh but tariffs in world trade, if you when you install tariffs, you slow down world trade and uh um I I think that will be the thing that ends up uh popping this. We'll have some other event that sort of co that coincides with with all of this. And uh you never know uh what is going to come. You know, when Alan Greenspan when the


NASDAQ crashed, Alan Greenspan tried to reflate the stock markets. He didn't see the real estate bubble he was creating over here out of his per the periphery of his vision. Uh um and but that whole global financial crisis that was caused by Alan Greenspan's reaction to the uh that and then all of these uh new things like uh mortgage back securities and uh collateralized debt obligations and so on. uh uh but uh he didn't see that coming at all. He he created that bubble uh and he didn't see it. And so uh you


never know what's going to come at you out of left field. >> It's true. You never know until it's there, >> right? >> And I think that people who are here at this event are really looking for ways that they can protect themselves. And obviously there's there's gold and silver. You can do it that way. What else would you say? How would you think investors should strategize right now? >> Well, my other [clears throat] investment uh recently has been I've got


a 900 acre farm up in the mountains of Puerto Rico and uh so far farmland never went into a bubble and uh people always need to eat and so um that is uh another very resilient investment uh that I'm making. Uh but you know uh you're talking about uh uh precious metals as though it's only a safe haven. It's only insurance. And there are these brief moments in history where the safe haven investment, the insurance for the last 2,500 years simultaneously becomes the asset with the single potential gra


gains in absolute purchasing power. We're in one of these rare rare moments in history right now. And we've seen tremendous gains in the purchasing power of gold and silver. It isn't just protecting your portfolio. You know, it's still sort of considered by most people some lunatic fringe investment. Uh I've been investing in gold since uh my first purchase was in 2002 and the spot price was $315 and I was buying gold eagles at $325 uh each and I've been buying ever since.


I was a precious metals investor before. I was a precious metals uh dealer and author and commentator. Uh and and so I'm basically practicing uh what I preach. Uh but um uh the the gains have been absolutely spectacular and they're not done. They are nowhere near done. The Dow gold ratio tells us that. The gold silver ratio tells us that. and all of the reckless government spending all over the world tells us that. >> Well, and and part of the reason I asked that question is we had gold and silver


prices go up to those historic highs a couple weeks ago at this point and I think people were wondering, some people were wondering, should I take profits at this point? Should I be taking some of that money off the table to do something else with? Do you have any any thoughts on that or would you always keep it in in gold and silver? No, I'm a believer in waves and cycles. Uh I intend on uh selling tanches. The first thing is I've let I try to um not make my investment decisions based on emotions. And so I use the gold


silver ratio to tell me whether or not to buy gold or silver. And because the gold silver ratio has been so out of whack, uh I I own 300 ounces of silver for every ounce of gold. Um it will come back into balance one day. Uh we don't know when. It's going to take a little while. Uh but I believe you're going to see the gold silver ratio uh in the 20s or less. In other words, right now it takes 85 ounces of silver to equal the value of 1 ounce of gold. Uh if it if it takes 80 and you buy silver and it goes


down to 20 and you sell your silver and buy gold with it, you just got four times more gold than you paid for. And so uh it's it's a a strategy that can be back tested. It works. uh and uh for 2500 years the average exchange rate was about 13 to 16 somewhere in that range uh ounces of silver to 1 ounce of gold. So this is something that has only existed since the uh big discoveries of the commtock load and the silver valley and Celina, Idaho uh back in the late 1800s. And simultaneously governments


around the world went on the classical gold standard and treasuries distorted their stockpiles of silver. And so all this silver flooded onto the market and silver's value plummeted compared to gold's value. And it has bounced up and down. But we've been at these historic high areas of like 100 to one and during COVID 120 to1 which had never happened in 2500 years of gold and silver being money that had never happened. And so, uh, this was something that, uh, was a great opportunity. And by allowing the


gold silver ratio to sort of dictate to me, uh, which one I'm going to buy, uh, I ended up buying a a bunch of silver during COVID, right around $11 an ounce. And so, that was pretty nice. The >> um, >> pretty nice, >> right? Right. Uh, but what can I say? It's nowhere near done. Um when you look at how the bull market of the 70s progressed uh and uh then you look at this natural balance that uh that different sectors of the economy stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, energy. Uh and


you know when you do these they're called ratio charts where you divide one thing by the other. What you're doing is you're eliminating the national fiat currency from the equation. And the national fiat currency creates this smokec screen, this fog that we can't see through. You can't see what true value is. So, um, you know, you can get an idea of this. Uh, there's a couple of online chapters uh from my last book at ggsr21.com. And chapter 3 is the shortest and most entertaining uh chapter and it's going


to benefit you for the rest of the it's just a primer on how to read charts and how to see when whoever created that chart is trying to lie to you, how they're trying to uh influence your perception. And uh uh but uh it shows you that um most the way things are priced in national fiat currencies, it's very difficult to perceive what true value is. And so anyway, >> well, we'll include a a link to the chapter in the video description so hopefully people can check it out if they would like to. Just one small other


point on silver. I think that when people saw it get past the $50 level, there there it's quite a psychological level and especially with everything that was going on with the shortages in London, there are a lot of questions about, you know, are are things changing? I'm wondering if you can talk about that situation. It it seems to have resolved. It also feels like something that could rear its head again. >> Yeah, but it had only basically reached the level that it was at in 1980.


uh inflation just using what I call this I'm the person that coined the term the CP lie. Uh there's basically two different sets of numbers that the government uses to measure inflation. The original set of numbers that they used from World War II until 1982 and then from 1982 until today they keep on adjusting the uh the CPI and and so I call it the CP lie because it way underestimates inflation. But even using that calculator, you come up with more than $200 an ounce uh to equal the value


that silver had back in January of 1980. I mean, name something else that's selling at a discount to its 1980 price. And you really can't um when you compare it in in my book uh the great gold and silver rush of the 21st century. I compare it to the uh percentage price change in stocks, real estate, uh uh bonds, uh the growth of the uh the M2 currency supply, uh and the and the um uh the uh Wilshire 5000 uh index, which incorporates pretty much all of the publicly listed stocks in the United


States. and you end up with these uh price projections that range from $200 to about $2,000. I mean, some of them just are absurd. Uh except it's it it's it's just math. And the thing is that uh we have a tremendous shortage and a lack of supply of silver right now. Uh we didn't have that back in 1980. This is th this is a different I I don't understand the structural deficits that we have in silver where there's uh less supply coming to market than the demand for silver uh each year and the prices


still being down where they were back in 1980. So >> yeah, I think a lot of people have trouble understanding how that can be, >> right? And so I think you're going to see gold a lot higher than it is now. So, let's say gold goes to $10,000 an ounce like Jamie Diamond is now saying. Uh uh if it goes to $10,000 an ounce and you've got a uh 20 to1 uh gold silver ratio, you're talking about uh that that's $2,000 silver, isn't it? >> Your math is better than mine. I believe


so. >> Yeah. Right. So, which sounds ridiculous. Uh, I'm not expecting $2,000 silver, but I am expecting something over $200. >> That sounds very fair. Well, this has been very educational. I really enjoy the the look through the history and how it can affect what's happening today. I'll let you get back into the conference unless you had any final thoughts you would leave investors with right now. >> No, that's it. uh you know um the one thing I do want to say to the audience


is investing is a team sport and just collecting uh the knowledge that you get on channels like this. Uh this is your team right here. [laughter] So okay >> you on and hope to do it again soon. >> Okay. Well thank you. >> Thank you. >> It's a pleasure. >> Very nice. And once again I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Mike Maloney.