I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is Frank Holmes, CEO and CIO at US Global Investors. Thank you so much for being here. Great to have you as always. >> No, it's wonderful to be with you, Charlotte. >> Always really good to be catching up with you and we've made it to almost the end of 2025. So, I want to spend time today looking back at the year that we've had and of course forward to 2026. And I thought we could begin with gold. If we look back to our last conversation


all the way back in July, you were telling us that gold would get to 4,000 per ounce in 2025, which of course it did. So, I have to ask right off the bat, what are you expecting for the gold price next year? Well, next year it it will most likely test 5,000 and by the end of Trump's term it uh I think it'll be $7,000 and I think that silver will be over $100. >> I think those are those are some big numbers, but they're starting to feel more attainable. And as we know for gold, there are so many factors that are


behind the price right now. So, I'm wondering what you would pull out as the most important elements for investors to keep an eye on for gold in 2026. >> Well, it's been this century that gold has outperformed the S&P 500 um by a a really decent margin even though it's dominated now today with seven magnificent technology companies because of the breakthrough in AI. uh but really if you look at overall [clears throat] u what's taken place this century has been the rapid use of MMT modern monetary


theory um and I was looking at a chart yesterday was saying that it's now 30 years that gold has outperformed the S&P 500 and still there are it is deeply underweighted and at one time it got up to 8% and went down to less than 2% and it's still hovering only about 2% of American Americans own gold uh in a diversified portfolio which is just crazy uh when you have the largest and most success hedge fund Ray Dalio um having a 10 to 15% waiting in gold and then gold stocks on top of that um in his success this


century a lot has been having a a good portion of those assets in gold related investments and I think that that's really an important wakeup call so people say oh it's over now it's a big move. Well, it'll have a correction, but it trades higher. [snorts] Um, uh, because MMT is not going away. And for your listeners, this modern monetary theory basically says that you use printing of money faster than what the economy is growing. Could be two, three times faster, and that will ignite the


economy. uh and then when the economy gets strong again, you take back that short-term paper fiat money you put into the system. Uh and that's where it falls apart. There is a lack of discipline u of a real commitment with politics to pull back the reigns on that money. And it doesn't matter if you're in a democracy or a dictatorship in China. Um there it's all a race to zero with fiat money. and it just becomes wiser to have this asset allocation into gold and gold stocks. >> I think that people are definitely


starting to to realize the value of gold right now. And so, as you mentioned, we're we're set to go higher in 2026. Right now, we are still historically high when it comes to gold, but we're in a little bit of a a holding pattern at the moment. I think people can see all of the the drivers that are behind gold and they wonder what will kick off the next leg higher, the next move that we see in gold. So, any thoughts that you would share on that note? Well, it's now the big money printing uh


was before for many of these sort of feel-good um idealistic social welfare programs and and now you're stuck with a lot of those commitments. But you're seeing this push back like it would be a classic would be Rubio in the US lamenting about 45 years ago uh Cubans as escaping Cuba on a rubber raft and and styrofoam getting to Miami and working so hard but now their retirement uh they're getting $1,000 a month and young new refugees are getting $1,500 a month and flying back and forth. um that


sort of where your tax dollars are going for these social welfare programs like that. They're going to change and and and where you're going to see the big spend is going to be military. Uh we saw [clears throat] Trump warned Europe and Canada, NATO that America was going to pull out unless they all start carrying their fair share, which is 2% of GDP is into national security. Cyber security is included with that. data centers end up being included with that. Uh and and so when you see that spend uh it was


incredible reflex that happened out of Europe that it went over 2%. Uh and you saw military stocks in Germany go up 100%. You saw military stocks in UK and so NATO ETF is a classic example of the UK. uh every time there's some negative news of Russia Ukraine, $50 million are going to that ETF and it only increased with Trump making those statements. So now the push is 5%. So what is happening in Canada under new prime minister Carney is having a a minister of AI and having a minister u the minister of


defense uh is also alumni of Goldman Sachs just like prime minister Carney is uh and he was also in the military so he has appreciation for the importance of defense you're seeing that the political leadership is now changing at the top end of decision decision making and where capital will go and I think you'll see a bigger spend uh of the debt funding particular for military spending. So this means that currencies are going to be racing down to zero. Some will happen faster than others. uh


and and you can look at the century there are several that went from [clears throat] 100 to 90 to only 5 cents and 2 cents on the dollar whereas it's taken other countries like America 120 years to do that um and and just it's important to recognize that race the overall calm way to invest is gold and make sure you have this allocation and this is a wonderful time of the year Charlotte when I've always recommended buy silver coins, give them away as as happy Hanukkah gifts, Christmas gifts,


um especially to your children and grandchildren because they don't flip them out. You give them a a a gaming technology or anything else. They it's gone. Uh it's forgotten about, but they keep their silver coin and remember that their parents and grandparents gave them this and they start stacking and holding on to these coins and they're going to eventually become quite important. Uh and and we're seeing that now with pennies, the last creation of pennies in America. It just took place. There'll be


no more pennies being made um since co there's been a shortage of pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters. As people start hoarding these coins uh because eventually they're going to go away. But if paper money becomes worthless, those coins go up in value. Uh, so if you were seeing it a a slow change, but it's not mainstream. It's not going to be in the Global Mail or the Wall Street Journal yet. >> Well, I think that's a nice transition. I always like the silver coin gift idea.


I think that's a great one, especially as you said for kids. And we can we can transition over to talking about silver because always good to have gold in mind. Our audience is very interested in gold. But what's really attracting attention right now among investors, I think, is silver because the price has really been on the move the last week, week and a half or so, nearly getting to the $60 level, which I think quite recently sounded out of reach. So, what are the factors you see kicking off this


latest rise in silver? Well, I think it's a big part is the whole solar um alternative source of energy and solar panels and the demand for uh silver in in its ability to be a transformative part of renewable energy. Uh and I don't think that that is going to go away. I don't think you need ESG and DEI uh requirements which were really key. Uh it's interesting that that Europe, Canada, and the US were pushing all this agenda, but the Chinese weren't. Uh and they just continued to


plow through building mines and and what used to be when I first got in the business in 1978, uh when I first went in the investment world, uh that it would it took 7 years from the day of a discovery to you got an ounce of gold or the crown uh and to now it's 30 years. But in China, in Africa and other places where they operate, it's it's 5 to seven years. Uh they they they basically have been able to dominate the control of especially strategic minerals that tie into technology, but they're the biggest gold


producer and the biggest buyer of gold uh in the open market. And that's also to legitimize their currency to try to catch up to what America is relative America has the largest uh holdings of gold and and so it would take a huge amount of 100% of all gold supply every year for the next decade for them to catch up which they're not going to buy 100% off. Uh but I think you're going to continue to to buy that. So we are witnessing geopolitics, sources of energy, uh currency devaluation and a shift of money


printing towards national defenses. Uh and I think that that's really you know an interesting phenomena that I see uh in the sort of global um environment that we live in today. >> I think we can definitely see how the strong case for silver is developing alongside gold. And I want to take a look at the gold and silver mining stocks as well because investors had to wait a little while for the companies to start catching up with the metalist prices. Now, now it seems like that is starting to happen. We're also getting


some generalist interest in the gold and silver stocks, but as we're heading into next year, I think people are wondering where should they focus when it comes to the gold and silver stocks. Where is the potential now? Well, sure. Coming back on the idea of gold and silver. It was a year ago. Um, and I was commenting to one of the biggest gold billion dealers and silver coins. They sell them and uh, uh, they were just shocked at the premium of silver, spot silver, uh, was so much lower to get delivery. So, it was hard


to actually get any sides in silver. Uh, and the premium for spot silver was way over the futures price. uh and and and so therefore they believed it was all going to fall. Uh and and I had a thesis that no, it telling you it's going to trade higher. Uh and the same thing was with gold, that premium trades higher. I I I think that that's what you want to be looking at uh on a regular basis. Not that it's going to the premium is going to go away because the scarcity element, the supply of new silver mines coming on


stream, new gold mines coming on stream uh is very very very difficult and and [clears throat] challenging um and capital expensive. So with that um the value of liberal of silver cash silver coins, silver uh gold coins, get them, buy them now. I I I think they trade higher because that premium is not going to evaporate. It's going to be more of a sentiment predictive that higher prices. Uh and I I think it's really important that people grasp that concept. Now that transfers over into gold and silver


stocks and gold and silver stocks move two to three times the daily price movement of gold and silver prices. So if gold goes up 1%, the gold stocks go up 2%, silver goes up 1%, silver stocks go up 3%. Silver falls 1%, silver stocks fall 3%. So silver has got a higher beta, a higher daily volatility and a 10day volatility, the silver stocks to silver prices and gold is basically 2% uh to the price of gold. Uh and and I think that we're going to continue to see um that that interest in those


silver stocks and the gold stocks is really going to come from the growth momentum players. And you can see in this past year starting about 6 months ago, it happened also back in 2005 uh where gold stock starts showing up in investors business daily and investors business daily has a huge um momentum stock buyers following and they're agnostic to the business. You could be in healthcare, you can be in in uh AI and you can be in gold or silver stocks. They are looking for this revenue momentum Q over Q and year over year and


they are looking for cash flow and earnings month of quarter over quarter and year over year. So this past year, many of those stocks, the gold stocks started showing up 6 months ago, better than the overall stock market in growth in revenue and cash flow per share. So voila, and IBD's big 50 holdings is showing up gold stocks and we started showing up the royalty stock names. uh and then they would fade in and fade out and you would have Ken Ross coming in and going out that it's it's more of a


bigger cap gold stock names, but New Pneumont didn't show up. And New Pneumont is the biggest beast of them all. Why did Pneumont not show up in IBD? Well, it's because it didn't have revenue momentum and cash momentum relative to the other universal stocks are looking for the strongest growth in revenue and cash flow. But I believe that we're going to witness even further growth over the next year and couple of years where gold stocks are always going to be in this IBD uh because the


scarcity element of so hard and timelines for getting new silver and gold. Those that have the deposits will be able to demonstrate this momentum growth in revenue relative to the S&P 500. So if the S&P 500 is growing at say 5% in revenue and gold stocks are growing at 12 and 15% in revenue, money starts the momentum investors start going into gold stocks. So I think if you're bullish on gold and silver then the real big leverage gain is gold and silver stocks. And that would be would


you would you say to focus then more on those big producers that are likely to be getting that generalist interest or or can investors move down the chain? >> I think you want to move down the chain and and the midcaps can show new minds coming on stream and growth that they're the ones that will give you that big momentum. Um and and I think that Panama uh Cobra as it comes back downstream the copper gold pfrey deposit that got shut down. Well, that's a huge impact to Franco Nevada. Uh, and that will just


torque its revenue. So, it's looking for that event. Uh, opening that mine again. Uh, all of a sudden, who would be the biggest beneficiary right away would be Frank. They don't have to worry about all the costs and setting it up. It's all they get the royalty off that production, that stream. So, I I think that those companies show up. A new one that came out just before CO was called Triple Flag and now it's got substance and size and it's showing up in IBD. Uh, and it's a it's a growth stock. Um,


Royal uh, Gold was a growth stock until they made the acquisition. Um, and that major acquisition all of a sudden diluted the revenue per share growth and cash flow per share growth. So it drops out of showing up in IBD and but Wheat and Precious shows up in IBD, Ken Ross shows up in IBD, uh, Elorado, uh, Ken Rosses, the the names that people are going to at this stage. O Cisco would show up. What will happen down the road is another sea change is happening from the crypto space. And what's happening


in the crypto space who's becoming the 800 lb gorilla is Tether. And Tether has the biggest stable coin in the world. And it's basically a money market fund that they keep the interest. So therefore, it's not a security. It's a blockchain uh asset, but it's outside of the US and it's outside of the EU. And it now has over 500 million customers. and and you're talking about roughly $4,000 uh a a customer and it and that's remarkable type of numbers of just under $200 billion in assets of US dollars.


They own more US dollars than uh Germany. They are one of the biggest buyers of US government bonds every auction. They started pivoting with the thought process of gold prices going down and real interest rates going negative. Gold is a super performer. So they started small with a tether stable coin. Can't buy in the US or Canada. Can't buy this in in in Europe. But the rest of the world is a big buyer in Latin America, Eastern Europe, um uh all through uh Africa, uh the Middle East, uh


Indonesia, these places, they would have big buyers of the stable coin. They become a big buyers of their stable gold stable coin and they are showing up as being one of the most biggest buyers every week. So, as money goes into that stable coin, they're big buyers of gold. They bought a safety deposit box they basically built into the mountains in Switzerland and and they are continuously buying. Now, they've gone into a new gold stock where they put $150 million of their gold stable coin into it. So, we're


talking about them owning 50 tons of gold and growing. Uh uh and they they made last year uh it'll drop this year cuz rates are falling, but they did make $13 billion with $175 workers, computer scientists basically out of Lugano. Uh and and I think that they are a gamecher in uh alternative assets in buying the actually the most prof profitable company in revenue and earnings per share per employee in the world. They're making this big significant bet on gold. Guess what, Charlotte? They're showing up and only more than 5%


love this midcap, small cap royalty companies. They love the royalty names. >> I'm so glad you you mentioned Tether because I find it so fascinating and you did a great job explaining for for people who might not be familiar with what's going on. So, thank you for for going into that topic. And it leads into I wanted to spend at least a little bit of time looking at Bitcoin with you because like gold and silver it was at all-time highs earlier this year. And unlike gold and silver, it's now going


in a different direction. We see the Bitcoin price heading downward. So I'm wondering what you see coming in 2026. Do we see a Bitcoin price recovery? What factors are you going to be watching next year? Well, I think copper, there's no doubt that copper's taken on a new industrial element and the silver was for in particular solar panels and we needed that source of renewable energy uh and you need silicone and you need uh uh solar. So the Chinese dominate that in for their own economy and also


exporting selling these solar panels around the world. Uh I don't think that that's going away. uh it's going to becoming more and more difficult to get uh renewable sources of energy. Uh [clears throat] maybe geothermal the cost differential will make a big difference. But looking at copper, um, copper is becoming a strategic mineral and that's because of the huge military spending I talked about earlier. The NATO spending going into when they want to have autonomous cars, they use a


lot more copper. Tesla uses a lot more copper in their car than a Ford uh uh pickup truck. uh and and is recognizing the batteries lithium is also all of a sudden the strategic mineral uh and we're going to see that there's the protectionism of copper but what China's done with this one belt one road concept which was the beginning I was very bullish on I thought it was a brilliant idea until Xi Jangping showed that he's a dictator and this really is a Trojan horse to get his tentacles into 140 of


the 194 countries in the UN have borrowed from it over a trillion dollars. They bought a 100 ports and and they want to control these deposits. So the idea of even Ivanho at the beginning was the big capital came in with Robert Freedelland's deal was the Chinese and uh it was for them to have access to that copper. The same thing in Chile, the same thing in Peru. uh is is and and you need this copper for the wiring and you need it for all the wiring in particular for the data centers and for


cable every type of form of cable for it conductivity well if if China shuts down or prevents you from being able to get uh strategic minerals which they've been doing and what happens with copper so copper deposits in Canada are going to become more valuable the big problem in Canada is regulation ations have taken it from 7 years to 30 years and they've basically taken away property rights and turned them over to uh Indian reservations are controlling a lot of these property rights and that's created


just another dimension of complexity of how do you turn around and build these operations uh whereas you do not have that problem in Africa uh to the degree and you have a different risk in Africa which is radical Islamic uh jihads etc. in in places like Mali uh etc. So that's a different risk than in Canada. Well, now we're in Canada and we're in the US. We're going to see policy changes and we're going to see fasttracking of these projects because China would like to be able to shut down your access to copper.


Well, that really slows down the ability for data centers. Well, why are data centers important? No data centers, no Netflix, no mobile apps, just just forget it all. You need data centers. And now we have what's this AI industrial boom, you need even more data centers. And Canada with this huge surplus of of hydroele electricity has created so many barriers to entry with no data centers, without all this government regulations etc. You just look at Nvidia chip sales as a percentage of capita and and their 50%


is US. So you have over a thousand um HPC high performance computing data centers in America. Well, they need a lot of air conditioning. You get air conditioning, you need a lot of copper, copper, copper, copper, copper, copper. Uh you're doing all the military uh all the big spend on on security, copper, copper, copper, copper, copper. Uh and then you're gonna have tungsten, tungsten, tungsten, uh titanium, titanium, titanium. Uh so it's really interesting to see the shift on the value of the periodic table.


What becomes uh overvalued and undervalued on that on that periodic table. There is no free lunch. And that's what you have to recognize. And the government MMT is now shifting from social welfare programs uh of every form. And it's now shifting to security. Uh, and in that security spin are data centers. It's not just for you and I to be able to use Open Chat or Perplexity or Grock, which I love Grock. Um, no, no, it's it's that makes it easy. It is for autonomous vehicles. It's for


autonomous robotics. It's for autonomous military equipment. Um uh it's for uh uh AI to protect against threats from the KGB of uh of of China is called MSS. Uh and they've been involved in massive hacks into the telecoms of North America and the all the power stations in North America. They're called typhoons. Vault uh is one vault typhoon. You can look it up on Google uh or open chat and learn more about it. But we're we are dealing with this. And I'm more sensitive to this Charlotte cuz I live


in San Antonio and San Antonio's military USA and we have three air force bases, a army base. We have the second largest NSA operations. We have the number one cyber security university in the country. So I get lots of sort of that vocal information and flow of where things are going that are not mainstream Bloomberg. >> You can really start to see how all these things connect and and how maybe investors can translate these into opportunities for 2026. I know I have to start letting you go, but I've got a


couple of fun fun questions before I do. If we look forward to next year, what would your pick be for top performing asset? It can be a commodity, but it it doesn't have to be. >> No, I I I think the commodities are going to continue to do well. I I think that the the the Bitcoin data centers are are are deeply undervalued relative to a data center uh which doesn't do Bitcoin. So, Bitcoin is volatile like gold is volatile and and it's a and that attracts a different investor. But what you are seeing with


data centers, they trade at 10 to 15 times revenue per share. Not two times, not three times, but 10 to 15. Um, and they trade at 20 to 25 times ITA. I mean, if gold stocks tra um the gold stocks would triple from here, triple. So, it's just recognizing that. So now where the cheapest way to play this energy is Bitcoin miners because Bitcoin miners like Hive, they went and sourced um what we call surplus or stranded electricity and we went into those places and we built substations and we built transformers and bought


them and hooked them up and and the process for converting what they call a tier one Bitcoin mining data center to tier Tier three is much much faster than saying here's we have to build from scratch a tier three. That timeline is 3 to 5 years. But if you already have a tier one data center, it could be 9 months. So the value is really the Bitcoin data centers that are going into the hyperscalers are looking to partner and do deals with. So I don't think the data center cash flow multiples come


down. I think that the Bitcoin data centers are doing what Hive is dual. It is both tier three and tier one and was the first to do tier one. Now we're scaling it substantially in Canada uh along with what we've done in in Paraguay. But Paraguay gives us this blue sky for tier three. So simplicity, you spend the money in tier one, you get your capital back quickly within 18 months, and then you start to plan for tier three. Uh and and tier three is then buying these Nvidia chips. But then


you need much more air conditioning cuz you're building a brain. Uh and so I think the cheapest asset class are Bitcoin data centers that really have great assets to convert. uh they have the power, they have the land, and the hyperscalers like Microsoft, Amazon will cut deals with them or try to take them out. That's where we're go. That's where I think is the big mean reversion next year in that technology overlay. Uh when it comes to the metals, I think that copper is making new highs, but I think


that copper has much more upside. I think that copper supply not only difficultly from the mines is more challenging. We're going to see it become a strategic weapon by the Chinese uh and we're going to see the the interest by uh what we've seen now this past year under President Trump is taking investments. They've been making investments in mineral companies. They've been making investments in Australian and Canadian companies who are in the exploration for strategic minerals. Um, and I think the same thing


is going to evolve more readily in copper and some of the other elements like tungsten u, and we know lithium uh, so well, but there's other elements on the periodic table. So, we are in a secular bull market for resources, Charlotte. We're a secular bull market and we are not overbought because people are underinvested. And I say this because if you look at ETFs of all the ETFs in America, what percentage are in the GDX? GDXJ go AU is our ETF uh uh using Smart Beta 2.0 to pick gold stocks. If you look at that percentage


of all ETFs, it's less than 2%. It was at 8%. The smartest money in the game are 10 to 15%. So I believe there'll be this thing mean reversion is called that more and more investors will all of a sudden start going into gold, copper, these various stocks. Money will flow into ETFs and it'll become 10% of the overall all ETFs. And and and I've seen this cycle before. I'm 70 years old and God blessed me that I could go run 3 kilometers this morning. Uh but and and with that 70


means I've seen many cycles and those cycles give you an idea that there's still such uh reluctant to in the space and what's going to happen next year is the small caps and the midcaps are going to improve and they're going to get more bids coming into them. um has been sort of slow and disappointing to see, but I think we have to have is a change in the regulatory oversight in Canada to streamline it and make it easier from environmental to build a mine uh to explore to develop a mine. Uh all these


things have to get streamlined using AI and using AI to streamline the regulations. Uh that would really help price discovery. The junior gold stocks, the junior any of these stocks lack price discovery and a lot of that burden comes from the regulatory regime of giving citations that on all the press releases that happen. We hear from many the 50 gold junior gold stocks we own. Uh people lament about it and and you need price discovery to raise capital. Uh and and you need to have this sort of


overall element that's so positive. So I think that it will happen uh and and we're going to see under prime minister in Canada and carney uh who is from Brookfield. Brookfield is an infrastructure. Brookfield is very big in data centers. Brookfield understands that you need to have AI. They understand that you need cyber security and military spending. So we are going to see a huge change and I think the faster it happens the better it's going to be for Canada. uh to be the the real


stomping ground for exploration development. Uh and I so I remain very bullish this way. The other bullish part for Latin America is is opening up, we're seeing conservative political leaders coming into countries like Bolivia. Um and and the more we have that of getting away from Colombia's pro and Hugo uh Chavez's u uh protege uh Maduro. Um the that world is I think is is going away. Malay is in in Argentina. Uh I know Paraguay is very very financially a conservative country. Um and and everything they do. So they are


growing at a five to 5% GDP clip with very little debt funding for it. So you can see these things evolving. So we're in a secular big bull market for resources. very few believe it and if you're not wrong, you'll be wrong. >> Well, I think that's that's a perfect place to wrap up. I think we covered a lot of ground here today and you've given us so much to think about for 2026. So, thank you very much for for coming on. This is great. >> Well, thank you, Charlotte, and and


happy holidays to you. >> Happy holidays as well. Once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Frank Holmes with us Global Investors. >> Thank you for watching. If you like this video, make sure you [music] hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. We'd also love to hear your thoughts, so leave us a comment below.