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 Hello everyone. Welcome to Bald Guy Money. And a topic I've covered a few times with great popularity on this channel is how much gold and silver you need to purchase a home. And the first time I covered this was back in 2022 when I said my viewers would be better off purchasing gold and silver to later be used to purchase a home. Now, since I made that first video, the price of a median US home when priced in gold has come down by 51% and when priced in silver, that has come down by 37% as you

can see in the image here on the screen. But many people who listen to me on that want to know the specifics of how to pull this off without having to number one lose the protection of their gold and silver in a developing bull market and number two without having to pay capital gains taxes on the sale of their gold and silver. So to discuss that as well as some other important topics including a gold and silver pullback, the bull market we are seeing in mining stocks and even platinum as an investment. I invited Rick Rule to the

program who goes into deep detail on all of these topics in this video, including even naming a couple miners he is particularly bullish on. But just before we dive into that discussion, please remember to check out www.summitmetals.com summitals.com if you want to buy gold and silver at a great price from a dealer you can trust, including 5 ounces of silver at spot if you use the code new customer at checkout. And I will leave the link to this deal in the video description below. But without any

further ado, here is my discussion with Rick Rule. Okay, everybody. So, I would like to welcome Mr. Rick Rule for the second time on Bald Guy Money. Welcome, Mr. Rule. How are you today? Pleasure to be with you. I'm doing very well. The better to be talking to your audience. Thank you. Well, Mr. Rule, you know, we've had a little bit of a chat before the the camera's gone on, and I just want to jump right into it because I know my viewers are very curious about what you have to say on on some specific

topics as they pertain to things. I've been presenting here on the channel for a couple years, but something that's a little bit closer to where we're at today. I often say on my channel that there are signs that we're getting close to the end of a bull market for precious metals. Two of the signs that I usually look for are, for example, expected interest rate increases and a falling gold to silver ratio. Now, with metals prices, specifically gold on a really wild runup as of late, people are saying

the trade is getting crowded. Yet, the gold to silver ratio remains very high. So this again for me is telling me maybe we're not at the end yet and interest rates are expected to come down even more. I would like to ask you Mr. Rule, am I wrong in expecting this precious metals market to continue moving up? I think it depends on the time frame you're talking about. Uh it wouldn't surprise me uh if gold and silver prices both needed a rest. They've had a pretty dramatic uptick. Uh a couple days ago somebody

asked me online when I would sell my gold which is related to that question. Uh and maybe that answer would be useful for your audience. Gold historically has done well when people are concerned about the maintenance of their purchasing power in fiat currencies and in fiat currency savings products. I share that concern. So specifically, I will sell my gold, which is to say, I will believe that the gold bull market is over when the following circumstances occur. We have a balanced federal budget. When we have a fiscal agreement

in place that will allow us to honor or repudiate $100 trillion in the net present value of unfunded entitlement obligations of the US government. That's not my number. That's the Congressional Budget Office's number. Okay? So when we figured out how people your age are going to get their social security or we tell them honestly that they're not going to get it, when that hundred trillion dollar problem is resolved, I'll be looking to sell my gold. But there will be one other thing.

Uh we will have to have a real positive interest rate. When I say real positive interest rate, uh although the government will tell you that the rate of inflation, the rate of the deterioration of the purchasing power of the US dollar is 2.6%. 6%. Any of your listeners who took the trouble to compile a list of goods and services that they consume, not that the government consumes, but that they consume, we'll see that their real cost of living uh is escalating at 7 and a half or 8% a year, which is to say the purchasing power of

their savings is declining by seven and a half or 8% a year. uh real interest rate is the calculation between the yield on the US 10-year Treasury which is about 4.5 and the rate of deterioration of the purchasing power of the US dollar which is more like 7.5. Historically real interest rates uh in the sum of about 1 and a.5% or 2% are considered attractive. That would suggest that the interest rate paid on the US 10-year Treasury would have to be at some number like nine up from 4 and a half. So I

will believe that the gold bull market is over when we bal balance the budget when we resolve the entitlement problem and when either the rate of inflation falls or the yield on the US 10ear Treasury goes up. Well, I want to just grab on to something that you said a moment ago because I get it. You know, the only things that are guaranteed in life are death, taxes, and maybe devaluation of fiat currency, but you did mention that we've made a big move up and you would expect a a breather before we continue on the move up. Do

you think that there is still a liquidity event in front of us that is going to cause another significant drop in the prices of precious metals? Maybe not necessarily to the same level that we saw in 2008, but something similar to that. I am embarrassed to say that I believe that there is a probability of that rather than a possibility of that. I don't want people to take my word uh and go huddle up in the corner in fetal position and wait for a liquidity event. But I think the truth is that there are

too many scary things out there. There is too much ideological division in the country and in the world and there are too many harbingers that are negative as opposed to positive. So while I'm not saying that I think that a liquidity event is either inevitable or eminent, I think it's a probability rather than a possibility. I think it is a contingency that I absolutely positively have decided in my own portfolio to ensure against. I'm running way more liquidity in my own portfolio than I otherwise

would. Um, I I think people need to defi decide for themselves. And I would hasten to remind uh your audience that I'm not an economist. I'm a credit guy. It is with my credit hat on that I'm afraid about liquidity. Am I saying this is going to occur? Am I trying to scare your listeners? No. But you asked me the question around a liquidity event. Uh, and you rightly stated that in a liquidity event, all asset classes get hurt because the decision isn't made by a rational investor, it's made by a terrified

investor. And more importantly, the decision is made by a margin clerk. And the margin clerk doesn't care what your preferences are in your portfolio. They sell whatever has a bid. It's also instructive to know that while all asset classes fall, the better asset classes recover more quickly. So in 2008, as you suggest, the gold held up for a day and then sold off. But interestingly, the Fed's response to 2008 was to lower nominal interest rates and flood the market with liquidity, which caused gold

to come back very, very quickly. So your investors need to remember that part of history, too. So it doesn't mean obviously like you said, curl up into a ball and don't act. And that's something I say on my channel all the time, you know, make sure you're staying on a schedule. And right now, if the price of gold is high for you, I've been saying, you know, maybe look at fractional as an option to keep a little liquidity on the side, a little cash on the side, just in case we see that

probability play out where we see a pullback in precious metals. Now, another thing I've been talking about a lot on my channel, and this is I believe it's kind of a crowning moment for this specific topic on Bald Guy Money and having you on, and I'm so happy to have you on once again because a topic that I've been talking about here on the channel since 2022 as housing was was topping out was using your cash to buy gold and silver and then buying a house when home prices come down as metals

prices appreciate. Now, the median price of a home in the United States, according to the Fed, when priced in gold and silver, has crashed since I made those first videos. And many people who followed me in on that are now in a great position to capitalize as median home in the United States is now 51% cheaper when priced in gold versus that first video that I made back in 2022, and 37% cheaper when priced in silver. But some of my viewers, Mr. Rule, remain skeptical about doing this or even how

to do it because the classic arguments against this are if they sell their gold and silver, first off, they lose the protection their gold and silver has been giving them. And with inflation, as you I think correctly already alluded to, poised to to take liftoff after maybe a slight breather. Maybe we get a small period of lower prices like we did in 2009 before inflation continues back up. I can sympathize with some people's concern about that. But in addition to that, many of them also say they will be

on the hook for capital gains taxes if they sell. Now, when I had you on my show last year, we touched very briefly on the topic of borrowing against your metals to keep ownership of them and unlock the value of your gold and silver without having to incur those capital gains taxes. Now, with the battle bank officially lifting off, and I'm so excited about this, Mr. rule. How can my viewers who have been waiting for this moment borrow against their gold and silver with battle bank to make this

dream happen? What are the advantages of the advantages of doing it as opposed to selling it and what are the risks or barriers they face if they want to do this? Uh broaden the discussion a little bit beyond real estate. Uh there are a lot of people who have about 1% of America well one% of American investors uh have gold as a substantial portion of their portfolio. That sounds like a small fraction but it's a large population. So there's a lot of people um and when people have money tied up in an

asset that's a static asset, basically an insurance policy, uh sometimes they want access to that capital without having to sell the asset and importantly as you suggest not having to pay the capital gains tax which devalues the asset. At Battlebank, we will allow holders of physical gold and silver to in effect open a margin account against their gold and silver, have credit available, but not have to draw the credit until there is an opportunity or a need to deploy the ty. In other words, if they're imp

implementing the strategy that you suggest as an example, uh, and let's keep keep the math simple. Let's say that somebody has a gold and s a physical gold portfolio worth $100,000. In a typical brokerage margin account, you would have immediate access to $50,000 in credit. You wouldn't have to use that money. You have access to it. If an opportunity comes up, you can draw down on that money, use it as an example uh on a down payment or something else, and then in effect pay yourself back, refinance out over time.

uh keeping access to the gold and silver uh not paying the capital gains tax but also having access to the capital to do something that you believe is more immediately advantageous to you. Um the disadvantage is that you need to be very careful with what you use the money on. The idea of gold and silver is to have uh a bottom line asset uh an asset of last resort and you need to be very careful that you don't obiate the advantage of the asset of last resort by over encumbering it. The last thing that you want to do is lose that

asset. So, it's important that you view gold and silver as a bedrock asset that you access if you need to or want to uh the capital that you have tied up in it, but you use that capital extremely extremely prudently. Um, we need to look too at this home that you're talking about and we need to talk about it in two fashions. one the way I have always mistakenly regarded them which is to say financial assets the second as a home for your spouse for your family it's important that you know that and if you are

reducing the whole discussion to a financial discussion I think it's important that you let not let the market establish the value of the house but rather that you look at the house in terms of foregone rent in other words if the market says that the house is worth a million dollars, but you could rent that house for $4,000 a month. Uh what happens is that that house is still from a financial point of view overvalued. That isn't to say it won't go up. If however uh that house is more

than a financial asset, uh if it's a bedrock of your family unit, you need to view these things very very differently. uh and in that circumstance uh you need to begin to think in non-financial terms. But even thinking in non-financial terms, you have to be able to afford this asset. I if you've, let's say, built up a bigger portfolio in gold, a million dollar portfolio in gold, and you take half a million dollars out to do something else with, employ that half a million dollars very,

very carefully. Are there any limits? For example, is there a certain threshold that people have to have in order to qualify for such a loan with Battle Bank? At present, uh, there has to be $100,000 worth of gold and silver in the account. Uh, I suspect that as the bank becomes larger and the volume of gold and silver credits that we have on the books increases and as our efficiency at processing the loans increase, that we'll be able to take that minimum down. Uh, another of our products at the bank is foreign currency

CDs. At our bank, you don't have to save in US dollars. You can save in Canadian dollars, Swiss Franks. You know, you can save in 20 different currencies. A lot of banks will do this, but they have a million-doll minimum. Because we learned how to do this at EverBank, we have a $10,000 minimum. And my hope is that with regards to physical gold and silver credits that as our assets under management and this asset increase and as we become more efficient uh in offering this product that we'll

be able to be bring the minimums down. Okay. So let's say I have $100,000 in gold and silver today and I join as a customer of Battle Bank and I say I would like to secure that line of margin that you've mentioned. I assume that I have to send that gold and silver somewhere to remain in let's call it at least a neutral storage location where if for example I lose all of the money I mean you can collect on that gold and silver should you need to. You don't want to have to come and knock on my

door. So, I guess my follow-up question to that would be uh how is that going to to work? Where would I, for example, be sending that gold and silver? And are there any guarantees associated to um make me feel safer about the storage of that gold wherever it is I'm sending it? Those are great questions. And as you suggest, gold buried in the backyard is not collateral. Okay. I've got it. I promise. Yeah. Yeah. You can't tell me that the collateral is under your carrots. It doesn't work. Um, there's

two different ways. If you have an existing relationship with a dealer, a bullion dealer, a and you have that bullion stored with the dealer, it is an easy matter for us to establish a relationship with the dealer. Transfer the custody of that metal to us, but your dealer agreement stays in place. If rather than that you want to deal directly with the bank, either is okay with us. uh we will store that gold in your name with a uniform commercial code filing at either Brinks or Lumis. The reason for Brinks or Lumis is

because I was around in the decade of the 70s and I know that there were some storage facilities that were less than honorable and I want the storage facility that's holding your metal as my customer and my collateral as a bank. I want that storage facility to be owned by a publicly traded company. so that I can review their financials quarterly. Uh, and I want internal audits in the vault uh to be of industryleading standards. Uh, my background at SPAT was that the Royal Canadian Mint, Brinks, and Lumis

uh between them stored about $20 billion in collateral for us. and we got very good at understanding internal audits. And so we want the gold that we store on your behalf to have industry best practices with regards with regards to internal audit. So I think we've got that bit of the conversation adequately covered. Now I'd like to shift a bit to miners because we've also discussed that uh in the past and you know of course gold and silver are still at least for now remaining strong in a falling

market. We're finally starting to see a little bit of rotation out of other stocks maybe even partially out of tech and into these miners. Although uh I still see higher stock prices around the corner for miners maybe even after a flush out if we get that event that we talked about before. But with oil prices being as low as they are right now, I do believe that of course when they announce Q1 earnings as well as um I should say Q2 earnings, I think they're going to be blowout earnings considering

where metals are today and where the the price of oil is. Mr. Rule, do you see the same potential in the miners that I do or do you think the mining trade is already a bit too crowded? Uh again, you need to describe yourself as an investor. If you use the word trade, uh the gold stocks in the last 12 or 13 weeks are up very very very nicely. If your orientation is to the quarter, uh when you're in a meltup, you have to sell. That's what you have to do. The if you bought these things because you

think they were underpriced and you thought when money came into the trade that they'd go up in price, the reason that you own the stock is gone. It happened. So, you sell the stock. Um, I'm an investor. I'm not a trader. I If somebody gives me too much money too quickly, too easily, I will certainly take it. But my orientation is longer term. Today's gold prices are not baked in the cake with the market valuations of today's gold mining companies. As an example, uh we've been advising people

for a very long time to own Agniko Eagle, the highest quality of the gold miners. And Agniko Eagle has done spectacularly well in the last 12 months, up 60 or 65%. We ran valuations on Agniko Eagle a year ago at $2,700 in gold. Uh they're an unheeded producer selling gold at 3,200. We had we had estimated that Agneo Eagle would generate about $5 billion in cash flow in 2025 and we thought it was better than appropriately valued. We thought it was cheap particularly relative to the quality of

the company. At $3,200 gold they're going to generate 6.5 or 7 billion which means that even after the runup in price they are not unattractively priced. That doesn't mean that the gold price couldn't fall back to 2750. Uh, you know, it doesn't mean that Agniko Eagle couldn't decline by 25%. But I think it's highly likely that uh while you might not be happy as a trader owning Agniko Eagle 2 and a half months from now or three months from now, I'm not making a market

call by the way, but it's not unlikely that that would occur. I think three years from now, you're gonna be ecstatic voting at Nikico Eagle. I I you know, when I people asked me before, you know, a year ago, so the gold prices run, but the gold miners haven't run. Why is that? That one's simple. The gold price ran until 13 weeks ago because of central bank buying. The retail and institutional buyer was non-existent. The buyer in the gold space were central banks. They don't buy

stocks. Uh 13 weeks ago, life changed. You began to see real inflows into the retail physical ETFs, which is to say that living, breathing human beings started buying gold, not just central banks. Uh and you got real earnings momentum in the gold stocks. Uh and so some of the retail money that had been in other sectors of the equity market uh began to go to gold. There's a wonderful index, the Bloomberg earnings momentum index. Uh, and traditionally that's been big tech. That's where the earnings

momentum has been. I think the last time I looked 12 of the top 50 uh in US earnings momentum were gold mining companies and that uh attracts investors. And that game's not over. you suggest there are going to be quarterly surprises uh that are going to take people's heads off uh in a positive sense. Now how long this trade lasts as a trade is a different question for me as an investor. Uh if I believe which I do that over 10 years the purchasing power of the dollar declines by 75%. And I believe that it's likely that

a con commitment increase occurs in the gold price. While there could be a trading interlude where the gold equities trade down, the valuations, the hard valuations, the cash generating capabilities of gold mining companies will I believe increase for the whole decade. When I'm looking at some of the charts, obviously, you know, we are starting to see the miners break out a little bit and it looks like maybe even the GDX, so the big mining ETF, if things continue, will want to retest the 2011 highs. That

said, we're not that far off of the 2011 highs on the GDX, but the GDXJ on the other hand, the junior miners are way off of those 2011 highs. Now, my next question is about mergers and acquisitions and mining because that's really what sent the prices of those junior miners skyrocketing in 2011. My question to you is, do you think we're going to see that kind of mergers and acquisition cycle again that is going to benefit junior minors? Yes, but not as a class. uh you need to understand that

the junior minors as a class are valueless. If you merged every junior minor in the world into one company called Junior Explore Co. and you looked at the money that they generated either by profits or by M&A as opposed to the money that they spent on GNA and exploration, that business uh Junior Explore Co, we'll call it would lose two billion a year or three billion a year. So what do you pay for a business that loses two billion a year? You know, do you pay eight times losses, 12 times

losses? That disguises the fact that within this 3,000 company universe of Flatsom and Jetsum, 10% of the issuers generate such spectacular performance that they add legitimacy and even luster to what is effectively a bankrupt sector. There will be spectacular amounts of money made in mergers and acquisitions and in discoveries in the junior sector, but those gains will be limited to the people who have the knowledge and do the work to separate in movie parliament the good from the bad from the truly ugly.

So the headline answer to your question is yes, but there's a big qualification to play that game. You have to do the work. Make no mistake, if you buy the GDXJ, the GDXJ may escalate with the gold price. It may escalate from M&A, but you are owning in that index a whole bunch of stocks that you otherwise wouldn't own with a straight face. Okay. Let let me just ask you then. You mentioned Ago Eagle as one that you like and you know they're a very serious producer. Is there any junior one even just one name that you

think this is a good this is a good junior minor? Uh it's a hell of a run. Uh but I look at G mining as an example. Uh the Genyac family has an expertise. They as contractors, private contractors know how to build mines. Uh it is selling at a reasonable valuation. Uh leadership in the company is transferring from Ginyak Senior who I've known for 40 years to Ginyak Jr. Uh he has served a 20-year apprenticeship. This is the kind of company that you're looking for. This is the type of analysis that you have to do

to be involved in the junior minors. This is not a circumstance where got a hunch, bet a bunch. Uh you really truly have to do the work around balance sheets, around durable competitive advantage, around capital stack, around financial structure. If you're not prepared to do the work, get out of the sector. Now, shifting to another precious metal. We've discussed silver. We've discussed gold, platinum. Now, this is one of those rare ones where we've disagreed with each other on the

past, but as things stand right now, when I look at the charts, and I say this really as a long-term platinum bear, I actually see platinum poised to make a move up. I I I do I see it in the charts. I see a bull flag being formed there, a long period of consolidation with a wedge that's getting pretty tight, and odds are saying that it's going to break up uh break to the upside. Now, what I'd like to know about platinum, Mr. Rule, is are you still bullish on platinum? And for people who

are waiting for a pump up and looking to get out of platinum, if you know somebody put a gun to your back and said you need to trade your platinum for something, would you choose to put it into gold or silver? I I think if somebody has a short-term orientation, if they're a trader, that the momentum is with gold today. Uh platinum is not in my investment account. In my speculative account, I own platinum because I think the zeitgeist uh the narrative is wrong. The narrative is that the internal

combustion engine goes the way the dodo in 2030 and the need for autoc catalyst goes away in 2030. I believe the internal combustion engine goes away in 2065 or 2070. And so demand for autoc catalyst cont continues for 35 years. On a net present value basis I add a value tail and other analysts don't. I also own platinum because I think the the potential for political disruption in South Africa and or Russia which is where platinum comes from are high. And if you had a hiatus in supply the price goes crazy. Here's why.

$125 worth of platinum in a catalytic converter enables the sale in the Western world of a 50 or $60,000 car. If the price of platinum doubled, it wouldn't change the finished price of the product that the platinum enabled the sale of. There is unusual demand inelasticity around price. This is not a certainty. And so I don't hold it in an investment account. I hold it in a speculative account. Uh the other thing I like about platinum is at current commodity prices on a fully loaded basis the platinum

producers are losing money. They can say well my selling price of platinum is X and my all-in sustaining cost to produce it is Y. Therefore I'm generating a small margin. But that's They don't take into account taxation and they don't take into account the cost of capital. They're fully loaded costs and they don't take into account by the way uh deferred sustaining capital investments which is to say they've artificially lowered their all- in sustaining capital costs. uh an industry

where ongoing demand for the product is insured, where the commodity price is selling for less than the total cost of production is one where you will see a price increase. If you don't see a price increase, you'll see more smog. It's been a pleasure chatting with you, Mr. Rule, and I thank you so much for making the time, but I do have one more question before we end this call. Last year you invited me to take part in the rule symposium to to to come to the the rule symposium and unfortunately it was

happening just as I was moving out of Dubai with my family. But I want to know am I still invited this year and if so when is the rule symposium and how can my viewers attend even on a virtual basis? Yes, you are invited and your physical inability to attend is no excuse. You can attend our conference in person, which would be my preference, or uh as over a thousand people in 33 countries did last year, online via live stream. The event takes place July 7th through 11 in Boca Raton, Florida, or in

the comfort and convenience of your own home or office. So, no excuse for missing it. Uh and by the way, in either circumstance, we will give you in excess of 50 hours of dense and valuable information. So we will record the entire proceedings, including the breakout sessions, and those recordings will be available to you for a year. And you'll need them because we're going to give you more information in four days than you can absorb in four days. Why should you attend? Well, several reasons.

The first is that we present a big picture perspective unlike the big picture perspective presented at other symposiums. Specifically, our macro commentators aren't journalists. They are or were participants. As an example, David Stockman was the director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan administration. He presided over the first department of government efficiency. He detailed in a book called The Triumph of Politics, how Congress, both Republican and Democrat, derailed

the Reagan revolution within six months of inauguration. He's very recently written a book called How to Cut$2 Trillion Dollars from the US Budget. Any discussion of the budget, the debt, and the deficit should include a discussion from somebody who was from the belly of the beast. This guy ran the original Department of Government Efficiency and he can describe how it was derailed politically and tell you what the next 10 years holds for US policy around the debt and the deficit. When other

conferences talk about the Fed, you know, they have some rookie journalist from the Wall Street Journal or something like that. Not us. We have Daniela D. Martina Booth who was a researcher at the Dallas Fed. again in a biblical sense from the belly of the beast. When we talk about the structure of Wall Street, good and bad, uh we don't have some Democratic staffer from CNBC. We have Nomi Prince who was a partner at Goldman Sachs. When we talk about the interplay between politics uh and Wall

Street, we have Jim Rickarts who was general counsel at Long-Term Capital Management whose failure almost brought down Wall Street. You get where I'm going? In every circumstance, our commentators were players. In some cases, our players, they describe the problems as it really is from the inside. You don't get that elsewhere. The second differentiator is that our this this conference is 30 years old. Our customers have told us what they want and our customers have told us that our exhibitors are content, not

advertisers. At every other investment conference in the world, the qualification to be an exhibitor is a check that cashes. Stop. At our conference, public company exhibitors have to be owned in our accounts. We refuse more exhibitors than we accept. Now, there's no guarantee, sadly, because I own a stock. It goes up. But there is a guarantee that every single exhibitor has been vetted. No other conference in the world has that. And that allows me to make an extravagant boast. Anybody who attends

my conference live or via live stream who doesn't think that they got their money's worth can get a full refund. We've been doing that for 30 years. The financial risk of coming to my conference either live or live stream, the financial risk is all borne by me. If you think for any reason at all that I haven't delivered the value that I promised, I'll give you your money back. I've been doing it for 30 years. I'm delighted to say that the conference has been good enough that we've had to

refund about onetenth of 1% of the tuitions charged over 30 years. But that notwithstanding, unlike any other investment conference on the planet, full satisfaction or money refunded. Thank you so much for coming on the show and I'm wishing you a fantastic day. Thank you. Remember too, battlebank.com or at rural Investment Media if you want more information about the bank. Just write bank in the question and comment section and I will link up the the battle bank as well below. And I really want all of my

viewers to check that site out and consider the benefits especially for precious metal stackers out there who want to get a little bit better, let's say more careful customer service that maybe you're not getting from your current bank today. So once again, thank you. I will leave the links to all of that below and wishing you all a great