gold news

 [Music] I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing news.com and here today with me is leevi Gunter one gold sales and marketing manager at appx thank you so much for joining me online today great to have you here likewise yeah thanks for having me really good to be speaking with you and of course we have a lot to go over in terms of where gold and silver are headed in 2024 before we go there I was hoping you could give a brief overview of one gold and atmex so that people understand the differences between the two then I'm

hoping we can look at the buying trends that you saw in 2023 for gold and silver looking at what people were buying and who was doing the purchasing yeah that's a that's a great question um I'll start just by kind of giving kind of a high level overview of of the companies so so atmex on on one hand is uh the largest physical Metals retailer here in the US they they've been in business for over 23 years now they've got around two million customers and I think at this point they've done

around um 18 billion in sales so they're one of the more I would say kind of trusted names or kind of a household name in the industry um and on one side you have um oneold which is what oneold is is a uh vaulted platform for selling gold silver and platinum so customers can basically just um create an account online or use the mobile app and and buy metal and have it stored here um in the US in Canada and Switzerland or the United Kingdom and basically what one go was it was a result of a a partnership

between atmex and another company your audience may have heard of in in spra Asset Management so uh the goal was there to kind of create a more modern coste efficient means of investing in in precious metals so uh just to kind of give you a 30,000 foot view of what both companies do uh certainly we do look into Trends throughout the year uh and again just kind of given the size of atmex um somewhat on some level what's happening there is a little bit indicative of what's going on in sort of

the the broader retail space so if I look back just in in 2023 um I would say the year start off a little more like slow or a little normal just in terms of volumes nothing remarkable uh that quickly changed in around March as you could imagine uh when news surfaced about Silicon Valley Bank going under FDIC receivership and and similar concerns with other institutions at that point uh both companies saw a massive influx of of new customers and and quickly what happened was atmex saw its best month of sales on

record and in the company's uh 23e history so that was kind of an interesting Trend there and and on that front you know we we do like to engage with our customers quite a bit just kind of to learn where they're coming from uh you know why are you investing and and at that point almost without fail what we were hearing is you know customers were just less comfortable holding liquidity in the bank than what they used to and and sort of uh identified gold as as kind of a natural solution to

that uh and and that so that was kind of interesting not probably a huge surprise for that time frame uh but yeah throughout 2023 we noticed a few other Trends as well um I'm trying to think one interesting one that we noticed was if you look at uh some of the larger gold and silver ETFs so I'm thinking like the the GLD and the SLV for example uh they were reporting net outflows throughout 2023 whereas kind of oneold uh and atmx were were sort of seeing the opposite and and once again where we're

curious as to why H and so we engag with our customers especially on the oneold side because there are some similarities between uh that platform and ETFs and once again what we're hearing is customers wanted an exposure to gold and silver which is certainly something the ETFs would provide but they actually wanted to own the metal and to have title to it and and so I think uh for us here I think it highlighted kind of a broader point which is sort of the decision on how you buy your gold is is

almost just as important as the decision like two by gold so um from I I do look at like product Trends and I would say you know given one Gold's pretty straightforward you're just choosing where you want to have your metal held and whether it's gold silver or platinum some of the more interesting Trends emerged from the atme side just given their broad product selection I think at this point they probably have somewhere around 30,000 different products listed on their website so um again just

looking back at 20123 and how sales broke down um it was primarily for gold on adx so I want to say around 60 or a little over 60% of atmex sales dollars were accounted for through sales of gold products and a little over 30% were for silver products and uh the rest was split up between you know platinum and plaum and so on but um and that Trend probably holds true for atmax generally speaking I think we sell a little more gold than we do silver it's probably not the same across the board for other dealers they may sell

more silver than gold but um that was certainly one uh that that's kind of noteworthy to your audience and then if I like zoom in a little further if you will just kind of look at what types of products are being sold and in really both categories gold and silver uh it was the 1 out coins the 1 o Sovereign coins and that was followed by uh production products so like silver and and gold bars um and then once again if I look a little further even into that category specifically like one out gold

coins uh most of those about close to 50% of that those sales dollars uh came from 1 oce gold American Eagles and around 15% were accounted for through one out scho Maple Leafs gold Buffalos and then it kind of splits off from there into the kruggerands ETC and there was a similar trend on the on the silver side where about close to 40% of atmex sales for one out silver products were for silver American Eagles followed closely by Maple Leafs Etc um and again probably not a huge surprise given where a dealer based out of the US

that gold and silver American Eagles are fairly popular but to me I think it kind of highlighted the point that customers wanted products that were you know widely recognizable highly liquid something that could really they could sell anywhere um but but yeah those were kind of some of the I would say most widely purchased products on on atmex if you you kind of fast forward from that uptick and sales uh in q1 to around October we we saw an a huge lift in liquidation so customers selling metal back to both one gold and atmx and and

that was due to the increase in the gold price followed by uh the attack on Israel there I think in early October and and once again just saw a massive uptick in in liquidations I think broad more broadly speaking in in the fourth quarter um one gold specifically saw a huge influx in customers selling back and I think December was our busiest month in those terms in in nearly two years um more significantly atmex reported about a close to 50% increase in buyback dollars spent in 2023 when compared to the year prior and about

120% increase in buyback orders process and uh than two years ago so again just kind of a highlights the point that there were a lot of customers out there uh taking advantage of the market swings and um once again I I look at you know what's commonly being sold and the trends there are probably not a huge surprise if I look at the fourth quarter in terms of what was sold back to ATX um in terms of quantity it was the the number one was the one out skull American Eagle um followed by the one

out scho Maple Leaf one out scho Bars were after that of various mints and then one out scull K grains in that order and uh it once again just kind of highlights the fact that one out School products specifically were kind of the most widely uh traded throughout 2023 uh and then again a similar trend for for silver where the most commonly liquidated product was the one out silver American Eagle followed by uh Maple Leafs and then it kind of splits off from there into various other silver coins from uh

branas and Kruger so on so yeah just a couple of I would say some of the more high level trends that we noticed throughout throughout last year really interesting I think we have we have a lot of points that we can pick up on from the summary that you've given there one point I was wondering if you could elaborate on so you know you mentioned you had the best month of sales ever back when we had the banking prices going on if we look at 2023 precious metal sales for you as a whole how does it stack up to previous years

where does it fit in that picture I I would say it's up there in in in terms of the 23e history of apnex it's got to be in certainly in the top five um obviously anything in 2020 and 2021 and even you know 2022 uh those were all like record years and that's sort of what we got accustomed to here is just like one record-breaking quarter after after the other um so it was certainly in the top five I don't know the exact number but overall was a strong year in sales and especially in terms of flow again just

given all the all the liquidation that occurred in the fourth quarter yeah and the other point that I wanted to pick up on there so you mentioned of course you serve mostly American buyers one thing that I hear all the time is people in the East it's part of their culture they buy gold as a matter of course whereas over here in the west typically we we don't buy as much gold so you mentioned banking crisis do you think we're starting to see attitudes change over here people starting to become more interested in

gold is just something that is going to be sustained over time I think so I mean I guess time will tell and like you said historically um folks in the United States they don't own as much gold as as others do and you can maybe cite a variety of reasons for that maybe that's a whole another uh interview but but yeah I think there are some signs of that especially as things persist like inflation H in just general uncertainty in in and you kind of see sort of a movement towards uh gold kind of slowly

making its way into the mainstream um and it's not really one of those assets that's like overhyped at this point either so uh you know you saw that in the early 2000s with kind of the.com bubble right you know um and then and then may 2021 or so with with certain you like like Bitcoin for example you saw the the bitcoin.com commercials and then soon after uh Bitcoin crashed so no one's really talking about gold in the main stream at this point and that to me is kind of telling of an opportunity uh

but yeah I think there are you know you can make a case for gold kind of making its way more into the mainstream especially sort of as some of these uncertainties persist all right and you know you gave a great overview of buying Trends last year what kinds of products people were picking up I think heading into 20124 what people are probably curious about is where can they get the best value for gold and silver products this coming year so any trends that you can mention places where people might want to look

if they're interested in buying yeah I mean I'm going to be a little biased I mean I think atmex provides a great service and in one gold as well but just generally speaking um I think that you've got to start with you know just doing your due diligence and and finding a reputable dealer uh and what I like to look at is just you know how long have you been in business who's backing you those types of things customer reviews um so I if I'm kind of getting into it I would sort of start at

the high level um and then it can kind of even once you've narrowed it down to maybe a few dealers it can get sort of overwhelming because a lot of them have like I said a vast product selection so uh you know in terms of value I look at some of the more commonly traded products uh on the physical retail side you know those are typically like I mentioned earlier your your 1 o Sovereign coins uh and I'd kind of kind of favor those myself again just being how how common they are in the market

and how recognizable they are so if I'm just getting started um I would look again just find a reptile dealer um and then kind of narrow it down from there and try to find products that are they're going to be liquid and you know I think premiums especially for people who are new they might you know come to buy a coin and they realize that there's the premium that they have to pay on top of that what trends are you seeing there at the moment what would you want investors to know about premiums right now yeah

that's a really good question you know and I'd have to kind of take a couple steps back so um prior to 2020 you could kind of predict where premiums would be on gold and silver retail products generally speaking um and then what happened during the co pandemic was you know you had major mints that were operating uh below capacity you had supply chain disruptions and as a result pretty quickly uh in the first quarter of 2020 you know premiums were inflated the most I've ever seen and you know

I've been in business nearly a decade now but um so that to me was not worthy and that was kind of the Cause right and and and that Trend really like persisted for a while and you had certain events that kind of exacerbated that so the the the really the supply was never able to catch up to the demand if you will um and like I said certain events kind of added to that like in 2021 you had the silver squeeze movement so you've had all these kind of catalysts that have driven premiums up to sort of record

levels for the past several years we are seeing somewhat of a normal normalization on that front too where retail premiums have dropped this past year and and that's certainly a good thing to highlight for for those who are just getting started uh and one thing we we see on oneold a lot is is ERS want an exposure to Gold but they don't want to pay a massive premium uh so they might get into one gold and pay the you know one to two% that you've got to pay for silver or or 80 basis points that you

need to pay for a gold premium and then they kind of watch premiums from there so as premiums tend to decline they may swap that vaulted metal for something like a physical delivery of of gold American Eagles or silver eagles but yeah just broadly speaking we are sending seeing kind of premiums uh Trend down a little bit at least for the time being it seems that mints are operating at capacity once again and sort of Supply is is starting to kind of catch up with demand okay I also of course want to

take a look at your outlook for gold and silver in 2024 so starting on the simple side with gold what do you think are going to be the main drivers for the metal in 2024 yeah good question um like probably a good portion of your audience I I have somewhat of a bullish outlook on gold for 2024 and it's just kind of like you mentioned I think that there are a lot of potential drivers there I'm just looking at what happened last year a lot of those Tailwinds I think are going to persist into

2024 without maybe as much of a headwind via fed policy or a red rate hikes excuse me um and again I'm just looking at recent history like what did gold just do it's there's a lot of momentum there uh it's coming off of its best year I think since 2020 it gained a little over 13 % in 2023 I believe it achieved its highest um annual close around 2075 or 2078 an out so and look at just why that happened in short it was due to uncertainty uncertainty at first regarding the banking sector um

uncertainty regarding Global economies inflation but more significantly it was uncertainty in terms of geopolitical events so uh obviously you had the the war in Ukraine the the conflict in the Middle East here more recently and I'm not a geopolitical expert I'll say that uh but I think if you were to ask one none of them are really predicting a quick or clean ending to a lot of these conflicts that are currently going on if anything I think some of them may even escalate I mean I mentioned the Middle

East a moment ago just as early as last week um you had the US and some of allies had clashes with Iranian backed hthy Rebels there in the Red Sea so just little things like that that I think could easily flare up in terms of geopolitical events that could uh emerge as primary drivers for gold next year and then more broadly speaking uh you know the United States and China are still vying for influence in the Pacific specifically around Taiwan so I think there's a lot there just geopolitically

speaking um and then you have the potential pivot uh in fed policy I think at the last I checked the uh fed watch tool there's about a 67% chance of a rate cut as as early as March um and certainly that would be a bullish development for gold as well and I think there could be some uh parallels on the inflationary front too as far as where we are now and even where we were um in the 70s I think that in 1975 the FED probably had a sense that they had kind of camped down inflation for the time being and and what happened

was there in 1976 we saw sort of the second wave of inflation from 76 into into 1980 and I can could easily see something like that happening for gold and at that time um or or in this time period but at that time um you know gold increased from about $180 I Believe In 1976 to about $850 so uh I could easily see sort of a second wave of inflation if not maybe just inflation um sticking around for a little bit longer than what's been forecasted and if you wanted to sort of play Devil's Advocate uh you

you could and you could maybe make more of a short-term bearish ARG for gold and that maybe inflation does stick around for a little bit longer and as a result uh the FED may not raise rates but perhaps they don't cut rates as soon or as frequently as what's been forecasted um so in that scenario that would be to me kind of a bearish development for gold but more so a short-term bearish move so even that considered I think there are a lot of potential Tailwinds going into 2024 as I mentioned the FED policy uh shift is a

big one but primarily I'm looking looking at General uncertainty concerns about the dollar and especially geopolitical events yeah you know and on the note of the geopolitical events that are going on one thing that it seems to have been in the past is that you would have these things happen we'd get that shortterm Spike and then it would Fade Away now it seems like they're providing more longer term support for gold is that kind of what you were seeing as well yeah I am and and then like you had mentioned you

know things like this flare up and then the the you know they tend to not dominate the news headlines quite as much and then uh the gold market sort of settled down but here in recent history I think you've had just a lot of other uncertainty again as it pertains to inflation and and the dollar and just general uncertainty that have been supported of metals in conjunction with geopolitical events so yeah I think we've seen here in the recent year some of these moves upward being sustained again just by

General uncertainty and so in your outlook I know it's it's tough to figure out what the FED is going to do when it's going to do it how how are you factoring in recession concerns because I know that some people definitely still see that as a possibility in 2024 other people are saying no it looks like they're going to get the soft Landing that they're looking for how does that fit into what you see coming yeah that's an interesting question I think oftentimes the FED likes to look at jobs numbers

and recently we've had some pretty decent jobs numbers at least here in the US and and so that lends more towards the FED um I mean kind of keeping policy as predicted I I don't know if you know I know that the FED right now is kind of leaning more towards a soft Landing I know that they've been wrong at least a couple times in the past so um I mean time will tell I'm kind of just going based off of the available data and what's being predicted right now so you know I think what's predicted is is I

believe three rate Cuts in throughout the course of 2024 uh that to me doesn't seem unlikely even if we do dip into a little bit of a recession but I'm certain time will tell and I think I heard you mentioned just briefly that Trend toward dollarization which is a really interesting one curious about more of your thoughts there how you think that could develop in 2024 yeah I think there's been a lot of talk about that and especially in in you know when you start to talk about the bricks Nations and wanting to move away

from the dollar and um I I think I've heard Rick rule say it before just because it's inevitable doesn't mean it's imminent um so I think that something like that could certainly happen as a far as as far as when you know you kind of move away from the dollar as the reserve currency I I don't know it's kind of hard to speak with to that there are a lot of kind of obstacles there uh but certainly it's on a lot of people's radar we hear a lot about that from customers they're

concerned about the future of the dollar and what the ramifications would be especially in terms of our debt if if we were to move move away from the dollar as a reserve currency so uh yeah I think that's been definitely a factor in people's minds when they go to you know look into gold as an ass as a as an investment asset and particularly just not holding liquidity in the bank like Ed mentioned yeah I think certainly becoming more top of mind for people and just to come again around to the

investor angle so I think a lot of people of course want to know what the gold price is going to do in 2024 curious to hear if you have a range that you're looking for and then added to that people always hear that you should buy low sell high so what should investors do when we're heading into a year where we're probably going to see an elevated gold price continue yeah that that's a good question in terms of where the price may go you know um I'm like I said there are a lot of Tailwinds there at least from

what I can see and a lot of potential drivers um you know conservatively I could see goal hitting 2020 or 2200 easily in in 2024 um and as far as you know kind of the whole Buy Low sell High um aspect of things what we find a lot of our customers are doing they're buying gold and silver uh as well in ter more so for wealth preservation so it's less speculative and more so just as a means of preserving their their wealth and kind of wealth insurance if you will and and so a lot of them are are price

sensitive to a degree in terms of where the spot price is but um you know to the G to the degree that they are many will kind of dollar cost average into a position over time and and kind of allocate a certain amount of dollars to you know gold or silver or both uh on on a recurring basis and and you know specifically on one gold there's a tool called Auto invest where uh you know customers can put in $500 a month or ,000 dollar a month or or what have you into gold silver or platinum so a lot of

customers I would say kind of take that approach where they're not as price sensitive they not necessar to looking to liquidate you know on the uptic more so just kind of you know buying gold for the long term and uh you know we'll we'll hopefully we'll achieve that in terms of wealth preservation you know best case scenario maybe you pass it down to uh the younger Generations or use it in retirement but I I see probably less speculative trades and transactions on our platforms and more

um transacting just due to again uh wealth preservation yeah okay interesting that you me men that auto invest feature on one gold because I was thinking to myself that maybe people are more likely to trade on that platform because it's there's the digital aspect there is that something you see yeah you know it's it's appealed to a wide variety of investors um you know new investors who have never thought about gold until now um to the seasoned investors who hold a lot of gold and silver at their home you

know we have one gold accounts ranging anywhere from $10 to you know well over $10 million and so it appeals to a broad audience and a lot of them don't have just a lot of expendable funds to buy 20 ounces of gold at one time so uh tools like like I mentioned Auto invest kind of allow you to buy fractional amounts without without sort of paying the the higher premium that you traditionally would need to uh for fractional gold and silver so so yeah to answer your question it's it's appealing to kind of

a broad audience there who who wants to make an allocation in the precious metals but doesn't necessarily have the liquidity to put you know a significant amount in at once that makes sense yes it does make sense and just quickly I also want to make sure that we look over to Silver so silver I know a lot of fans of silver in our audience but it can be a very frustrating metal to watch the price kind of stay pretty range bound especially when we have gold near all-time highs we have the deficits of

at least the last couple of years so where are you seeing silver go in 2024 yeah like you mentioned a bit of a head scratcher on on Silver especially last year I mean historically speaking uh silver tracks somewhat with the price of gold and it really failed to do so last year like I said earlier um gold had its best year since 2020 uh with over a 13% gain if you look at 2023 silver declined a little bit there was a lot of volatility there I think it ended the year less than a percent down but again it should have had a lot of the

same drivers as as gold and it just didn't perform the same so that was certainly interesting um I I still have kind of a a bullish outlook for gold in in 2024 um specifically I'm looking at like sort of the supply demand aspect of things I know I don't think we have data quite yet for 2023 um but I know in 2022 there was a physical silver deficit uh of around 238 million ounces which is not insignificant right uh and to my knowledge production hasn't really increased remarkably or at all um

industrial demand which accounts for a significant portion of silver demand remains at or near an all-time high so those fundamentals intact alone tell me that I think silver could be undervalued at this point I don't really have a prediction for silver in 2024 but I'm still bullish on it I'm still buying it um so overall I think the fundamentals are are intact for silver yeah and you know you talked about how it has kind of that precious side and it's got its industrial side do

you have any sense of which of them might have more of an important role this coming year you know it's it's really hard to say I mean in investment demand obviously remains strong it sort of tracks with with gold investment demand um now industrial demand is a key component I think in the last few years it's a account counter for a little bit more than investment demand and looking longterm Silver's used in a lot of applications um it's it's not typically recycled so once you use it um in

whatever product you know and you're done with it it goes into landfill right so there's a finite amount of the resource it's being used at a high rate and if you look at what it's being used for a lot of these green initiatives uh require a lot of silver and so uh I'm kind of looking at the industrial aspect to kind of outweigh investment demand at least in the future uh we we'll see if that holds or not and you know if you have kind of a gloomier economic Outlook and there's a downturn economically

especially in some of these industrialized superpower countries that that need silver a lot then then maybe the industrial demand will decline I'm not seeing that at this moment so uh again given a lot of the initiatives out there and and what silver is needed for uh I'm pretty bullish on the industrial side of things okay y silver always a tricky one so thank you for going over that I wondered if you had any final points pieces of advice that you would leave in FS with for 2024 yeah that's a really good question

um you know overall if you're interested in in the precious metal space like I said earlier I I would look at reputable dealers um I I wouldn't be probably too price sensitive at this point if you're wanting to make an allocation into into gold or silver uh you know a little bit over a long period of time can go a long ways uh so certainly do your due diligence and find something uh that that works for you if you're interested in atmex or or one gold uh you could check either of them out at apmex.com or

o.com uh but but yeah okay perfect thank you so much for coming on to go over what's going on with gold and silver really good to have you of course and once again I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing news.com and this is Nea Gunter with one gold and appex okay did that feel okay yeah I felt all right to meet what do you think yeah it was good did you did you get um everything that you wanted to say to cover all the points thank you for watching if you like this video make sure you subscribe

to our Channel we'd also love to hear your thoughts so leave us a comment below we'll see you next time