Gold news

 [Music] [Music] I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing news.com and here today with me is Byron king of Paradigm press which was querly aora Financial Byron is a longtime newsletter writer and he works closely with Jim records well thank you so much for little care well greetings Charlotte it's nice to be here good to see you and we're here catching up at pdac and we're we're nearly very nearly at the end of the first day so I think it's fair to ask you how it's been for you sentiment

you're seeing down on the show floor uh the first thing I noticed when I walked in was how few uh people there were I don't mean that in a horribly negative way but there are less people now than there were before fewer booths fewer people it's been that way all day you've been up here doing interviews I've been down on the floor and I've I've had entire areas all to myself uh uh and it's a sign of the times uh it's hard money it's tough out there in the markets a lot of people have just sort

you know not I want to say lost interest but they have become more disinterested in this very very important sector at the same time I'm optimistic at the end of the day at the end of day one I'm optimistic okay I think that's that's a good setup and you're right I have been stuck up here I took a little trip downstairs in the morning and I wasn't sure it did seem a little bit quieter to me I wasn't sure if it was just early but okay so now we've got that set up and I wanted to start a little bit

broadly because you always have usually some interesting ideas about how you're approaching the market so what is looking most compelling to you right now right well I work at Paradigm press and we do energy and minerals but there's a whole another side of us that does artificial intelligence crypto all those things those guys are doing fabulous they can't sell enough newsletters uh the public is fascinated by this uh and and over on our side on my side we're like but don't forget the

gold and the silver and the copper you know the point is you can't do all these energy intensive AI virtual reality C you can't do this stuff without a a reliable supply of energy and that goes back to you know the primary energy sources you know oil gas uranium uh and things like copper things like steel and aluminum things like you know silver uh Platinum Group Metals rarer you know you can't you can't do it and so uh I think that as uh you know as as as the momentum of of of uh technology and of

crypto Etc as that keeps going keeps accelerating into wherever it goes uh it has to pull the the basic materials the metals uh with it uh and just if some of that froth on the beer over on the technology side drips back into the you drips back onto the table you know for them for the Drillers and the diggers uh uh where we're in for some good times and again this why I'm sort of feeling good at the end of the first day there are fewer boosts fewer people here at Pak than before it seems to me uh but I

detect a sense of true competency among a lot of companies that are down there companies that have followed and a sense of essential optimism that they are doing the right things and that and that they will be rewarded very interesting that you mentioned Paradigm press has this whole AI crypto side as well we do what we do as well which I never bring to YouTube so people may not know but I have the same feeling about how those markets are doing versus us over here in in metals and rainning I think maybe what we can

do is drill down on opportunities that you're seeing maybe maybe starting with energy cuz that's something that we've talked about quite a bit in the past and I've definitely been hearing these conversations about how AI in particular I think Elon osk is even out there telling us how much energy we need for this so where are you focusing in energy well I think that the absolute sweet spot of energy to supply Baseline power to the AI system it has to be nuclear uh the the you know burning carbon you know

is is is considered bad in the world even though China opens a new cold fired power plant you know twice a week whatever but you know nothing nothing we're we're not talking about consistency here we're just talking about what's going on in the world uh nuclear has had a wonderful runup it still has a ways to go uh and so right away you need you need the nuclear for the Baseline you cannot run uh the complex artificial intelligence you can't you can't run the energy demand

for AI and everything else off of intermittent power off of batteries off of you know windmills pump you know pumping it in the battery that's not going to work you need absolutely secure Baseline power to make it work nuclear is is uh the way it's going to happen and so uranium is one way um in terms of like you know who who's here to what I love urani or I love Energy Fuels um you know U you you you energy fuel St they're downstairs nice Booth had a nice talk with them I visited their facility

and Blanding Utah wonderful company wonderful you know true uh you know true they they're truly good at what they do and they have a rare earth side as well where they're Pro in in addition to processing the rocks that give you your uranium yellow cake they processing your rocks the rocks that can give you rare so that's a that's a that's a nice play downstairs there very yeah I had just had energy fields on talking this morning so yeah definitely an interesting one and okay on the energy

side as well the last time we spoke we did a big bricks conversation because it was just after the bricks meeting and you had told me that bricks has essentially become an energy place so how does that component fit in with this huge growing demand for energy well yeah I mean uh Bri you know bricks originally was a was an invention of Goldman Sachs as a marketing tool for their products that had to do with you know India and China whatever you know bricks became a geopolitical block in the sense you know

you know Russia was uh uh is in there but now that they've essentially merged as of the beginning of this year 2024 uh with uh I you know Saudi Iran UAE I it's brics OPEC and so uh brics is not just a uh it's not just a it's not just a a geopolitical block it's it's becoming a trading block and a big element of the trading block is an energy block uh when you look at you know brcs you know Brazil is a big oil producer Russia is a huge oil producer uh you know China produces energy but they're big oil user

Saudi Iran I mean we're looking at we're looking at some of the the largest energy plays in the world Iraq wants to get in and so they they they control energy and when you control the price of energy you control the price of pretty much everything else because food is energy fertilizer that makes the food is energy transportation is energy mining his energy you know putting the diesel in the big yellow gear and you know digging the rocks or you know making the explosives that blow all up and you know

the chemicals that process that's all that's all petroleum based natural gas- based uh products so if if you don't have a if you don't have a if you don't have control over the energy supply chain you're going to have trouble in the mines and minerals supply chain as well it's it all it all fits together uh when you look at it you know from the from the high view from the larger View and I think one more point on on the energy side so battery metal lithium in particular did not have a very good year

in 2023 and I think last year there was a lot of a lot more lithium hype for sure around here so how are you feeling about the battery Metals you know yeah what are your thoughts there well the battery metals are are a thing and they are a thing and they will be a thing uh but like everything you know they they they have Cycles as well uh one of the problems with uh lithium for example has been the slowdown in uh uh public acceptance of of electric vehicles now you know China makes lots of EVS in the

US we've the US has hit a wall in terms of EV adoption you know by people who actually want to write a check and buy a car I mean a lot of people they they don't want they don't want the EV they they don't want to be they they they may or may not want the EV a device they sure don't want it shove down their throat by government mandate which is what's happening uh and you know talk to the auto dealers of the world they'll tell you that you know the EVS are backing up on the Lots uh SEC and

there's no secondary market for them you know I mean you got things like you know Herz Corporation selling off a big whack of its EV Fleet because nobody wants to rent them things like that so so that all of that feeds back into something like lithium I mean there was a lot of lithium hype a lot of money flowed into lithium uh there were a lot of promises a lot of vaporware L lot of PowerPoint you know PowerPoint chairborne Ranger kind of stuff people slapping the screen about what we're going to do and they

didn't do it and uh and so it backed off uh lithium but many many other metals as well had a tough last you know six months uh the only thing that really seems to have done well in a consist was his gold you went above 2000 in about what November of 2023 and pretty much stayed there with the exception of a day or two a couple days were we dropped below 2,000 but it's you it's it's well back above 2,000 again uh that's uh that's an inflation angle that's a US government spending budget deficit angle

national debt angle uh you know I mean Bitcoin has been going through the roof but you know it it's it's F it's funny you you have you have crypto people and you have mining people you got Bitcoin you got gold uh it they're sort of very related though you know bit Bitcoin is digital gold you know gold is you know gold is you de electrified Bitcoin so to speak right there but it's it gold will have its day and then there's the silver slingshot right behind it so gold silver

are always uh are are never out of fashion yeah you know I had this thought over the past week where we had gold doing well we had Bitcoin also doing well and we do typically hear that maybe Bitcoin steals attention from gold but I had that going through my head I was like well they're both they're both doing well right now so any thoughts of her well they are you know they are a reflection of the Bitcoin doing well gold doing well are a reflection of the government destruction of currencies

everywhere the US dollar the Canadian dollar British pound European Euro etc etc you go down the list you know uh governments everywhere have overspent uh their deficit spending that National debts are rising what have you and Bitcoin gold is the Public's way of saying uh we don't like what's going on we don't trust what's going on uh gold is the world C Central bank's way of saying we're not sure what's going to happen but we're going to buy gold I mean I mean you you I mean maybe not

Canada maybe not the United States definitely not the United States the Central Bank does not buy gold foolishly in my humble opinion but uh central banks everywhere else they sure are and what do they know you know they they know that Something Wicked This Way Comes in terms of uh the future uh viability of currencies you know Fiat currencies fail they always do you know go you know all the historical arguments yeah yeah yeah in terms of like what do we do today um you know we we live our life in know in the normal economy we

buy things with dollars we pay our bills in dollars we get paid in dollars all that kind of stuff uh but uh take some of those dollars and you know buy your physical gold buy your physical silver you know invest in invest in Bitcoin in one of these exchange traded funds that they have I mean there's a lot of ways to do it but uh uh this this is this is people opting out at least a little bit 5% 10% of the of their of their net worth moves into something hard like gold or silver something you know

digital or an electronic like a Bitcoin uh but this is this is people voting with their money against the way things are going so that uh uh you I guess it all gets back to the macroeconomics and it all gets back to you know central banks ruining the currency on on behalf of the of the politicians who can't stop spending the money yes okay I like different ways of saying the same thing I like that and let's let's talk about gold a little bit more we can leave Bitcoin to the side for now I know you

have a you got a 3,000 gold price prediction out there and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that I don't know if you have a time frame you had mentioned some of the different factors behind gold but maybe we just go into that well it's uh as we speak it's early March of 2024 uh it would not surprise me at all to see gold at 2500 by the end of the year uh you know gold may or may not agree with me uh but uh uh it it's more like what what are the underlying Trends what are the underlying forces the

underlying Trends and forces ought to give a lift to Gold continuously as the year unfolds I do not see the the macro situation of say the US dollar I don't see that improving the government goes deeper into debt by a trillion dollars every 3 months uh so we've got nine more months of of 2024 and so by the end of the year instead of 34 trillion national debt it's going to be 37 trillion national debt if you don't have some gold now some silver now get some okay um what I don't know what else to say I think

that's probably all you do need to say and what I want to I think kind of start to finish up with is gold stocks one of the questions that I've been asking people frequently these past couple of days and months is you know people are out there we looking at the very high gold price they wonder where the stocks will live I wonder if you have any any insight on that and and how you're approaching it well a high gold price can never be bad for a gold company uh it's uh it can only it it it increases the value of the

reserves in the ground it increases the value of what they pull out of the ground and sell it increases the cash flow uh now what happens to that cash flow I me the because the price of diesel goes up and the price of explosive goes up and the price of Labor goes up and steel and okay yes oh yes yes it but a higher a higher gold price is never a bad thing for the gold mining companies now you say but gee the gold company share prices are way down to which I say yes lucky you you know lucky you uh you you look at the biggest of

them you know baric is at a about a fiveyear low still pays a dividend you can think what you want about baric in terms of management or anything else but they're they're big and when when the stock market decides that g we better own some more gold in our in our big family offices and our big money management portfolios is a a company like baric a company like Newmont they're the first they're the first go-to companies then you get into the the the I'll say smaller companies but

some of them are not that small uh the uh the some of the companies that have really amazing uh upside leverage are are small exploration plays we saw it in the last two years with a company like snow line where a major major discovery on a company that like nobody ever heard of out in the middle of like nowhere and I don't mean to it I've been there it's it is somewhere it's not nowhere it is somewhere but it's just far away you can't get there uh it's hard to get there um they they they've done

spectacularly well uh there are other companies out there you know drilling drilling Drilling and and any any one of them could you know could could come in with something similar to that you know so there's a lot of upside in in serious gold Discovery these days uh and we're seeing it downstairs on the floor talking with companies who are saying I'm not going to so much uh just keep you know building the resource I'm actually going to step out of ways and see if I can expand it I'm going to you

know really see if I can you know make this thing theoretically look a lot bigger uh just with a with a couple of holes at the outskirts here uh there and so uh um like I said there's a lot of positivity out there the stock prices are down the share prices are down but the the gold is there the asset the the geologists are there the drill rigs are there enough companies have enough money that we're going to see some really exciting things in the next year uh and some of those companies are downstairs

you know in the on the on the convention floor today as we speak and it feels it feels like they've kind of come full circle from the conference floor to the conference floor so I'll I'll let you go but I do want to ask before you do go is there any final thoughts that you would share with investors as we're heading into the rest of the year well it is so easy to be uh you know pulled away by the momentum you know that the the fear missing out and all OG you know Nvidia did this and OG

bitcoin's doing that okay I'm not saying don't don't dabble in those things but I'm also saying don't forget the the the the basics don't forget the mines and the minerals you you can't do much of what the world wants to do without the basic mines and minerals the world will need copper lead zinc the world will need the Rare Earth elements uh the world will need you know the nickel the world will need uh you know the Platinum Group medals the gold the silver it's

it's not going anywhere and these companies are just on absolute uh you know fire sale right now in terms of share prices uh it's uh the these are these are the kind of things that if you get into the right plays at the right points in the next year or so the next few months where these These are these things that could set you up for the rest of your life I think I think that's a really good place place to wrap up on and I also like the point you know you can do other things we should look at

this but you are allowed to go look at other you can drink Pepsi and Coca-Cola that's okay or orange juice whatever you know but uh yeah don't uh don't don't restrict yourself okay perfect thank you so much for coming on to have this quite wide ranging discussion thank you once again I'm in Charlotte cloud with investing news.com and this is by King with paradig press [Music]