Louder with Crowder - October 18, 2025


EXPLAINED: Is America Headed For a Market Crash?


Episode Stats

Length

56 minutes

Words per Minute

228.91731

Word Count

12,827

Sentence Count

781

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

Samuel O'Brien has been in the financial industry for over 10 years and is a partner at a company called True Gold Republic. He talks about why he thinks gold is more of a safe haven than the dollar and why he bought gold right after the election.


Transcript

00:00:16.000 I know it says good morning, but good afternoon, good evening works as well.
00:00:19.000 You know, it just don't get too hung up on what's on the mug there.
00:00:22.000 But uh welcome.
00:00:23.000 Um I am excited to talk to you guys today because we have uh I see the admonished in my my name is still there.
00:00:31.000 It's always gonna stay there.
00:00:32.000 You guys are painfully asking for me to be hurt by admonishes all the time.
00:00:32.000 Fine.
00:00:37.000 That's fine.
00:00:37.000 I can deal with it.
00:00:38.000 Um but I'm gonna do you a favor.
00:00:40.000 I'm gonna talk about something that we don't talk about a whole lot on the show.
00:00:43.000 And uh and and just tell you something that has been on my mind since I don't know, just before the election last year.
00:00:50.000 Um and talk to you a little bit more about kind of some financial topics.
00:00:53.000 Now, I know some people may not be interested.
00:00:56.000 I'm not giving you like expert advice or anything like that.
00:00:59.000 In fact, on Wednesday, Steven gave me crap after we talked about gold for a minute and uh and said, Yeah, yeah, go ahead and give us your give us your uh professional advice, and then sat back and I was like, no, I'm just saying I've noticed certain things, and I hear noticing is you know, fine these days.
00:01:12.000 I am interested in what this means.
00:01:16.000 I'm interested in why you have the SP 500 up 13.4% over the last year, Bitcoin up 67.6%, gold up 58.8%, silver up 60.3%.
00:01:29.000 And then comparatively the dollar is down about 4.6%.
00:01:34.000 Those things are very interesting to me because when I took finance in college, um, gold was put out as something that people use as a hedge against the market because they want to make sure that they have a balanced portfolio.
00:01:46.000 How we've always talked to you guys about this, whether it's gold, silver, anything else, that you have a balanced portfolio.
00:01:51.000 We're never gonna tell you to go grab, you know, everything, like put everything you got in Bitcoin and hope for the best or doge or whatever else, right?
00:01:58.000 So I just was curious.
00:01:59.000 I was like, wow, why is the market up and it's pretty strong?
00:02:03.000 And all of these other things are up as well.
00:02:07.000 It just didn't make any sense to me.
00:02:09.000 And really the gold price has been skyrocketing over the last year, but it's reached all-time highs, topping 4100 per ounce.
00:02:18.000 U.S. stock futures rebounding this morning after the major averages closed in the red, halting seven consecutive days of gains for the SP 500.
00:02:26.000 But the gold rally, it continues to power higher.
00:02:29.000 Spot gold hitting $4,000 an ounce for the first time ever.
00:02:34.000 Billionaire investor Ray Dalio says he sees gold as more of a safe haven than the dollar.
00:02:38.000 He compared its record run to the 1970s, a time of high inflation and economic uncertainty.
00:02:45.000 Plus, NVIDIA reportedly investing in XAI as Elon Musk's startup looks to raise 20 billion dollars.
00:02:51.000 Bloomberg News reporting the company is investing as much as two billion in the equity portion of XAI's fundraising.
00:02:57.000 The report comes just days after rival AI startup OpenAI announced a blockbuster deal with NVIDIA competitor AMD.
00:03:04.000 NVIDIA declined to comment on the report.
00:03:07.000 So there's a reason we included the NVIDIA part in there, and we'll get to that in just a second.
00:03:12.000 But gold's up about 58 uh point eight percent, I think is the number I gave you, yeah.
00:03:17.000 Over the last year per ounce.
00:03:19.000 Now I just so happened to buy gold right after the election.
00:03:22.000 So things went uh swimmingly well for me and my timing.
00:03:25.000 But again, it's part of a balanced portfolio.
00:03:27.000 It's not like I just put you know every single dollar that I had in gold.
00:03:31.000 And the reason that I bought it was to make sure that I had some balance.
00:03:34.000 But like I said, it's typically a hedge against a market that is filled with uncertainty and risk.
00:03:40.000 And you guys know that I am not the world's expert on this.
00:03:43.000 I I I think I have a bit of an understanding of uh some of the questions that I have, some of the things that I've noticed about the markets lately, but I wanted to bring in somebody from the financial sector to be able to talk to us a little bit about that, and that brings us to my guest today, Samuel O'Brien, who's been in the financial markets for about 10 years.
00:04:02.000 Bring him up.
00:04:06.000 All right, Samuel, so full disclosure, you're you work with a company in the financial industry with True Gold.
00:04:13.000 And uh is that the short name, True Gold Republic?
00:04:15.000 Do I have to do gold republic?
00:04:16.000 There we go.
00:04:16.000 True Gold Republic.
00:04:18.000 Yeah.
00:04:18.000 Full name.
00:04:19.000 Um, but this is not like a sales pitch of of any sort, right?
00:04:23.000 We are partners in this deal, but you have some uh understanding.
00:04:26.000 We actually talked just before the show on a number of different things that we're kind of adding to this conversation about this strange place that we find ourselves with the market.
00:04:35.000 So just tell me a little bit about how you got kind of into this market and what you guys do.
00:04:40.000 So obviously I'm not from America, uh but I started with I started with my with my business partner.
00:04:46.000 We worked for an American Precious Messers firm.
00:04:48.000 This was going back 2013.
00:04:51.000 And we started selling physical gold and silver, but that company was like mainly focused on the fancy coins, collectible stuff, you know, things like that, which was it's good for some people, but it's not giving you direct exposure to the metal prices.
00:05:05.000 Like sometimes you'll be paying two, three times more than what you need to.
00:05:09.000 So if the price goes up, you think you've made some money, you probably really haven't.
00:05:12.000 So we were sitting there one day and he said that you know, I've got an idea, we can do this way better.
00:05:17.000 And so, you know, credit to him.
00:05:19.000 He set up direct bullying in the UK in 2015.
00:05:23.000 I was the second employee, so it was like a small team of us.
00:05:26.000 We worked long hours, but we just sold you know physical gold and silver to the British public and it took off like a rocket.
00:05:34.000 You know, it did really, really well.
00:05:36.000 Um then COVID hit as well, so there was like sh you know, crazy increased demand for precious metals because people just didn't know what was going on.
00:05:42.000 Right, yeah.
00:05:43.000 Um so that really helped us out.
00:05:44.000 And the markets were crashing at that time.
00:05:46.000 So that makes sense.
00:05:47.000 Markets go down, prices of these things.
00:05:48.000 Markets are going down, everyone was like, Yeah.
00:05:51.000 Everyone was very frantic and then everyone was just buying gold and silver.
00:05:54.000 They were like, we don't know this could be end times, right?
00:05:56.000 We need something, everyone was buying toilet paper, gold, still.
00:06:00.000 We're hoarding totally people with like a closet full of toilet paper.
00:06:03.000 It was like prison rules.
00:06:04.000 You trade a roll for like a steak or something like that.
00:06:07.000 Exactly.
00:06:08.000 It was it was the weird commodities, but obviously gold was uh was that thing where people thought, you know what, you know, things get really, really bad.
00:06:14.000 You know, that was that week right where the market break was going off every single day.
00:06:18.000 Market was shutting down.
00:06:19.000 So people were very scared.
00:06:20.000 And normally, yeah, as you were saying earlier, like gold is there for when people are fearful, they buy gold and silver.
00:06:27.000 Yeah, um, mainly gold just to protect themselves against downside risk.
00:06:30.000 Like that's the idea.
00:06:32.000 Um but we did very well in that period, and then I pitched the idea, I said, look, let's take this to America.
00:06:36.000 You know, let's go out there.
00:06:38.000 Um I was fortunate enough to be blessed with that opportunity to do that.
00:06:41.000 We opened up a first office in Miami.
00:06:43.000 And out here, there's bigger companies that have been b in business for a long time.
00:06:47.000 So we just wanted to set up like a boutique operation, small group of guys here doing it the right way, uh, trying to educate people on how they can do it.
00:06:56.000 We have to take our lumps as well.
00:06:58.000 You know, we could have done it the quick way, but we took the long route.
00:07:00.000 But it's uh that's better to do it right.
00:07:03.000 I mean, we've been very uh and and I wanna we'll get into this, I have some key facts that we're gonna talk about the markets and some of the AI stuff that we think is um behind this in a number of different ways, not just in driving kind of some of the uncertainty, but also a lot of the gains.
00:07:16.000 Um but we're very particular about the people that we partner with because we're not looking for kind of every single uh sponsor out there to come on board.
00:07:26.000 Um, you know, Steven has often talked about gold companies that there's just they're a dime a dozen and they're very few that do it the right way or even take care of their customers, and we're like, why would we send people somewhere that they're not gonna be taken care of?
00:07:37.000 They're gonna be taken advantage of and buy something that's like a collector's item as opposed to just getting the actual product, like you said, pay a premium for it when gold goes up, the collector's item doesn't necessarily track the same way.
00:07:47.000 Um and so we really wanted to avoid that.
00:07:49.000 And also, like, you know, the whole gold has never been worth zero.
00:07:51.000 Yeah, neither has coffee.
00:07:52.000 You know, like all that makes sense.
00:07:54.000 I don't want to scare people into doing anything.
00:07:56.000 I just want people to be educated and make their own decisions and then figure out what makes the most sense for them, which is really funny because that's where I was.
00:08:04.000 And so I'll I'll tell my story a little bit and then we'll jump in.
00:08:07.000 I was like, you know, like I my uncle had gold in like the 80s, and he ended up getting a divorce and his wife, not divorced, I think they just separated and his wife sold his gold bars.
00:08:17.000 And apparently they were pretty sizable gold bars because you know, they're back in the 80s, they were worth you know significantly less than they would be today.
00:08:23.000 And so I just imagine, you know, like from die hard with a vengeance where they've got those giant gold bars in the back, you know, or something like that.
00:08:29.000 Imagine it was something like that size, like a hundred ounces or something like that, which would be great.
00:08:33.000 Um she sold them to kind of stay afloat.
00:08:36.000 And so that was the first time I'd really hold heard anything about it other than like gold schlager.
00:08:40.000 You know, I knew there were little flakes of gold in that drink, and I was like, okay, I understand what gold is.
00:08:44.000 Um but I I always wanted to own it.
00:08:47.000 Like I just wanted to have some.
00:08:48.000 Not like to have a whole lot or anything like that.
00:08:50.000 And I just never like it was almost like paralysis by analysis.
00:08:54.000 Like I couldn't pick a company to buy it through.
00:08:56.000 I didn't know if I could just go to a store, you know, like a gold and silver dealer Or something like that locally and just buy it for market price.
00:09:03.000 I just never done it.
00:09:04.000 And so because it was something unfamiliar, I just didn't do it.
00:09:07.000 Yeah.
00:09:07.000 And I had wanted to do it for several years and finally I did this last year.
00:09:13.000 Picked a company, went with them and bought it.
00:09:15.000 And I'm really glad that I did, you know, because I've gotten, like I said, all the upside.
00:09:18.000 Again, it's not like a giant portion of what I am trying to like put away and save responsibly.
00:09:24.000 Uh but I I thought if well, if I'm having that same kind of you know, thought process, I'm sure a lot of other people are, and they really don't know where to go, and it's because they've been taken advantage of so much by people and fed so much crap by people on what they have to do and get scare tactics and you know, all these people switch gold sponsors, you know, they don't even care who it is.
00:09:43.000 They're just like, Yeah, we'll be the face of this next gold company in two weeks, just give us a minute to finish our current deal, right?
00:09:48.000 It's just a weird game.
00:09:50.000 So um I we always wanted to avoid that.
00:09:52.000 So got high expectations.
00:09:54.000 If you guys end up doing any business with Samuel, make sure you let us know if he uh does anything wrong.
00:09:58.000 I doubt he will, but our our guys come back to us.
00:10:00.000 Also, let us know if he uh they've if it's a good experience because I've I've had some bad experiences with people before, uh, but not our sponsors, they do a great job of taking care of people.
00:10:09.000 So let's let's jump into some of the the facts of what's going on in the markets.
00:10:14.000 Gold will be a piece of that, but mostly we're talking about just kind of what's going on in the financial markets and how this stuff kind of shakes out.
00:10:20.000 So key fact number one.
00:10:22.000 Um the markets do appear to be very strong, right?
00:10:25.000 So the SP 500, and and I'm gonna give some remedial stuff.
00:10:28.000 I know most of you probably are familiar with what that is, but it's the list of the 500 largest and most important publicly traded companies in the US.
00:10:35.000 Includes companies like Nvidia, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, Meta.
00:10:41.000 Um if you noticed a trend there, congratulations, you're paying attention.
00:10:45.000 The top 10 SP 500 companies account for almost 40% of the entire value of the SP 500, and we will dive into that just a little bit more uh later on.
00:10:56.000 But if you can see a problem, congratulations.
00:10:59.000 That's potentially a problem if they are all kind of all running in the same direction, and uh a lot of the growth and performance is coming from that direction.
00:11:08.000 So SP 500 is performing really well.
00:11:11.000 Uh it's growing at a 22% annualized return over the last three years, and just last week it hit an all-time high, right?
00:11:20.000 So these are all good things, right?
00:11:21.000 The SP 500 is going up.
00:11:23.000 A lot of people may wonder why they don't use the Dow as kind of the benchmark.
00:11:27.000 I think the SP 500 is a little bit more stable.
00:11:29.000 Um, at least historically it has been.
00:11:29.000 Yeah.
00:11:31.000 We might undercut that theory a little bit today.
00:11:33.000 Yeah.
00:11:34.000 So uh I'm not I'm not 100% sure, but uh I I do know that when I look at kind of like 401k and I look at just any small investing that I would do, um, I always like to see green up arrows.
00:11:48.000 You don't always see that though, right?
00:11:50.000 Um and I don't know enough about the stock market other than to get in trouble.
00:11:54.000 Like I was trading stocks and options when I was 18, and I made a little bit of money and I lost a whole bunch of my sister's money.
00:12:02.000 So anytime I I would lose, it was her money, and we weren't rich or anything, we didn't have a ton of money to lose.
00:12:06.000 Uh, but I would trade on her account and be like, oh, sorry, I lost you a thousand dollars today.
00:12:11.000 That's that's really my bad.
00:12:12.000 Um but any time I would win, I'd feel like, oh, I've got this game figured out.
00:12:16.000 Like this is so easy.
00:12:17.000 Everyone makes money in a bull market, right?
00:12:18.000 Like, yes, exactly.
00:12:19.000 Right now you can pick stocks, and like we have like me and my friends have like chats where people recommend tickers and everything's going up, but then like you know, there's a few days coming from it.
00:12:28.000 And then you're like, okay, we're not this good, we're not that good at what we're doing right now.
00:12:32.000 But everything right now is obviously going ballistic, which is yeah, which is very weird.
00:12:36.000 Like it's very strange.
00:12:37.000 But then gold and silver, you know, at the start of the year, we didn't, you know, if someone said to me that the end of the year, or the start of the year, the end of the year, gold could be touching 4500 dollars, and I'd be like, that's very bullish.
00:12:48.000 Uh exactly what you would have said.
00:12:52.000 Like you would have probably bet every dollar you had that that's probably not the case.
00:12:55.000 I would have taken the under on that one every time.
00:12:58.000 But we we fought conservatively, and you know, we wrote blogs and reports, we have a market uh analysis that does things, and he you know, from the technicals, he was saying if three thousand dollars for gold would be a great year, and for silver, it could hit forty forty, forty-five dollars.
00:13:16.000 You know, that's what our expectations were.
00:13:18.000 And we was like, if we could hit that, people are gonna be very happy.
00:13:21.000 Uh and people uh over the moon right now, you know, with people that invested last year like you, the year before, the year before, these are people that have made stock market gains almost in in gold and silver, which is like uh supposed to be it's uh it's an insurance policy.
00:13:36.000 It's not meant to go up like a stock.
00:13:38.000 So that's like being the weird factor, but yeah.
00:13:41.000 Well, everybody talks about, and speaking of bull markets, when I was doing this whole investing that made me think I had this thing figured out, it was 1998.
00:13:49.000 So it's not exactly like I could miss very easily.
00:13:53.000 My biggest misses were when I would buy options that didn't cover in time or something like that because it was too close.
00:14:00.000 The window was too short for them to actually hit.
00:14:04.000 But outside of gold and silver, what is the most common other two precious metals that people will buy like physical I would say that you're really mainly looking at gold silver and then there is minor interest in platinum like growing a little bit but still like for the the five years that we've been a business out here the amount of platinum that we sold is fairly nominal.
00:14:26.000 Yeah people like the idea of it because it sounds different, right?
00:14:29.000 But I mean I don't I've never followed platinum that much a voice just been on gold and silver.
00:14:34.000 Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
00:14:35.000 No it doesn't yeah and I know that people like it they like the idea of it but it's just not it doesn't have the same silver are yeah.
00:14:45.000 And you've got to actually uh hold up what is this gold back?
00:14:49.000 Is that what you're saying over there?
00:14:50.000 It's a go back.
00:14:51.000 That is one one thousandth of an ounce and uh is that so that is that legal currency legal tender and well yeah gold and silver is now legal tender in a few states.
00:14:51.000 Yeah.
00:15:00.000 I think it's up to five states.
00:15:02.000 Florida in uh March or April was just approved so golden center is gold and silver is now legal tender.
00:15:09.000 So it means you can spend it.
00:15:10.000 Yeah you can spend gold and silver.
00:15:12.000 So this company uh the gold backs they've got you know approval to do it and you can spend this like in some shops you'll see on the sign of the door like they accept Apple Pay Visa MasterCard you can accept uh a gold back as well.
00:15:26.000 That's all it might be we're getting some change out this guy but yeah but it's uh it's showing that people want to do it.
00:15:33.000 You know and it it's just a different way, you know a different currency.
00:15:37.000 Yeah.
00:15:37.000 Well there there is kind of this counterculture movement right now.
00:15:40.000 And I think you know obviously the the coins are you know like Bitcoin and all that other coins out there are are driving a lot of that decentralized in a different way, right?
00:15:48.000 But there's still kind of a practical like okay if I want something physically in my hand that's not my phone yeah um what do I have?
00:15:54.000 And there are different options for that.
00:15:55.000 I actually thought because we what what we see is like you know one of the reasons that all of this could be happening is there's these like investor classes of people that are constantly looking for new places to put their money because they're bored.
00:16:06.000 And so that was part of the rise of certain random things over the last you know 10 years one of those being uh Pokemon cards.
00:16:14.000 Yeah.
00:16:14.000 And then there was the graded card phenomenon with uh it wasn't just Pokemon that was part of it but it was like the football cards and basketball cards like graded PSA 10 gem meant cards became I didn't realize this but like a wall street phenomenon people with tons of money.
00:16:28.000 And like I had bought one for like I don't know a thousand dollars and sold it for I think two thousand dollars or fifteen hundred bucks and it's worth ninety thousand dollars today.
00:16:28.000 Yeah.
00:16:37.000 It was like 20 years later.
00:16:38.000 So it's not like I'm gonna sit there and hold on to it but I actually looked over and I saw just a hologram like what do you have like a Charizard card here to make a point or something like that?
00:16:45.000 Like a holler just to be like yeah see this is what I do.
00:16:48.000 You didn't wear it around your neck, you know, like one of the Logans.
00:16:52.000 But not one of the Logans.
00:16:55.000 He has two first names.
00:16:55.000 Logan Paul.
00:16:56.000 Yeah.
00:16:57.000 Always throws me off.
00:16:58.000 But anyway, I thought it was interesting.
00:17:00.000 But yeah, platinum.
00:17:01.000 I don't know.
00:17:02.000 I don't know where else.
00:17:03.000 Like what other metal.
00:17:04.000 But I know that I always see people pushing.
00:17:06.000 Yeah, we was in.
00:17:07.000 Before we came here, we was in downtown.
00:17:09.000 And I just checked out one of the gold and silver exchanges there.
00:17:12.000 And I said to him, like, how's it been?
00:17:14.000 And he was like, people are so infatuated with metals right now that people are trying to buy copper.
00:17:18.000 And one of our wholesale suppliers was like, you can start selling copper if you want.
00:17:23.000 And I was like, I'll let you know about that.
00:17:24.000 Like we get inquiries.
00:17:26.000 But you can buy like a, you know, a.
00:17:28.000 kilo of copper now which is like a nominal amount but people have interest and metals prices are all going up like I'm sure copper woo could go up too.
00:17:38.000 So people are interested about it but it's I would say if you if you're starting out on it like stick with the basics.
00:17:45.000 Yeah gold stone silver get too crazy yeah but you know somebody's gonna be like listen that's gonna go up like 20 thousand percent because it could be on people get on to palladium or whatever it is you know pick your you know random metal that's the one that's gonna go up.
00:17:57.000 You can do that later, but just get everything in order first okay all right so key fact number two.
00:18:03.000 really right now the investors are it seems like people are spooked, but they don't really know where to go, right?
00:18:10.000 So if if the markets are doing fantastic, why do you why do you think you see investors flocking to items that would typically tell you that the markets are teetering or at least there's a lot of concern about them, like gold, bitcoin, silver, other assets.
00:18:24.000 Um and really the answer right now seems to be, and that and we can have some conversation about this is that they feel like the market gains are too heavily concentrated in AI related gains.
00:18:35.000 Like, like I said, the top 10 S P five hundred companies are 40% of the value of the SP 500, and those 10 companies heavily rely on AI as a basis for their growth.
00:18:46.000 And investors right now are kind of rightly asking themselves like, is there an AI bubble?
00:18:51.000 So let me give you just a few stats really quickly.
00:18:53.000 So since October of 2022, AI has been responsible for 75% of SP 500 overall market returns, 80% of SP 500 earnings growth, and 90% of SP 500 capital spending growth.
00:19:07.000 And just one example, so I told you we'd get back to this NVIDIA.
00:19:11.000 So by June uh of this year, NVIDIA alone had already accounted for 34.5% of all of the SP 500's gains for all of 2025.
00:19:20.000 And I think concentrating all of that in such a small industry, it's kind of like the tech bubble that we had.
00:19:27.000 There was so much that was writing on tech.
00:19:30.000 Whenever those kind of overvaluations and people investing a lot of money just to try to get in on the right company at the right time, you pay way too much.
00:19:37.000 And we've heard a lot about that with uh, you know, the stories at Meta, like inj you know, some of the best AI engineers in the world getting like hundred million dollar signing bonuses, just way overpaying to try to keep the best talent um at meta.
00:19:37.000 Yeah.
00:19:50.000 And it seems like investors are seeing this and going, okay, I know AI is a thing and it's happening and it's going to change the world in a lot of different ways.
00:19:58.000 We don't know all of them yet.
00:19:59.000 I just don't know who is going to be the one to break through and not everybody can.
00:20:04.000 Well, I I think when you look at companies like Meta, um Google, uh like they'll buy like anything that has great potential.
00:20:11.000 They will.
00:20:12.000 So they're always going to be at the top.
00:20:14.000 There is obviously an AI bubble because like you know, I was talking with with my Marks and guy, I don't know, he was saying like there's one AI technology that comes out and we run to that, and then we run to something different, then we're on something different, and it's like always chasing the new shiny object.
00:20:26.000 And all of this stuff is costing a lot of money.
00:20:28.000 So there is definitely an AI bubble, but with companies like NVIDIA, like, you know, I don't think that that bubble will pop.
00:20:34.000 You know, I don't think NVIDIA, we wake up tomorrow and it's halved in value.
00:20:37.000 You know, it's it's a machine.
00:20:39.000 You know, the the backbone of this AI industrial.
00:20:41.000 Bookmark this for one scary way.
00:20:45.000 Maybe no, no, I know.
00:20:46.000 I think you're right.
00:20:47.000 There are certain players in the AI sector that will do better than others and perform at a more stable rate than others based on what they provide.
00:20:55.000 Um but there are also a lot of people trying to catch up.
00:20:57.000 And I I agree with you that Meta and Google are positioned to be able to buy these companies up as they as they come up, but there are a lot more people going after them now.
00:21:06.000 Yeah.
00:21:06.000 Um and I think that that, you know, like it's it's interesting to watch kind of what's happened with X, because when Elon Musk bought Twitter, he didn't buy like, and this was pretty obvious that he didn't buy it just for the market value of Twitter, but I don't think I certainly am not saying that I was predicting exactly where he was going with this, but very quickly it became clear wait a minute, he's trying to do something with AI and he needs to be able to train his models and he needs a ton of information to do that.
00:21:30.000 What better way to do that than to buy one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet?
00:21:34.000 Yeah, you know, and have information from as many countries as he can get a uh you know X to be available in.
00:21:39.000 Yeah.
00:21:39.000 So that made a lot of sense, and it's like, okay, that's why it was worth more in the long run.
00:21:45.000 And we thought evil X in the interim or initially just because of the free speech aspect.
00:21:49.000 I think that was a component.
00:21:50.000 It was definitely a component thing.
00:21:53.000 Okay, Grok's here now.
00:21:54.000 But grok is I mean, especially for like gold and market commentary and stuff that perhaps is more right-field sometimes.
00:21:54.000 Okay.
00:22:01.000 You try and speak to Chat GBT and it's still very censored on those topics, whereas you can speak to Grok and Grock gives you all kinds of buying advice.
00:22:09.000 Sometimes the truth, yeah.
00:22:11.000 So it's yeah.
00:22:13.000 But I'm glad that he bought it.
00:22:14.000 You know, I think uh yeah, Grok's great.
00:22:16.000 I use I I use that tool a lot.
00:22:17.000 Yeah.
00:22:18.000 We like it.
00:22:19.000 He, you know, I like Elon in in a lot of I like a lot of things that Elon does.
00:22:23.000 Um I don't think he understands free speech fully because he was not he's not steeped in it, right?
00:22:27.000 So we've seen that with certain things that have happened with Pam Bondi And hate speech and stuff like that.
00:22:27.000 Yeah.
00:22:31.000 Like hate speech is not a thing.
00:22:33.000 Like we've we've moved past that, you know, years ago being a thing.
00:22:37.000 And when you have somebody say something like that, or when you have, I think Elon and and really X, I shouldn't say Elon, it's his company though, that boots off some voices early on.
00:22:48.000 Um, you're like, well, wait a minute.
00:22:49.000 Like I thought this was about freedom of speech, and these people aren't breaking any laws, and so therefore they should be able to speak freely.
00:22:54.000 Um I think that just takes time.
00:22:56.000 So I think a little bit of patience is required, I think, with Elon on some of these issues, but broadly speaking, he's been very, very good.
00:23:02.000 Like we haven't had the ability to communicate um like this openly in a very long time, and not even say controversial stuff.
00:23:09.000 Just like just talk about things that we believe, yeah, ideas that we have, and not really putting any people groups down or denigrating anybody or calling for violence, anything like that, just being able to speak.
00:23:19.000 Like it's been a very weird uh, you know, last kind of I don't know what do you want to call it, eight, ten years.
00:23:24.000 It's I feel like it's definitely turned a corner, but then you still in the UK, you I see stuff every single day, which is like people, someone's going around this old guy's house, you know, just because he posted something about Palestine on Facebook.
00:23:38.000 Or put up a flag.
00:23:39.000 Yeah, it's it's insane.
00:23:41.000 And Elon's behind uh Tommy Robinson now in the UK and supporting that freedom of speech movement because he was labeled as a terrorist, and he has some stuff in his past which I definitely don't agree with.
00:23:50.000 Right.
00:23:51.000 However, yeah, there has to be a line.
00:23:53.000 Yeah, there has to be you know some sort of compromise.
00:23:55.000 You can just dislike somebody.
00:23:56.000 Yeah.
00:23:57.000 That used to be enough.
00:23:58.000 You know, like you just tune out.
00:23:59.000 And we don't have to throw everyone in jail.
00:24:01.000 Yeah, it's it's uh exactly.
00:24:03.000 There are middle grounds.
00:24:04.000 Yeah.
00:24:05.000 Let me let me give you just a quick example of some of the risks of the concentration, right?
00:24:09.000 So if if if investors are saying, all right, AI, there's a concentration, this bubble could burst, it could drive you know, some of these companies out of the market.
00:24:17.000 Maybe I'm invested in those, or maybe some of the value of the SP is going to be tied to that.
00:24:21.000 And it doesn't have to be like a fundamentals issue.
00:24:24.000 It can just be a public perception issue that drives the market down, right?
00:24:28.000 Just like right now, it's not necessarily a fundamentals issue that has companies trading at the multiple of earnings that they are.
00:24:34.000 Um they're just it's just a lot of enthusiasm in the market right now, and that can go away quickly.
00:24:38.000 But other things can happen, like China.
00:24:40.000 And that happened uh here this this last week.
00:24:43.000 So China they dominate the rare earth market.
00:24:45.000 We've known that for a long time.
00:24:47.000 Uh they've needed it.
00:24:48.000 It's it or they've controlled it because all of that stuff is needed to produce the chips fueling AI.
00:24:55.000 And they do that by controlling 70% of rare earth mining, 90% of rare earth processing, and 93% of magnet manufacturing.
00:25:04.000 And we we talked to you about that.
00:25:05.000 But last week, they also announced that they were tightening restrictions on exporting rare earth metals.
00:25:11.000 I don't know if people remember this, but we gave the example of Germany, essentially, if they were going to export something to France, but they had used Chinese technology uh to make it, and it was one of those export controlled items, they would have to get permission from China to export to France.
00:25:27.000 That kind of crazy kind of mentality of like, well, we we didn't even use like we used some technology that was yours, but we didn't this is this isn't like these are our minerals.
00:25:27.000 Yeah.
00:25:37.000 You know, we dug it up or whatever, right?
00:25:39.000 And so it just it it started to make things a little bit more controlled uh to a point where President Trump had to respond, and we talked to you guys about this, and I'll just read his quote really quick.
00:25:48.000 I can't do the voice.
00:25:50.000 Stephen does the voice, I could try a Trump.
00:25:51.000 There's hand there's a handful of words that I can hit every once in a while.
00:25:54.000 My wife thinks I can do a fantastic Trump voice.
00:25:57.000 I'll leave it at that.
00:25:58.000 No, no, no, no, no.
00:26:00.000 It's just been learned that China uh has taken an extraordinarily aggressive position on trade and sending an extremely hostile letter to the world stating that they were going to effective November 1st, 2025 impose large-scale export controls on virtually every product they make and some not even made by them.
00:26:19.000 Based on the fact that China has taken this unprecedented position, the United States of America will impose a 100% tariff on China over and above any tariff that they are planning currently.
00:26:31.000 And this basically sent them that's it's an addition to the 40 or 50 percent that caused a lot of the meltdown over what's going on with China.
00:26:39.000 And this sent the markets tanking.
00:26:41.000 I had no idea why uh at the time until I saw this because we were getting ready for the show, but it was very early in the morning, I think that that I saw this.
00:26:48.000 And uh we're like, okay, well, we'll see what happens with that.
00:26:51.000 And then it turns out like the very next day it's like, okay, maybe there was a miscommunication, and so the markets are like, hey, again, and it's like, I don't know if there's a miscommunication.
00:26:58.000 Oh, I've never seen somebody like control the markets through posting social media messages.
00:27:03.000 It was the same last time, though, is it?
00:27:05.000 Yes.
00:27:05.000 It was the same last time.
00:27:06.000 And it's okay, something's happened.
00:27:07.000 He's tweeted, but then today there was another tweet, and I think that things have now cooled off a little bit.
00:27:12.000 Yes.
00:27:12.000 With uh with the trade tensions, and maybe you know things are out of whack, but yeah, it's it's very like up and down.
00:27:19.000 Yeah.
00:27:19.000 And thankfully things have settled out a little bit.
00:27:22.000 But it doesn't take much for the market to run scared.
00:27:26.000 Right.
00:27:27.000 And the well, they think about like the retail investors.
00:27:29.000 So somebody who, you know, like you and me, basically, that that's investing in the market.
00:27:33.000 It doesn't take much for us to go, maybe I should pull back, or maybe I should start hedging against kind of the market moving because maybe Donald Trump gets in a bad mood and China does too, and all of a sudden we've got you know even more of a trade war or more tariffs or whatever else and it causes a problem.
00:27:47.000 But I think we feel feel that way.
00:27:49.000 Like I if I trade stocks, I have the worst paper hands ever.
00:27:52.000 Like I see it coming down a little bit.
00:27:54.000 You're like, I'm out.
00:27:55.000 That's it, I'm done.
00:27:56.000 My stop loss is 0.05%, you know.
00:27:58.000 But I think we feel that way because of how high things are.
00:28:01.000 Yeah, i if we was in like more stable times and we wasn't seeing some shares jump fifty percent, sixty percent, then you'd be like, okay, you know, tried it out.
00:28:10.000 But now things are moving 10% up, 10% down, 15% up, 15% down.
00:28:14.000 It's you know, it's different times.
00:28:14.000 Yeah.
00:28:16.000 It's way more volatile.
00:28:17.000 So way more volatile.
00:28:18.000 And uh, you know, probably the worst piece of advice I ever gave anybody.
00:28:22.000 My shirt, sorry, my shirt's on a little that way.
00:28:24.000 We we get these the new left is violent, change my mind shirt.
00:28:27.000 So if you guys want to go to crowdershop.com.
00:28:29.000 I wasn't in planning on doing a plug for that, but um they they the they're brand new, so sometimes I have to work on where the fit is.
00:28:35.000 Um but I the I think the worst piece of advice I ever gave to one of my friends at church, we were in a community group, and we would always talk about you know, you know, putting God first and trying to make sure that we had our lives kind of oriented uh in the right direction.
00:28:47.000 He's like, Oh, yeah, you know, I I got some Bitcoin as part of my um my uh I got a bonus and I used it to buy Bitcoin.
00:28:53.000 I was like, oh, really?
00:28:54.000 And this was probably probably like twenty fifteen.
00:28:58.000 Something like that.
00:28:58.000 Yeah.
00:28:59.000 I guess I I could be off by a year or two, but the the price will help you kind of understand it.
00:29:02.000 I think he bought it for like a thousand, and it was at like five thousand.
00:29:05.000 That was yeah, probably yeah.
00:29:06.000 Somewhere around that time period.
00:29:08.000 And I was like, it's like five thousand dollars.
00:29:10.000 And he's like, Yeah, and he goes, I'm just gonna hold it and I've got like five, five Bitcoin.
00:29:14.000 And I was like, Well, that's amazing.
00:29:16.000 And yeah, you should sell it right now.
00:29:17.000 What are you doing?
00:29:18.000 Like lock in your gains, man.
00:29:19.000 What I mean, that's five, you've made five times your money.
00:29:22.000 And so immediately after that, it went up to like ten or fifteen, and and he was kind of making fun of me, and I was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:29:22.000 Yeah.
00:29:28.000 But you should totally sell it now, you know?
00:29:30.000 Like because it's just like the Pokemon cards are worth, I think less now and they will continue to be worth less over time because it just fades.
00:29:37.000 But you know, he should probably have held on to it.
00:29:40.000 I hope he did.
00:29:41.000 He's probably stoked right now.
00:29:42.000 But I I think that with anything, it's like, why do you get into it?
00:29:45.000 Like if you're in Bitcoin because you believe that the future of money is Bitcoin.
00:29:48.000 Then you're not gonna stay in it forever.
00:29:50.000 Like if you're doing it to make money, then you cash out.
00:29:53.000 Right.
00:29:53.000 It's the same with gold, like people own gold because they think that's real money, which it is.
00:29:58.000 Yeah.
00:29:58.000 So it should go up over time.
00:30:00.000 So why would you sell it?
00:30:01.000 Yeah.
00:30:03.000 We can just print more of it.
00:30:04.000 You can't print more gold unless we get the asteroid.
00:30:06.000 Everybody talks about the asteroid that has like 50 pontillion, you know, dollars worth of gold and everything in it.
00:30:12.000 Uh all right, so fast or fast fact key fact number three.
00:30:15.000 Um we do feel some additional pressure from kind of a weaker dollar right now as well, right?
00:30:22.000 So that can be due to a lot of different reasons, but domestic and international.
00:30:26.000 So we're gonna measure strength kind of in two ways, domestically and buying power, right?
00:30:29.000 And internationally, kind of versus other currencies.
00:30:32.000 Typically that's gonna be the pound or the euro.
00:30:34.000 There's a handful of others that maybe you could do as well.
00:30:36.000 But those are the those are the main ones.
00:30:38.000 Um domestically, let's you know when you talk about inflation.
00:30:41.000 I I I mentioned this to some of the staff.
00:30:43.000 I said, I haven't really felt inflation.
00:30:46.000 I know there's some inflation, obviously, and we we've we've kind of locked in kind of the growth of inflation.
00:30:51.000 So we we got to a point, I just don't feel like we're making giant leaps in inflation where I I feel it as much.
00:30:57.000 I see prices of gas go up and down, I see prices of certain commodities go up and down.
00:31:01.000 Um, but I don't feel like there's runaway.
00:31:04.000 But then you you throw out this number where you know a hundred dollars uh to to have the purchasing power of a hundred dollars in January of twenty twenty's money, you have to have a hundred and twenty-six now.
00:31:13.000 Yeah.
00:31:13.000 And so when you when you do the math like that, you're like, oh, okay, that's like an approximately twenty percent loss in buying power in that hundred dollar bill that you've just stuffed under your mattress.
00:31:23.000 Um and so it's it's it kind of brings it home, but you don't feel it quite as much because maybe it's this like I did earlier.
00:31:29.000 I bought a coffee and a bottle of water from the hotel cafe and it cost me twelve dollars.
00:31:34.000 Well, I think the hotels screw everybody.
00:31:37.000 So I think you're just used to being screwed by a hotel.
00:31:40.000 Or a big Mac, right?
00:31:41.000 You used to buy a Big Mac fries in a Coke and it would cost five bucks.
00:31:45.000 Yeah.
00:31:45.000 Now it's fifteen.
00:31:46.000 You know, that you know, it's gas prices uh is deceptive, right?
00:31:50.000 Because you saw very high gas prices, they've come down a little bit.
00:31:53.000 So and a lot of people measure that with okay, well, how much does it cost to fill up your truck?
00:31:57.000 You know, okay.
00:31:57.000 Right.
00:31:58.000 Cost 100, 150, 80.
00:32:00.000 You know, that's a swing that we feel.
00:32:02.000 But groceries, on the other hand, I feel like groceries are always going up.
00:32:05.000 Yeah.
00:32:06.000 That's uh and I think you know, if if you're privileged or you have like a high income, then you don't feel it on like a macro level.
00:32:13.000 But I think that going out and people that are perhaps more middle class that are you know still trying to make ends meet or barely head above the parapet, these are the people that truly feel it.
00:32:23.000 Like inflation is the tax on the middle class, and for sure.
00:32:25.000 Those are the ones that get screwed on it.
00:32:27.000 So yeah, people also get put in a corner where they feel fearful because they see dollars devaluing, but in bigger terms, like if you screw out a little bit, five years ago 100,000 was like a decent amount of money.
00:32:42.000 Today, you know, it's probably worth 70% of that.
00:32:45.000 A million dollars, like when I was growing up, my dad would say.
00:32:45.000 Yeah.
00:32:48.000 It was like unheard of.
00:32:49.000 Yeah, he would say, Oh, that guy's a millionaire.
00:32:51.000 You know, he done okay, he's done an amazing job, he's got a good business, he's done something incredible.
00:32:56.000 Now you don't have a million dollars.
00:32:57.000 Like you're probably Who are you?
00:32:58.000 No, yeah, you're in trouble.
00:33:01.000 I don't have a million dollars, and I'm not like that super super echelon.
00:33:05.000 Uh, but well, you know, I'm a young guy, I'm 31 years old.
00:33:08.000 Like when I retire, like if I have a million dollars, I'll probably be in trouble.
00:33:12.000 Yeah, I will need a lot of money.
00:33:13.000 Oh, you for sure will.
00:33:13.000 Yeah.
00:33:14.000 And that's just gonna be you know, when people talk about like the death of the dollar, right?
00:33:18.000 You know, that doesn't exist.
00:33:19.000 Like the American dollar is not gonna dissipate into nothing overnight.
00:33:22.000 That's not gonna happen.
00:33:23.000 Like people that say that are lying to you, you know.
00:33:26.000 But there will be a gradual decline on that, and that's inflation.
00:33:29.000 You know, that's what we feel.
00:33:30.000 It's just getting weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker.
00:33:32.000 And as it gets weaker, it slows domestic spending, which slows down the economy.
00:33:36.000 I mean, it these these things aren't you know always a hundred percent one-to-one, so I'm not saying that, but I'm saying it that it does have that impact um to a degree.
00:33:44.000 So let's look internationally.
00:33:46.000 Foreign investment growth is you know, in some ways declining due to tariffs.
00:33:50.000 Like that that scares people a little bit, but and it's resulted kind of in a weakening of the US dollar kind of versus other currencies.
00:33:56.000 Even though they're still buying our treasuries, right?
00:33:58.000 So there's there's still a demand for our treasuries.
00:34:00.000 They are still buying US treasuries, but you know, as of the last couple of months, foreign central bank's reserves now hold more gold than US treasuries.
00:34:09.000 Right.
00:34:10.000 So again, it's not gonna be like an overnight switch of everyone saying, Okay, we don't want US treasuries anymore.
00:34:16.000 They just want them slightly less.
00:34:17.000 What if we printed, I don't know, 40 trillion dollars tomorrow, paid off all the debt and had a couple of trillion left over.
00:34:23.000 Do you think then maybe they'd be like, okay, what the hell?
00:34:27.000 Well, then you ruined it.
00:34:28.000 I mean, I feel like we already are in play money, aren't we?
00:34:30.000 Yeah, well, exactly.
00:34:31.000 I mean, I don't know why I threw 40 out there, but you know, 40 between friends.
00:34:34.000 Let's let's make this happen.
00:34:36.000 Um, so that that is a fair point.
00:34:38.000 Like you've got a lot of these people, you know, going to reserves of gold a little bit more heavily than maybe they have in the past, and that's driving it.
00:34:43.000 And there's institutional buying of it as well.
00:34:45.000 That's a big reason.
00:34:46.000 Not not a major reason, but a big enough reason why Bitcoin is going up as well because people are buying that and holding it as companies.
00:34:53.000 Um, yeah, Ken Griffin was speaking like two weeks ago, and he was saying that you know you just look at the price of gold and Bitcoin, and people, you know, other nations are looking at alternatives other than the US dollar.
00:34:53.000 Yeah.
00:35:03.000 And that should be concerning for people.
00:35:05.000 Yeah, it should be concerning enough to say, okay, we need to shift into something else.
00:35:10.000 And it's not just because they think the US dollar is going down, down, down, it's because also we did weaponize the US dollar.
00:35:17.000 You know, during the war with Ukraine, we seized US treasuries owned by Russia, you know.
00:35:23.000 So that means that they invested all that money into them and it wasn't truly theirs.
00:35:26.000 So if they wanted to seize Russian gold, then they'd have to take an army and go to Moscow and get it out of the vault.
00:35:33.000 Like that's that's different, right?
00:35:34.000 So it's a little more protected for them.
00:35:36.000 Other countries that don't have as favorable relationships with the US would then look at that and say, okay, maybe we'll dial US Treasury spending back a little bit and we'll look at something else.
00:35:36.000 Yeah.
00:35:44.000 You know, that's yeah, that's just logical.
00:35:46.000 It's not, you know, it's not that economical.
00:35:48.000 No, yeah.
00:35:49.000 And and look, we've been getting away with it a lot, all of these other things because of the reserve status, right?
00:35:54.000 They basically having the reserve currency of the world.
00:35:56.000 That's helpful in their dips.
00:35:58.000 But there's also something that you know, we've we've talked about I don't want people to be afraid of this.
00:36:03.000 And I think that's the reason we did a segment on this, I don't know how long ago, six months ago, something like that on BRICS.
00:36:09.000 And the the the kind of the economic block comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and five other members, some of the five members they brought in, I was like, I what I thought one of them was like Ethiopia or something like that.
00:36:20.000 I was like, what?
00:36:20.000 Why are you bringing in this person?
00:36:22.000 Like of course they're not gonna do anything.
00:36:23.000 It may have been Saudi Arabia just came in.
00:36:25.000 Saudi Arabia as well.
00:36:26.000 Yeah.
00:36:26.000 Last year there was 30 new countries that applied to become joined BRICS.
00:36:31.000 Saudi Arabia was one of them that was admitted.
00:36:33.000 They're still kind of trying to see who else they want to bring in.
00:36:36.000 But it's that's significant.
00:36:39.000 Is I mean it it isn't gonna happen overnight, but people are talking about it openly right now.
00:36:44.000 Yeah.
00:36:44.000 And that's the difference.
00:36:45.000 Like it was kind of a taboo subject for a long time, and now people are openly talking about it.
00:36:50.000 Like you said, the R and BRICS, Russia, they have a little bit of a bone to pick.
00:36:53.000 Yeah.
00:36:54.000 You know, if you seize their treasuries or uh, you know, cut them off from the financial markets of the rest of the world uh to kind of nudge their behavior in a certain direction.
00:37:01.000 They may want to get to a point where you have less leverage over them.
00:37:04.000 But Donald Trump knows this, so President Trump actually warned any country that joined BRICS that they would have to deal with American tariffs.
00:37:12.000 You wouldn't have the dollar as a as your currency anymore.
00:37:15.000 You wouldn't have a world domination by the dollar if I didn't win this election.
00:37:21.000 And now the domination, like BRICS.
00:37:23.000 I told anybody wants to bring it be in BRICS, that's fine, but we're gonna put tariffs on your nation.
00:37:28.000 Everybody dropped out.
00:37:29.000 They're all dropping out of bricks.
00:37:31.000 Bricks was an attack on the dollar.
00:37:33.000 And I said, You want to play that game, I'm gonna put tariffs on your on your all of your product coming into the US.
00:37:41.000 They said, like I said, uh, we're dropping out of bricks.
00:37:44.000 And BRICS is like they don't even talk about it anymore.
00:37:48.000 He listen, he's not wrong.
00:37:49.000 He is putting pressure uh pressure on countries that are in bricks, and he is trying to incentivize people not to join uh up and try to weaken the dollar further.
00:37:57.000 But in doing that, it's kind of the same thing that we talked about, uh to a degree.
00:38:01.000 Like it's like I'd like to have less of my world dependent on you so that you can't leverage your power over me.
00:38:07.000 Yeah.
00:38:07.000 And that just makes sense to a degree.
00:38:09.000 I get it.
00:38:09.000 Though I kind of like the situation that we have.
00:38:12.000 We have a very favorable situation in the US because of that status, but if that did go away even a little bit, then yeah, you see higher interest rates, you see cost of goods rising even more, less access to these sorts of goods.
00:38:23.000 Uh of course that he has to he has to play that hand.
00:38:26.000 You know, you can't have a situation where you see people teaming up against the US dollar and you don't know anything about it.
00:38:32.000 Maybe maybe that would have been the case if you didn't win.
00:38:34.000 You know, it's that's perfectly valid.
00:38:36.000 And also that's why we spend so much on military here.
00:38:38.000 So that's true.
00:38:41.000 We weaponize that.
00:38:42.000 We well, and we've, you know, that's part of part of what I mean.
00:38:45.000 I don't know a lot of people understand kind of the Bretton Woods agreement and and what came out of that after World War Two.
00:38:50.000 Um and what essentially the United States did we be like, okay, well we'll we'll loan money and we're gonna guarantee trade around the world with our Navy.
00:39:00.000 And the importance of that and how much money we spend on that, not just to have a functioning Navy where we can go over and you know, pick a fight pretty much anywhere on the globe that we want, whether or not that's a responsible thing to do is another question, but the capabilities there.
00:39:12.000 And for us, doing that is kind of one of the things that got us this reserve status, this this okay, we're gonna use your currency.
00:39:19.000 Plus nobody else's currency is really worth a whole lot right after World War II.
00:39:22.000 Like everybody's economy was in shambles, you know, and it was not exactly you know, doing that great long term since World War One.
00:39:29.000 I mean, everybody's economy was basically on the brink of destruction uh after that.
00:39:33.000 So it it it is it's a very interesting place for us to be as you know younger people where we didn't we haven't experienced a time where there was even real conversation about anything else.
00:39:43.000 Yeah.
00:39:44.000 And so BRICS is kind of this newer idea uh economically to us.
00:39:48.000 Exactly.
00:39:49.000 Just to be backed by something which isn't in control of the US.
00:39:52.000 And you can perfectly see why they would want that, right?
00:39:54.000 You know, it's just like okay, well, you control the money printer, you control everything, maybe we can start doing some business outside of that.
00:40:00.000 And you are seeing, you know, even some of America's allies now doing trades in euros and yen, stuff like that outside of the US dollar, the petrodoll deal as well.
00:40:10.000 Right.
00:40:10.000 It was expired.
00:40:11.000 So there is definitely stuff there which could devalue dollar the dollar, but as I said, you know, it's not gonna be a point where it just crashes.
00:40:18.000 And what would replace it?
00:40:20.000 You know, if the you know nothing's close.
00:40:22.000 US is you know the US dollar is still the strongest currency in the world by by a hundred X. Yeah.
00:40:27.000 Nothing's really gonna come close to it.
00:40:29.000 It's just gonna slowly get weaker and weaker and weaker.
00:40:33.000 Are you holding one of the gold uh coins?
00:40:34.000 Yeah, this is uh that feel powerful to have forty one hundred plus dollars in your hand.
00:40:43.000 Yeah, that's crazy.
00:40:44.000 It just keeps going up every single day.
00:40:46.000 Um, is there any benefit to buying like what is that the double eagle versus just like uh just an American eagle?
00:40:51.000 I mean, yeah, if you're looking for something which is like very recognizable, very liquid, then an eagle is great for that.
00:40:58.000 Um, people sometimes have fears around buying bars because they could be fake, could be not fake.
00:41:02.000 This is obviously a lot harder to counterfeit.
00:41:05.000 Um, you don't really see much counterfeit gold.
00:41:07.000 Yeah, you probably do in China a lot more than here.
00:41:09.000 Like here, I don't think we've ever had someone ship us gold to buy it back from them, and they'll say, Oh, that's not real.
00:41:15.000 You know, it just doesn't really happen.
00:41:17.000 Um, but yeah, I mean the the US mint though is is under strain, like the premiums on American gold always cut goes up.
00:41:24.000 You've seen silver eagles as well.
00:41:26.000 Yeah, you'd probably be paying maybe sixty, sixty-five dollars today for a silver eagle.
00:41:30.000 Spot price is fifty-two.
00:41:32.000 So yeah, the premiums are gonna keep going up, and that's because they can't produce enough.
00:41:35.000 They can't produce enough gold or silver coins.
00:41:37.000 So does it make more sense then to buy, you know, you can buy, yeah.
00:41:41.000 Something that's more I you know, like I I didn't buy any of like the I don't know what to call it, like the name brand stuff when I bought it because I'm like, I want I don't want to pay a premium for anything.
00:41:49.000 I I feel like gold is gonna be fine.
00:41:51.000 Silver, yeah.
00:41:51.000 I don't know what the other the coins that I got, I don't know what they're called.
00:41:54.000 Um, but uh it's not it's not the the real like cool looking stuff, but it's the exact thing.
00:42:00.000 Yeah, I mean certain coins are I mean you can buy like British legal tender as well, which is great.
00:42:05.000 Uh like Britannia coins, maple leaves, you could buy like Tudor Beast, like nobody buy maple leaves.
00:42:09.000 We've got some Canadian people here, but come on, please.
00:42:13.000 I don't I wouldn't do that to you guys.
00:42:16.000 So do you recommend like is there yeah?
00:42:19.000 I mean, like, do you have like a way that you would recommend the average person out there, like what they should get?
00:42:23.000 Because I I literally made the decision based on the price.
00:42:26.000 I was like, well, I don't think I need to have like the the US tender version of it or the US coin, I or the US Met coin.
00:42:26.000 Yeah.
00:42:32.000 I just just give me the little bars.
00:42:34.000 That's fine.
00:42:35.000 Yeah, bars are great too.
00:42:36.000 Um, because I mean you know, if someone said, Okay, what's the most cost effective way to buy gold?
00:42:41.000 Then I would say you just buy the biggest bar that you can.
00:42:44.000 Yeah, buy if you've got forty-two thousand dollars, buy a 10-ounce bar, and then you're done, right?
00:42:50.000 But the only problem is that say you spend $42,000 on a bar of gold and it's gone up to $50,000, and you want to get $10,000 of that and give it to your kid, you know, buy a car or something.
00:42:59.000 Then you've got you've got to sell the whole bar.
00:43:01.000 I've seen videos where people just shave it off.
00:43:03.000 Yeah, you could try that, but it's uh I mean these are cool.
00:43:06.000 This is like uh you can get combi bars.
00:43:08.000 Um this is what are they called?
00:43:09.000 Uh it's a Valcambi combi bar.
00:43:11.000 Combi bar?
00:43:12.000 Silver one.
00:43:13.000 Um, but you can break this off.
00:43:14.000 This is in gram uh increments, it's the same for gold.
00:43:17.000 Gram of gold today is like 130 dollars.
00:43:19.000 So that's cool.
00:43:20.000 It's uh you could like you break it off.
00:43:22.000 Split it up, yeah.
00:43:23.000 You can split it up.
00:43:23.000 So it's it's it's a cool way to do it.
00:43:25.000 But yeah, I mean, I'd say that most people do prefer coins just for the basability um aspect of it.
00:43:31.000 You know, even now one ounce coins are probably quite expensive, so you might want like quarter ounce coins, tenth ounce coins just because you don't want to be dealing in you know five thousand dollar increments, maybe you know, in five years, ten thousand dollars.
00:43:44.000 It's it's a lot, right?
00:43:45.000 So you'd rather have something more divisible, and obviously silver as well.
00:43:48.000 You know, silver coins are great, you know, an ounce, two ounce coins, half ounce coins, you know, yeah stuff where you can you know it's bartable as well.
00:43:56.000 You know, if you do need it, it's there.
00:43:58.000 You don't want to be walking around with like a what of a hundred dollar bills, do you?
00:44:01.000 You want some change, yeah.
00:44:03.000 20s and tens.
00:44:04.000 Well, I mean I thought you know, hundreds was change.
00:44:06.000 So not that I think we've established that I'm not not not at that point in life.
00:44:12.000 Well, look, I you know, I've got a couple of other things to talk about, but really I think what I want to just kind of finish with is uh silver and why the price of silver moves a little bit differently than the price of gold will.
00:44:25.000 Um and I think you had mentioned that to me again before the show we were talking for just a few minutes and talking about how the you know these institutions are buying gold to hold and they don't really buy silver the same way, but silver does have some other kind of really interesting properties to it that make it something that people are gonna purchase for different reasons.
00:44:42.000 Yeah, yeah, we're seeing tremendous investor demand for silver this year.
00:44:46.000 You know, we've probably sold more silver than we have gold this year.
00:44:49.000 And we are seeing a rise.
00:44:51.000 I mean the stats early that you had what 70, 70 percent, just shy of 70% year to date on silver.
00:44:57.000 It's insane.
00:44:58.000 Um, but a lot of people look at just the industrial applications of silver, so you know, electric vehicles, solar panels, all these tremendous data centers that they're building.
00:45:08.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:45:09.000 It's gonna require a lot more silver, and there's already a a supply deficit of silver.
00:45:13.000 You know, they it's not that easy to mine silver.
00:45:16.000 Silver miners only sort of you know commit to 20% of the silver that is produced, the rest of it comes as a byproduct out of copper and zinc miners, and then they'll produce silver as a byproduct.
00:45:26.000 Oh so it's hard to just dump silver in the market because the price is going up.
00:45:30.000 Yeah.
00:45:31.000 So yeah, there's a there's a supply shortage as it stands, demand is gonna continue to go up, so the price should go up.
00:45:39.000 And then a lot of people are also married to the to the idea of the gold to silver ratio, which is how many ounces silver it takes to buy one ounce of gold.
00:45:47.000 Gotcha.
00:45:48.000 Right now we're at sort of forty two hundred, it's like seventy-five to one.
00:45:52.000 Um historical averages for the last hundred years have been closer to 40 to one.
00:45:58.000 So that would suggest that if gold didn't go up another cent and it stayed at 4200, silver should double in value, really, and that would be a hundred and ten dollars silver.
00:46:09.000 Now gold if silver's going up, gold would continue to go up too.
00:46:13.000 It's just playing catch up right now.
00:46:14.000 So I think yeah, if if you was to say, okay, what what would double in the next couple of years, silver?
00:46:19.000 You know, silver next year could very possibly be a hundred dollars.
00:46:22.000 Wow.
00:46:23.000 Uh yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
00:46:25.000 I didn't think I had no idea.
00:46:26.000 So I might buy more silver.
00:46:27.000 And it's cheaper, so you can, you know, they're buying one of those coins.
00:46:30.000 Uh yeah, you get I mean, if someone comes to us now and they buy like fifty thousand dollars worth of gold, then rough and thought they're like, is that it?
00:46:36.000 And you're like, yeah, unfortunately.
00:46:37.000 That's it.
00:46:38.000 Uh, ten of the years.
00:46:40.000 You only get that pen of these is not great, but fifty thousand dollars worth of silver, it's still uh you know, you you're still getting uh a good amount of silver for that.
00:46:47.000 And it's still undervalued, you know.
00:46:48.000 Back in the eighties, silver was like forty-five dollars.
00:46:51.000 So really, yeah.
00:46:53.000 Is that adjusted for inflation or just forty five dollars?
00:46:55.000 Straight price.
00:46:56.000 Yeah.
00:46:56.000 Yeah.
00:46:57.000 So it's just recently surpassed record highs.
00:47:00.000 So this is this is a little outside so guys, if you have any any questions, if you want to get information about this education on it, if you want to buy anything, you know, go check these guys out and we'll throw up the information on the screen right there.
00:47:00.000 Okay.
00:47:11.000 So you can go to LWC Gold.com or call 1800 628 4653.
00:47:16.000 You guys have a really cool deal right now, receive up to $15,000 in free silver with a qualifying account.
00:47:22.000 I'm gonna get the uh terms and conditions from you on that later.
00:47:25.000 Uh free money is always good money.
00:47:27.000 Um but if you know, like if you if you are interested in buying and having physical, go ahead and use these guys.
00:47:33.000 Like we we trust them.
00:47:34.000 We wouldn't bring them in and talk about all this stuff if we didn't.
00:47:37.000 Um but we talked about something that was uh a bit unrelated, but it kind of I think we talked about it because of silver.
00:47:44.000 Yeah.
00:47:44.000 Um and that was the power plant kind of conversation right now.
00:47:48.000 And I think a lot of people know with AI with all these companies, like the power demand is just astronomical.
00:47:54.000 Um, and we're not really sure how we're going to be able to deal with all of the power requirements for this, but it's caused some pretty interesting things to happen.
00:48:01.000 So tell tell them what you were doing.
00:48:02.000 Yeah, my theory is I'm not financial advisor, I don't give a advice.
00:48:06.000 Um, but nuclear energy seems to be like the biggest path forward.
00:48:10.000 And that's what you're seeing a lot of government funds going into now.
00:48:13.000 Yeah.
00:48:13.000 The UK and the US recently just signed a a deal to both employee developments in nuclear energy, and it was that technology that everyone's scared of, right?
00:48:20.000 You know, everyone was scared of Chernobyl, you know, everyone ha it just has a very dirty rep on it.
00:48:26.000 But people now think, okay, well, nuclear energy is you know, we consume more energy than we were ever going to consume, and these data centers and the AI industrial revolution is gonna consume way more energy than we could probably produce right now.
00:48:38.000 So we have to think, okay, what's the most efficient way that we know to produce energy?
00:48:42.000 It's not wind turbines, you know, it's not solar panels.
00:48:45.000 It's it's nuclear energy.
00:48:46.000 You know, that's it.
00:48:47.000 So we have to develop in that.
00:48:49.000 So yeah, it's been an area area that I've been very interested in watching, you know, speculating a little bit.
00:48:54.000 Speculating a little bit, yeah.
00:48:55.000 And it's uh I mean it it just makes sense.
00:48:58.000 You know, it just makes sense.
00:48:59.000 We now have m you know much better technology than we had beforehand.
00:49:03.000 So you know, we can do it in the right ways now.
00:49:05.000 Yeah.
00:49:06.000 No, it's it's really interesting because I, you know, I I'm I'm curious to see how all this shakes out because nobody's predicting all of these things will keep going up.
00:49:14.000 Something's gotta give somewhere, right?
00:49:16.000 And then they're not quite sure how what that looks like, how you know it'll end up kind of playing out, um, and and where we will be in five or ten years.
00:49:24.000 There's gonna be some people that are stronger and that survive.
00:49:27.000 Um but one thing, and I've I've had because of my wine business, I've had exposure to some of the top financial mines um in the retail investment advisor kind of market.
00:49:37.000 And sometimes you realize they don't know anything more than than the as the casual investor.
00:49:41.000 Yeah.
00:49:41.000 Um, you know, And so it's like it's this kind of fake kind of expertise.
00:49:45.000 But one thing that they have talked about that I think is true is um and just it gets borne out in the results, it's not as important to time the market as it is to have time in the market.
00:49:56.000 And they're talking specifically about like investing in the market over the long run and you know having a 401k and doing things like that or you know buying an ETF.
00:50:05.000 I think also when you're looking at that when you are looking at like buying gold or silver or doing anything else investment wise start small if that's all you have.
00:50:15.000 Do whatever you can because I I it is so nice to have I didn't I mean full disclosure I've been an entrepreneur just about my entire life I really didn't have a savings until recently because I was putting every dollar that I had into building companies and trying to build something that hopefully would have a much higher return.
00:50:34.000 But just having something come out of my check every single month, no matter how small it is because if you look at it at the end of the day like if I buy gold or if I buy silver for my kids and just throw it in you know like a a a box and just let it grow in in some value over time, you're going to get some increases for it.
00:50:51.000 Same thing with the stock market if I just start putting a hundred bucks a year or a hundred bucks a month or a thousand bucks whatever you can do, you're gonna see kind of that growth and you're also going to feel a little bit more kind of financially secure.
00:51:01.000 Yeah.
00:51:01.000 So when things do happen that maybe are a shock to the system, you've got some savings.
00:51:06.000 So the first thing I recommend is as quickly as you can get out of debt.
00:51:10.000 That's one of the biggest killers of financial freedom in this country pay off your credit cards as quickly as you can and get to a place where you pay them off every single month and don't pay interest.
00:51:18.000 Get savings.
00:51:20.000 I I think there are a lot of people that'll talk about this and again this is not like you know financial advice that you have to live by this is just what I'm doing.
00:51:26.000 Got out of debt then tried to get six to twelve months worth of savings in line so that if something happened with my job here as CEO of Loudworth Crowder if I fired myself or Steven fired me because the sign's still there I I would have something to live off of while I was trying to find that next step and then start investing in things that make sense and for us that was getting 401k going and getting kind of some physical assets together.
00:51:52.000 So like it's a part of a comprehensive plan.
00:51:54.000 And I don't hear it spoken about a lot from other people that way.
00:51:58.000 They just want you to buy their thing.
00:51:59.000 Yeah.
00:52:00.000 And uh I appreciate that you're at least allowing me to kind of walk people through that whole process.
00:52:05.000 Yeah and some people you know do put way more money than than you would imagine they put you know 70, 80% in because you know they perhaps more believe in end times and they think that the writing's on the wall and they want to prep and they don't believe in the in the financial system and and that's great.
00:52:18.000 You know I personally I don't have that that that set up but you know that's what you believe then I'm not going to tell you what to believe in.
00:52:24.000 Yeah that's it.
00:52:25.000 But yeah most people most financial advisors would tell you you know somewhere between 10 to 20 percent is great.
00:52:31.000 You know if times are looking a bit shakier then then maybe you do a little bit more but it's got to be what you're comfortable with but the most important thing as you said is is getting started because you know some people kick the ti the can down the road for like six months, a year, two years and they're like, oh goddamn I I I I should have well uh 2,000.
00:52:48.000 Now it's 3,000.
00:52:49.000 Now it's 4,000.
00:52:50.000 And I you know it's certainly it can't keep going up right I can't but it probably will.
00:52:53.000 But no but that's what people will say and I'll just wait and time the market.
00:52:56.000 That's what I'm saying.
00:52:56.000 Like time in the market investing is like you're not betting today, okay go the gold price is 4200, silver is 52.
00:53:03.000 Okay, is it going to go up or down?
00:53:04.000 You know am I going to invest 100,000 today and make that decision or can you do 1000 and then wait a couple months, do 20 thousand you know and break it up and then you'll get an average across and some are going to be better than others but you know that's it's probably a more sensible way to do it.
00:53:20.000 Especially when you know same with the stock market right now.
00:53:23.000 Yeah especially when everything's quite high you don't want to put well you're actually in one basket at one price it'd be like okay that's me.
00:53:30.000 You'd rather take it steadily we find that most people that are investing you know whether it's their retirement accounts or like with cash accounts like they invest once.
00:53:39.000 You know if someone says okay I want to do a million dollars or 5000 okay start smaller.
00:53:45.000 The initial amount that you do doesn't really matter to us.
00:53:47.000 You know that's just make sure that you like doing business, make sure you're happy that's what I was going to say.
00:53:51.000 Yeah.
00:53:52.000 And then we can you know we can do it again.
00:53:54.000 You know we can do it and as soon as you get delivery we can do it again.
00:53:56.000 We can do it.
00:53:58.000 Tomorrow I I always tell people like yeah we're always going to be here to sell you gold and silver.
00:54:03.000 You know, that's what we do.
00:54:04.000 That's how we keep the lights on.
00:54:06.000 It's just up to you about what price you're gonna pay for it.
00:54:08.000 And we don't have a crystal ball on that one either.
00:54:10.000 You know, it could go up, it could go down, but that's why you just gotta take action.
00:54:14.000 You know, it's yeah, procrastination is probably the biggest killer of all games.
00:54:18.000 Yeah, you need to uh you need to make a decision on something.
00:54:20.000 Yeah, absolutely.
00:54:20.000 And so if and and put the uh put the information back up for me uh really quickly.
00:54:24.000 So if if people go to the uh the website, um lwcold.com, uh, or if they give you guys a call, is there information on can they learn a whole lot about that?
00:54:34.000 Like what's for people who just don't know we have uh we have different informational guides.
00:54:38.000 You can give like leave that up there for now.
00:54:41.000 Yeah, give give one of our apps a call and they'll explain, ask you a few questions what you're interested in.
00:54:45.000 So whether you're looking at like cash accounts or if it is retirement accounts, because there's different different limits, like different stuff that you can do.
00:54:52.000 So the guides that we have explain that you know in great details.
00:54:55.000 Then we do one-off stuff, there's something's changing, we'll do market reports for next year that will come up so you can you know educate yourself a little bit more.
00:55:03.000 On the website, we also have weekly blogs as well, so people can just read, get familiar with the market, speak to people.
00:55:08.000 And I always say just like just dip your toe in the market, you know.
00:55:10.000 If you if you're nervous about it, which is like I totally get, you know, people like used to think that you were crazy when you bought gold.
00:55:18.000 Yeah, that was it.
00:55:18.000 You know, if I used to tell people that I sell physical gold and silver, they're like, oh, to the crazy people that think that get a shovel on the road.
00:55:27.000 But now we wanted to do it differently.
00:55:28.000 So but now it's not now.
00:55:30.000 It's you know, now now you're sensible if you do it.
00:55:32.000 So yeah, get started, see what you can do, you know, feel comfortable with it, and then you can always build on that.
00:55:37.000 And you know, we've had clients now that have been buying from us for five, six years that are still buying.
00:55:42.000 We know when it was you know tripled in value, it's still going.
00:55:45.000 So now I love it.
00:55:46.000 Well, Samuel, true gold republic, LWC Gold.com.
00:55:49.000 Thank you very much for being with us.
00:55:51.000 Thank you for having me.
00:55:51.000 We look forward to the partnership for many years to come.
00:55:53.000 Maybe we'll have you back on, you know, relatively soon to see how the market is doing, because I in a couple of months we we could be seeing something completely different that we'll have to talk about.
00:56:01.000 But yeah, thanks for being here with us.