Investing Legends Share their 2025 Gold Forecast – And It’s More Bullish Than You Think

Investing Legends Share their 2025 Gold Forecast – And It’s More Bullish Than You Think

We have stacked this panel this morning I’m very excited about it um on the extraordinarily farle of course is Grant Williams first time he’s ever been described that way um Grant’s the author of a newsletter called things that make you go H and this is the newsletter that all the other newsletter writers read uh his readership is absolutely Global into who’s who of money management he’s the founder of real Vision TV and and uh he’s moved on from that Venture and has a new Venture can I talk about it the

the principal get to the let’s get to the important stuff anyways readed Grant’s letter it’s phenomenal one of the core Voices That Shaped uh my journey as a as an investor uh beside Grant we have Alistar still 25-year veteran in the mining sector executive at some of the biggest mining companies in the world like baric numont ago Eagle uh pler Dome uh 25 years in and he’s still a baby face look at this guy young man in the sector bright future ahead of him um immediately to my left here we have Frank JRA a legend entrepreneur and

investor in the gold sector founder of many of the companies that you know um including Endeavor mining uh we and river which became gold Corp and Wheats and precious metals and to Frank’s left we have David gar another veteran executive in this sector and Company Builder um you know a major highlight is that the David was the CEO of gold gold Corp when they merged with numont creating the largest gold company in the world and this transaction was the largest transaction in the history of the gold sector so we are quite

literally in uh the company of gold royalty right now so I want to begin uh with the last five years of the gold sector there’s been a story of uh maybe two stakeholders two crosscurrents and I’d say if we go back to 2020 maybe 19 the buyer of gold we had a phenomenal gold rally and the buyer was Western investors right and they drove the price up probably in response to super low interest rates which often happens uh but as we progressed into the next couple of years interest rates started going up and those Western investors

those buyers became Sellers and the gold price fell by about 20% and maybe capitalizing on that central banks became the new buyers that’s the other stakeholder the crosscurrent and they’re buying massively over overwhelmed any selling and by mid 2024 the gold price had shot up to 70% above its 2022 low now I mentioned those two stakeholders because today they’re they’re both still at the table but they’ve shifted a little bit Central Bankers are still buying less than they were in 2023 but still buying more than they have on

average over the last 50 years and Western investors are now pivoting as well and we’re seeing the ETF flows reflect that Western investor sentiment is now favoring gold again Frank i’ I’d like to start with you have I summarized The Last 5 Years of gold activity sufficiently what would you add and what’s your perspective on the space today so you’re right about the central banks and I think it’s the central banks that are really driving the price and the pricing power is moving from west to east um and I think the banks will

central banks will continue to buy at an accelerating Pace uh in the ensuing years but uh you’re going to have to wait for part two of this movie this afternoon on my 430 panel and I’ll explain in much more detail why that’s happening and my theor is behind it but uh there’s also the the other issue is really the when you look at gold priced in US Dollars you have to think about why it’s going up against US dollars what most people don’t understand about gold is that it’s not the gold price that’s going up it’s that the fact that

the Fiat currencies that are measured against it are going down in value for a whole host of reasons so gold is always the constant just like in general relativity the speed of light is the constant and space times are the variable gold is the constant it is real money and field currencies are what are the variables that is measured against and I think you’re going to see as the fiscal situations situation in the US which is beyond repair I think that it’s it you’ll see under the Trump Administration my estimation that the

fiscal deficits will continue to go up exponentially at some point there will be a US dollar crisis um it’s going to happen in our lifetimes uh probably sooner rather than later and when that happens gold will go through the roof Grant I want to pass it directly over to you same question uh and any comments on on what Frank just shared here yeah it’s a brave man to contradict Frank duster when he’s talking about gold that’s for sure um you I think what you said at the beginning there J it’s a really important thing to understand the

mindset here when you talked about the the Western investors buying gold and then selling it cuz the price had gone up that right there is the difference in the East people don’t buy gold to sell it because the price has gone up they buy gold to own it and when they do sell it it’s because they need to raise money for something important it’s not because the price has gone up and that mindset pervades us here in the west significantly um I think what we’ve seen is um in the west we’ve seen a lot of

Attraction go to the tech stocks we’ve seen a lot of Attraction go to crypto anything that is moving is got momentum the price is going up this is the kind of behavior you see to Frank’s point at the end of Cycles there’s that last boat out of China the last Chopper out of saon whatever an analogy you want to use we’re in the point where everything is accelerating now and the corruption at a political level that colon McGregor talked about is accelerating the price moves in speculative instruments is

accelerating the lack of consequences for any kind of malfeasance is accelerating and there’s this real feel that that that we’re reaching the end of a major cycle here and because of that because the cycle is ending it’s time to get what I can out of this make as much money as I can steal whatever I can do whatever I need because the consequences as we’ve seen the last 20 years are non-existent and this used to be I live in the Cayman Islands part of the time and you know you you get used to small

Caribbean islands and Corruption the two are normally synonymous uh we’re seeing that in the C ISS now with real estate development you know the things that are being green lit to be developed are the kind of things that would never have happened they would never have gotten through 25 years ago you move to someone like the US where you expect to see the rule of law and what do we see with the SEC and the the kind of the lawfare against President Trump the lack of prosecution of anything else uh by the SEC under

Gary gendler and this kind of crypto way that is now becoming much much more pronounced so that’s a long-winded way of saying we are to Frank’s point this is going to come to a head we’re in the middle of that process now and at the end of that process when these Cycles fall over the one thing you want to own is gold we are moving into the the the part of this where it’s not a good idea to own gold anymore it’s essential to own gold and I think the price is going to reflect that in the coming 12 to 18

months well let me ask a follow-up question to that because as Frank mentioned at the jump the gold doesn’t change an ounce of gold 100 years ago is still that same ounce of gold what changed is the measuring stick the measuring stick being the US dollar that’s changed a lot and we have a new Administration coming to office that promises to be uh maybe more fiscally responsible and they promis to uh uh repair the deficit and um let’s let’s talk about your forecast for the measuring stick right now because I saw

a campaign run on two promis is one was that we’re going to fix inflation and the second is that we’ll add tariffs which are inflationary and Deport labor which is inflationary and reshore industries which is inflationary so try to balance those two things for me Frank will go back to you well you know even musk has been forc to admit that there’s no way to cut $2 trillion from from from the budget you think about it when you look at non-discretionary spending which you can’t touch defense spending which

no one would dare touch they’re actually going to increase it and costs on on the debt you’re talking about 86% of the federal budget there’s nothing to cut and so what’s going to happen is that uh and I think musk will last longer that maybe just slightly longer than scar muchi in this Administration he’s going to be gone and uh and there’s there’s no will to fix the problem in Congress because it just it’s just not there people don’t even talk about it they all they talk about is raising the debt limit so that they

can keep going and that’s a farce theyve they’ve up that debt limit about 80 times since 1960 it’s it’s a farce so I think it’s completely out of control and I think you you’ll see that you know it’s all going to it’s all going to come to head soon now David I want to I want to pass it to you first of all any thoughts you’ll share on uh what’s been said thus far on the panel well Gold’s been a one-way trade for 50 years go back to when the gold standard was abandoned and to Frank’s Point gold is a const

but in US dollar terms it’s gone from $35 an ounce to nearly $2,800 an ounce today the purchasing power of the US dollar and every other major uh Western currency has declined by 96% um so 96% 96% so basically dollar today buys you nothing you know relative to what it bought you back in the early 1970s how can it be anything but a one-way trade when Global debt to GDP is 350% uh the only way to deal with that debt is not fiscally it’ll be through the evaluation continued devaluation of viia currencies to basically devalue the

debt that’s how debt will be dealt with so it’s a massive Currency Reset that’s inevitable is there any incentive whatsoever to reduce devaluation of the currency for those that control the devaluation given that there’s no other way to deal with the debt it’s such a massive level I mean put it in perspective Global debt the GDP back in the 1970s when we last had a big inflationary cycle was only 100% so when Paul vulker came in took over the Federal Reserve he had the latitude to raise interest rates they went to 20%

against inflation headline inflation was 12 or 133% and that’s when inflation was actually measured properly it isn’t today and inflation was dealt with and we had a period of relative price stability for about 20 years as a result of his efforts there’s absolutely no latitude for central banks to do that today given the the the debt levels that we have currently again there’s no fiscally responsible way to pay the debt so you’re going to have to devalue the debt and that means devaluating the purchasing power of the fee currencies

that those those debts are denominated in I want to ask uh maybe General panel here we talked about some of the distractions I would say and this comes up a lot in conversation about the gold market there’s more distraction today that’s pulling investors away from the gold sector now there’s two ways to look at this one you could say that’s just a competitor that’s what that is we need to be more competitive as an industry provide a better value proposition if you’re a company um but there’s a bit

more to it than that because um there’s perception involved as well that these assets are the same if you look at like a uh a crypto coin like bigcoin versus gold these assets are the same they serve the same purpose there’s a variety of perspectives on this but I want to get the panels and Frank maybe we’ll start with you don’t get me started on crypto and Bitcoin listen this is going to be when when this whole crypto craze collapse it’s going to make tulips look like Berkshire haway okay it this is

this is a Ponzi a pyramid scheme and it’s a cult I don’t know if you guys any of you guys are on Twitter and watch the bigcoin Maxis they’re they’re insane they try and bully people and shame people into buying Bitcoin the you know the Bitcoin Community spent $245 million on the election campaign to bribe Congress and even the president to to change you know ease up on the regulations on crypto but it’s it’s it it and Michael sailor I don’t know if you guys might follow Michael sailor but he is beyond insane in the proclamations

that he’s making he would make Charles Ponzi blush this guy has said that and but he’s got such a huge following that there there’s a whole contingent of people that believe it when they say when he says the $500 trillion the global Bond all the global bonds $500 trillion is going to go all into Bitcoin the Bitcoin is going to $13 million a coin um these These are ridicul the Gold’s going to zero these are ridiculous statements but he needs to make those kind of statements to keep the greed Factor going because in any pyramid

scheme you need to have new buyers all the time to keep the game going and and so he’s he’s he’s you know trying to get the Greet reflex happening and he’s and you know to much to my amazement I debated him four years ago um and much to my amazement people still believe him and and so I think that this thing is going to take when it implodes it’s going to take the financial system down with it um it’s going to be have a huge effect and uh and you know and that’s been the distraction a lot of the

distraction from gold has been because of the you know the idea that crypto is a store of or Bitcoin is a store of value which has never behaved as a store of value they’ve changed the narrative so many times on bitcoin that is starting to sound like the plot of gong girl I mean it’s it’s it’s really you know they keep finding trying to find a purpose for an asset class it’s an asset class in search of a purpose okay so thank you for that Frank I think we um I want to move on to uh investor sentiment in the gold sector a

little bit Alistair and I want to start with you because you’re running a gold company you’re traveling talking to investors all the time um I began this panel by discussing the two main stakeholders that have existed for the last 5 six years being Western investors and central banks that have been driving the back and forth of the price what are you seeing Alistair from an investor activity and sentiment standpoint right now well I think it’s a great question and one of the elements I think we haven’t discussed here is

certainly like many on the panel here I’m bullish on the price of gold but what’s also at Factor here is the scarcity of the metal and to the point of Bitcoins can be created every day you can’t create more gold it’s a finite amount it’s found where it is there’s limited supply of it that’s what makes it scarce that’s what gives it value what we’ve seen in the last last several years you that scarcity is being tested it seems the the world is often shrinking in geopolitically stable jurisdictions where you want to operate

in seeing challenging environments where uh certain operators have had challenges so having a a solid operation with a solid reserve and a geopolitically stable jurisdiction those types of resources are becoming increasingly scarce I think that’s one of the factors driving price here and I think it’s one of the factors uh that many of The Operators you know are pushing towards and to clamber to get new assets so while I think many of investors are a little behind the curve what we have seen is the major operating companies

they’re running deficits in their reserves so they’re not replacing what they’re Mining and that’s because they’ve been underfunding exploration for years so now they’re on the acquisition trail and I think it’s targeted m&a activities to fill their pipelines I think that’s an opportunity for the junior explorers the junior developers to fill that void where many of the investors have yet caught on that these assets themselves may not go into production tomorrow but they’re being sought after and chased by the majors

who are willing to pay a premium to acquire them okay I have two questions for you uh following that statement so first of all you mentioned the geopolitical risk factor being a bit bigger today we’ve talked about um gold becoming more of a strategic asset for central banks they’ve been buying in copious amounts for a reason right uh when you don’t know what’s going to happen next the asset that has no counterparty risk is a good one to own I believe that’s by that’s behind a lot of the Central Bank buying so if it’s

becoming more of a strategic asset and geopolitical Fracture lines are definitely deepening around the world uh do you see more um uh countries being a lot more strategic uh with where they’re sourcing their gold from how they’re buying and selling the location of the deposit today does it matter more than ever as we become a bit more divided on the chess board I think it does very much matter the other thing I think is becoming increasingly important is what byproducts or other metals occur with

the gold I think it’s a much easier um message to deliver or a investment thesis when the Gold’s occurring with something for example gold often occurs with copper if you can have copper occurring with gold that’s a strategic reason to make an investment as often a reason to get communities or stakeholders involved or governments involved when they see it Beyond just gold not just copper though but we see a whole Suite of other metals that are becoming even more pre prevalent today antimony and other metals that are

needed to drive economy so I think the byproducts are an important piece different jurisdictions recognize that so it’s not just the Strategic value of gold but it’s a whole Suite of other metals that may occur with a gold makes it that much more valuable okay my second question there you talked about uh the scarcity of production um uh Peter Spina one of our speakers here at the here at the event recently put out a tweet talking about the con ccept of peak gold he said I believe we’ve hit Peak gold and I believe that for the

next 5 years we’ll see a 177% reduction in production every year um that topic seems to be pretty hotly debated online Peak anything always is but what’s the panel’s take on the concept of peak gold and maybe uh explain it a bit for us if you don’t mind um aliser well I think I think you’re right I mean there’s certain Investments that need to occur years in advance to get production ready uh to be in a state that can be mined so we’ve got that factor the expiration has been underfunded the other thing I think

people have to also recogniz is that in a strongly Rising gold price environment operators will mine at lower grades and that’s because they don’t want to leave material behind that has value so you come to a decision do you mind the one gr dirt today and make money or do you chase just the highest grade portion of it at a higher price The Operators are mining lower grade that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re making more gold they might make more profit but they’re actually potentially mining less go gold so that Rising gold

price actually in many cases and we’ve seen that from the major operators means they’re mining less gold at the same time as well so two factors that play there amongst many others yeah so the concept of peak anything is always at risk of being adjusted by technological innovation or just higher prices um David any thoughts on that yeah look I I think um to sum it up large scale operators in our universe are doomed uh they’re facing uh a squeeze from declining reserves and reserves are down 40% and that’s empirically demonstrated

because the Juniors haven’t had access to capital for over a dozen years they’re the ones that do all the heavy lifting and expiration they’re not replacing what we’re depleting as an industry and we’re we’re also facing cost pressures in the industry so the operators have seen a squeeze and they’re all in sustaining cost if you look at the R square the the correlation between the gold price and Allin sustaining cost it’s like 97 so in other words the costs are rising with the gold price they’re not getting leverage to

the commodity because they’re vulnerable to inflation we’re experiencing in the general economy that’s why when you look at the leaders in our industry the barracks of the new months their share prices are lower today than they were 30 years ago when the gold price was a tenth of of what it is today so they have not provided leverage they’re facing again increasing operating cost but also the squeeze that comes from underinvestment and expiration for well over a decade and that’s not going to reverse itself anytime soon I think

inflation’s much firmly entrenched more firmly entrenched than the headline numbers will indicate again those inflation numbers are definitely uh they’re definitely messed with we don’t have a real access real um measurement or barometer of what real inflation is and all these all these companies can do the largest scale companies can do is cannibalize they’re going to continue to grow their share count but they’re not going to grow their reserves and production so if you look at the bar and new mons today they’re at the same

production level Reserve level they were back in the mid 1990s but their share count has grown exponentially so the prare value creation simply is non-existent where you want to be in the industry is in the development stage asses the ones that are going to populate the pipelines that these larger scale companies are going to desperately require it and I should set the record straight the deal I did with Newmont was the biggest deal for 5 years and then numont had to go and do new Crest 5 years later they had the eclipse what

they thought was a deal that would set them up for1 20 years it didn’t uh they have to continually gobble up other companies play Pac-Man to replace a suboptimal production and Reserve level is simply not sustainable and is the only sustainable growth path forward then to look further down the food chain then at new deposits I mean as you mentioned uh reserves are down 40% uh from what’s the timeline or what would you think the timeline there over 12 years since 2012 so you remember we had a a fairly robust market for

juniors coming out of the Great financial crisis and they were able to raise money and then what happened in 2012 is we overbuilt as an industry overe explored and investors said you know what enough enough debt enough building enough cost inflation uh give us our Capital back so the industry has basically been giving money back to investors for the last Dozen Years in dividends share BuyBacks and whatnot and have not invested meaningfully back into the Grassroots expiration or place depleting reserves and that’s why we

find ourselves in the Dilemma among the larger cap univers uh that that we find ourselves in today and just for context because I know a lot of you are here for the first time ever once again love that um when David talks about reserves that’s an economic mineral deposit you’ll hear a lot of people talking about resources today a resource is a a geological Discovery and it’s measured based on geology when the geology proves favorable enough it’s upgraded to a reserve so think resource GE geology Reserve economics okay that’s

the difference so when David says that reserves are down 40% over the last 12 years that means the amount of gold that we know about that is economic to mine has decreased by 40% and that’s the problem that these major gold producers are running into so they can’t just go and buy more major producers they can’t merge they have to find new reserves that’s the challenge the industry faces um Frank what’s your take on the health of the gold sector today because you know you could say lot of the investor

sentiment is driven from bad memories of the past of egregious GNA poor management bad m&a deals back in 2011 uh what’s your take on the sector today from a health standpoint well I think you know there there are a lot of reasons why the sector is not getting any love from institutional investors and you know you can blame crypto which is distracting people um ESG which has created this idea that mining is dirty um and people haven’t connected the dots yet that mining is necessary to get to clean

energy so that’s a whole other thing but I think it’s also the the the industry itself is partially to blame there are far too many companies um burning a lot of overhead this industry needs to consolidate we need to deliver performance you know and so it’s partially the industry’s fault you know for a long long time it hasn’t performed and you need to perform you know economically with your with your deposits to to to qualify as an investment sector so I think that that’s part of the reason there’s just far too

many companies we need to consolidate this industry um I want to pass it back to the panel now and say you know this is an investment conference it’s a bunch of retail investors there’s too many companies that makes the Investor’s job quite hard because you’re shifting through a really big pile in order to find the winners um I always say your job isn’t to pick the winners in this industry it’s to get rid of the losers as fast as you can and then what’s left is where you have a good shot at finding

something great it’s impossible to find to pick the 10x but you can identify the losers much quicker than that uh do you think I’m right with that and could you provide some counsel and guidance on where investors should look today and feel free to talk your book please no if you look at my Investment Portfolio I’m not one to give recommendations Jay I I I would jump in here I think um everybody in this room whether you’re an experienced uh resource investor and I see a lot of familiar faces here who I

know come here year after year but there are a lot of people that are new to this space what David just said if you can find a transcript of that somewhere get the video transcribe it for yourselves carve it into a stone tablet that may be one of the best lessons you’re ever going to get in terms of how to think about what this industry is how to go about finding the right companies and how to think uh the way that the the um Executives running these companies have to think because you know gold is many

things gold is a a get-rich quick scheme it’s a get-rich slow scheme and it’s a stay Rich scheme and a different point in the cycle it it it performs a different task and if your motivation here is to is to go into the resource stocks take advantage of the leverage they offer what David just told you there is literally that one of the best short lessons I’ve ever heard in this space congratulations on that but if if you want to uh look at gold as a stay Rich scheme which is at this point in the cycle how I look at it because I

think there’s going to be a lot of wealth destruction that takes place and gold will protect you against that it’s a very very different mindset you know we had a tremendous panel before us um and if you were here for that and you heard pipper and Colonel McGregor and Pascal talking about the world the one thing you must have taken away from that is change there is a lot of change coming whether it’s in the gold space the financial sector government geopolitics technology changes upon us and if you think what the last 40 50

years have been like you know uh Rising markets Rising bond prices everything’s been great low inflation just think about change and think about the world we’ve had that’s been so easy for so many people to make money and change that at its very basic level it’s going to be much harder to make money it’s going to be much harder to hang on to the money you’ve made and so whilst there will be any number of opportunities in this ex exhibition Hall to find companies that are going to perform really really well in a gold

bull market that shouldn’t be your only focus you shouldn’t only be thinking about hey where can I find the 10 Baggers because if that’s really your mindset crypto is the perfect vehicle for that because there’s a 10 bagger produced every minute if you’re lucky enough to get in and get out this industry is as Colonel McGregor said it’s tangible it’s things that you pull out the ground that are valuable and so try and think about what it is you want to achieve by being here and by looking at researching and investing in the

precious metal space listen to what David said get a transcript of it I promise you you will read it over and over again and once you understand what your objectives are that’s when the work really starts if I might J I probably think about investing in the gold sector as a bit of a barbell at one side is focusing on good geological models because the industry definitely has a scarcity of reserves as Alistair correctly pointed out and he’s doing God’s work at gold mining now uh de developing some large

scale deposits that clearly the seniors desperately required to replace their depleting reserves and production so focusing on good geological models uh companies that are drisking assets that the seniors are going to need desperately it’s an existential crisis for them the other end of the barbell is who’s providing the capital to develop these mines and that’s why I’m running a royalty vehicle today I don’t want to1 a producer I sold a large- scale producer cuz I frankly thought that end of the

sector was doomed I I just didn’t see any way to create value all we could do is print more stock we couldn’t grow our ounces so focusing on the royaly companies to provide you unmitigated leverage of the gold price and leverage to the expiration of the underlying operators that own the assets protects you from inflation that’s a great model as well in a rising gold price environment with significant inflation that we’re going to inevitably continue to see in the general economy that will in fact

the supply chains and the costs of The Producers Alistair I want to give you the final word well well maybe one one point to add to that is uh to the investors is don’t overlook the basics um we’ve heard touching on it here but uh there are fundamentals that every company should have that’s what you should be looking for it’s stability of the assets you need to look at what’s in the portfolio you may want to go for a flyer who’s got one asset or you may want a company with a stable portfolio of assets with optionality gold mining

is a company that has that other companies have single assets which maybe have a higher shorter term uh leverage point to them uh the other thing is don’t overlook who’s running the companies I mean everyone can tell a story you know but who’s done it before who’s got experience having run it with operating teams jurisdictions who knows how to do it and then look at the capital structure as well you know what’s going to happen should they do a raise does the capital structure get blown out do you get diluted to nothing

so fundamentals are still key when making any investment I would never overlook the fundamentals and optionality in a portfolio and it starts with the people Frank one more word I I know we’re in overtime now but if if I I just want to add one thing that um on the demand side of gold that I think Mo many people in this audience will not be aware of um I the world gold Council first we need to uh make gold appealing and uh technologically convenient for the tech Tok generation okay they’ve been playing the crypto game

and uh the world gold Council for the last 5 years has been working with the 20 largest lbma Banks bullan Banks to create digital gold I just had a recent conversation with the president David Tate in London and he walked me through what’s what how it’s progressing so they’ve been at it for 5 years they had to they have to lay an entirely new infrastructure of fiber optics to make gold uh the settlement of gold instantaneous as opposed to now take may take up to six hours and what what that’s going to do and they’re going to

create a digital coin that is going to be divisible up to 100th of a gram so it’ll be available to the general public but the more important part is that although gold is a tier one asset with the bank of international settlements it’s not with the commercial Banks it gets discounted 85% as collateral so 15% value in collateral is going to change overnight because now the Risk Managers of these banks will allow with all the transparency and the the data that they didn’t have on volatility they’re going to be able to class it as

a tier one asset and get a lot more lending power against those gold positions it’s going to be good for the the public the Tik Tok generation and the banks I love it and access look um and and one comment that Alistair made here was uh how important the people are in in these companies and that’s what we’re doing here all of those companies out there the CEOs are on site they want to talk to you go talk to them make sure before you let somebody have an adventure with your money that you look them in the eye and ask them some hard

questions um uh both David and Alistar are running companies out on the floor right now you can find them out there gold royalty Corp and gold mining everybody on this stage will join me once again on this stage or a different one throughout the this conference ladies and gentlemen that concludes our panel please give them a round of applause [Music]