Selling Stocks, Buying GOLD & SILVER (Uncut) 03-19-2025

Why He Is Worried, Selling Stocks, Buying GOLD & SILVER | Jim Rogers

Well, I certainly had sold most of my shares around the world. I own more gold, I own more silver, I have a lot more cash, U.S. dollar cash. So it’s changed in that sense, but I am very cautious and worried.

I guess worried is the right word now, worried about what’s going to happen. Hello, and welcome to Soar Financially, a channel where we discuss the macro to understand the micro. My name is Kai Hoffman.

I’m the ad JR mining guy over on X and of course, your host of this channel. And I’m looking forward to bringing back Jim Rogers, legendary investor. We’ve had him on the channel about nine months ago and the world is completely different place.

I was going to prepare some follow up questions to our conversation. But I scratched that midway through because let’s start with a white piece of paper. We have to start afresh.

The world is a different place. There’s a new administration in the White House and things are changing on an hourly basis here. So we’ll start with Jim here in a few short seconds.

But before I switch over to my guest, hit that like and subscribe button. Helps us out tremendously. Our channel has been growing.

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Jim, it is wonderful to welcome you back to the program. Thank you so much for making the time. Oh, I’m delighted to be here, Kai.

It was a lot of fun last time. Let’s do it again. Let’s do it again.

Let’s jump right in. Jim, with so much going on, new administration in the White House, tariff wars, global tensions rising. How do you see the economy and financial markets change in the coming year? Well, Kai, I’m going to talk about the stock markets and that’s what most people care about first.

The stock market has gone up steadily since 2009. That’s never happened before in American history. We nearly always have had a big bear market sooner than that.

So this is the longest in American history. Washington says they’ve solved all the problems. There’s nothing to worry about anymore.

I, for one, don’t believe Washington. I would suspect that we’re going to have another unpleasantness in the market fairly soon. Where is that unpleasantness coming from? Let’s drill down on that.

Where do you expect turmoil to come from? Well, the main thing is that stocks have gone up so long without a big problem. And that leads to overvaluation. That leads to lots of enthusiasm.

I have not started selling short yet. I haven’t seen wild exuberance yet. But I hope I’m smart enough to start selling short if and when the time comes.

S&P 500 has corrected about 10%. We’re seeing a bit of a relief. I wouldn’t call it a rally yet, but maybe some relief trading going on, maybe some short covering even.

But it hasn’t spooked you yet, obviously, Jim, that you would have gone short in the market yet. Why is that? Where are you taking that confidence from that it’s not the potentially crash that you might expect here? Well, I guess people are smarter than I am. They sold short already.

No, what happens is in all markets, it goes up for a while, confidence build up and new people come in, old people come back because they get confidence again. Things have been great for a while. And people say, well, OK, it’s different now.

Everything is OK. And when everything is OK and everybody’s happy, start getting worried. Yeah, it seems like we haven’t really gotten rid of the buy the dip mentality just yet, Jim.

Is that the case? Are people still true believers? Well, that’s the point I’m making. So far, there’s more or less people are enthusiastic and confident. I don’t see a lot of people panicking and selling their houses and moving to another country.

People are still confident. That’s the word to use, confident. Absolutely.

We’re seeing it, unemployment, steady inflation. Let’s call it steady as well. We’re on two point eight three percent.

No big shocks so far to the system here. A lot of underlying or beneath the surface noise, perhaps. What is your say? Are we seeing a bifurcated market? Are the numbers telling us something that is not potentially true or that is different in the real world, Jim? Well, when people start using the word different and you don’t have to worry because it’s different now, that’s when you really get worried.

Yes. I mean, the American economy and the world economy has done pretty well for a while without major problems. I haven’t seen any wild hysteria in the markets yet.

I haven’t seen too many excesses on the upside yet. So that’s why I’m sitting and watching. Now, I have no idea.

Kai, you’re the market timer. I don’t know how to time the market. I just hope I get it right sometime.

Now, we’ve had David Hunter on the other day and he called for 7,500 in the S&P still. So he’s expecting that blow off rally. Because like you just said, he hasn’t seen the excess yet that you predict as well.

Is that realistic, 7,500 potentially? Is that 1,500, almost 2,000 points from here? I’ve been around the markets long enough to know that anything is possible. Just about anything is realistic. But anything can happen.

And when people think nothing can happen, it usually does. So I don’t know. I have no idea.

I’m not very good at market timing. I’m hopeless at market timing. But I would expect that the market can go higher.

Well, I’m not selling short. Because I think the market can go higher. For whatever reasons.

Yeah, talking about things could change in a heartbeat. We have a new administration in the White House and it feels like things are changing faster than ever. Whenever I wake up in the morning, it takes me forever to catch up on what was said in Washington or coming out of Washington.

What do you make of the new administration given financial market impact and economic impacts here? Well, I mean, Mr. Trump has been around before, at least in Washington. So we know something about him. The main thing that I think I know is that Mr. Trump has no clue.

He changes his mind every day depending on what he sees on television. I don’t see any, you know, when Margaret Thatcher or somebody like that’s in charge, you more or less know what’s going to happen. Because they have an underlying basic philosophy.

Mr. Trump, I don’t think Mr. Trump has an underlying basic philosophy except that whatever he needs to do, he will do. So that makes it a little more difficult for me anyway to figure out what’s going to happen. If you can read Mr. Trump’s, even if he can read his mind, which he cannot, he has no idea what he will do.

So it’s a little bit unique in that he doesn’t have that basic guiding philosophy that Thatcher or Goldwater or somebody had. Now, that’s an interesting statement because me as an investor, what do I do then? Because the uncertainty seems to be reflected in the market. We have seen that 10% pullback, but not more than that.

Like, what do you make of that uncertainty? What do you advise? And it’s not financial advice, the wrong word to use. What do you suggest investors like myself do then in these times of uncertainty? Where do you park your money? Oh, you want a hot tip. Always, Jim, always.

I have no idea. What I have learned is that for me, I have to wait until I figure out, when I see the mood in the market is whatever it is, I try to read the mood of the market and then try to act according to it. So far, the basic mood which I see is we don’t know.

We don’t know what’s happening yet. And so I’m not doing anything except watching. I’ve had Jim Bianco on this show yesterday and we discussed the Mar-a-Lago Accord because I was trying to figure out what the game plan is.

And you hinted at it. You don’t see a game plan really because he’s just acting based on whatever is on the TV these days. U.S. dollar weakness, bond, trying to lower bond yields seem to be obvious targets and goals he wants to achieve.

Or is it obvious? That’s maybe the question here. To me, it’s obvious. But the question is, is it to him and how is he going about it? There’s so much noise around it.

What do you make of that? What should be the goals perhaps? Why don’t you just send him an email and tell him what he’s thinking? He doesn’t know. You know, so tell him. I own U.S. dollars, yes.

A lot of U.S. dollars. Not because it’s a sound currency, but because I see some turmoil coming down the road. And in times like that, people look for a safe haven.

History says that people think the dollar is a safe haven. It’s not, but people think it is. So I own U.S. dollars.

I hope when the time comes, I’m smart enough to sell my dollars. Now, what you need to do is say to me, OK, when you sell your dollars, where are you going to put your money? And my answer to you is, I don’t know. For one of the few times in my life, I don’t know where to put my money.

I don’t see a competing currency for the U.S. dollar yet. And I’m trying to find it. If you know, don’t announce it out loud, please.

Send me a private email. Because I’m trying to figure out where to put the money if and when I sell my U.S. dollars. I’m not sure it exists yet, to be honest.

That’s a different discussion, whether it will be created. But not sure that exists yet. But you’re not even looking at other, let’s call them safe haven assets, like bonds or gold, precious metals.

Is that something you’re keeping an eye on? Well, I own silver. I own gold. And I hope I’m smart enough to buy.

I bought some more silver yesterday. I hope I’m smart enough to buy more of them if they go down. Yes, I own them.

But I don’t see, at this stage of history, to sell all my assets and put it into gold and silver. Those days may come. But I don’t see them yet.

And to answer your question, I don’t know yet. Yes, maybe bonds. But I don’t want to own bonds.

Inflation is going to come back. And bonds will go down a lot. I repeat, I am looking.

And I don’t know yet. There is direction I could take this direction. But you just brought up inflation.

We have to talk about it. It seems to be tamed. And I’m stretching out the word seems quite a bit here.

2.8%. A bit of a surprise here. It was trending higher for four or five months in a row. And I have yet to figure out why it was lower last month.

But what do you make of inflation? What’s driving inflation potentially higher here, Jim? Well, what’s driving it higher is gigantic money printing all over the world in the last few months, years. And that has continued. Yes, they’ve cut back the money printing in some places temporarily.

But, Kai, I mean, I read the same newspapers you do. I see that people all over the world continue to print a lot of money. And historically, that always eventually leads to more inflation.

And if you look at the debt situation in the U.S., I mean, it is really startling. It’s more than startling. It’s frightening.

I don’t know how the debt could possibly have gotten so high. And it continues to go higher. Nobody seems to notice.

Nobody seems to care. So the debt situation is part and parcel of this problem. And it’s getting worse.

I mean, the debt in the U.S. is unbelievable and has certainly never happened in history. No, absolutely. It is outrageously high, over $36 trillion.

Interest payments are over a trillion dollars. When you say $36 trillion, that’s what’s recorded. That’s their own balance sheet.

But there’s a gigantic amount of off-balance sheet debt, I mean, over $100 trillion. I mean, the numbers just cannot be comprehended. First of all, Washington doesn’t even count them.

They report the $36 trillion or whatever the number is, but they don’t report the $136 trillion with all the off-balance sheet numbers. Yeah, there’s a huge burden of debt coming, looming social security expenses, Medicaid and all that, veteran payments. Massive balloon behind it as well that we don’t even talk about.

You talked about the debt situation getting worse, and it’s a great segue to talk about Scott Besant real quick, because I know he was an intern under you. So I’m curious what your thoughts are about the U.S. Secretary of Finance here. Do you see yourself in him? Is there anything that you say, oh, that’s what I taught him here? That was over 40 years ago.

He was his first finance exposure at all. He thought he was going to be a reporter, journalism. He wound up working for me for the internship, as you point out.

But I was basically trying to go around the world on my motorcycle. So I was soon off to China. I said, hey, let me drive across China.

So he wasn’t there. We didn’t have that much exposure. He was certainly enthusiastic.

He was certainly eager. He certainly learned whatever he could, and he wanted to learn. Obviously, he wanted to learn a lot, because you see where he is now.

He’s not a journalist. And let’s hope he knows what he’s doing. I was going to say, do you think he knows? And it’s not an easy job, you know, refinancing the U.S. debt this year.

I think $7 trillion that he needs to refinance this year alone. That’s without all the extra deficit spending that might be happening. Does he have a chance to succeed? Well, nobody has a chance to succeed.

The numbers are overwhelming. The smartest guy, I mean, whoever you come up with, is going to have problems dealing with the U.S. debt situation. This is not talking about Scott.

This is talking about anybody and everybody, because the numbers are staggering and overwhelming. No country has ever had a situation like this. And I don’t know what’s going to happen.

You know, 100 years ago, it was Britain. And people said, oh, don’t worry. British pounds is the gold standard for currencies.

Believe it or not, 50 years later, 1976, Britain was bankrupt. They went from number one in 1925, or whatever that was, to totally bankrupt in 1976, bailed out by the IMF. It has happened before in history, often, and it’s going to happen again.

I don’t like saying it, but I can see what’s coming. Yeah, the writing is on the wall. The problem is we’ve been preaching about that since 2008, 2009, with all the money printing.

The writing has been on the wall for the last 15 years, Jim, and we’ve been managing to kick the can down the road. You said, like, don’t use the word different, but is it different this time? Like, are we misinterpreting real economy here? Of course it’s not different. It’s never different this time.

And I can add, I can subtract, I can know the numbers. The numbers are going to overwhelm us, and at some point, it’s going to be too late. It’ll be on the evening news every day.

The situation will be so dramatic. It’s not there yet. Most people on the evening news don’t know about the debt.

But there will come a time when everybody will know about it. Oh, my gosh. And that’s called a serious bear market.

I have to ask you about Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. Do you see any chance that they will succeed and potentially trim at least some of that deficit spending to at least slow down the deficits here? Well, they say they are, and they say they have. They say they’ve done some already.

But I’ve seen this movie before, you know. This is not the first time that a new administration has come in and said, OK, we’re going to solve the problem. You know, pretty soon, people start saying, wait a minute.

This is too much pain. This is a serious, serious problem. We cannot go that far.

That’s too much. And they back off. And the situation gets worse.

Maybe this time they will be serious. If they’re really serious and they cut spending that dramatically, it’s going to be a huge bear market. But that’s why I don’t think it will last.

Because when people start feeling a lot of pain, they start screaming and complaining and beating on the walls. And that’s when people change their mind. It’s interesting, at least the approach.

At least somebody’s trying to do something. That’s my opinion, whether it will succeed. We’ll find out in 10 years probably.

But at least somebody’s trying something. I just interrupt again slightly. I’ve heard this before.

Yes, they’re saying it. But they’ve said it every four years. They’ve said it every two years.

They always say it. Do they ever follow through? No, not when it gets to be painful. Good point.

Absolutely. Jim, on the debt side, there’s two ways to sort of mitigate the debt. One is, of course, just stop spending and don’t increase the debt load.

But also just grow GDP. Productivity growth and other factors weigh in here. Do you see GDP developing in a positive way here? Just talking about the Atlanta Fed, for example, came up with some numbers that were actually negative due to gold imports, funny enough.

What are your thoughts? Well, the American economy has been expanding since 2008, 2009. And it’s still going on. But I think I see signs that we’re coming to an end.

Whether I see it or not doesn’t matter. I know that this economy will slow down somewhere along the line. I know that historically we’re getting there already.

And when it happens, it’s going to be terrible because the debt is so unbelievably high now. And we’re all going to scream. I think the voices are getting louder here.

But just to drill down a little bit on the signs, besides the debt, is there anything else you’re looking at that makes you nervous or where you see cracks appearing? I mean, a few small wars scattered around. We’ve seen this before in history. Sometimes the small wars turn into bigger wars.

But there are several conflicts going on in the world right now. They don’t make the evening news normally, but they’re getting bigger. And that will lead to even more of a bear market if and when we have a serious bear market.

Yes, of course, higher interest rates, inflation, debt, all of these things are adding up. Now, you could say this has happened before. It certainly has.

But I’m afraid that now it’s to the point where it’s so high and such a big problem, it’s going to have more of a dramatic effect on all of us in the next year or two. Gold has made the evening news lately, which is interesting. And for me, coming from the gold side, it’s actually fun to see that our sector is starting to get recognized.

Not just Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Donald Trump are talking about gold, but mainstream media with a $3,000 benchmark being broken here. What is gold telling you? Is it a flight to safety? Is it hype? What is the gold price telling you here, Jim? It’s all of the above. Whenever people get worried or confused, they buy gold or silver.

And that’s happening again. This has been going on for a few thousand years. And gold and silver have always had an attraction to people throughout history.

I mean, remember Jesus Christ? He was sold for 30 pieces of silver. Because silver was the money then. Silver was a valuable asset then.

And those sorts of things are starting to happen again. And somebody is buying gold and silver because they see that problems are coming. And I say, I bought a little more silver yesterday.

Jeffrey Goodluck called for $4,000. He said, well, a $3,000 gold forecast is not really a forecast when gold is trading at $29.50. What do you make of that forecast? Is it realistic? I’m guessing the answer already. Well, of course it’s realistic.

Maybe not this month, but certainly this decade. There’s no question about that, if not before. I mean, all over the world, central banks are printing money.

All over the world, governments are running up debt. I’m not the only person who knows that. More and more people are realizing we better do something.

Yeah, and they’re doing it more aggressively these days as well. A lot of countries buying gold. On the silver side, is silver still lagging behind gold a little bit? And I’ve asked you this before, Jim, but can you make rhyme or reason of it? Why is silver still lagging behind gold, especially given the historical context that you provided here? Well, it’s partially because silver is not on everybody’s mind the way gold is.

I mean, if you turn on the TV or you open the newspaper, the first thing you read about is gold. Because that’s historically, traditionally, the safe haven. As far as I can see, that’s the only reason now.

It’s not that both aren’t going up. But silver certainly moved up. It hasn’t moved up as much as gold.

And if I were going to buy one today, I’d buy more silver. But I would buy more of both before this is over. Yeah, no, absolutely.

It makes a lot of sense. One thing I’m trying to make sense of, Jim, is the price move in copper. Jeffery Gundlach is suggesting a 60% chance of a recession.

Others have been calling for a recession. So I’m trying to make rhyme and reason of the copper price move. We’re almost at $5 a pound again.

What do you make of that? What is Dr. Copper telling you here, Jim? Well, as far as I can see, it’s just that people need hard assets to protect themselves. Meaning people understand they need hard assets, real assets, whatever they are. And copper is one of those.

It’s very liquid. It has many uses around the world. And people are trying to protect themselves.

Maybe there’s another reason. Maybe it’s deeper. But it’s certainly part of it.

Would you throw China into the race here, or into the discussion, saying China is starting to spend more money, printing money, as you said, to stimulate the economy? There’s daily news out of Shanghai that there’s more money being tossed around. That’s a common problem. And they’re now trying to revive the economy.

It’s a gigantic country. And if they start pumping money to revive things, it’s going to have an effect on lots of assets, including copper. Especially copper.

In China’s case, that’s one. Jim, we’ve got some audio interference here. I think there’s some audio playing or picking up from your speakers, potentially.

That was messing with your microphone. But we brought up China into the discussion. Might as well stay on China for a second here.

We’re starting to see more of a multipolar world. The US is not the sole ruler of the world anymore. We see other powers emerging, like China.

Others are mentioning Russia to a degree as well. Where do you see China’s role moving forward here? As far as I can see, China is going to be the most important country in the 21st century. It already is.

In some sectors, it’s happening. Yes, this has happened often in history. 100 years ago, it was Britain, and then it became the US.

Unfortunately for us, I think it’s now changing again. The world is now moving to a Chinese-centric economy. But I repeat, this has happened many times in history.

It’s certainly something to be concerned about or aware of, but it has happened often. I hope we all live long enough to see it happen many times. Many times in history.

I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but given the 100-year cycle, do you think the US has 20 more years, maybe 19 more years to go before its tenure is up? Tenure is up. That’s a deep statement. If we were sitting here in 1954, we would have looked ahead and said, Britain is coming to the end.

And it was. There’s no question. We can look back and know that Britain was at the end of the road and things were changing.

But did the world… I mean, you and I both continue to be alive. Britain continued to exist. The world continued.

Yes, Britain lost its status. The US is going to lose its status. But will we still go to Paris for holidays? Will we still do things that we did before? Yes, some of us will still continue to prosper.

I hope you and I are two of those people. Fingers crossed, Jim. Absolutely.

I hope we benefit from this gold run at least. We spoke nine months ago, which is an awful long time ago. I’m curious.

Has your investment thesis changed at all? We talked about a few things. Have you reallocated some of your money? Have you moved things around a little bit? You mentioned Uzbekistan before and other places that you invest in. Has that shifted at all? I certainly had sold most of my shares around the world.

I own more gold. I own more silver. I have a lot more cash, US dollar cash.

So it’s changed in that sense. But I am very cautious and worried. I guess worried is the right word now.

Worried about what’s going to happen. Makes a lot of sense. Maybe a final question here, Jim.

Would you invest in Europe right now? The indices are running. Jeff Gundlach, I keep coming back to him because I’ve seen his monologue earlier, his 45-minute data presentation. That’s why he’s fresh on my mind.

He’s been investing in Europe since 2021. His play seems to be playing out in a proper way right now. Are you investing in Europe at all? Is that of interest? I don’t think I have any shares, any investments in Europe, any significant investments in Europe right now.

That’s partly because I’m lazy, but also because I see problems coming worldwide. When they come, they’re going to come worldwide this time. I still own a few shares in China, a few shares in Uzbekistan, but I’ve sold most markets around the world because I see problems coming and I’m too lazy to pick the four or five countries that will do okay.

Fantastic. That’s awesome. Definitely a shift from previous statements mentioning that you’ve sold a lot of shares.

You haven’t told me that before, so that’s a fun fact here. Jim, anything else our investors and our audience should be aware of before we let you go here? Be very careful, especially these days a lot of new investors are coming in. The new investors always think it’s easy.

Remember they call up their friends and say, oh, this thing called a sidewalk is very easy. It’s not easy. Just be very careful and be worried.

Thank you so much. Wise words. Really appreciate it.

I hope to catch up with you over the summer here in Singapore in person and do that. Thank you so much for your time. I usually ask my guests where I can send them because often our guests are newsletter writers or run a sub stack or so, but I’m just eternally grateful for your wisdom and for your time.

Really appreciate it and hope to catch you soon. Thank you so much. It’s my pleasure.

I don’t have anything to sell, Kai. I know, that’s why I didn’t ask. Jim, really appreciate it and hope to catch you over the summer and everybody else.

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