Economists Uncut

Smart Money Rushing Into Gold (Uncut) 02-05-2025

The Financial System Is Cracking—Smart Money Rushing Into Gold | Jonathan Wellum

Gold and precious metals have become a much more mainstay part of our portfolios because of the monetary condition and the debt situation in the world. That’s what drives our decisions because we don’t think that the fiat currency system is sustainable the way it’s been run. Hi, my name is Trey Reich of Bristol Gold Group and I’ve spent the past two decades studying precious metals and precious metal equities from both the buy and the sell side, most notably at Sprott Asset Management.

 

And because of that experience, Wealthion has asked me to host a series of shows on precious metals, hard assets, and monetary affairs. We’re going to start off this week with Jonathan Wellam, CEO of Rocklink Asset Partners in Toronto. And because most Wealthion viewers are pretty familiar with John and his firm, we’re going to skip the lengthy intro and get right down to business.

 

So it’s fun to get together and chat on days where there’s a lot happening. And this morning was Trump tariff day in so far as he imposed 25% tariffs on Mexico, including oil, 25% tariffs on Canada with a 10% oil exemption, 10% tariffs on China on top of anything that exists. And we’re already getting some feedback from Justin Trudeau’s tariffs on about 130 billion Canadian of goods.

 

And President Scheinbaum has already said she has moved to Plan B. I’m not sure what Plan A was, but Plan B includes a mix of tariff and non-tariff measures. So 1.6 down, the Canadian dollar is down a full percent, and yet gold is up $30 to a new all-time high, which is probably not what I would have guessed with the dollar this strong. But how do you read what’s going on today, and what are the implications for markets, and how do you think it will all settle out? Well, good to speak with you, Trey, and congratulations on the program.

 

I know it will be very successful. Great to speak with you today, and you’re certainly asking a loaded question. So let me just back up a little bit.

 

Certainly, being in Canada, we’re very concerned about the tariff threat, if you will, and it certainly appears it’s imminent. We’ll find out exactly what happens in the next little while. But we’re very concerned about tariffs, clearly 25% tariffs on all the goods that we send down to the United States.

 

That’s a big impact on the Canadian economy. About 40% of our economy actually is open in terms of trading, and a good half of that or more goes to the United States. And conversely, in the United States, only about 10% of the U.S. is actually open, and only about 1% comes up to Canada.

 

So you get about a 10 to 1 ratio. Anyway, it’s a very large differential. So we do not want to get into a trading war with the United States at all.

 

And so I think it’s very important for us in Canada to continue to talk to Donald Trump, to continue to get behind some of the issues that are concerning him, and to try to resolve those issues intelligently. That doesn’t mean that we can’t put a few tariffs back on and push back a little bit, but we should not be trying to go one-to-one with the United States of America. It’s a powerful country.

 

We are much smaller, and we are ill-equipped to do that. And so that’s why I think our dollar is clearly weak, and Canadians are very concerned. If you’re up here in Canada, you’re seeing a lot more nationalism now.

 

Canadians are banding together and thinking, how are we going to push back against this if it does happen? And how can we work together and manufacture more here, deal with other countries, diversify our risk and so forth? But in terms of the overall capital markets, no, I think if President Trump continues to put tariffs on, it’s going to cause volatility in the markets, and I think the markets will come off because there’s going to be adjustments. What does this mean? We don’t know what businesses are going to be impacted. We know that even the S&P 500 companies, about 40% of their earnings comes from overseas, outside of the United States.

 

And so if the U.S. dollar is on wheels and going straight up, that means earnings are going to be impacted when they have to repatriate their revenue from all these other countries around the world, and that’s going to impact stocks. And so with stocks trading at high valuations, I think that these tariffs, the threat of tariffs, the imposition of tariffs, will take the markets down. It’s just a matter of how much and how we can protect ourselves in maybe certain sectors that would be less impacted.

 

Interesting. So you brought up stocks, obviously a popular, I think, topic with all money managers. And at this point, looking forward as investors are repositioning their portfolios for 2025, looking back on 2024, it was surprising in lots of different ways.

 

It was certainly stronger than most people thought. At the December of 23 Bloomberg strategist poll, the average forecast for the S&P in 2024 was an increase of 1.4%, which was the most bearish forecast in the survey’s 25-year history. But instead, the market was up 25, as you know, and that was the second year in a row of plus 20% returns.

 

And over the two years, the S&P is now up 57.8%, which is a pretty gaudy number. And of course, now, forecasters and strategists are universally bullish. And in their December 24 forecast for this year, the average forecast was 11.7%, which was the most bullish forecast since the COVID recovery here.

 

So I don’t know, in my view, any broad-based investor, balanced investor, the big question is whether the S&P is going to go up a third year in a row. So what are your thoughts on that? Excellent points. I’ve talked on previous Wealthion programs too.

 

Yeah, I mean, it caught us by surprise that we were up so much last year. We fortunately were invested in the market and did quite well. Having said that, it sort of surprised us.

 

And that’s because, again, if you go back a couple of years, you remember we came off record low interest rates, and then we had this inflation concern, supply chains, too much government spending and so on led to inflation. And then interest rates, we’ve never had a percentage change in interest rates that dramatic in such a short period of time. So you’re thinking, well, of course, this is going to have to slow down the economy.

 

This is going to have an impact on earnings, cost of capital has gone up and so forth. You run all that through your models and you go, there’s no way we’re going to get 25% type of growth, but we did. And so I think that really underscores, though, that we need to be particularly careful in 2025, not adjust our models all up and go, let’s continue to party.

 

I think that’s very irresponsible. I think you want to really double down on your models, look at the companies that you want to buy, make sure they’re appropriately valued, keep a little bit more cash around in your portfolios and be careful. With all of the things that President Trump is doing around the world, including tariffs, which we just talked about, that’s just another factor to destabilize and cause stocks to come off and to cause some headwinds, I think, going forward.

 

So I think, investors need to be careful. I agree with many of the policies that Donald Trump wants to enact. It’s going to make the United States more competitive, it’s going to lower the cost of capital, lower taxation, capital flows will improve into the country.

 

All of that’s true, but valuations are high and that money has to come from somewhere else and it will put pressure on the global economy so that Europe is going to feel it, Japan’s feeling it, China is feeling some of this. And if tariffs go on in Canada, we’ll feel it in Canada. So I think, again, caution, caution, caution.

 

Don’t move your models up. That’s what we like to do. We like to base the future off the immediate past, but I think in this case, there could be a dislocation and a discontinuity, if you will.

 

In our business, what we’re trying to do is double down on the best companies that we think are trading at better prices, discounts, maybe give us some hedges to the uncertainty. So we keep some, as you would expect, in precious metals, places like that. And be cautious, be careful.

 

Don’t throw caution to the wind in this environment. Thanks so much for watching our discussion here on Wealthion. If you would like help with your wealth efforts, please head over to wealthion.com for a free portfolio review.

 

So you brought up one of my future questions, so we’ll skip to it now. What role do precious metals and hard assets play generally in rocklink portfolios? And how have you adjusted that exposure to the current conditions? Yeah, good questions. You know, if I were just really quickly to go back in my career.

 

So I first got in the investment business back in 1990. So I’ve been doing this for 35 years. We were loaded into financials.

 

Anything you could leverage up in the 1990s went straight up. It was a great play. No one cared about gold because interest rates were coming from, you know, 18-20% down to, you know, 4-5% type of thing.

 

And gold was like $300. And like, why are you going to deal with this? But Trey, as you know, over that period of time, then into the 2000s, which just got worse when you hit 2008, we loaded our balance sheets corporately, government-wise, sovereign-wise, and also personal. We just loaded with debt.

 

We just debt, debt, debt, debt, right? And so I think over the last 10 years, and certainly since I’ve been running rocklink for 15 years, gold and precious metals have become a much more mainstay part of our portfolios because of the monetary condition and the debt situation in the world. That’s what drives our decisions, because we don’t think that the fiat currency system is sustainable the way it’s been run. And so every year that’s gone by since 2010, when I started rocklink, we’ve just slowly added to our positions in the precious metals, starting with 5-6%.

 

Now we’re up to close to 18% of our portfolios. And that’s simply because we don’t trust the system. It’s not sustainable.

 

I would argue that a lot of the changes that Donald Trump’s trying to do to the States is that he acknowledges that the current course for the U.S. is not sustainable. You cannot add a trillion to your debt every 120 days, which is what Biden and Harris were doing in the last year. And so at $36T, with the most important country in the world, the reserve currency in the world, with $36T in debt and also growing, they’re still running large deficits.

 

He’s just been in there for two weeks. And $100T in unfunded liabilities. The system is not stable long term.

 

And so when that blows and when exactly what happens, we don’t know. But we love to own some Gold, some Silver, some hard assets. We have some in some of the energy places like Uranium and also some of the strategic metals like Copper and Nickel also.

 

We’ve bought that in a lot of royalty companies. So we buy those assets as strategic long-term asset plays in a world of fiat currency that cannot hold its value without dramatic changes in policy. And again, we don’t see that happening other than what Trump is now starting to do in the U.S. Do you look at Gold as a hedge or do you own it for sort of nominal reasons, if you know what I mean? Yes, we own it for both a hedge and for growth.

 

So we actually look for companies that can, even if Gold just stayed the same price as it is today, around $2,800 U.S., we actually have a growing cash flow. So that’s the beauty of owning, I think, royalty companies that have got deals that are in perpetual deals and are working with great partners that can continue to develop their resources, increase their Gold production, Silver production, Copper production and so forth. And also some miners.

 

So we do own a couple of miners. Our largest position, thankfully, and I might say we’ve had this for a couple of years, out of admiration for Shawn Boyd, and that’s Agnico Eagle. And we’ve been very fortunate there because he just continues to blow everybody away in terms of his acquisitions and the ability to run that company efficiently.

 

And so we’ve owned Agnico Eagle down to $50 in Canadian, now it’s trading close to $140. And that’s an environment where Barrick and Newmont have basically done nothing. And so we do look for growth.

 

So it’s not just about staying put and just protecting purchasing power. We want to grow our purchasing power with our exposure in the precious metals by buying really well-run, active companies that know how to allocate capital and compound that growth. Take another example, Franco, Nevada.

 

They had a tough time in Panama. Maybe Marco Rubio down there twisting their arm on the Panama Canal will get them to smarten up on their Copper production too. But we own Franco, Nevada.

 

We’ve owned it for many years. Back in my mutual fund days, we were the largest institutional shareholder in Franco. So I’ve been in and out of it since the 90s.

 

But that’s a powerhouse. And they took a bit of a downstroke last year, a little over a year ago when they shut down the big mine, the Panama mine that First Quantum was running. But again, that will eventually come back, but they just continue to grow anyway.

 

And now that’s back over CAD$200, almost USD$140. And we’re making good money on that. And today it’s up nicely in a down market.

 

So I think there’s opportunities like that if you really buy well-run capital allocators and they’re in areas that can hedge your risk, political risk, economic risk, which I think we’re going to see a lot of that in 2025 as the world recalibrates around some of the policies of Donald Trump. So we’ve ended in the Gold sector, which is such a surprise. No, just kidding.

 

So in 2024, 10-year yields increased 18% from 3.9% to 4.6%. And the dollar index set new two-year high was up 7% over the course of the year. We had stocks up 25%, as we’ve already discussed. And yet, if I had told you those three things, what would you have guessed gold would be up for the year? I don’t think the answer would be 27.2% on spot gold.

 

So not that you can explain everything in the universe, but why do you think gold is breaking from these historic correlations that so many people have watched for so many years? Again, great question. And I think the main reason for that is that because even though the U.S. dollar is going up, people are seeing through ultimately all fiat currencies are weak. The fact that the U.S. dollar on a relative basis is better, and indeed it is because they have the deep capital markets and they’ve got tremendous liquidity, and you go and you’re like, do you really want to own euros? Do you want the pound? And now the problems they have there, do you really want to own the yen? So I think that what it’s showing you is despite the U.S. dollar being strong, gold is still a much preferred asset over all of the fiat currencies.

 

It’s overwhelming the fiat currencies. And I think the BRIC nations that are often talked about, and of course, Donald Trump has threatened them also, that if they try to get rid of the reserves, they try to run the U.S. dollar, so to speak, that he’s going to put 100% tariffs and those threats. Well, they’ve already found gold.

 

They’re loading up on gold. They’re getting ready for the day when if they have to flex their muscles against the U.S., and I don’t think many of them want to be doing that anytime soon, but if they have to, they’re going to have a lot of collateral. They’re going to have a lot of collateral behind their currency.

 

And so India, China, Russia, and the other key components in the BRICS country, Brazil and so forth, they’ve been buying a lot of gold. And so I think that overwhelms the strength of the U.S. dollar. And so I think what it’s telling you is beware that the global economic order is under stress, period.

 

And I think in 2025, the reason why it’d be still bullish on gold, even though it’s gone up, it’s trading at good valuations, is because that stress is only going to be enhanced by Trump trying to realign the world and trying to pull that manufacturing back to the U.S. and to suck the capital out of other parts of the world back to the U.S. That might be good for the U.S., but it’s going to cause more stress in the global environment. It has to. And so with that in mind, I think the best way to sort of protect that is probably precious metals and gold.

 

And so I go back to that’s why I think it’s outperformed and surprised probably all of us. So going back to the miners for a minute, the gold price move in 24 was up 27.2. Silver was up a little more than 21. And I’m sure you remember in mid-October, I always have times during every year where I tell my wife we can buy the Mercedes.

 

The GDX was up 44 percent and the GDXJ was, I think, 41 percent or something like that. And between October and the end of the year, because gold stocks were up so much, in other words, the 100 percent was 144. A 20 percent downturn really collapsed that year-to-date performance number, as I’m sure you know, all the way down to 10 percent.

 

So we have gold up 27 percent and the GDX up 10. We didn’t buy the Mercedes and I think GDXJ was up 15 percent. How do you explain that differential and doesn’t it, not to ask a leading question, but doesn’t that present a catch-up opportunity in Q1 for high-quality gold miners, even if gold stays where it is? Well, if you buy that Mercedes, you better make sure it’s made in the United States or you could be paying an extra tariff on it, right, coming into the U.S. Trump slaps it on from the EU.

 

But no, in terms of your question, I think there is catch-up on the well-run miners. I just saw a report this morning saying that on average, this is across quite the large number of miners, their average cost, all-in sustaining costs are running around $1,500 an ounce. Well, when you think $1,500 an ounce, all-in sustaining costs, if you can find one that’s trading even below that, or even at $1,500 and you get $2,800 on the commodity price, the spot price, plus, plus, that’s a beautiful margin and they should be just generating tons of free cash flow.

 

And the issue would be finding the companies that, first of all, have the margins, know how to run their business. And secondly, Trey, as you know, they are good capital allocators because one of the worst things that happens with these companies is they generate lots of free cash flow and then they go and they squander it. They buy things too expensively or they get properties that are not lucrative properties and so forth.

 

And so that’s why, again, you’d be very selective on the companies that you’re going to buy. Buy the best management companies with proven track records. In this environment, they should make a lot more money and I think you can make multiples of the of what the price of Gold is going up.

 

You should be able to make multiples on the stock. And so I agree that there should be catch up, but be selective, be careful, because, you know, I think it was Rick Rule who I have great admiration for in his stock selection and follow what he said and so forth. I think Rick Rule pointed out, and I could get it slightly wrong, but between 2001 and 2010, the price of Gold went up five times or six times or something like that and the free cash flow per share on the big miners went down.

 

And you say, how is that possible? Well, it is if you don’t know how to run those businesses and you buy everything at the top and you spend way too much capital and you don’t get anything for your capital spend. So be very, very careful. But I do think there is catch up and there’s a big opportunity if you’re careful in terms of the companies you’re buying or maybe buy, if you’re not good at that, buy some ETFs, like Sprott ETFs.

 

There are different companies where they handpick some of the best miners with good balance sheets and good prospects and they put some screens on them. And so you can get maybe the top 10 or 12 or 15 gives you a bit of diversification because mining is a tough business and there’s political risk and you can have the best mine in the world and all of a sudden, Leon DiCaprio comes along and starts complaining about the environment as he did in Panama mine and they shut the thing down, even though it’s a beautiful, beautiful mine and producing very necessary resource copper. So that’s why I say diversify and just really make sure you’re buying great companies in good jurisdictions with less political risk.

 

I know that at Rocklink you don’t own bullion for your clients directly because it’s so easy to do. Everybody can buy GLD and they nickel a share. But for those who aren’t your managed clients and they are interested in getting precious metal exposure, is there a sort of a rough paradigm that you would recommend in terms of how to get involved in gold bullion or equities or how to balance it or what would you give the person following along at home how to get good gold exposure? Yeah.

 

I mean, it does depend on the individual and their comfort level with the gold. We have some clients who love, they want half their assets or more in gold related, gold precious metals related securities. And that’s fine.

 

We walk through that with them. And to be quite honest, I don’t have any problem owning a large percentage of my financial assets in that space, but it’s not for everybody. So we try to, again, that’s the key when you’re doing investment management, know your client, understand what their risks are and what their needs are.

 

But I would suggest, I mean, basically back of the envelope, we say the client should have at least 15 and even up to 20% exposure in this environment. And that means about 5% of that could easily be in bullion itself. And then we can own some royalty companies and get some exposure through the businesses.

 

The way we suggest that they do it, because we don’t add much value just owning the bullion, is that they can go and buy it directly from, you know, spot money up here in Canada, also in the US. And we also have a relationship with SWP, Strategic Wealth Protection in the Cayman Islands. And they have a great process down there.

 

They’re a wonderful company and know the principles, been to their facilities. And that’s a great safe place. You can’t get gold off of a little island very easily.

 

You can’t steal that very easily when you’re on an island that only has an elevation of about eight or nine feet. And you got to carry that gold around. But they have a great business model and they’ve just expanded their facilities there.

 

I think they’re by far the largest in the Caribbean. So we encourage people, if they’re going to hold some of the gold, they might even want to hold it outside of their home country in order for protection from expropriation. You know, we had some crazy things go on here in Canada a couple of years ago when our governments shut down people’s bank accounts and so forth.

 

So Canadians are a little bit more sensitive to that and making sure you have a little bit more protection. So I think, yeah, 5%, even up to 10%, if you have a good appetite for it, then you can go directly to players that will sell it to you. My caution is try to minimize derivative exposure.

 

I think if you want gold, you want to own gold. If you want silver, you want to own the bullion. And so you can go to companies like Sprott where you can buy even the funds where it’s backed one for one in gold, in a safe spot, audited and owned by reputable people.

 

And that’s very important, too. One of the downsides of buying, you know, GDX and things like that is, you know, you can get a lot of derivatives. And I know people, if you’re comfortable, that’s fine.

 

But if all of the proverbial stuff hits the fan at some point and you really need to make sure you’ve got it, you want to make sure you actually own the physical. And I think that’s important for investors. In terms of Rocklink portfolios, do you stay in the monetary realm of gold predominantly or does silver play a role in your precious metals exposure as well? We have a couple of silver companies and we also own Wheaton Precious Metals, which still, somewhere around 50%.

 

It used to be Silver Wheaton, which was predominantly silver, but they came too large. They couldn’t, you know, the silver market’s not large enough to allocate in there. So we like having some exposure to silver.

 

We have some Sandstorm Royalty and they’ve got exposure to silver also. So most of the gold companies, royalty companies, not all of them, would have a reasonable exposure to silver also. We also own Pan American directly as a silver stock and a couple of clients who really like the silver, we own some Mag and some Silver Crest in our portfolios.

 

Those are also well-run silver companies. And I think, you know, silver again is more volatile and it certainly appears, I mean, people have been saying this since I’ve been following silver, right? Silver should be trading at, you know, 10 to 1 ratio, 15 to 1, 21, all these different multiple ratios. I don’t know what the ratio should be, but it’s certainly when you look at silver, there’s no question in my mind that the production is not really meeting the demand that’s out there.

 

And there certainly seems to be a shortfall. And if we continue to go EVs and solar panels and so forth, which we’ll see how fast those sell, we’re going to need more silver. We need more silver on the electrical grid, AI, all of that.

 

And it doesn’t seem to me that we’re producing enough and there seems to be a deficit. If that’s the case, yeah, I mean, silver could be explosive and we could make a lot of money in silver. So, we don’t do a lot of direct investments, but I certainly admire people that are in this space.

 

And I think there are some great opportunities if you’re smart and you buy the well-run companies, but we get it indirectly through a lot of the companies that have exposure to it and do Gold equivalency with silver. And so most of our, as I say, our Royalty companies have probably 15%, even 20% coming from silver. And I like that.

 

Copper I like also, Nickel I like. The interesting thing, Trey, we live in this world where we think it’s all digital and it’s all virtual and we don’t have to dig any holes. And the interesting thing is that our energy demands are growing at such an amazing pace that we have to, and we should embrace mining.

 

We’re going to have to embrace mine. We have to dig a lot more holes. We have to extract a lot more metals and minerals out of the earth.

 

And this is the irony that this generation, many of these, the green revolution, well, you can’t have the green revolution unless we have a mining revolution and we have to find a lot more mines, minerals and so forth. And this is critical. And so I think that the biggest story going forward is why not buy some of these critical assets and commodities where you can buy them at a fraction of the cash flow, literally a fraction of the cash flow of these chip companies, which have all gone straight up over the years, because you can’t have chip companies without mining.

 

And so, again, I think that’s going to be an opportunity at some point and be positioned now and buy some of the best companies that’ll give you that opportunity. Great. And I’m sure you saw the JP Morgan study recently that one half of 1% of investment assets are in precious metals and precious metals equities.

 

And even the median over the last 100 years is somewhere up around two. So that would put quite an upward push on some of these names. And there’s not a lot of capitalization to go around.

 

That’s exactly the case. And at some point it will be explosive. Again, we don’t make those predictions.

 

We’re in there already and we’re buying it for other reasons. And we think that we can continue to compound. Could some of that go parabolic at some point? Absolutely.

 

The market cap of the Gold and Silver companies is insignificant. I mean, it’s just a fraction of what Apple is trading at $3 trillion. And yet these companies are essential.

 

We need them. And again, you look at Copper, Nickel, other core products. Uranium is another one.

 

If we’re going to power these AI and the data centres, we’re going to need more Uranium. And Canada, up in Kamiko, up in Saskatchewan, we’ve got more Uranium than we know what to do with for the next 150, 200 years. And so this is again, opportunities, I think, for investors.

 

It might not go straight up tomorrow. It might not go up in three months, but build positions, be a capital allocator. That’s the way we go about it.

 

We’re not trying to time the market. We’re not smart enough to do that. But if we can buy great companies with products that are needed and are growing, the demand is growing over the next number of years, and they’re well-run companies by really intelligent people who are watching the balance sheet and being careful how they run them, then I think you can make some serious money.

 

And it might come in fits and starts when you least expect it. And that’s fine. But you want to be there when the action starts.

 

So that was great. I think we have a little time left. So I wanted to get back to sort of the big picture with one brain-teasing question.

 

So since the Fed’s first cut in September, the 50 basis point cut, we’ve now cut rates 100 basis points. And through the middle of January, the 10-year yield, I think, peaked at 480. So we were up 120 basis points from the 360 when the Fed started cutting.

 

So we have cut rates on the short end 100 basis points. And on the long end, the 10-year Treasury yield has gone up 120 basis points. And I’m sure you’ve read that that’s never happened before.

 

That is the steepest increase in long rates following an initial Fed cut. So I think what all we do with gold and hard assets, it’s all sort of related to this question. Why do you think that’s happening? Yeah, I think it’s because ultimately, the accumulated debt in the world is just so massive.

 

And so you take the situation with just the US funding situation this year, my understanding, again, if you look at the US, it has to roll over over $10 trillion in the marketplace, has to refinance. Because the genius that was the head of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, who used to be the head of the Federal Reserve, thought that you’re just going to keep all your money six months in a year and two years all short term. So you just never heard about putting money out longer term at low interest rates.

 

And so the US, just to use as an example, the refunding of debt is so large. I think the market’s looking at that and going, we’re not going to be buying that stuff at 3%. We’re going to buy that at 4.5% or 5%.

 

It’s just too much risk. So I think it’s telling us there’s risk out in the world. There’s concern about ongoing inflation that we haven’t wrestled it down.

 

And so they want a premium as you go out on the yield curve, which I think is perfectly reasonable. And it’s interesting because as we started going back 12 months ago, everybody said to load into long bonds, you’re going to make a ton of money as interest rates come down. We’ve kept short.

 

And it’s not because we’re geniuses on interest rates. I’m looking at it and going, I’m not sure how this is going to work out. Sometimes you just have to be honest and say, I’m not sure.

 

So I’m just going to make sure I get a guaranteed return. And it’s not worth losing money. But the reality is, this is different this time.

 

We’ve got so much debt to refinance. There is more risk. There is the problem of ongoing inflation because we’ve printed so much money around the world.

 

And that hasn’t gone away. So I think the bond vigilantes, if you will, the bond market is very astute. And they’re saying, no way, Jose, we’re not going for this.

 

We want higher rates. We’re not going to get suckered into buying all this stuff at 3% and then watching it blow out on us. And so I think that’s what it’s telling us.

 

It’s telling us that the situation in the globe is a bit more unstable. Inflation is a concern. And there’s just too much refinancing of debt that has to take place.

 

Not to mention also, I mean, the US, again, hopefully Trump will change this. But on the current course, you guys have to fund another $2 trillion just in deficits. And this has to stop.

 

I think it goes back to why you’ve got Donald Trump basically using a wrecking ball around the world and disturbing the global order somewhat. I mean, there’s a number of reasons for it. But I think part of it is that things have to change.

 

And that’s what we’re seeing. So on a scale of 1 to 10, where is your confidence in the Fed? My confidence in any of these central banks is exceptionally low. I’d put it maybe 1 or 2. I’m not a person that really looks to the central banks.

 

I love free markets. I think the price of money should be set in the markets, not by the Fed. And so I would be much more of a libertarian.

 

And I think since 1913, if you look at the loss of purchasing power in the American dollar, and the same thing if you look at what’s happened in Canada or any of the major Western countries, it tells you that the central banks have not been very good at their job. Totally agree. Well, this has been spectacular.

 

Thanks for spending time with us. I always enjoy your indomitable spirit. And I wish you the best of luck in 2025.

 

And we look forward to talking again soon. Terrific. Thank you so much, Trey.

 

Excellent job and look forward to speaking with you. Perfect. Have a good day.

 

Okay, bye now. That’s a wrap on another discussion here on Wealthion. Thank you for joining us.

 

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