Our Insights

This is our first video of the year and again happy to report that we did 21.3% last year and thus far this year we are up well over 3% now so I'm very very happy with what the portfolio is doing. I have got to admit right now what is going on in the world is just incredible with the Trump victory. He has moved since January 2nd so quickly to implement his policies and the truth be told nobody really knows what his policies are. Initially he started with tariffs against Canada and Mexico and in a very short time he was able to get  Canada and Mexico to acques to his  demands of better border patrol cracking  down on fentel etc so he's really  flexing his muscles and showing that he  is going to use the weight of the American government the American economy  to change things. Now tariffs appear to  be Trump's attack plan or weapon of  choice and normally tariffs are thought  of as very bad things as it creates  incredible costs and incredible  hardships on consumers so specifically I  think what Trump is trying to do is to  rebuild the US economy, move away from  globalism, more to a meral approach where America he says is no longer going to be  the dumping ground for consumer products  but America is once again going to start  manufacturing things. So, this is a massive change in what is going on now. Whether Trump persists on the tariffs or not remains to be seen so it's very hard to draw conclusions immediately, but I think he will continue to use them as leverage. The problem again with tariffs is if he brings tariffs into the US the costs for us consumers go up considerably and it's very damaging to other countries, Canada included. I have to admit I feel a bit sorry for our politicians who have been caught blindsided by this and don't really know what to do because we've never seen this before. Ultimately I think Trump is  trying to as I mentioned strengthen  the US economy's industrial base again  and with the revenue he takes in from  tariffs it's quite possible he may want  to do a tax cut for US citizens which  would in essence be a good thing but  he's going to have a really tough  time with the deficit. Now he's brought in Musk and others to try to cut cost tremendously in government programs but as we sit, the US economy and the global economy are still not in good shape. Currently both gold and silver are up sharply this year and in short what we are seeing is a global reset. Trump has effectively said that he is repatriating US gold back to the US and we’ve seen this through recently a delivery report of I think 400 to 450 tons of gold that need to be delivered from London back to the US. What we’ve seen is a problem with delivery as there’s not enough gold for the huge demand that has come through the comx where these contracts, instead of settling up in cash, are demanding the physical gold. So, this is just a continuation of what we've seen where the world in the globalist structure is no longer going to be the case in all countries and now including the US are bringing their gold home because effectively gold has always been used for international transactions.  I heard a very good quote from Vince Lany (a gold trader) who I listen to his  podcast daily said that for two  generations the government and the media  have been very good at taking gold  out of the equation where a lot of  people don't really understand what gold  is or what its historical practices  or what the historical relevance was and  as we go forward I believe the US and  all countries are repatriating  their gold so that they can use it going  forward. I think this trend is going to continue now. This is a reset much like 1934 where FDR confiscated gold and revalued it so that the US dollar dropped 40% against gold or Nixon going off the gold backing. With this massive  amount of gold being repatriated to the US it is resetting the stage going  forward so  as this takes place I think what  governments and central banks are  looking to do around the world is to  increase the amount of gold they have on  the balance sheet, reduce their US treasury bills and treasury bonds which  is a problem for the US treasury as they  have to issue I believe anywhere from 7 to 9 trillion dollars of bonds this  year. So what I think they're trying to do is  repatriate the gold not go back to the  gold standard but one thing what we have  seen is Judy Shelton wrote a book  recently and Trump nominated her in his  first term for Secretary of the  federal reserve and she did not pass  the approval process. But she wrote a book where she's recommending that the US issue gold back bonds again not necessarily going back to a gold standard but using gold in the process of finance.  

Gold's elevation to a tier one asset in the banking system is a massive change that will have significant implications going forward. Gold will now be used in the global banking system in ways we haven’t seen in our lifetime and will become a more relevant asset in the investment world. To understand how big of a change this we are must look back at when it was removed from the banking system originally and why it has come back. Now the current global US dollar-based system was created in 1944 at the Breton Woods conference in New Hampshire. Gold was pegged at $35 an ounce to the US dollar and other countries could peg their currency value to the US dollar as well. This agreement was a huge benefit to the US but had its challenges and weaknesses. The system in its original form began to break down in the 1960s resulting from a massive increase in US dollars globally. The US in effect had created too many dollars when compared to the gold that they needed to back it. Other countries had begun to demand gold for their US dollars because those dollars were not worth what the peg stated. By 1971 the US stopped pegging the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce because countries demanded gold for their dollars and had depleted the US gold reserves ending this arrangement. It essentially let the price of gold float freely in the open market. Gold had been illegal for US citizens to hold since 1934 but in 1975 the US reversed this law, and it was once again legal for US citizens to own gold. January 1st, 1975 was the first day of this change and it was expected that there would be massive demand for gold as a result, but this didn’t happen because at the same time the bank of international settlements conveniently devalued gold's collateral value on bank balance sheets. This move effectively made it much more costly for banks to hold gold and as a result banks in the western financial system sold their gold in massive quantities. This selling value completely crushed the expected increase in gold buying by US citizens. This policy devaluation of gold's value in the banking system helped to drive the price of gold down by almost 50% over the next year and a half, temporarily crushing the bull market in gold however continuing inflation. Problems in the US persisted throughout the mid-1970s and this brought back buyers into gold investor. Demand for gold eventually took the price to a new high of $850 in 1980 but the impact of gold’s demonetization by the banking system would be obvious to market watchers. Massive money printing over the next several decades would drive a stock bond and real estate bull market in which gold as an investment became an afterthought. Gold had been effectively removed from the banking system in 1975 and wasn't needed by investors anymore fast forward to 2019 and gold has once again been brought back into the global banking system. The BIS’s Basal 3 agreement raised gold status from a tier 3 asset to a tier 1 asset. This rule change would effectively remonetize what was originally done back in 1975. This move would now make gold just as valuable as other tier one reserve assets such as US dollars and US treasuries within the banking system. This move means that now central banks and governments, the biggest players in the world, will want to buy gold more than at any time in the last 50 years. This policy change was done with very little fanfare and virtually no business media coverage. Subsequent to this change we have seen massive central bank buying most recently in 2022 and 2023. This central bank buying has helped drive gold to a new current all-time high of $2,800 an ounce. This buying is very likely to continue another factor that is important to consider is that currently the BRICs nations are in the process of creating their own settlement currency or unit using gold. The gold waiting in this unit ensures that gold will be backing payments when settling trade imbalances between these BRICs nations. This new arrangement will increase gold's usage going forward and should help drive the current gold price much higher in years to come. Western nation’s central and commercial banks will be scrambling to accumulate more gold. For this new reality with the revaluation of gold and its possible new use in international trade settlement it is likely that we will see a large change in the relative value between gold and hard assets versus financial assets like stocks bonds and real estate. Gold will rise and financial assets will drop in relation to one another with the ever-increasing global conflicts around the world gold's value and usage internationally will rise as well. Given the changes we've discussed this is why we believe that gold will become an important asset in investment portfolios going forward in order for investors to preserve their net worth and properly hedge the financial assets they own they must have a portion of their portfolio in gold. 

The BRICs meeting in Russia has now concluded and as expected there were some interesting developments that were brought forward in this meeting. As I've stated before the Breton Woods Agreement that’s been in place since the 1940s with the US dollar as the dominant world reserve currency is slowly whittling away. Now one of the things that triggered this was the US action in removing Russia from the Swiss system. Basically, the US froze Russian assets, swift trading system, and as a result took the Russians off the swift trading system which is basically the system that the whole globe uses. Now having seen these other nations that are afraid of falling on the wrong side of the US said maybe we should help the Russians develop an alternate trading system so that we don’t get frozen out from the trading because of US sanctions. So, the BRICs have really moved quickly in developing an alternative trading system to the US dollar. Now this is a very important development that I can't emphasize enough that's going to influence and affect investors globally. In short the Breton Woods Agreement allowed the US  to have commodities globally priced in US dollars and now this was a huge  benefit because the US could print  lots of money run deficits which they've  done since the early 60s and the excess  money that they were printing and  running these deficits could be absorbed  globally meaning countries outside of  the US always needed US dollars to buy  commodities. Countries were happy to keep US dollars on reserve but also buy US treasuries. Now this is changing because countries have as we've seen with the Ukraine war don't want to have a lot of US dollar assets and treasuries if they run a file of the US. So, this meeting in Russia was very significant to the BRICs settlement system. One of the things that was proposed that Vladimir Putin has said they'd like to produce a BRICs precious metal exchange and commodity exchange so that commodities will trade in their nations under their control as opposed to the west. Right now, commodities have been largely priced in New York City and London although Shanghai has recently developed in the past two decades. By pricing their own  commodities the BRICs nations feel  they'll get a much better price for  their commodities and hence that will  benefit their economy so the BRICs  developing a different trading system  using 40% gold is a big event and as  I've mentioned there's been very little  coverage here in North America on this  so I did a write up last week showing the history of  the US dollar dominance and how it's  changing. We've also produced a short bullet point highlighting the import important points from my article.  I encourage you to look at that and if you have time to read my article again because it's going to have a big impact on investment returns going forward. It's a long-term progression but as it stands now one of the reasons why gold and silver may have run up so much this year is the markets are preparing for what is developing in this BRICs settlement system. So what I  think this means for investors  specifically in the US and Canada is  that over the next decade or two we're  going to see a rise in hard assets like  gold and commodities, oil etc and a  decline in financial assets meaning  stocks, real estate and bonds because  with a different, alternative trading  and currency system, it's going to be  harder to create leverage in this world  and let's face it leverage has been a  massive driving factor between behind  the asset gains in stocks and really  state over the last 40 or 50 years. So please have a look at my article and the bullet points as I think this is a very large issue and a big turning point in how the world does business going forward. 

Yesterday the US federal reserve cut interest rates 50 basis points taking the fed funds rate down from 5 and a half to 5% and this is a very significant event because it means now that the globe is in a loosening cycle the federal reserve has cut rates half a percentage point. This basically allows other central banks around the world to start cutting interest rates and continue to do so as the global economy appears to be slowing. Specifically in the US the federal reserve cut rates believing that the economy now needs help and as a result we’re likely to see many more rate cuts to come over the next one to two years. Now if we look at the bond market the US federal reserve controls short-term interest rates meaning the overnight lending rate between banks is controlled by the federal reserve. However, the bond market is set by traders, investors etc., who every day, buy and sell bonds and determine what the interest rate is for any specific period. So, the fed only controls the short term, the markets control the longer term however the two-year bond is a very important indicator. Jeff Gunak at Double Line Capital who's one of the largest bond fund or fixed income managers in the world always states how important it is to look at the 2-year bond. Now the 2-year bond currently as of yesterday was at 3.6%. The fed funds rate was at 5.5%. This is a difference of 90 basis  points and I read an article the other day where the  author indicated this is one of the  largest discrepancies or differences  between the fed funds rate and the  two-year bond rate 190 basis points and  what it says is effectively that the  federal reserve is behind the curve  meaning the fed now has to catch up to  what the bond market has been saying. So, the two-year bond has rallied dramatically taking yields down to 3.6% and in order for the fed to get a normalized yield curve and a normalized yield curve is when short-term rates are lower than longer term rates. The fed has  to cut at least two full perent  percentage points to normalize the curve  so it looks like we're in for as I  mentioned a lot of interest rate cuts  going forward and what this means is  that effectively central banks around  the world are cutting interest rates to  devalue their currency in order to  stimulate loan growth to reflate  economies but the one problem now is  that inflation that's been coming down  isn't necessarily under control or  finished with. So the fact that the  central banks are making money cheaper  at a time where inflation is still  effectively in the system raises some  real problems so what this effectively  means for investors going forward for  stocks it's quite likely stocks may  rally initially on the euphoria of  interest rate cuts however the reason  interest rate cuts are occurring as I  mentioned is because the economy is  weakening and with a weakening economy  it's quite likely we will see earnings  numbers for the US economy and for  stocks coming down. So, the stock mark market could be vulnerable over the next 3 to 6 months for precious metals and commodities it's quite bullish. As I mentioned the currencies of the world are going to be devalued by lower interest rates and as a result hard asset could do very well. So, for investors going forward it's important to remember we have just started an interest rate cycle lowering the cost of money and as a result we will see I think very volatile markets and a lot of uncertainty going forward. I do expect the precious metals to continue to rally on the continued inflation fears and the geopolitical problems that are occurring right now in the world.