Silver Price Prediction 2026: The Global Currency Reset | Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson has been a wealth manager for over 40 years and he's based out of Switzerland. Where in Switzerland? We don't know. He's [laughter] he doesn't really like to share that information, which is exactly what I would expect from a wealth adviser based out of Switzerland. He runs a YouTube channel and he posts on LinkedIn. He started doing it about 5 years ago and he has about 120,000 subs on YouTube, which we're discussing wealth management is pretty impressive. He generates millions of views a month and most recently uh because he focuses on silver, gold, the metals market, he's just going nuts. And so we got a chance to sit down with him and talk to him about what's going on. Silver's tripled in the last year. Gold has doubled. Um why is that these are we're entering historic times where our dollar is being devalued. Uh there's geopolitical issues. Silver has huge industrial demand. So that's having an impact on it. And we really wanted to ask him what's going on both like now today and is this similar from previous bull cycles? Is it different? Why so? And he was just a wealth of information. He's very techsavvy. He keeps pulling up charts and things that you're going to see. But it's very approachable as well. In fact, he still takes calls today from anybody who wants to just chat with him for free. He has many calls a day just to help. Um, I think it's mostly older people that don't know what they're doing with their wealth and and don't know what's going on today. Just help them out and tell them where what how they should be thinking about allocating their portfolios and things. Um, so I'm grateful we got to talk to him. He's very entertaining and I think you're really going to like it. Um, if you haven't subscribed, please do. Please like, do all of those things. It really helps us out and I'm so grateful that you that anyone is listening. like these conversations are so interesting to me and I just think there's someone out there who will also find these conversations interesting. So, thank you for watching. Okay, welcome to the Austin and Matt podcast. I wanted to start by hearing a little bit about you. Um, I see you blown up on YouTube and I think the people out there would like to know a little bit about your background. Um so I worked for 47 years in the wealth management industry um uh with private banks uh mostly in Switzerland uh as an unblenmished career and when I got to 65 years old I decided to retire. Uh the plan was I'd probably write a book about investing wealth management. Um but uh I never quite got to write that book. I got write down a lot of ideas for it. Um but uh about what what what I did start doing was writing articles on LinkedIn almost. I'd never been on LinkedIn until I retired which is a bit dar because LinkedIn is supposed to be for working picking up a job. Yeah. I [laughter] didn't Yeah. But I didn't have time when I was working. I didn't have time to get a get another job. So when when I retired I thought I'll go on LinkedIn and maybe people can appoint me as a non-executive director to big companies and things. Um, but I started writing articles and suddenly got a quite a following on LinkedIn. It went from zero to 10,000 followers. I don't know how many I am now, but it's not a lot more than that. Uh, and then uh because I was writing articles, I got um one YouTuber, his name's Mario, he wrote to me and said, "Clive uh you wrote an article about the Federal Reserve. Would you come on my show and discuss it?" So, I was quite honored to do that. So I went on his show and the video that we did blew up. It went like half a million views. Uh now normally he was getting like at the time 10,000 views. Uh but the consequence of that getting half a million views on that video uh was that lots of people wanted me on their shows. So I got a lot of invites and I was so for the next two years I was accepting invites to go on people's YouTube shows. uh and you know the the feedback I got from people who watched the shows was was encouraging. It was the sort of feedback which made me want to do more. You know, if people said, "God, I can't stand this old funny duddy, you know, [laughter] out of okay, well that's fine. Don't have to do it." But re reality, the the comments were very good. Very, very, very, very nice people. Lots of nice people on the internet saying nice, very nice things. So, uh, after two years, I thought, well, why not do my own show, you know, and I started it. I I didn't plan to sign up with Google. I just just just planned to put up YouTubetubes and see what happened. But then because I was getting quite a lot of hits, uh my wife said, "Well, why don't you sign up for their monetization program, get paid?" So I thought, well, why not? You know, you have to fill in a lot of forms. That was about that was nearly a year ago now, I guess, maybe nine months ago. Uh so I filled in a lot of forms and uh kept doing it really. That's it. And kept doing it. Now I now I'm doing my own show. I'm trying to do one to two a week. That's incredible. What uh how does it compare to your your actual your previous career of wealth management and now you're talking to the camera one to many and I guess taking some one-on-one calls like how does it feel to be doing it this way versus sort of doing it in the office meeting with people for 40 years? Well, the technologies moved on. Of course, we didn't really have Zoom until COVID came. uh you know co covid was kind of what uh changed it but as far as I was concerned in wealth management the clients weren't they were older people and they didn't really adopt zoom at all so it still carried on with the telephone uh but we we had to stop meeting the clients and then of course uh retirement came at in 2021 just as as co was finishing um so this is a new thing for me going on uh camera. Uh but I'm not afraid of it. I've been sitting in front of clients face to face for 47 years. Uh and most of them need what I regard as very basic and simple concepts. They needed explaining to them. Uh and what I thought when I went on YouTube to start with, I thought that my audience would be people like me who'd worked in the finance industry, who knew all about investments. But I guess a lot of them just took one look at me and thought, you know what, I know all that. I don't need him to tell me. Uh but what was happening the questions were coming in from people who said how do I get a stock broker or I've heard of shares I think I should I think I should do something. I'm 65 years old. I've got my lump sum. What do I do? Um so I realized that the audience is people who are broadly speaking above their 40s and mostly in their 60s or 70s. They've got money, but they've never been trained in money. They've worked in some other industry, whether it be plumbing or dentistry or or medicine or surgery or whatever. Um, and now they've suddenly realized they should be doing something. And I think the other thing which is changing now is we're in a world where what's happening to the monetary system is out there. They they are hearing it. They're saying, you know, is my money I'm, you know, I'm 65 years old. I might live another 30 years plus. My dad actually lived to 94 years old. That would be 30 years plus. Um, they're saying, what's my money going to buy me in 30 years time? And they're kind of realizing not not a lot. So, they're starting to think they should do something to in a way protect themselves. The real obviously the dilemma for most people is that should they take risk I volatility risk ups and downs which is very unsettling for someone who's never done it but that is the way you protect yourself or should they stay in the safe investments of watching their their buying power dwindle away. Yeah, it's almost no decision is also a decision, right? So to not go take any volatility is to accept just having a hole in your boat that just keeps leaking forever. I you know I think the people who do listen to me want to do something. They they want to and they're willing to um and it's just a question of when I if I'm doing the the speaking to them on a one-on-one basis, it's a question of making sure they don't just dive in and say, "Right, that's it. I'm going to put everything in the stock market or uh you know it's softly softly catch the monkey. So try with two or 3% and see how you feel. Have you ever seen a moment where metals seem to be like a a high volatility trade like they are right now or does this seem a little bit new like in your whole career? This is not new for me. we had the same thing and I I'm trying I I I can't exactly remember when it was but it must have been um yeah I think it must have been after 2000 uh let me think yeah it would have been from about 2000 up to about 2010 roughly uh and the goal was going through the roof I mean it was uh it was very very exciting you know watching it go from 200 to 250 260 300 and you know I think it hit 850 in the end uh and it was a very exciting period. But literally gold uh more than tripled. It was it was I think it end up quadruple what it was um at the time which was the 850 mark being it had come from say $200. Um and I know I'd been invested in gold long before it that bull market even started. Uh but it was very exciting stuff watching it and going on um there was a forum which I went on at the time called uh it was part of a a website called raging bull which doesn't exist anymore at least it's been taken over by another company unrelated and they had uh lots of forums in there hundreds of forums one was called the coffee shop and the coffee shop was where everybody who wanted to talk about gold or silver went we talked about gold really not silver um so it was a a nice place where you could go and discuss with others um what was happening, what might happen to the gold price and why. So you've seen gold run triple in the past was the same rhetoric happening back then that's happening now as far as like this is the end of the world, this is the end of the dollar, the fiat system, everything's crumbling. Like was that a similar narrative back then or was it different? No, no, not at all. Not at all. It was basically the um monetary inflation catchup story. So the the the the only story I recollect of the time and there may have been others but the one I recollect was basically they they are printing money they're expanding the money supply and that money supply is going to cause inflation and gold keeps up with inflation. That was perhaps the only there may have been other stories but that's the only one I remember. There was no question of the monetary system failing as we now know. So what's different this time? Because we are printing money. We are we do have a bunch of inflation happening and so why is why do you feel or do you feel that this time is different than the last time that gold has run up like this? We all know that what the levels of government debt around the world are unsustainable. It's not me saying it. These are very important people. the heads of central banks, chief economists, uh people who are paid to know, heads of treasuries, you know, they they are they themselves are saying it. Of course, it's not I'm not saying it because they say it. I say it because I see it myself as well. It's perfectly obvious that when you live way beyond your means, time is running out. Um, and that applies whether you're a family running up credit card bills where the interest exceeds what you earn or whether you're a government running up debts where the interest is going to exceed what you can collect in taxes. Um, you know, there are there are examples in history where the money has been debased. I think this is slightly different because this is a story more about um debt and more about the global currency and the in the interlocking of all the currencies because we're I think every currency every western country every large one is kind of dependent on every other one. uh you know if one one of them if any one of them fails any one of the large currencies fails there'll be a I think there'll be a global panic where everyone says are we next uh and that will sort of be a domino effect it'll be self self-fulfilling and of course we got all the banks around the world who are cross-lin many many ways so you know I think giving you an example let's say Japan uh was to spiral into a debt situation which became unsustainable and that's a likely scenario that would have an impact on bonds from Europe and the USA as well causing those bonds to see their yields rising at the same time which would then make funding of the deficits much more much harder and therefore bring the end close closer and closer. It sort of creates a run and I think that was a little bit by design, don't you think? To to intertwine all of the global currencies in the name of globalization and in the name of uh getting all the countries to play nicely with each other. It seems like that was done on purpose, right? And maybe this is a maybe everybody knew where it was going to go because it is fiat currencies. But it does seem like it started to go that way specifically to encourage global trade, right? you know, I'm not I'm not sure there was any kind of conspiracy to do something like that. But it's it's quite normal that things have gone that way because the communications of this world have opened up. The infrastructure, the uh supply chains have opened up in many different ways which wasn't possible 50 or 100 years ago. uh and as as it becomes easier to trade with foreign nations, uh as it come becomes easier to transfer money from nation A to nation B, particularly when we're dealing with uh a fiat system as opposed to physical gold, which is maybe a little bit harder. uh in that kind of environment it's quite natural and normal that countries are trading with each other in a much you and the the links between different nations become uh more numerous and stronger. Uh of course we might be going backwards a little bit now um as some countries start to reing their horns about doing business with their uh old friends shall we say. Well, do you It reminds me of like in 20ou in 2022, uh, the US administration froze government assets uh over the Ukraine war. I think they froze something around 600 billion. And as far as I've been looking at and listening to and reading, it seems like that was a key point that sort of sent a message to the rest of the world that let everybody know, hey, like your dollars are safe with America until they decide it's politically inconvenient and then they could freeze them. And that sort of started maybe it was already going in that motion, but that continued to uh aid in them starting to kind of get off the dollar a little bit more and get into metals. Does that do you do you agree with that? Yeah, I mean the the the whole idea of sanctions is to try and change behavior, but you have to be careful who you're dealing with. Um, you know, if you're imposing a sanction on an individual, uh, you can basically force him or or tell him what to do. But if you're trying to impose a sanction on a giant country like Russia or China, it's very hard to impose your will on them through the sanctions. Uh, because they can just stick two fingers up you and say, you know, we'll do what we want. So in a way that's been that the sanctions have have not had any effect. I mean it hasn't achieved the objective of ending the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. And I think that's a lesson that the world is is learning. Um, but the the the other side of that that equation of showing that they can put sanctions on anything they like, weaponize the dollar, is one that where countries are saying, well, we're friends with the United States, or so we think, but now we're not so sure how things are going to work out. Should we be as exposed as we used to be to the dollar? I mean, we've been doing our we've been doing our job. We've been selling doing doing the nice thing. We've been selling our goods really cheaply to America and then we they've been paying us with money they print out of thin air and we've been very good. We've been taking these dollars and sticking them in our treasury. We've been really really nice to them and now they're turning around and telling us we're their enemy. Well, if we're their enemy, why would we why would we why would we do any of that? Yeah, it makes total sense, especially with the idea of printing it out of thin air. It just seems, you know, and I What what school do you ascribe to? I mean, there's the Keynesian economics, there's the Austrians. Um, how what do you do what do you see as a better system? Well, you know, first of all, I'm very glad that I'm not running a central bank or a government because uh you know, the it's a it's a very very hard business to to get it right and I not going to pretend that uh any one of these systems is better. Uh you know, I can I can certainly see the benefit to mankind of having a gradual increase in the money supply. um uh preferably without the government getting more into debt. Although we're in that situation uh in all western countries because that's the way the system works. But increasing the money supply in general is a good thing because it it greases the wheels of the economy. Um but on the other hand uh those who have the wealth would perhaps say uh if if their wealth is in the form of monetary savings they would say I want sound money so that I know that what I've saved today will still be worth the same 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. I don't want to take any risk. I want I want I I want to live in a world where I can save without risk and know that it will still buy me in 20 years what it buys me today. Now, we can't say that anymore um because the monetary inflation um and when I say monetary inflation, I'm really talking about the levels of government debt more than I'm talking about the money in circulation. Uh because a lot of people haven't realized the narrative of has shifted from 20 or 30 years ago. 20 30 years ago, the narrative was increase the money supply that's inflationary. But I think the narrative is now increase the government debt. That's inflationary because when the government borrows money, the government is getting poorer. It spends that money and someone out there gets richer. And that richer person, whoever it is, is going to say, "What do I do with all this extra money?" Well, he's he in the world we live in today, he can't buy any more pizzas or hamburgers or cups of coffee there. you know, and even if he does, it won't change the price of cups of coffee. So, what does he do? He takes that extra money and puts it into something else, whether it be property or gold or bitcoin or the stock market or works of art or royalties or something or paintings, doesn't really matter. Th those those people who collect the money as the governments get poorer want to buy things. And and what that does mean is that even though you might think, "Oh, well that's the rich buying themselves fancy yachts or whatever, it doesn't really affect me." Well, it does affect the man in the street because sooner or later they're going to reach retirement and they're going to want the sort of luxuries that you have in retirement, which are generally things in short supply. things like uh having a nice home, things like um being able to pay for medical expenses, um things like uh having going on expensive cruises, you know, there's maybe a lot of things that people dream of when they retire and the but they and they might be saving all their life only to get to retirement to find that all those things they want in retirement, they can't have all of them now because everything all of those things are costing a lot more. Therefore, they've got to focus their retirement on things like healthare or something else because there's enough to go around anymore. So, for the average person who might want to join the rich people in saving some things, are you would you recommend more of looking at like a hard asset like gold or silver or more of a productive asset like buying a piece of property and planting a big garden or or do you advise something and I'm talking about people that don't have millions, just people that are living on a salary, a 9 to5 sort of salary. What do you see as a good way to save actual value for them? Well, first of all, everything depends on your age and what you expect to earn in the future. Um, what I'm telling very young people now, I'm talking about people who are 18, 20 years old, um, who've only got their own savings. In other words, they haven't inherited any money. is if you're young, you can take an all-in bet on something you really believe in. Um, now what I do say as a sort of rider on that is the number of investments you should have is your age minus 20. So if you're 21 years old, you can have an all-in bet on one thing. When I say that that's the minimum number of investment minimum, so 21 you should have a minimum one. 22, you should have a minimum of two investments. By the time you're 30, you should have a minimum of 10 investments. By the time you're 65, you should have a minimum of 45 investments to be properly diversified. But so, the younger you are, the more you can take a focused bet and pray that it works. One of two things is going to happen. Either you're a genius and you'll be well on the road to making some money. You'll be able to go into the next year and have two investments instead of one. or you'll lose the lot, in which case you've had that punch on the nose and you won't make the same mistake again. So, you're learning young. Okay? There there's there's not a great deal of point in a young person taking his savings from his first year of salary and saying, "I'll have a widely diversified portfolio of 45 investments." Yeah, it'll do what's written on the tin. It will do better than putting it in the bank. But why? There's no point. You might as well um focus your your bets. But as you get older, let's say you've got to the age of, I don't know, 50 and you've now got some money and savings and you realize you should do something. Uh that's the point at which you shouldn't try and put all all their money in gold or all your money in equities or all your money in Bitcoin or all your money in property. But people have a pension to do that. Why? Because they know more about property than whatever or they they've read a book uh the Bitcoin standard. Once anyone's read the Bitcoin standard only believes in Bitcoin, they'll only buy that or they've read um the book uh by Ben Graham, the intelligent investor. I think that's it. Yeah, the intell they read Ben Graham's intellig. But the reality is they should find a way to have some of everything so they can learn a little bit about everything. Now, that doesn't mean to say uh if you if it we're talking property that you have to become a landlord. Not necessarily. Uh you know learning about property could be as simple as uh having a home extension done at your own home. It could be making your garden better. You know it's it's money going in which will hold its value when you come to resell. Uh but it can also mean uh investing in um uh real estate investment trusts which are diversified pools of properties. could be residential properties, could be shopping malls, could be hospitals. Um, many of these uh real estate investment trusts specialize in different types of properties. Uh, some specialize in what's called ecosystems. In other words, they'll pick an area around a train station and they'll own the the offices, the shops, the apartments, the hairdressers, the gyms, the the the the coffee shops, the restaurants. Uh, and they'll own and the transportation. They'll own the entire ecosystem. and they manage it in a very clever way to make sure they've always got tenants for the for the offices, always got tenants for the residential stuff, always got uh shoppers going to the shops. And but you know, the point is there's a real estate investment trust which fulfills every possible dream you might have about how you personally could manage real estate if you were doing it on your own and if you had enough money to do it. So, but you don't have to have enough money to do it. You could just buy a real estate investment trust. the minimum purchase is one share, which might be2 or $3 depending on the stock. Um, and now you're in it. And if real estate does what's written on the tin over the decades, it goes up in value that provided the people running that re real estate are good, your properties will rise with the times, the rents will go up. And of course, you're collecting every year a nice fat dividend. Usually the dividends on these are quite high. And most people will discover that when they look into it, in most cases, the dividends you're collecting are pretty much the same, if not sometimes better, than what you would be able to collect yourself if you ran your own real estate portfolio. Because if you run your own real estate portfolio, not only are you going to have to deal with accountants, tax advisers, insurance companies, tenants, God help us, uh, you know, and vacant vacant periods, repairs, uh, repair men of every description. Uh, and of course, you're going to have to have a lot of your own time. You know, even if you even if you employ an agent, it still takes time to employ the agent to have to do all this. And after you've paid for all this, you're going to discover that even if you're getting 6, 8, or 9% rent on the price you paid for the property, after you've deducted all these ongoing things, including taxes, by the way, because taxes are no small bite of the cherry here for the government, you'll find that you end up with probably less than you're getting by getting dividends from a real estate investment trust where you sit on your bottom and watch the money come in day off year after year. And it's liquid. Yeah. And and of course, yes, you unlike your own building that you bought, you can turn it into cash anytime the stock market's open. 8 hours a day, uh, Monday to Friday, 365 days of the year. So, you might not like the price you get, but at least there's a price. That's not the case. If you go and buy an apartment and let out, you might find that there's no buyers because the tenants not paying his rent, and nobody wants a wants a property where the tenant isn't paying the rent. Well, how would you convince someone like my age? I'm 37, so I should have 17 investments, but how would you convince me not to go all in on silver after after I just heard Keith Newire say that he's all of his financials for Majestic Silver is at $32 an ounce silver. How does one just have the discipline to stand back and not just go all chips in on silver right now? Because that's that's what I really need to know. Well, first of all, I do think it um not only silver, but silver miners and gold miners too, but put put them and platinum miners. We're going to put that all into one bucket here. Um the prospects are very good. Um particularly if you look at the miners, um and I've been doing some maths today on the miners, we only need the metal price to stand still and the profits of all these miners are going to be much much higher in the quarters which follow. Um, and doing some maths on the back of the envelope, it looks to me not only will the profits be much higher, the rise in the share price has not taken account of the rise of rise of the metal fully, even though they've many of them have risen faster than metal, but there's a much more leveraged effect on profits of a mining company when the price of the metal rises. So most of if if today's price holds most of these miners should be significantly higher in price and in many cases even if the price were to fall 30% from here most of them will still be or should be much higher in price in about 6 months or a year and a half. Um why but as for you why why wouldn't you go 100% um into mining even though it seems to be a really good story at the at the moment? Well, you never know which way the wind blows. All kinds of things can happen from government actions to surprises uh in the in the sector. Uh there could be a host of things which might happen. You know, the the solar industry might suddenly define find that using um paper works better than silver. I mean, I don't know. It's obviously not going to happen, but you don't know. Yeah, I think graphine actually could be a threat. I have seen some graphine research papers come out that say it could be a good like conductor of electricity. I know silver is one of our highest conductive development. Well, there you are. You find yourself a diversification. So, why why aren't you in two investments? [laughter] Well, gold as well, right? I think it would be just gold. Oh, wait. We're already at three. [laughter] We're at three. But you forgot about platinum, you know. Okay. But let but let's keep going. You know, if you look around the world and and you study hard, there are countless exciting stories. Some of them are undiscovered and some of them are overpriced. It depends which way you look. You have to look. But the world is full of opportunities and the people who are running those opportunities actually fully believe in them. Why are they in their that their particular opportunity and not saying screw this? Why would I own a hamburger shop? Whatever it happens to be, I should be buy just buying silver and sitting on it. They're not because they believe in it as much as you believe in silver. Uh and I believe in silver, but it doesn't mean to say I'm going to go and put uh more than a certain percentage exposed to that area. Um you know, I traditionally said 5 to 10% was not a bad number to have. I was typically a little bit higher than that. And probably with the rise in prices of everything, I'm probably closer to I might even be 30%. Uh I hope not. and probably more like 25%. But um 30% is is is a lot to have exposed to one general risk. So gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and the metal mining stocks and so forth. This is an ecosystem where they'll all behave in the same kind of way. I think it's going to do really well and I'm prepared to take the risk if I've got 30. You're not going to pair back if you have 30? [laughter] No. Um because it didn't cost me 30. Yeah. You inherited it. It grew up. Cost me 10. Yeah, that's right. It cost It cost me 10 or 15. So that that that's that's why I don't feel um so stressed. If I just bought 30% from zero, I would feel that I had made a foolish decision. Well, you made a really good point about those silver miners cuz they're the price to mine the silver out of the ground is not rising with the price of silver going up. And so if it costs them $20 to mine an ounce out of the ground and it was at $40, they have a 50% margin. But if silver's $100 now, they got 80% margins and it's just, you know, and that that would warrant a repricing of the stock by analysts and by everybody who buys it. It's just literally better margins alone. And and even more extreme are the profits of the gold and silver royalty companies because a royalty company hasn't got any costs at all. All it does is collect 10% of the gold coming out of a mine and sell it at whatever the price is. So it doesn't matter if the m the mine doubles its production. It might cost the mine more to dig up twice as many ounces, but it certainly doesn't cost the go the royalty company any more. just gets twice as much gold coming in the door which you can sell at the price going. So a royalty company can operate on two employees whereas a mining company probably has to have hundreds of employees or thousands depending on the company. So you know and and as you talk about the as you mentioned the leveraged effect on the profits of any company which is involved in the sector is very significant. There are companies which were not profitable at $30, $35 an ounce of silver, but they are massively profitable once the price goes above $40, which is what we've happened. So, their profits might have gone from $1 an ounce of silver to $50 an per ounce. So, there will be companies out there where we're going to see the profits 50 times as much. Now, that doesn't necessarily translate into 50 times the share price because quite often there was a certain expectation that the silver price would go higher. I mean, the people have always been expecting that we'd get back to the old days of $50 silver, which nobody really expected to go so fast through it. Well, there are I suppose there were quite a few people. Um I was one of them. But um [laughter] but in g in general most people saw that if had this mindset if it ever gets to 50 again I'm out. Right. One thing one thing I'm hearing is that uh large like retirement funds in the United States aren't really invested in silver mining companies because the market's too small. Is do you know if if that's the case? Yeah. So the the gold mining sector is a tiny tiny fraction of the value of Nvidia. Okay. So you could take I haven't got the figures. Well, last time I looked was about 6 months ago. When I looked about 6 months ago, I think it was like um onetenth of or 15% of Nvidia would have bought every single gold mining company that existed. It's probably now 30 or 40% of Nvidia because the gold mining sector's risen. Um, that's one company on Wall Street could have bought the entire gold mining sector. Now the silver mining sector is just onetenth or was it's probably bigger than that now, but it was at the time I looked onetenth of the size of the gold mining sector. Now given that it it's risen faster than gold, I would say it's probably about 17th or 16th of the size or probably about 1/8 of the size of the gold mining sector. So the silver mining se sector as a sector to invest in is very very small. A tiny amount of money would move and does move it a lot. And the platinum sector is onetenth of the silver sector. Wow. So you can imagine how tiny that is. So a a little tiny tiny tiny fraction one in a hundred people saying I'll just put 1% of my money into platinum would really move the platinum mining sector significantly. There are not a lot of platinum mining companies around and the few which exist uh there's are in Russia or South Africa. Oh do you feel well okay there's a few questions here. Do you feel comfortable investing in jurisdictions like Russia and South Africa? That's the first question. Well, I did feel comfortable investing in Russia till they they uh told me my shares were blocked. Um, did that happen? Yeah. Well, yes. I mean, I I I'm a globally diversified portfolio investor because I don't I I don't want to be excessively exposed to any country and that includes the United States. Um, so I try to limit my exposure in any one country to a maximum of 20% and I'm already starting to feel uncomfortable at 20. Uh, but ideally it's 2 and a half% per country. Um, so yes, I did have uh I think I I had Ross Ross Neft. Oh, and I had a gold I Yes, I also had a Ross I had a London quoted gold mining company. Uh, I've forgotten the name of it. I think it's called Solid Core now, but it's still in my portfolio, but it's basically blocked. You can't do anything with it because this Londonbased company happens to have gold mines in Russia. That is incredible. But yeah, I I had but but you know, it's no big deal. You know that's when you have uh u a huge diversification across a lot of countries, it's part for the course that some might run into difficulties for a while, but because you have 49 other countries, it it doesn't really matter. You say, well, the other the others are doing great. Uh if all 49 all 50 of them get blocked, then then they've got a problem. Um but you know, I I'm assuming that we won't have the whole world lock up. I've heard you're supposed to invest in as many countries as your age minus 20. So if you get to 60, you should be invested in at least 40 countries by the time you're 60. Yeah. I think I if if you if you if you look at my my uh on my web page, clive.com, I've got a specimen portfolio which I produce each year called it's called Beat the Benchmark. So this one's called 2026 beat the benchmark. There's 40 stocks in it, but I think there's something like 25 28 countries in there where the stocks have been bought on each stock exchange of those 28 countries. There's probably about 30 stock exchanges. Do you have like brokerage accounts in all these different countries? H I just cur how do you actually if I wanted to go do that, how do I actually go buy all those shares? Well, we're in Switzerland, which is one of the most sophisticated countries in the world when it comes to finance. I can't imagine that there's any Swiss bank which couldn't couldn't access all 50 countries or 40 countries. Uh uh I mean I I but when I say can't imagine it, it never ceases to amaze me that I'm getting uh messages almost almost daily from people in countries like the UK, America, Canada, Australia saying my broker won't let me let invest in Poland or Mexico or uh or Sweden or I think what kind of you know what kind of broker are you with you know and there must be brokers out there like I I know there's some brokers um out there which have a larger rate range of countries um where where you can invest. But you know it it is frustrating for me when I'm saying to people be globally diversified. They're writing back saying my broker won't let me. Yeah, totally. Can I? And then they say but I found an ADR on the American stock exchange for this stock. Is it safe to buy it? Well, sometimes yes. But the trouble with ADRs is sometimes the volume is very very low and the bid R spread is too wide. Um, and I don't recommend that. I I mean I I say always buy on the local exchange. What's an ADR? An American depository receipt. So in some country many many companies decide to list their shares locally and in America and the American version of the share is called an American depository receipt ADR. So you technically you own a non US company but you're owning it through having bought it on the US stock exchange with a US uh is I don't if you know what an ISIN is but that's the code for the stock and it's it looks like a US stock but it's not taxed like a US stock. Ah so it's like a game of telephone with your money. You buy this and they buy that kind of it's a proxy to get it to to get access to those shares. Um, if if it's an ADR, anyone anyone with an anyone who can buy shares in America can buy those shares. It's dead easy to buy them. But what I'm trying to say is not every ADR uh has volume. Most of them do. Uh but, you know, if you look on the American stock exchange, you'll find ADRs from virtually every country on the planet. You know, Vietnam, Cuba, not Cuba, um um the Cuban stocks in America. um v probably Venezuela probably uh Peru, Mexico, I don't know, all over the place. Maybe not Iran. When you're when you're evaluating a jurisdiction, I'm really curious because I'm seeing a lot of people on online right now saying that it's very bullish for the precious metals that the United States is buying stakes in some of our mining and like rare earth minerals companies. But for me, I feel like it's a sign of desperation. I feel like the the country is probably not do has not done very well in managing it supply chains and its own natural resources. And it also makes me think that the rare earth minerals are probably going to start moving at government speeds which is probably not good for our overall like survivability of this. What is when you see like the US announcing they're going 10% into some of these strategic companies? What does that signal to you? I'm kind of curious how you see it. Um to be honest with you, I'm seeing it as publicity. I'm not really seeing it as anything which is going to make any difference. I mean, let's face it, uh it's dead easy on the streets of America to buy hard illegal drugs. Uh you know, if if the price of a rare metal is high enough, um you'll find a way people will find a way to get it. Clive, are you speaking from experience about the drugs in American streets? No, we don't have any drugs here in Switzerland. Oh, that's right. That's right. So, what do you see since you've been in this for so long? I'm just curious what is going on? What's different now? I really want to know like because we have all this inflation. I guess it's the debt to GDP ratio in America has gotten kind of bonkers and like how does this play out right now? Like can we just quantitative ease our way out of this like we did in 2008 or like why is if this is different, why is this different? Well, that was seven questions. Which one would you like me to answer first? All of them please. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um so let's start with why is this different? Um you know historically the precious metal sector kept kept pace with inflation. So retail prices go up by 5%, gold price goes up 5%. Maybe not in the same year but it was kind of like that. But what's changed now is people are front running what they see is going to happen. They don't care that gold or silver is running ahead of inflation. They're saying where are we going to be x years from now and where we're going to be x years from now is in a system which can't exist at least we can't the system we know today can't exist at some point it's it has to go wrong so they're saying I'd rather see I'd rather own something which I know will still be there when we get to the other side. So if you happen to own some gold, even if it's in a fund, and here we have the argument about whether paper's worth owning at all, but even if it's in a fund, there's a generalized belief that we'll get to the other side of some hyperinflation [snorts] or a crash or a default or a a bailin or whatever they or a replacement of the currency, whatever they decide, you'll get to the other side. What you had in bonds or cash may not buy you anything at all or certainly not as much as it did, but what you have in gold or silver will still be there and it will still be yours and you're not going to have to ask permission of some government or anybody for that matter to do what you want with it. And I think that's the feeling that people are getting. They're saying there's an awful lot going on the world. there's, you know, there's a hundred reasons why we need to be concerned about saving for retirement in the traditional way. Um, and I want something which gives me a plan B. I want a parachute. You know, I want a lifeboat because I don't know what's going to happen and I don't feel comfortable about it. So it it doesn't it we've moved away from the situation of comparing precious metals with the inflation rate and into the situation of saying uh what let you know something's going to happen and I want to frontr run it. Yeah, we were just chatting with uh another person the other day and he mentioned that gold and metals are a gifen good and that's the defined as a good where the higher it goes actually the more you want it and so it's sort of versus opposite you know price and demand you know it should the more expensive it gets the less I might want something but with gold or silver usually when the price goes up you you see that and that's a signal that actually I I need to have more of it actually and so maybe I agree with what you're saying that it seems like there's a bit of a a fun might be too big of a word for it, but everybody is running to the physical medal all at the same time just in to try and anticipate what's going to happen. Well, well, here here we're into the behavior of the crowd, the the the mayhem of of the mob, if you like. Um, when these things happen, if you're smart enough and can see the psychology of people going forwards, you can play these things very well. Now, I I don't profess to understand the psychology of of people, but what what I do know is that when bull runs run, they can run far longer and way beyond what people expect. But we always must expect along the way to have some very sharp pullbacks. That is the nature of every bull market in history, whether it be stocks or precious metals or anything else. Bitcoin is a perfect example of that. you have you have these large rises then sudden pullbacks then another rise up to a new all-time high then pull back and and it goes on like that whether you're talking with stocks or gold or anything. So those who are into the market they're always going to be climbing what's called a wall of worry when you see the price at what looks like an all-time high you say ah it's at the top of the chart. They're all see the charts behind me it's all at the top you can't see it there. There we are. They're all at the top of the chart. It can't go any higher is the mentality because we as human beings have a tendency to believe that when we see something at the top of the chart, it's going to go back down towards the middle. And if we see it at the bottom of the chart, we think it's cheap and it's got to go back up to the middle. It's going to So the the the mind of humans is trained to look for patterns. So when something is different from the way it was, we're looking for a return to the norm, to the mean, return to the mean. So humans naturally all there's two types of humans actually. A the majority of humans think that last week's price was the correct one. And the price you're seeing on the screen behind me must be a mistake. It's an anomaly. It can't be correct. So, I'm going to sell saying that mentally I'm thinking I'm going to sell my silver because I got to get out of here. But there's another army of people who are thinking I better I want to I've been wanting to buy it for a long time and I haven't done so now it's rising. I better hurry up before the price is higher next week. And that not only the private individuals who are uh thinking that they need to have they they've been they've known they should have had some for years. They've done nothing about it. Suddenly they've woken up and said, "Oh god, time's running out. I better run." So they're running into it. But we've also got the consumers of silver in terms of the manufacturing companies. Those manufacturing companies require a certain amount of silver to keep the production process going. Now they're hearing stories that there might be shortages out there. I'm not going to tell you whether I know whether there's a shortage or not. I don't know if there's a shortage. There could, but it looks looks to me like there is because we got multiple prices. We got, you know, price in Shanghai, which is different from the price in Comx. Then you go to a coin shop and try and buy some gold or gold or silver. They'll tell you one price, which is a huge premium above the spot. Then you then you try and sell them some of that price and they want they give you a huge discount on the price like like we've never seen before. You know, we got $20, you know, they're offering to buy it back, they're offering $20 below and to sell it to you, they want $20 above. You know, that's that's more than the entire price of silver a few months ago. Um, but why are they doing that? Because even they don't know where the price is going to be tomorrow. They can't take the risk that they buy it off you and it collapses 10 or 20% next week. And they can't take the risk to sell it to you because it might rise 10 or 20% next week. So, they widened their margins to guarantee themselves a profit. Now, eventually some uh calm will return to the market, but not now. It's, you know, the market is at the moment is volatile. It's got to stay volatile. So, we're going to have these big swings. Uh I I mean, statistics says the next move will be up because when something's hitting an all-time high, nine times out of 10, the next move is another all-time high. That's just statistics for you. So, the chances of the next move being a sharp move down is is about one in 10. Um but, you know, obviously at some point that we will we will hit a high whether it was yesterday or whether it's going to be tomorrow or 6 months from now. at some point we hit a high then we have a 20% pullback but that 20% pullback might come from $200 down to $150. We don't know. Um so but what I'm trying to say is in bull markets it's a wall of worry that is being climbed and at every moment in time there's a risk of a sharp pullback and when that happens people get shaken out. So coming back to your question of should you put all your money in silver? Well you're going to feel pretty awful if you do that and the next day happens to be the day that the bare market starts. So what what what I would suggest is you do you invest smaller amounts little by little. So no matter what happens, you will not ever feel like the last fool because the average price you'll pay if you buy on multiple occasions will always be less than the highest price ever. Therefore, you're not the world's last fool. I I think that's really precient advice. But in the comx, you mentioned the comx. What are what exactly are you seeing in the ComX? Because I'm hearing stories like crazy stories like oh they might run out of silver but it seems like they have like 400 million ounces or something ridiculous. How could they possibly run out of silver? So first of all let's talk about how much silver they actually have. They've got 415 million ounces of silver as of today in Comx. 415 million which is divided into two pots. One is called the registered silver which is silver which is available for delivery to meet futures contracts and the other pot is called the eligible silver which means it's of the right size and shape but it doesn't have the documentation at the moment uh because the holders of that silver currently have no intention of making it deliverable to meet the contracts. They don't they're not they're not short and therefore they're not putting their their silver into the regale which would be for eligible not for sale but it could be as soon as they say I want to sell it then it'll switch over. Yeah. So exactly so eligible silver sometimes moves some of it moves into register silver which means it would end up being part of the uh futures contract for delivery. But most of the almost all of the eligible silver is not for sale. It's held by longstanding holders, big institutions. Now, this is hearsay, but it's widely documented like that. Um, but some of it is held by institutions which trade silver. They're just not ready to sell it today, but at the right price, they'll move it. Um, but let's just talk about numbers. That 415 million is broken down at the moment into 113 million which is registered available for delivery. Do you know how many contracts how many ounces of silver outstanding in the March contract? March is coming up. March is a big one. So I'll tell you the answer in March as of today. If all of those contracts are called for delivery, which is unusual, but if they were called for delivery, it would require million ounces of silver. Now, there's only 415 million ounces of silver in COMX and of that only 100 million 130 million is available for delivery at the moment. So there's more contract more uh demands for silver because people have bought futures contracts and the coral is people are short 450 million. So it's 450 million long 450 million short. We don't know who the longs are. The longs could be institutions which have to get that silver come what may. They might be for example car manufacturers, silver panel, solar panel manufacturers, uh electronics industry, defense industry or other industries who've got to have it. Might be exchange rated funds who bought it forward because they've got they they've they've they've got money in the door. They can't find the spot silver, so they bought it forward anyway to get make sure they're covered. We don't know. We don't know who the longs are. They might be taking delivery. Could be family offices, could be hedge funds, we don't know. They might be taking delivery. Um, and we don't know who the shorts are, but we can assume they're they're what's called the bullion banks who traditionally roll over shorts and make some money because when you sell silver forward, you get a higher price for it than spot. So, you sell it forward, wait till the spot month, buy it back, and sell it forward, wait till the spot month, sell it forward, buy it back. So, it's a it's a a rolling thing guar as a guaranteed way of making money as long as you can get the silver when it matures. But if the silver isn't around and everybody else wants the silver as well, well at the moment there just isn't enough in comx. That's a fact. If all those contract now what we're going to get what I'm going to get to is how likely is it that those March contracts will be called for delivery as to the more customary uh thing which has happened in the past where most of them were rolled over in 2025. I'm just looking at it now. Every single month, the amount of silver called called for delivery was several multiples of what had been called for delivery in 2024. So month after month, more people than ever in percentage were calling for delivery than they had the month before. For example, in the month of November, four times as many uh comix delivery notices were delivered in December uh November 25 as November 24. But let's look at January 26. So, I'll start with 2024. Now, January is not a big month, but it gives us a feeling of which way things are going. In January 2024, 1,360 contracts were called for delivery. In January 25, 2370 contracts were called for delivery. That's nearly twice as much. How many ounces does one contract represent? 5,000 ounces. 5,000. When you say a thousand contracts, you have to multiply that times a 5,000 to figure out the ounces of silver. Okay. January is not a big month. The big month is March, just to put that in perspective. So, but what happens in January tells us what might happen in March. So we had 2024 2025 almost double the number of were called for delivery. 7 times as many have already been called for delivery as 2024. Seven times as many it's more than seven times so far 2025. That's 2024. So it's about three and a half about three and a half times 2025. Holy. So everybody is buying silver and rather than rolling it over into more paper contracts, they're actually standing for delivery of the physical silver. So it's being drained. So So what I can see and is approximately all of the contracts which were outstanding for January approximately have been called for delivery. Someone is taking almost all of them someone is taking that silver out. We don't know who it is, but they're saying, "I'd rather have the physical than a paper promise to get it in three months time because they could just roll that contract forward." So, that money is being that that silver is being taken out. Um, and I and it's not all of them, but it's it's a high percentage, a very high percentage and the highest percentage probably ever. Um so when when we get to March if we have a very high percentage of contracts called and I can tell you let's say in March uh 2025 there were three times as many contracts called in 25 as 24. So let's let's say it's four times as many as 25. So there were six and now I'm going to do some math on the back of the room here. There were 16,149 contracts called for delivery in March 25. Uh let's take four times that. Uh that's 64,000 roughly 65,000. So 65,000 contracts of 5,000 of of 10,000 ounces. Uh that's is that am I 325 million? You've done it good. 325 million ounces of which only 113 are available for delivery. So what happens? What if let's say let's say that happens and COMX doesn't have the silver what happens to the price of silver and what do they actually do like like so here's what happens the price and this is provided they don't decide to close the market or something stupid like that but in a free market what happens the price of silver goes up and up and up until someone says I'm rolling or or here you are. You know, I'm I'm out of here. Here's here's my sil you you take it. So, at a at a certain price level, the silver gets squeezed out of somewhere. But the trouble is, of course, it's still got to be in eligible the right size bars, 500 5,000 ounce bars, and there isn't enough eligible registered silver at the moment in existence to do that. You know, it's not even that much money. I was looking at it. 113 uh what was the number? 113 million ounces is only like 11 billion today in silver which like I mean that's a lot of money to me or you know whatever but 11 billion in the markets I mean Elon Musk could buy all of that with like a a credit card like that's really not that much in terms of value 11 billion is nothing I mean take take a a midsized mega cap company like Exxon Mobile that's 600 billion right so like and of course we're not even talking about the videos of Microsoft which are much much much bigger you know, we showed the trillions. So there's really this is a very thin market. This silver market is very thin. Yep. Well, you don't need a lot of people who hold Exxon Mobile or Nvidia or Microsoft or anything else to say, I'll I'll take 5% of my profit and stick it into the precious metals just in case. And the price goes to the moon. Yeah. And if if the like if Donald Trump steps up and says we need 500 billion more in military spending and and we have to have silver for our fanciest weapons that we used to kill each other with then I guess 11 billion could easily go towards silver the government. It sounds like that's like yeah very very reachable number. Yeah that's a little I mean it's a little scary I guess is the word. Is that right? reticence I would have on that is I probably wouldn't plan uh my investment strategy around what Mr. Trump says. No, no, no. Right. [laughter] No, I think there's I think there's a chance the Pentagon's probably buying. I think it probably has become a military strategic military. It's it it's possible, but it doesn't really matter. We don't have to know. We only have to listen to what silver is telling us about itself. What is it saying? It's saying the price is higher because more people want to buy it. And it doesn't we don't care. You know, silver doesn't care who wants to buy it. Doesn't it doesn't care that Joe Sap is uh walking down to the coin shop and saying, "Here's my silver. Uh what will you give me for this?" And the dealer says, "Well, I'll give you $20 below the silver price." Joseph, I don't like that. Give me more. You know, silver price doesn't care. What the silver price cares about is someone out there is paying the price. It may not be his coin shop, but someone's paying the price. Is there a chance that if I if I were to buy some like silver coins or some gold coins actually and they're listed as uh strategic minerals, is there a chance the government knocks on my door and comes and takes it from me? You know what? It's always possible they take anything you've got. you know, if you have uh something they want, whether it be property, uh they want to build a motorway through the middle of your house, um you know, you might you might have some recourse in some ways and some defenses, but at the end of the day, uh whatever, you know, if they decide that uh your there's a banking crisis and the banks have to be bailed out and everyone with more than $100,000 loses it, they can decide that just as happened in Cyprus. What about Switzerland? Do they do that in Switzerland? Well, it's never happened and I'd like, you know, I'd like to I'd like to hope not. Um, you know, I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of some sort of bank bailin, but you can never say never, you know. Um, that's why you have to be diversified across lots of financial institutions or more than one, let's say, and you have to be diversified by type of thing you hold. Uh that's why I talk and you know some of those things have to be where you don't need to ask permission to get it. Um and I've got a very good example of here in Switzerland. There's there's multiple um examples in Europe. Um but there's a lady here in Switzerland. She's a Swiss national and she made the mistake of going on YouTube and criticizing France's actions in Africa. She I think she comes from Cameroon originally, but she's a Swiss national, Swiss resident. The French government decided that anyone who was an enemy of France must be a friend of Putin. Therefore, they used the sanctions rules of Putin to sanction her along with 12 other individuals. Net result, all her bank accounts in Switzerland are frozen. [snorts] The only places she can do anything is the post office. They won't let her have any currency other than Swiss Franks. The banks who froze her money sent her Swiss Franks to the post office but refused to send her dollars or euros to the post office. That's frozen. She can't trade stocks or anything. She can't pay her rent because her landlord's bank account is in a bank and the bank isn't allowed to take money from a sanctioned person. She's not allowed to travel in Europe. She can't get on a plane. She can't receive her earnings from Google because they won't pay her because she's now a sanctioned person under the anti-Russia sanctioning rules. Yet, she's got nothing to do with Russia whatsoever. She just happened to make a mistake in criticizing the wrong country who who took umbrage at it. Whoa. We are living in a land of giants. That's why you need to have something which is not absolutely where you have to ask permission to have your own assets back. Does it matter if you haven't got any silver and you go down to the coin shop and he says, "I'm charging $20 over the silver price." It's your insurance policy. You don't say, "I'll wait till the price is better." You say, "I think I better get it." You don't care because once you've got it, it could be your lifeline. Yeah. It might be your last chance to buy it at some at some point, at least for a little while. Well, th this is something we're experiencing too in some places. Um I uh I did uh when I was in Kron Montana over the Christmas period I kept going to uh there's a shop which sell I had bought some gold coins in it from it previously two years before and I wanted to see what he'd got. So I kept going to the shop. Every time I went to the shop there were people in it and he was busy. He said come back the afternoon. Eventually I was going to come back on the last day which was the day they had the big fire in the nightclub. The the fire which killed so many people. they'd shut off the entire road. So, I couldn't get into his shop at all because the whole road was shut down. So, I couldn't go and buy my gold coins there. So, when I got back to Geneva um a few days later, I went into a big coin shop there called Deusa. They sell gold, silver, they buy it, too. Um and I was what I wanted to buy was the latest issues, the 2026 coins, the gold ones and the silver. What see what they got? If they got anything for 226, I was going to buy it. Um, but they said, "Sorry, sir. Even though you're a regular customer, we've got so many people coming in the door, we have to only let people in by appointment now. The earliest you can have an appointment is Thursday." This was on a Monday morning. Now, I said, "Okay, I won't come back on Thursday. I'm not It's not going to be convenient." So, I haven't I haven't actually got my gold coins yet. But they basically from Monday they told me at the time on Monday you have to wait till Thursday and we'll write you in the book and give you a time when you can come in. So yes, you might not be able to get them. Now at the at the moment in some places it's a waiting list to get in the front door. That is crazy. What a time to be alive. Everybody loves gold too. I mean it doesn't matter where what country you're in. What I mean it's for some reason all humans really like that shiny rock. And so to your point it goes all over the no matter what country you're in. And so if everybody wants it, it's uh it's a problem if you don't have it. Well, my eight-year-old asked me a question the other day. He said, "Daddy, what does precious mean?" Well, it's it's nice and shiny, and it's rare. Yeah. And everybody wants it. Well, this has been a positive message from [laughter] the Awesome Matt podcast. Clive, anyone anyone who's made it this far understands why your time is in so much demand right now. So, we really appreciate you coming on. You You're an excellent guest. You're You did a terrible job of convincing me not to go all in on silver. [laughter] And I really I really hope we get to chat with you again. Well, I I hope that my advice was bad advice and you make a ton of [laughter] money. I hope so, too, man. Thanks. It's It's been a real pleasure. Thanks, Live.