E69: All that Glitters with Peter Grosskopf

There's a reason certain songs stop feeling like songs and start feeling like myths, and maybe no rock song fits that description better than Stairway to Heaven. What's fascinating is that Led Zeppelin didn't sit down intending to write the greatest rock song ever. In fact, when the song began, it barely existed at all. It was fragments, pieces, moods, unfinished ideas scattered around an old country house in England. Jimmy Page had been carrying around this descending acoustic guitar progression for months. He'd written it during a retreat to a remote Welsh cottage called Bron-y-Œr, this isolated place with no electricity, no distractions, just musicians and ideas. He kept tinkering with it between tours, recording demos on a mobile tape deck at his boathouse, but he didn't yet know what it was. What he did know was the feeling he wanted. He later described imagining a piece that would begin almost delicately, naked acoustic guitar, and then gradually evolve into something massive, a song that kept climbing, building, accelerating. He even said he wanted it to speed up, which musicians traditionally weren't supposed to do. He envisioned something that would erupt into what he called this great sort of orgasm at the end. Sorry, uh, for the language there. That's a pretty extraordinary way to think about composition. Not a verse-chorus pop song, more like architecture or cinema or a symphony. The band eventually gathered at Headley Grange, an old English manor house where Led Zeppelin liked to work because traditional studios felt too sterile. They thrived in loose atmospheric environments, fireplaces burning, people wandering in and out, ideas emerging organically. One night, Page and bassist John Paul Jones sat near the fireplace drinking cider while the others were out at the pub. Page started playing through the disconnected sections he'd been working on. Jones picked up a bass recorder almost casually and began accompanying him. Then they started stitching the pieces together— transitions, movements, dynamics— and suddenly the song revealed itself. The arrangement became this dramatic journey: the fragile acoustic opening then electric guitars entering minutes later, then drums arriving even later, until finally the whole thing explodes into that legendary solo and climax. John Paul Jones later said both he and Page were heavily influenced by classical music, and you can hear it. The song unfolds almost like a long-form composition with movements and tension and release instead of repeating hooks. But the most famous moment came later Robert Plant was sitting by the fire with a pencil and paper while Page played the opening chords again. Plant said he'd been in a terrible mood, then almost involuntarily his hand started writing, "There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold," and then, "and she's buying a stairway to heaven." Plant himself was startled by it. He later said it felt as though he was being guided, like the words arrived through him rather than from him. Nobody in the band fully understood what Stairway to Heaven even meant. The lyrics were mystical, symbolic, almost dreamlike. Hedgerows, pipers, rings of smoke, shadows taller than our souls. But somehow it all fit the music perfectly. And maybe that first line is part of why the song has endured, because gold has always symbolized something deeper than wealth. Gold represents longing, desire, The belief that somewhere, somehow, there's a higher level you can buy your way into. Security, immortality, salvation, meaning. She's sure all that glitters is gold. That line works whether you hear it as spiritual commentary, social criticism, or an investor's instinct. The irony is that the song itself became gold. Commercially, culturally, mythologically. And the album it appeared on became just as legendary. When Led Zeppelin finished recording it in 1971, they made a bizarre decision: the album would have no title at all. No Led Zeppelin IV, even though that's what it has become known as. No subtitle, no explanation. The band was furious at critics who didn't care much for their music and thought the band was a fad, and they were tired of the music industry machinery. Jimmy Page wanted to strip away all expectations, all branding, all narrative. No band name on the COVID no title, just symbols, mystery, and they refused to explain it. Because once you explain the magic, some of the magic disappears. And maybe that's why Stairway to Heaven still works all these decades later. It isn't just a song, it's a climb, a mystery, a search for something shining in the distance, something people have chased forever. Just like gold. This podcast is brought to you by Ginsler Wealth. The information discussed today is meant to be general in nature and not tailored to your specific investing circumstances. This means that you should talk to your regular Ginsler Wealth advisor or your own advisor before acting on any information we discuss today. Nothing in this podcast is intended to be a solicitation, and past performance does not guarantee future returns. As the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold. And even though in today's case we are talking gold, it is still not investment advice. Today on The Unlimited Podcast, we speak with Peter Groskopf, former CEO of Sprott Inc. Advisor to Fourth Lane Partners and founder of Argo Digital Gold. He will give us his case for owning gold, other commodities to watch, and his key lessons for investors. Let's go! All right. Well, welcome everybody back to another episode of The Unlimited Podcast. Today we are moving on for a period from our topics of wealth, hard estate planning, etc., to talk about the most shiniest thing in the world. At least maybe that's how my guest is going to describe it. Which is gold. We haven't done a podcast on gold before at Ginsler Wealth. We are not serious resource or gold investors. We might be after an hour here with our guest. And the goal here today is to share with everyone maybe the thesis for gold, owning gold, and why folks have been coveting gold for thousands and thousands of years. So very excited to have Peter Grosskopf on the Unlimited Podcast here. So Peter, thank you very much for joining.

Well, thanks for having me, Brian Ginsler.

Let me give listeners, you know, the formal bio of Peter, which I always say I'm going to do briefly, but my guests are so accomplished it takes a long time. But then we'll let Peter describe himself as well. So Peter's a highly experienced financial services executive, investor, advisor with more than 35 years of experience across asset management, resource finance, commodities, precious metals and real assets. He is currently a shareholder and advisor to Fourth Lane Partners, a wonderful firm in our industry, where he supports the firm's real asset strategy. And he is also the founder of Argo Digital Gold and serves on the board of Agnico Eagle Mines, the World Gold Council, and Aleris Private Equity. He was previously the Chief Executive Officer of Sprott Inc. from 2010 to 2022, during which the firm's assets under management grew from approximately $5 billion to more than $20 billion. Prior to Sprott, Peter was president of Cormark Securities and was also a co-founder of Newcrest Capital, which was acquired by TD Bank Financial Group in 2000. He's a CFA charterholder and holds both an Honors Bachelor of Business Administration and a Master's of Business Administration from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, one of my alma maters as well. I'm an HBA '99, so 27-some-odd years ago.

You're still a youngster, Brian.

Well, I don't know. I'm getting older by the day here and, you know, trying to stay young, trying to stay in as good shape as you. I think when I met you years and years ago, I kept bumping into you at the gym and you were beating all the youngsters at the gym. So just trying to keep up. So Peter, look, obviously I gave the formal intro, but I mean, you have a very unique background and a very focused background in this area, I think. Based on my intro, and I suspect what you'll tell us, my goal really is to have our listeners understand that there's almost no one in the country that is actually more qualified to talk about gold than you. Can you just give a little bit of maybe now the color around that, your journey, how you got into sort of this space and what you're doing now? Sure.

Well, after graduating from the same university as you, same degree actually. Now, now that we know that. I was going to go into investment banking and accepted a job, and at the last minute I just didn't feel right about it. It felt like a bit of a factory. A friend hired me on as an assistant futures and options trader in commodities and gold for the predecessor to Bank of Montreal. So I started basically not on the trading floor, but as a junior trader, understanding the math and not much else about those markets. But I started at quite a young age trading gold contracts. I guess what solidified my path in the industry is I did go back into investment banking after my MBA and I covered junior resource companies in Western Canada for RBC. So I grew up with a lot of executives that are now the main people in the industry. I was one of the first bankers to cover the gold industry. And on top of that, I'm a libertarian by nature and being a libertarian, you, you, you tend to think about free enterprise and protection from governments as opposed to being political in one way or another. And the protection from governments is a big part of the case for gold. So, right. It kind of just went with what I believed in philosophically.

Amazing. And a big portion of your career obviously was with Sprott, probably before you got there and certainly during your time there and after Sprott's really known as sort of the premier, I think, firm around gold and resource investing. How did you get to Sprott? And Eric Sprott, I guess the founder, is known as a legend in the business too. So how was it working with him and what'd you learn from Eric too, by the way?

Yeah, well certainly he was a great mentor and he's a great person on top of being a legendary investor. He's certainly the biggest risk taker in the sector. And when I started with Eric, it was very early. It was 1992 or '93, I believe. And I was his banker for junior golds and junior oils. When he began the investment firm and then took it through an IPO, he hired me to run the investment firm. And I just thought Eric's skillset and the Canadian skillset in general of knowing these junior resource companies could be brought to an international stage. And I'd say the biggest success I had at Sprott was taking that brand and, you know, it started as a Canadian brand. It's now 99% global. So having a team that could do that and, and put the product into the right channels was the very central part of the Sprott story. And I think last, at last count, it's $65 billion US. So quite a—

Oh my God. Yeah, amazing. Well, and you mentioned Canada. We're going to talk about Canada a bit later. So I hope— I think everyone on Earth knows what gold is. It's not the most complex thing to understand from at the most basic level, but I do always like to go back to basics. So maybe as an intro, you can give us just what is the case for gold? If we're going to talk about gold for however long we're going to talk here, what would you describe as, you know, if someone stops listening to this podcast, you know, 5 minutes in, which almost no one ever does, luckily, what's the basic case, simple case for gold? Why do you like it? Why should we like it? Why should it be in a portfolio?

This simplest takeaway sentence is it protects your purchasing power better than your local currency. Most people think of gold as a risk risk-on investment. I do not. I think it is a risk-off investment. I think it is.

And what do you mean by risk-on and risk-off? Just to make sure everyone understands those phrases.

Well, I, I believe that when you assess your portfolio, you need a basis against which you assess it. And most people, that's Canadian dollars or US dollars for North American investors anyway. I, I believe that gold should be assessed against its purchasing power for the broad spectrum of what you need to purchase over your lifetime. And I think as such, it's insurance. It's not a risk-on asset, meaning it doesn't have any counterparty risk. It is just what it is. It is the original form of cash, and I use it in my portfolio as a surrogate for cash, which means I'm constantly adding to it. I can subtract from it when I make other risk-on investments. I can even make interesting risk-on investments in this sector that give me more leverage to gold. That's quite different than gold itself, which is for starters, one of the world's most liquid assets. It trades about 180 billion a day. And secondly, has no creditors associated with it. I can just go and pick it up and sell it at any time. And even the way you can store gold, it has no counterparty risk with another financial institution. You can just own it in a vault and we can talk about how that might work.

Yeah. I want to talk about that too. Yeah.

That, that's kind of the way I, I see it.

Okay. You said it's a surrogate for cash, but obviously it's, I would say obviously dramatically more volatile than cash. I understand there's a downside to holding cash if inflation's running and whatnot, but how do you think about that? A lot of people say they like cash in their portfolio, A, 'cause it's stable and then they could use it to deploy, you know, when the markets pull back or something like that. But gold would be bouncing around, I presume.

Yeah, if you assess gold in US dollar volatility terms, it's a modest volatility. It's about 10, 11%. Per year, but that means that you're using the US dollar as the, the surrogate opposite when you're assessing volatility. I don't think that gold is that volatile when you look at it in purchasing power terms, a broad spectrum of CPI or what you need to buy with it. Oh, again, over a lifetime. In fact, if you looked at gold, let's say the world's 12 biggest fiat currencies, let's say the last 20 years, so that's 240 sets of data. Gold would have outperformed fiat in probably 220 of those 240. It's unbelievable how consistent it is across a broad spectrum. So I don't, I don't think of it as being volatile.

Okay. And, and you mentioned a moment ago the phrase of gold as insurance. So aside from maybe protecting against decreasing purchasing power of your regular cash, I guess, What's gold insuring against? Is it inflation? Is it something the government's doing? Is it market crises? A lot of people say, I want gold in my portfolio because when the market crashes or the world crashes or whatever, that'll protect me. Is that an accurate phrase or how do you think about it as insurance?

Yeah, so mostly purchasing power insurance. And so currency debasement is the primary reason, but Certainly government debt, financial crises, or market crises are things that could be considered to be related. It's, it's the financial system and, and the financial system either has confidence or it doesn't. And when it has confidence, you know, there's less need for gold. And when it doesn't, I think there's more need for gold. And I think we're in one of those times now. So government debt would certainly be top of my list.

Okay.

It's absolutely uncontrollable now and it's unsolvable in many mathematical ways. Financial instability and market crises. Well, I'm not smart enough to predict those. I just know they happen every once in a while when things get overheated. And then inflation is a tougher thing to assess. It's related, of course, to debasement, but gold could just as easily hedge you against deflation, which causes market crises, as inflation. I always had this debate with Eric Sprott. Why are you buying it, Eric? And he would actually think, okay, we're going to debase first, we're going to crash, and then we're going to hyperinflate. And I go, well, that's a little too complicated for me. So yeah, like, uh, I don't know about this deflation stuff. It doesn't seem like governments really want to ever, uh, allow that. So it's kind of more of inflation that I would lean towards. But, you know, currency debasement first, government debt second. Let's just leave it at that.

Okay. So, and interesting. So you're not even saying number 3 is market crises, you know, Great Financial Crisis, COVID or whatever. Was gold helpful in those times?

It's a good question. So gold is initially used as a source of liquidity in crisis. So it actually usually comes down as investors take their leverage off because it's so liquid.

It's the first place you can get funds from in a second, basically.

Yeah, it's so easy to get funds from that area. And a lot of people like hedge funds have gold on and they're levered. And so when they're delevering, it usually suffers a correction in the first phases of a crisis, and then it almost always rockets in the second and third phases. So the GFC, COVID, NASDAQ, any of those crises, gold always acts in a familiar fashion.

Okay. Given those reasons to own, and we're going to dive more into some of those, I mean, your, your role at Fourth Lane and for your career probably has been advising investors and others whether they should buy gold or hold it. And like, how, how much should an average typical, I don't know what, investor hold of gold relative to their portfolio, to their wealth? Probably a tough question to answer. I don't know.

No, it's not, not tough for me actually. Oh, good. I think that gold should be at least half of your cash allocation. So if, if total cash and liquidity, call it, is 10%, gold should be 5%. If total cash and liquidity for the purposes of your portfolio is 20%, I think gold should be 10%. At the extreme, if gold for you is taking the place of a Treasury bond, which I would argue it should start to be taking the place of a Treasury bond, you know, I think then it gets up into the 20% range.

Wow. So, you know, at our firm, we manage money for investors. Our approach is we don't tend to hold much cash at all. I mean, we assume investors have cash in their bank accounts outside of us. But my view is the markets, and use markets in general as a term, we invest in a whole bunch of different asset classes, but markets tend to go up. You said you're not smart enough, and I'm certainly not smart enough to know when the next crisis is going to happen and time the market perfectly. So our view is let's be invested and we invest with other managers and they have very smart brains and they'll invest as well. So we don't hold a lot of cash. So in a portfolio where you're not holding much cash because you want it working for you, how does your answer change on, you know, how much gold to be there?

Yeah, I, I take, you know, 5 to 10% out of your credit bucket then and say that's an anchor portfolio diversification move that would outperform credit in times of rapid inflation, outperform credit in terms of in times of crises or credit crises. And can just be a non-correlated asset within that portfolio that provides diversification. So we're getting into portfolio science now, which is more your area than mine.

Yeah.

But, but there's also an efficient frontier placement for gold that would probably put it between 5 and 10. And that includes gold stocks, by the way, because you can't kind of assess gold stocks in a separate bucket from gold, I don't think.

Right. Yeah, so that was on my list of questions, but since you raised it, why don't we just touch on it? So yeah, what's the difference between— I mean, there's a difference for sure, but what's the difference between owning gold itself, and we're going to talk about how you can actually do that, and gold stocks? How should investors think about that? Because obviously gold stocks are going to be driven— when I say gold stocks, I mean gold miners, producers. Obviously there's going to be a correlation with the price of gold, but how do you think about that, or how should we think about that?

Well, generally gold stocks provide about 3x the return or 3x the loss, right? Depending on what gold is doing. So it's, you know, almost 3 times as volatile. It's quite, quite a high volatility level. And that's the, the challenge is timing it. Also, there is a valuation cycle to gold stocks where gold stocks do get cheap and beaten up. And left alone as a trade for long periods of time. And, and then they get quite interesting even just as value stocks, which doesn't always happen. But I think that's the job of a portfolio manager or professional. I do not think that individuals should be doing the technical work on gold stocks alone. I mean, I, I think it's either a portfolio manager or a, an ETF for broad exposure. Again, the challenge being timing. And if you're going to make individual equity bets, I very much think you need a portfolio manager that knows the technicals on the gold side. And I mean things like metallurgy grade, catalysts, managements. Management's probably most important. Yeah. So it's quite a different investment than gold.

Right. No, it sounds like it. And when it comes to having to time these things very well, again, very hard to do. And The entry and exit points are hugely important. Let's talk for a moment, a slight derivation off to the side. I have to raise this one, uh, gold versus Bitcoin. You said gold is a proxy or a surrogate for cash. Cash, you can spend easily and do whatever. Aside from the fact that it might protect your overall wealth or your portfolio, I can never really figure out how you're gonna spend gold if you needed to spend it for some reason. So anyways, maybe give some color around that sort of question that I just answered, but also gold versus Bitcoin. And Bitcoin's been around 20 years, gold forever, but how do we think about those two?

Yeah, well, uh, there's no question they have the same philosophy, which is a protection against, uh, debasement. Um, I, I think gold's a much bigger market and a It's much less volatile than Bitcoin. There's no question about that either. I think that Bitcoin is becoming legitimized just by the sheer size and trading in its market and the number of investors that are willing to hold it. It is having growing up pains, I think, because people don't really know whether it's a risk-on or a risk-off asset to talk about, you know, what I mentioned before about gold. And yet I sort of welcome its presence because it is a very mobile asset. It has a, its background in a lot of these stablecoin concepts, which I do believe are going to allow the world to act quite efficiently outside of the financial system as well as in it. So it has a role from a transformational technology perspective. I don't know it well enough to buy it. I don't know how to keep my Bitcoin safe, for instance. I know you can put it in a wallet, but I know the gold vaulting system, so I know how to keep gold safe. I think that's the first part is if you're going to hold an asset that's a debasement insurance asset, you better make sure it's safe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

You better make sure you can get ahold of it because that's why you're holding it in the first place.

Right. So that's like, that's, I guess, is my conundrum. And you've just explained it or mentioned it very clearly. The gold is safe in a vault. And my assumption is if you really have to get access to the gold in the vault, because, you know, in an, I don't know what, an emergency or you're traveling, you got to leave the country or, you know, I don't want to sound like an alarmist. I'm just trying to think through the scenario or, you know, everything shuts down because the power grid. I don't even know. My question is, how do you actually get that gold and how do you use it to buy something if you need to buy something? Because you're not going to chisel your gold bars into little pieces. Whereas with Bitcoin, I can send you half a penny or I can send you $1 million in, in 7 minutes.

You can use it as a payment mechanic.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So So that is the fundamental disadvantage of gold over history is we're not in Roman token terms. And I always used to be upset when our portfolio managers would, you know, show people token or coins and, and say, this is a, this is a stable form of money.

Right.

What gold is doing as we speak is it is becoming digital. And there's two ways in which you can use gold in a very liquid, easy-to-use fashion. One is ETFs. Yeah. So there are physically backed ETFs where you can use gold to pay, you know, just by buying and selling with your prime broker or any financial institution. You can pay for any stock or investment using that ETF. It's totally fungible once it's in the ETF form.

Yep.

And then the second thing is, as per our project at the World Gold Council, we are ensuring that gold becomes digitized. And by digitized, I mean direct-to-vault ownership in a digital form that you can move and use both as payments and as a fungible asset within your portfolio. And lastly but not least, the tokenization of those digital certificates, which has happened in two liquid cases already, and it's taking so long, but it will happen. And once it happens, it's going to happen very quickly. So once you have a gold token that can be used for payments, I think it's just going to take off.

And it sounds to me a lot like Bitcoin at that point, isn't it?

Right. Just bigger, less volatile, more secure, and I would argue the gold system can't be hacked. You know, if, if your token or if your digital certificate is stolen, yeah, KYC, know your client, and AML, anti-money laundering, at the vault level, the stolen certificate gets canceled and the true owner is recognized. So I think it's one step more secure than Bitcoin.

Wow. And how far along is that? And does that require participation of or cooperation amongst all countries around the world or something, or that's sort of a centralized process that then gets adopted?

It's a centralized process. The world's gold vaults are already cooperating. You can already buy digital certificates online that are allowed to be redeemed in different countries. But the World Gold Council is creating this system called GAS, Gold as a Service, which is basically an almost free storage system, free, insured, properly custodied, and will back a lot of these certificates and tokens.

Okay. Amazing. I said at the beginning, this podcast is all about gold, but I actually want to get your, your, your good brain and thoughts on a whole bunch of other resources and commodities. But so maybe just to close out on gold for a moment here. You've given us all the sort of good thoughts, why investors might want this, why you like it, why you own it. What's the best argument in opposition to everything you've just talked about for 20 minutes? Why wouldn't somebody want to hold gold? People have said, well, it's a rock, it doesn't generate any income, et cetera, et cetera. Like, so what if you had to argue against yourself? What would be the case against gold in contrast to the first question, which was the case for gold?

For one thing, higher interest rates make bonds more attractive and more active diversifiers against inflation. If you're long bonds yielding 8% and inflation is 5%, you're, you're making a decent return.

Yeah.

So long rates and the ability to, to have risk-free rates that that really compensate an investor instead of confiscating their value over time. That would be one thing. The early stages of a crisis, you know, as we mentioned, the dip, the dip on the crisis. But you could say that about any asset, by the way.

Yeah. Oh, sure.

Early stage of a crisis is always deflation for a while. And I think the third thing that investors right now are very much benefiting from on the gold side is central bank accumulation. So central banks have now replaced US Treasuries with gold as their number one FX diversifier. And that's because the US has politicized the dollar and in terms of achieving their goals with the SWIFT system and other penalties, sanctions. So I don't think that will change for a long time. We've had 50 years of US dollar dominance. You're probably going to have 50 years where foreign central banks prefer gold to, to US dollars. So I think we're good on that one, but it's something you got to watch.

Okay. So the case against gold became maybe another reason to buy gold. I like it. Gold is one shiny, glittery object. There's other precious metals, other commodities out there. So maybe talk for a moment about silver. Silver has somewhat similar properties to gold. Once you're past the gold thing, I guess, how do investors think about silver or any other precious metals that you think we should know about?

Silver's a really interesting one, and it's interesting because it is a market that is dominated by industrial uses, and those industrial uses right now are increasing primarily because of solar, but also because of its use in a carbon-silver battery that is being pioneered by Samsung and the Asian manufacturers, which has apparently got the best characteristics for long-term EV propulsion. So silver is in short supply on an industrial basis, but more importantly, it is dominated in the short term by investment flows. And when gold is performing well, silver buyers come out of the woodwork and it's more volatile than gold and they pile in and it's a small market and it can get squeezed very easily and it's in the process of being squeezed. So, you know, you had this run up over $100. It's, it's pulled back and consolidating in the $70 range. I do think there's a very good chance that we get a further surge. I do not see silver in the same way as gold. It's, it's more of a risk-on asset for these themes.

Okay.

And it's not your stay-at-home kind of inflation protector like gold is. It is your alpha of the precious metals. Yeah.

Sounds like it's like the gold stocks versus the gold itself, maybe.

Uh, that's right. Uh, it's a little less volatile than stocks. If you want real leverage, silver stocks are the way to play.

Oh, sure.

And, and, uh, paradoxically, silver stocks are not yet factoring in even the current silver price. I think so. Silver stocks will produce earnings gushers here and are probably undervalued. Even using the spot price. But I do think I'm positive on silver. I think it's going to, it's going to have a good run, but that's a risk-on statement, right?

Okay, good. Well, there's a, there's a forecast there, or prediction, I should say. You mentioned silver's use in industrial purposes, batteries, etc. We're in this world now of AI taking over the world, data centers, data centers in space, apparently. What does that mean for not necessarily gold and silver, although maybe silver, but what other commodities, minerals, energy sources, like how should an investor think about capitalizing on that trend in the world?

So for the AI buildout, it's broadly noted that copper is what the grid needs. I would say probably silver second because of its solar and other applications, but aluminum, or aluminium as the Brits call it.

Yep.

Antimony, antimony, which actually is more of a defense application. Tungsten, again, more of a defense application. And then the rare earths, of which there's only two that really matter, which are the heavy rare earths. Rare earths are required for the magnets to drive some of this robotic innovation that's happening, and they're in pretty short supply. But I'd say copper and silver for the actual grid. You know, there's probably others. I think lead, tin, zinc, it's all needed.

And is there enough of this that can be mined to meet—

No, I mean, no. All of those mineral commodities will have a strong bid for two reasons. First of all, there's more of them that are needed. Secondly, well, there are actually three reasons. More needed. The grades of existing production, production complexes are going down, so it's harder to find and produce. And the third is that the US needs to onshore a lot of the supply. The US has been dependent on Russia, South Africa, and China to supply a lot of these minerals. And it, it, it's finally realizing it can no longer do that in this world. It needs to onshore supply. So it needs to do deals to establish supply contracts with projects it can count on.

So actually, that's a good segue speaking of what the US needs and what the world needs, and they're relying on, you know, Russia, China, etc. But we're sitting up here in Canada. Don't we have basically everything the world needs? I'm exaggerating a bit, but what does Canada have here from a resource perspective? We're known as a resource country. Our stock market moves significantly when resource prices are in demand and moves. Lots of resource companies. What's your view of Canada, what we have, what we're doing to capitalize on it?

Well, we are rich from a resource perspective. I would say if you had to rank the relative richness, energy would have to be the top of the list. Gold would be high on the list as well. Uranium is very high on the list.

And when you say relative, you mean relative within the different types of commodities, or you mean relative to the rest of the world?

Relative to the rest of the world and to its meaningfulness to Canada as well. Okay. But energy is by far the heavyweight for Canada. Gold is pretty heavy. You know, uranium, we are absolutely needed on the global scale and it's a great export. There are other minerals in various proportions that you can find here. And also interestingly, and this is becoming a critical mineral now, helium and hydrogen are in fairly good supply in Saskatchewan. So Saskatchewan's probably going to become a richer province going forward.

Wow. So I think the latest sort of charts that I've seen is showing Canada productivity relative to some of the other major countries in the world, pretty low. What's the challenge here? If we have all these amazing resources, why can't we be a richer country, maybe is another way of saying it.

Well, we have something that a relatively famous author has recently called suicidal empathy. Canadians love to say their story. They love to favor the minority and ignore the majority. So some of our policies, mostly previous governments, were disastrous for this country. I mean, you're, you're talking about the productivity loss in Canada relative to our neighbors. It cannot be overstated. It's a disaster for Canada, but it is starting to change. And I, you know, I'm a proud Canadian. I think that the resource policies in particular are coming around the right way. There's more capital for resource projects. There's quicker approval timelines. It is being prioritized, but we have to stop ignoring the majority and we have to be willing to make broad, sometimes divisive steps to bring these projects to the forefront if we want to increase our standard of living as a country, which has again fallen dramatically. Canadians like to pat themselves on the back and say, we're a great country, but you cannot make an excuse for how badly we've lagged in the last 20 years.

Well, I don't know if our Prime Minister listens to my podcast yet, but Hopefully he does. He can hear that because I agree with you wholeheartedly. Okay, so we're, so we're sitting here today, June. You've talked about gold. You've talked about other resources, commodities. And as you said at the beginning, you don't have a crystal ball and neither do I, but what does the world look like in your view over the next 5 to 10 years? And what would you be doing about it with any of these commodities that we've discussed or otherwise? Because, you know, you're in the role of advising clients and families just like we are?

Well, I don't like listening to the masses or the economists or the metals forecasters. I believe that the opposite always happens. But I do think that this K-shaped economy and the have and have-nots and the difference between productive companies and people and those that are unfortunate is becoming bigger. I think that's our number one issue. I believe AI is going to make it worse, and I think it's going to make it worse fairly quickly. So I would— the fallout from that I'm relatively sure about, which is we are going to have bouts of inflation. We are going to have bouts of government intervention, and we are going to have increasing requirements for liquidity. To support the bottom half of the K. And that can only come from more and more and more government intervention and more and more debt and policies which include financial repression, policies which include pinning short-term rates close to zero. And I think that's a world in which you need some defects. So again, I don't know the timing. I buy gold and gold stocks constantly, so I'm not really in the mode of, worrying too much about the timing, right? And I also understand you can't not have investments. You need offensive investments in AI private companies, public companies that generate much greater returns for investors in the long run.

Yeah.

So you need offense and you need defense.

Good comment. And actually, maybe on that, in that vein, that sort of words of wisdom or advice. As I said at the beginning, you've been doing this for decades and decades. Any piece of advice that you would give to our listeners, presumably many and most of them are investors or otherwise, it doesn't even have to be investing related, something over the course of your many decade career that is sort of a key lesson that you keep with you on a regular basis.

For me, with all kind of humility. I almost never get the timing right. So I don't think it's a fair goal for investors to think they're going to get the timing right. I think what you can do is stick with what you know. I have a much better track record in this sector than I do in any other. So stick with what you know and do, do your homework to allocate the balance to somebody who can do that for you. I, I didn't do that early enough in my career.

Right.

And the last thing is that from my own perspective, I don't think owning precious metals is an option. I think it's a discipline. Saving is never easy. Sacrifices are never easy. Having insurance is never easy or cheap. I think it's a discipline and I would advise investors to have some exposure to this sector.

Okay, amazing. All right, so last question for you, which we ask all our guests here on the podcast. Our theme here is Your Wealth Unlimited because we help families with whatever they need. Nothing is off limits for us to at least look at to invest in. We're very selective, of course, but my point is, you know, there's no limit to what we'll do for the families that we take care of here. So I like to ask our guests, if you weren't doing what you've been doing for the past 35 years, the world is unlimited. You could be doing anything in the world that you want. What might you be doing or what might have you done?

I would have loved to start a healthcare company that makes healthcare more affordable and accessible because there's so many inefficiencies there and there's so many great technologies. And there's some great companies that make great margins as well that are actually doing that. That, that to me is super impressive. So that's one idea that I'm never going to get to. Maybe I'll buy a few stocks in that sector.

Right. Got it. Okay, good. Okay, sir. Well, look, thank you very, very much for enlightening us on gold and other glittery objects. Appreciate your time very, very much. You obviously know what you're talking about, and hopefully our listeners enjoy that as well. So. Wish you the best.

Let's stay in touch.

You got it. Okay, talk to you soon.

The Unlimited Podcast is hosted and produced by Brian Ginsler and is edited and mixed by myself, David McMillan. This podcast is not to be taken as investment advice. If you like what you heard, don't forget to rate the podcast and follow us on social media @BrianGinslerWealth. Thanks for listening and see you next time.