Investing in Physical Gold & Silver with Your IRA

Welcome everyone to a special Directed IRA webinar and Directed IRA podcast. This is Matt Sorenson, your host today, and I'm excited to be talking about precious metals and investing in precious metals. That was the hot asset last year, best performing asset, gold and silver in particular. A lot of people did well on precious metals, and I want to talk about it today, how we're looking in 2026. How investors are thinking about this. But let's be honest, you do not wanna know what Matt Sorenson thinks about precious metals. I have a great perspective on IRAs and what you can do, but I have David McElhaney here from McElhaney Precious Metals. We'll bring him on here in a second. He's worked in this space for decades and we're gonna be leaning on him for his insights. We've had many IRA account holders work with him in investing their IRA in precious metals. We always enjoy getting his expertise. He speaks across the country. And is a known expert in this space. Before we dig into that though, that is the topic of the day we're excited to get into. I have a couple announcements. First, our Alt Asset Summit that David spoke at last year, we had some other great speakers on all the other alternative assets, but our next Alt Asset Summit is coming up October 22nd and 23rd. That'll be live in Costa Mesa, California. That's in Orange County. Get to that event. You will meet other like-minded investors. We have hundreds of our customers from Directed IRA that are there, many other account owners, like-minded investors like you figuring out how to grow and build retirement. We also do, for any Directed IRA customers, a customer appreciation event that evening. Last year I had 3 account holders, 2 of them in the tens of millions with Roth accounts, one of them with over $100 million, talking about how they grow and build wealth. So not only do you get amazing speakers across different assets you can use with a self-directed IRA. You also get to meet other investors and some successful investors that have done very well as well. So want to make sure you're there. AltAssetSummit.com. Go to AltAssetSummit.com and you can register for that. If you do have an account at Directed, check the newsletter because there's a discount code in there that'll save you some money. Maybe we'll drop it in the chat too, in case some of you want to register now. Let's get into the topic today. And I want to introduce David McIlvany of McIlvany Precious Metals. David's been in this space, like I said, for decades, a well-known expert. When we've worked with precious metals customers and when we were out in the industry talking, who should we work with? Who can we rely on, on a precious metals dealer? David McIlvany's name came up and his company, and we've had a great relationship working with them. And if— and I'll say this in the precious metals space, and this is some of the questions we're going to get into. Not all companies in the precious metals space are great to work with. Um, so as an investor, you want to work with someone that's had a track record and been around for a while. Um, so David, welcome. Um, thank you for being on. It's good to see you.

Thank you. Great to be with you.

All right, well, I'm going to dig in with questions, and I've got a lot of them here. I know you guys may have questions. Follow Aaron's instructions on how to do this, but I'll get the conversation started here. Um, Let's just start like kind of big picture. Why are people investing in precious metals and what is like the, what's the compelling reason of why this has been an asset class for, I don't know, maybe thousands of years? I don't know, for a long time it's been an investment asset.

Yeah, I think people look at it as a way to diversify their portfolio and to do that with a non-correlated asset. So it tends to not move with equities and on that basis it, over time lowers as a part for a part of a portfolio mix. It lowers volatility and increases returns, assuming you do some sort of a routine rebalance between your riskier growth assets and gold. There are years where gold will outperform and years where it will underperform. So having it in balance with other assets is, is really critical. But it's an amazing diversifier.

And I think that's how a lot of people have looked at precious metals is kind of this counterbalance to the stock market or hedge. Edge. But last year, you know, the stock market did well and precious metals did well. We had some weird years. Um, like, what do you— how are you thinking about precious metals now? Um, you know, and this year it might be more of a counterbalance, I don't know. But like, we've had some interesting years where stock market and precious metals performed well. Like, what was happening?

Yeah, I think that was going on. The big driver of the metals market in recent years has not been retail investors. It's been central banks, and they have looked at their reserves through a different lens following 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and the US Treasury seized $300 billion in foreign currency reserves. Central banks all of a sudden said, if it's not in our hot little hand, we may not have access to it when we need it. So reserve management has shifted dramatically. They doubled the ounces that they were buying on an annual basis from 500 tons to right around 1,000 tons a year. And I think that appetite is still there. The most recent interviews with central banks, 45% expected to add to their positions this year. Close to 90% were looking at it and said, if we're not adding, we see the central bank community continuing to add. So positive vibes from them. And you get the swing investor. I should say that the swing move in the, in the price really has to do with the investment community. And those catalysts can be inflation concerns, geopolitical concerns, um, stock market volatility. It's viewed as a safe haven when other things are under pressure. And so maybe a longer discussion about debt deficits, sustainability of fiscal policy, monetary policy, and the trajectory of those things. But gold has performed in line, and in fact better than the stock market, in a couple of If you go back over the last 25 years, in gold terms, the Dow is down 70%. And so sometimes you look in nominal terms and looks very impressive. It's up like 4.6 times in 25+ years. But the Dow-gold ratio was 43:1 25 years ago. It's 13:1 now. Gold has outperformed equities over the last 25 years. We see that ratio continuing to contract. Act in the direction of a 3-to-1 ratio. And at that point, I think folks are going to have to lighten up on gold. You'll have better— you'll have greener grass, so to say, in the equity space.

Yeah. So, I think so in kind of a very general sense here, and I know there's all the geopolitical stuff, there's the deficit, there's inflation, there's so many things going on in the world that can incentivize people to be like, "I'd rather have gold right now." But one of the primary drivers can be, "Hey, the stock market's a little too frothy right now. I'd rather be in precious metals," or, "The stock market's falling off a cliff and I'm scared of it, so I'd rather get into precious metals." So it's been like this for, as you mentioned earlier, retail investor is like, "I'm not loving where the stock market's at, so I'd rather go seek haven somewhere else." And precious metals have been a home for that kind of, that feeling that people have and where to allocate some dollars.

Yeah, Matt, I think that the key there is that something is different now than it was over the last several decades. And this is really well reflected in Mike Wilson's comments last October, November, when he said the 60/40 portfolio, that traditional mix of 60% stocks, 40% bonds, that model's broken.

Yeah.

And reducing your bond exposure makes a lot of sense. So he's suggesting 60/20/20, 60% equities, 20% bonds, 20% gold. Why would you reduce your bond position by half from 40 to 20? It's because you've got a bond market which is facing things that it hasn't in a long time, inflation and higher rates. And that's not positive for performance in the bond market. So if you wanted to take money out of the stock market, traditionally you would de-risk, go to bonds. Except that it's kind of frying pan to fire in the context of inflation and rising rates. So he sees a lot of headroom for gold in the context of the bond market being impaired. Where else do you go for a safe haven? It'll, it'll pick up a lot of safe haven demand.

Yeah. What do you think about cryptocurrency as that's came in and it's gotten a lot more in vogue? A lot more people have invested money into it, institutions, individuals.

Is it—

does it compete with precious metals, with the actual physical gold? I mean, a lot of people refer to Bitcoin as digital gold. We definitely have people that invest in it with their IRAs. Even I have too. But like, how do you see that playing out and investors thinking, well, I do want some diversification from the stock market in particular. Maybe that's in precious metals or crypto, or maybe it's in both. How do you see that? Have you seen successful investors like approach that?

Yeah, the successful investors that I know, particularly in crypto, were early adopters. And so they've got a cost basis advantage. They've always treated it as a risk asset and position-sized accordingly. So you're talking about a small percentage allocation in a total portfolio. And if it works, great. If it doesn't, it hasn't impaired your performance being a smaller position. Tends to perform in line with other risk assets. And so as a non-correlated asset, as a safe haven, I think you're talking apples and oranges. So gold is what central banks buy and it's what large investors position assets in. Traditionally, your European allocator would have a 10% allocation to gold in terms of total net worth, which is a pretty sizable number. And again, it's just kind of a ballast asset there as a reserve. And you know, you start to realize the value of having a liquid reserve asset when other things are under pressure. And all of a sudden you can utilize that liquid position to reposition, refortify even lower cost basis in other assets that might be under pressure. That's why that sort of annual rebalance or periodic rebalance is so key. And it's one of the ways that you can improve performance lower the total volatility of a portfolio and improve long-term performance with an adequate position in gold balanced with equities and other assets. But crypto, again, I would categorize it as a risk asset as opposed to a safe haven.

Yeah, and I think, you know, at the Alt Asset Summit you spoke at last year, I did a presentation called The Crazy Hot Matrix, which was basically, if any of you have seen that YouTube video on like, you know, this is a guy teaching other men how to like find a spouse and it was like ranked women on X and Y-axis of crazy and hot, basically. So, I took that same matrix. It's hilarious. It trended well on YouTube. You can do it for men too, ladies. You know, you can reverse it. It works similar. But I took that for investments and it was risk versus return on the X and Y-axis. Looked at crypto, we put it on a very high risk but high return, which is hot and crazy. And I think precious metals, on the other hand, would be lower risk, traditionally lower return. I wouldn't put it like a crypto-type high return or an angel or venture investing, but it definitely has a much riskier, lower risk profile. Than cryptocurrency. I mean, you'd agree with that, right? I mean, I think that's pretty like most people's perspective between the two. I think you nailed it. And like, I think the big differentiator from crypto to precious metals is crypto is just such a higher risk.

Yeah, gold is boring until it's not. And as they say, you know, there's decades where nothing happened and then there's weeks where decades happen. And that's what you tend to see in the metals market. They are very responsive to concerns, diminishment of trust, whether that's institutional trust or market trust. And the adjustments in price can happen fairly quickly. Last year, 65% in gold, 165% in silver. Big moves. We're digesting those moves now in what is a very healthy and normal correction given last year's just stellar, stellar performance.

Yeah. What do you think as to timing? Because I think a lot of people saw that run last year and it kind of surprised people, even me when I was doing my research on the Crazy Hot Matrix, I was like, what investment assets performed great last year? And I was actually surprised to see that precious metals beat out every asset category, actually. And you hear the saying from Warren Buffett, be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. And what was last year, the, you know, it ran up and there was a little bit of greedy there and people got fearful. I mean, and how do you think about like, so what do I do as an investor now sitting here in 2026? You said there's been some digestion.

Well, timing is important to keep in mind with the metals market. You generally put in the lows between June and July each year. So there's a lull in price and performance. And typically things pick up in August and September. So the timing of our interview is great. If you're looking at positioning, we are well off the peaks. The structural supports for the metals market are very strong. And, you know, I think the number of family offices, high net worth individuals, central banks, sovereign wealth funds that continue to take an interest in gold and position, you're in pretty good company. We did not see a ton of investor interest or froth until late in the fourth quarter last year. So there was a lot of price action, but most of it came from central bank buying. And then as we got into the fourth quarter, certainly some derivatives trades because obviously gold and silver have a futures market, an options market. And that's where we saw some, some sort of fast and furious hot money come in late. And they're already gone. So sentiment indicators in gold, if you're a contrarian, sentiment would say don't touch this asset with a 10-foot pole. I like that. You know, to take Buffett's adage, you know, I think it's wise to look at things when they're selling cheap and no one is paying attention and maybe let the market own them when everyone's paying attention. Tell you the sentiment indicators in the metals market, are practically dead. COT reports, you know, there's just, there's nobody paying any attention to the asset, which is great. That's when you wanna buy it, not when everyone else is chasing the price.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great insight. What would you say to someone that's getting new into this, into precious metals? They're familiar with other assets. They might have, you know, the typical stock market equity stuff, or maybe they've had that 60/40 portfolio, or maybe they even own a rental property or say have small business but they're new to precious metals. How would you, you know, start approaching that and think through that for them?

Yeah, I think with every asset class, education is really important and it's something that we prize. We've been doing this for 54 years and love bringing people along to understand the asset class and the best way to position a portfolio. How you construct the portfolio gives you lots of options, particularly within an IRA, because there's ways that you can trade the metals and compound ounces, not just wait for a price improvement. So we look at the gold-silver ratio, we look at premiums on particular product. When there's no premium on those products, we're buyer. When it's the high premium, we are happy to sell. And you over time are accumulating more ounces for free. So that compounding of ounces requires some strategy. It requires, you know, a real discussion and education., which, which we're more than happy to engage with.

Yeah, okay, let's dig into that. And I want to talk about your IRA too. So for everyone listening, just so you know, your IRA can own precious metals, like the physical precious metals we're talking about here, not like an ETF or something like that, but it can actually own the physical gold or silver, and you can be trading that with your IRA or, or buying and holding. But let's talk about that because I think a lot of people— there's one perspective on precious metals of Let me just buy it and own it. I'm just going to be in that asset for the long haul versus this trading strategy, which I know many of your clients are doing with that. And let's maybe walk through that because with a little more detail, but also I want to layer in how an IRA is kind of cool in that strategy too, if we could. So let's, let's just start with like the strategy that you're doing. You unpack that a little bit that you were just mentioning.

Yeah, I mean, so when you look at gold and silver, there's always a leader and always a laggard, and you're just buying the value play in that mix. And as the gap closes, you then are moving from what was undervalued and is now overvalued to the other asset. And to be able to play that volatility between the metals, because they're constantly, you know, they're switching between who's the leader and who's the laggard in terms of performance, that allows you to be heavier into gold at one part of the cycle, be heavier into silver at one part of the cycle, or you can even play that ratio between platinum and palladium as well, other precious metals that are IRA allowable. The premium—

If I can say just to keep it, put it in layman's terms for everyone, it's like, and essentially what you're doing is from your perspective on that spread, you're buying at a discount and selling at a premium.

That's right. That's right. And it's just, I mean, that's where it's not rocket science. We don't have a lot of competition in the space in part because our cost structure is low enough that it allows us to have lots of accretive trades for clients, whereas most of our competition charges way too much money. They could never get back to a point where the client is making money and making more than they're giving up in commissions. So that's a part of the reason why we've differentiated ourselves. First company in the US to put metals into IRAs back in 1986. And this trading strategy of compounding ounces between gold and silver has been super effective for growing the number of ounces that you have. Now, of course, if the price moves, that's wonderful, but now it's off of a larger base, which is, which is really the effective part.

Yeah. So, and let's talk about using your IRA. Which, you know, first of all, you couldn't even own like gold, you know, for yourself. And then, and then, then you could own it in your IRA. There was changes to the IRA rules. But this has been around for a long time now, and people being able to own physical precious metals, trade them in your IRA. But if you think about this on an individual side, if I'm doing that personally, right, all these trades, I'm going to have some short-term gains on these things accumulating some tax cost in there. Your capital gains rate is actually at a premium because precious metals are— you don't get the 20%, I think it's 28%. That's right. On the— even for long-term, let alone short-term at your ordinary rates. So, the tax drag on that strategy can hurt you individually. And you're only paying tax if you're making money on that. But it's still— there's a drag that tax cost is eating into it. But with your IRA, You're buying and selling precious metals. There's no tax, right? I'm— that the, the gains I'm making on the strategy there, the whole gain is building in my IRA.

Yeah, I think one of the ways that you have effectively educated and helped people understand their IRAs is that if you can capture some growth inside that IRA structure, it's very wealth transformative. And in most people look at metals and they're like, okay, so I own a few ounces and, you know, this decade it's up and next decade it's down. Net-net, why do I own this stuff? Well, in integrating a compounding out strategy into an IRA, it doesn't matter if you're in a bull market or bear market. You're just continuing to grow the ounces that you have. Like a farmer might grow from having 300 acres to 500 acres to 1,000 acres, never really pricing what is the price of an acre today. Less relevant as long as he's compounding and growing the number of acres he's got, or square feet if you're a homeowner. I think that's, you know, being inside of an IRA, that's where the magic happens. That's where the magic happens with a precious metals compounding out strategy.

Yeah, and I love that because that's, for many people, you know, I mean, the goal of everybody with their retirement account is to have the largest account possible when we hit 59 and a half or whenever we're really trying to, start living off of that. And as we think of the investment opportunities we have, no matter what the asset is, that's the power of the self-directed IRA is I get to keep every penny of the return and that's going to compound and grow faster. So, this trading strategy, okay, great, I'm making money, I'm compounding, I'm growing, I'm building the value of the account, and I'm going to do that faster and get a lot farther than if I was doing this personally with my individual dollars and it's hitting my 1040 and I'm sending the IRS and the state money every year, which is not dollars that could have otherwise got reinvested and helped grow and compound next year and next year and next year. So, so super powerful. And that's the whole point of IRAs. And the sad thing is too many people have thought about that for, you know, oh, my IRA can do stocks or it can do mutual funds. They just haven't thought of these other assets that are out there. To being able to be owned in their IRA.

Yeah, metals, metals I think are kind of an unsung hero in a portfolio. We talked about lower volatility, non-correlation, diversification benefits. Very rarely do people think of them as growth assets. They can fall off the radar for long periods of time. What moves the metals to higher prices is really important. Are we in a bull market and what drives that bull market? Are we close to an end in that bull market? There's sort of an adoption cycle within any asset class and you've got the early adopters, kind of maverick thinkers, and those are the patient long-term holders of metals. When Wall Street begins to take an interest, which they did in 2013, '14, '15, they created a whole number of mutual funds and ETFs and things like that. That's kind of the stage 2 of a bull market. Where you tend to see the fireworks is stage 3, when there's lots of products for people to own. Uh, Wall Street has an opportunity to, to make money on the trades themselves, and investors come en masse. To be honest, we really haven't seen that yet. Even with last year's price performance, I think we are sort of early in that last stage of a bull market. That could be 2, 3, 4, 5 years yet. Of really spectacular growth in gold and silver. And this comes down to basic supply and demand. You've got 3,700 tons that are produced, and we'll just talk to gold for now. 3,700 tons a year coming from mines and close to a third of, well, not quite a third of that, 20, 25% of that is taken from central banks at this point. So they're competing for available supply. There's all kinds of industrial uses as well. Investor demand is really what drives the price, and that's in light of inflation expectations, in light of debt sustainability, which is something that's going to be hard for us to work away from. $40 trillion in debt today. Interest component is roughly 20%, between 20% and 25% of all tax revenue is going just to pay interest. It's one of the largest line items on the federal budget. We spend more on interest today than we do on national fence, which is just stunning. So this is a problem that actually compounds negatively and creates real tension in terms of confidence with our currency, confidence with our debt markets. That ends up getting on the radar screen of enough investors and they start that migration process. If you wanted a baseball analogy, we could be in the 6th inning. I think we've got some more innings to go. And this is where all the action happens.

Yeah, um, awesome. Well, let's see if we have questions here. I'm going to turn it over to Aaron. We'll grab some questions. I don't want to dominate the conversation. It's just not getting Matt's questions answered. I have a couple more though. I'm not done, so I still get a couple more. I'm just going to reserve those. So let's turn over to Aaron and see if we got some— any questions live for David. And I can answer any too, but better to get what David thinks if it's about precious metals.

Okay. This is a good one. Thanks, Kim. She messaged in a couple of questions. So we'll hit yours first. Oh, it looks like we have a part 1, part 2. I love that. Okay. So Kim is asking about a solo 401 with directed IRA. Thank you, Kim. And is also invested in an IRA LLC as 100% owner. Can the IRA LLC write a check to purchase approved precious metals? Question 1.

Absolutely.

Okay. And let's walk, let's walk through kind of that structure here in a minute. She follows up with, what are the special precautions and steps involved for using a safe deposit box at a financial institution like a bank I've read about this literally 2 hours ago in Matt's latest edition of the Self-Directed IRA Handbook. Thanks for hosting the webinar today.

I'll fill that one. Yeah, go for it, Matt. Yeah. So, so with precious metals, great, right? The approved metals you can own in your IRA are gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. And there's some requirements in that, just some detail on that, like some fineness requirements or specifically approved coins. But, um, but those are the 4 precious metals you can buy. We typically see gold and silver as being the big, big, big metals. Now there's also a storage requirement for IRAs.

I will—

I don't— we can punt on the solo K because it's an unresolved question. There's not technically a storage requirement on solo 401s. Yeah, let's punt that. So, um, so I'll just say that I still recommend storage with the custodian, but you, you don't have to in a solo 401. But the storage requirement basically says you need to have the metals custodied with someone who's a bank, credit union, or trust company. And so, we custody our metals through a third-party trust company that we have a contract with. A lot of companies in this space do. McIlvaine, David McIlvaine and his company, they use them as well called Delaware Depository Trust Company. They're in the business of being a Fort Knox. We're a trust company. I could store your metals in our offices here, but we do not want to do that. We are not a security type place, okay? These types of storage facilities, they literally scan every employee coming in and out of that business. And if you have a filling with silver, you need to declare that. They will know if you're coming in and out of facility and any that small of metal is detected on you, they will know. So there's a security and, and, and reason why you're using those facilities, but it's also a legal requirement.

Okay.

If your IRAs can own it now in an IRA LLC, you have your IRA own an LLC 100% and now you have a checkbook with the LLC. Now you can write the checks to go buy the precious metals. They still got to be the qualifying metals— gold, silver, platinum, palladium. But the question is, what do I do with storage? Well, the storage rule still applies to the LLC. Now, some people have made the case, and I've, I've kind of said this is a gray area. It's in my book of, well, Matt, I have this LLC. I don't want to store the precious metals at this Delaware Depository Trust Company or some third-party facility. I just want to put it at the bank where my LLC checking account is at. And I'll put it in a safety deposit box at that bank. Does that satisfy the requirement? My answer is probably, but someone's going to be the test case and I can't say for certain. And I've been giving that answer for the same last 10, 15 years because no one's got audited on that and the IRS has given zero guidance. It is literally a gray area for me. I wouldn't do that. Like my own account, I probably— I wouldn't do that. I just put it at a storage facility that I know is going to be I can say 100%. Some people want to be able to go and touch it. They want to have access to it. They want to be able to go see it. They want it at the bank in their city, right? And I get that. And if you want to rely on that, just know you're going to pioneer that line of thinking. Now, what we know you can't do, and there are cases on this, what was the case? What was the name of the precious metals case? Is probably about 4 or 5 years ago. There was someone who had an IRA LLC structure and they were storing precious metals at their home. Well, they got audited. The IRS said, you can't have this. There's a, there's a, there's a storage rule for IRAs. You violated it. They said, no, no, no, no, this was in our IRA LLC. And the IRS was like, we don't care. It's all the same. The storage rule still applies. So what was that case's name? Anyways, well, someone will throw it in the chat. I know someone on my team knows that case.

It was McNulty.

McNulty, there we go.

Okay.

McFly, McNulty. Yeah, so we know you can't do home storage. If you have an IR LLC and you want to do the safety deposit box at your bank, you could make the argument that it is still in the custody of a bank and this is a bank safety deposit box. I think that could win. I'm just not certain and I don't give people green light. It's kind of like a yellow light. So, um, so, but I think that would be a strategy if you were going to just be a buy and hold person. If you want to do some of the trading stuff Dave was talking about a second ago, that wouldn't work just for the logistics of the, of the, of the metals.

Yeah.

So I don't know if you have any comment on that part, David, or anything you want out there.

Yeah, certainly the logistics, uh, that becomes hard if, if you're using the LLC and it's, and it's not at a depository. I will say that your storage rates are going to be improved using a regular IRA versus, you know, having an account, a private account, whether it's a trust account or a personal account or an LLC account at Delaware Depository. Their fee structure is going to be higher. So you'll pay more for the privilege of the LLC component if, if you're opening up an account directly with them as opposed to doing it inside of a traditional Roth structure.

Yeah. And I think what you could do if you have the IRA LLC is just send the cash from the LLC bank account back to us in your IRA at Directed because you still have an IRA with us and we can just invest the precious metals directly from the IRA. And then it falls into the discounted pricing and the custodian relationship, and it'll trade easier. Now, if you're on that mindset, though, I'm just going to do buy and hold, Matt, and I like to be able to go touch it. I'm cool being a trailblazer. You can go the safety deposit box route too.

You want me to rapid-fire a few?

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's do it.

David, so this will tee up nicely for you, but maybe you can talk a little bit about your firm. I've gotten a number of questions about, is there a brokerage firm? Do dealers need special licensing? How can I buy metals with my IRA? What kind of company can I work with? And then, so that's part one. Part two then would be, what are the most common gold, silver, coins, or bullion out there that are being held in a self-directed IRA?

Okay. Um, yeah, the advisors, uh, we have, um, many of them with 20, 30, 40 years experience. Um, we don't have a lot of turnover. Folks love working with us. It's a, it's a small family business, um, roughly 60 employees. And, you know, there are no licensing requirements in the industry. This is different than the SEC. Um, I, I have a second business, an asset management company. We're very familiar with SEC requirements and what goes into compliance. And there's a lot of things that are mirrored from one company to the other. But this is where your trust and confidence in who you're working with, the integrity and their reputation is everything. And so, you know, it's just— it's something that as a family business, we've, we've guarded with our lives that this is, you know, taking care of people. Is the only way to do business. Unfortunately, the industry being unregulated does not attract a great crowd, and a lot of our competitors notorious for 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% commissions. And so you think you're putting in your 401, and it's a 201 day one because of the fee extraction, and it's akin to highway robbery. So I would, I would just say that's, that's an important piece. And, you know, part of our vetting process and being, you know, in, in, in, in the house, so to say, with, with your company, Matt, we appreciate the care and consideration you took in making sure we're that group. So common gold and silver, you're looking typically at coins that are minted by national mints. That could be the Canadian Maple Leaf, that could be the American Silver Eagle, the Austrian Philharmonic, you know, bars. You're wanting typical hallmarks, which, you know, there's some European refineries, there's some US refineries, but it's all very standard bullion product. Again, where our competitors begin to play with the math a bit is by focusing in on fractional ounces, like 1.5-ounce silver coins and 2.25-ounce silver coins, where all of a sudden the math is skewed and you're trying to do a spot price calculation on the basis of the ounce, and it's just confusing. And that's where they charge you whatever they want. Uh, we like the plain vanilla stuff, um, 1 ounce, very close to the bullion price. And, uh, the exception to that is on occasion The American Mint, the US Mint makes proof gold coins. And when we can buy those near the spot price, we love to do it because based on supply and demand, last time we sold those ounces for clients, we were getting a $900 premium over the spot price. And so you buy them close to spot, sell them at $300, $500, $900 premiums. And that's another way to compound ounces. And we just be moving from proofs back to Gold Eagles or 10-ounce bars or kilos little gold bars, whatever the case may be.

Cool. Um, thanks, David. So let me, uh, I'll just rapid-fire a few that are, that are kind of easy one-hitters. Um, a lot of people just— I don't know why this always comes up, and I swear I'm at Costco every week with my family, and I, and I was just waiting for somebody to pop that in there. Can I buy gold and silver at Costco? Thanks, Nestor. I'm not picking on you, but yes, you can. With an IRA, no. But you can't personally, can absolutely. With an IRA, no. But I love that.

I mean, I still have, or do they still have it? They still have it. They still do.

The one by our house.

Now they don't buy it back, which is—

Yes.

Yeah.

Non-refundable.

Non-returnable.

So you got to, you want a relationship ultimately and know where you're taking those ounces.

Yeah.

So, anyways, I always get a kick out of that. Okay. So, the next one, what are some of the fees associated with doing, with purchasing metals in an IRA? I'll just hit on that real quick. Well, first you're going to need a custodian. So, whether you're using a checkbook IRA LLC or a solo 401, you know, we'll just stick to the IRA. You'll need an IRA custodian. That'd be Directed IRA. And we have, you know, an annual administrative and recordkeeping fee. That we charge. And then the next fee is you're paying some fees that are built into the investment itself. So just as David just outlined, whatever that may be. And then the third part is their storage fee. There's— and maybe we can hit on that, that kind of the difference between segregated, non-segregated, because we did have some questions pop in for that. But, you know, it's typically, you know, a flat fee that we've negotiated with some of the depositories. In this case, we were talking about Delaware Depository. We have a flat fee, whether it's segregated or non-segregated, and it's less than a couple hundred bucks a year. So those are pretty much at a high level, the fees that we're working with.

Yeah, I would just say one more thing on the segregated versus non-segregated. You're not really getting much for that segregation. I mean, it's, it's, you know, here's my pile of ounces that's segregated. Here's the pile of everyone's ounces. And we've accounted for everyone's ounces and all the ounces are there. That's non-SEG. And just knowing that the ounces are there and accounted for is, is sufficient. You know, there are rare occasions where somebody just says, I want the added assurance and you just pay more for having your own pile. Because basically you can't be commingled with anyone else, which basically means you're paying for that space and all the space above it because it takes up storage space. And ultimately, I mean, you're talking about a depository as a real estate play, like they're maximizing square footage and the fees associated with square feet. And if you're taking up more space, they're going to charge you for it. And it's just the accounting processes are so clean. I'm— I don't see— I don't see the need for it personally.

Yeah.

And you can keep your costs down by just doing, doing non-SEC. We see as the most popular. But if you still, you know, you want to be special and feel like, you know, I got my own little piece of real estate on the shelf, you can pay for it and we can drop the fee schedules in there a little bit. Right. We have like those— the team's in there. So yeah.

Do you want me to address—

Yeah, we're on the investment side. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, the scale of a transaction matters, you know, a $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 transaction. These would be smaller transactions. We would put in a 6% category. And as it scales towards, you know, six figures and above, it starts to migrate towards 3%. So there is, there is a value add depending on the scale of the transaction. Pencils get sharper.

Yeah.

And I think if any of you are out there shopping precious metals, I mean, we see people charging 30%. It's insane. And as a self-directed custodian, we can't really give advice or say, "Oh, don't work with that company versus that." I mean, and to some of David's comments earlier about some of these companies that don't have a great reputation and it is not regulated, We just ran into some problem people in the industry. I'll just say that. And you'll see 20%, 30% or higher fees that they're charging as a commission. And when you're paying that much, I mean, it takes a long time to make that money back in gains on that asset. And so, pay attention to that. Make sure you're understanding what you're actually buying and how much of that is being marked up in terms of a fee. And so, and I'd say on the other side of it, work with a company that has been around, that has reputation. That's why we have David and McIlvenny on here is because we've seen them do good business. It's not, you know, we can't endorse anybody or anything like that. But, you know, you can ask around and get a feel for their reputation. And I think their 50-plus years in business definitely says a lot.

Now, one more thing on that. You mean basically what you're getting in that cost structure is you know, an advisor who's on retainer. You want market updates, um, they're Johnny-on-the-spot to, to provide, you know, market dynamics, charts and graphs, market commentary, and of course advice along the way. And when you start compounding ounces, you start to realize it's really worth paying for the advice, and, and not just a transaction fee, but the ongoing advice of how to position And, you know, our whole CRM system is built around these ratio trades to where it's automatically tracked and we know when there is an accretive trade. Nothing happens without the permission of the client, but the advisor's calling you to say, you know, here's where your entry point was in the gold-silver ratio. Here's where it is now. This is the accumulation of ounces on this particular transaction, net of fees. And then it's go time. Give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. And so there is, there is an added value piece there with our firm because we take an advisory role.

Yeah.

Um, I do have one more that I want to hit on, um, in regards to— let's say I don't like who I've worked with, who I bought metals from, and I don't like the custodian, I don't like the depository. It's just been one hot mess and disaster. Like, what are my options to— let's say I want to trade some in the future? Can I move them in kind? Like, what does that even look like? We do get those questions asked, you know, internally when people book a call with us. And I just dropped that in the chat again. But what does that look like, David, when you've worked with other people who have, you know, already purchased metals with an IRA? Now they even either want to implement some of these compounding strategies or they, you know, want to move custodians or they need to move to another depository. Maybe you and Matt can kind of talk through that and give some color as to what that might look like for clients.

Yeah, well, I mean, it does happen with some frequency. And so we inherit a lot of accounts from our competitors. And I would just say that, you know, we're happy to give you the advice, the counsel, and the education. There may not be an accretive trade day one. So, you know, in putting cost basis and being able to track that for you, the process begins and we take a long-term view to our success as a business and would love to work with you for decades to come. So if there's no transaction to happen day one, we're fine with that. We'll steward that relationship with just as much care. And that certainly is the ethic that you'd find with any of our advisors.

Yeah, and I'll say, you can, if you've bought precious metals with an IRA, had a bad experience somewhere, I mean, we are opening accounts every day coming from some other competitor self-directed IRA provider that, you know, talked a big game and wasn't very great at the end of the day. And so, it's easy to move the account to us. You just transfer. Let's say you got a traditional IRA at Company X and you're not happy with them. You want to get in the directed IRA party because this is where you want to be. You know, you can move over here. You open an account with us. We do what's called an in-kind transfer. If those metals are sitting at a depository, they may be at Delaware Depository. They kind of are one of the big players in the space. If they're not, we can work with them. We've worked with some other depositories too, where we can move it to Delaware Depository. So our team can help direct it in terms of the account and getting the asset over here. And so you can close that account with that precious metals IRA provider you didn't like. When it comes to, all right, Matt, well, I want to sell those metals or I want to sell those metals or swap those metals for other metals or or anything like that, that's when you would contact, say, McElhaney, because we're not helping you buy and sell the assets. So you would need a dealer for that. And that's where you would contact David or his team.

David, what kind of— what kind of like assurances or, you know, proof is there that I am indeed at the time of purchase, it is in fact real gold, real silver? Like, what— how does that look and work for the client? Again, these are retirement dollars and assets being invested. So how can they ensure that it is what you say it is that they're purchasing?

Yeah, I mean, the best way to approach that— we're dealing with COMEX/nyMex Depository. Delaware Depository is, is moving metals on behalf of large Wall Street firms, institutions. And, you know, they're accounting for the metals and the settlement into the trades happens in a reasonably short period of time. So you transact the metals and you're going to get an account statement with the metals that have settled in your account. If you wanted to, you could have those metals sold out of an IRA. I'm not recommending this, but you could have them delivered to your door. They are physically present and that allocation process, they're live, they're there. No one can put a claim on them, put a lien on them. They are exclusively yours and sort of at your beck and call. If you wanted to take delivery, you could. But it's typically a 10-day period for the metals to settle into your account.

Yeah, and we've had people do that. They've taken distribution of their precious metals in kind, you know, usually after 59 and a half. And if this is your Roth account, it's going— there's going to be no tax bill. The metals show up on your door and now you personally have them. Now, any appreciation in those metals, now you're responsible for any taxable gains. So just keep that in mind. But the— and if it was a traditional, you'd get a 1099 that would be taxable. If you took that out. So, but we've definitely, and we've had those instances where the metals get shipped out and the person gets it, you know, you gotta literally get the metals to your house, like literally. So, and I even, you know, I know something like Delaware Depository, for example, and some of the others are like, you can go there if you want. Like if you want to go visit and go inspect on it, you can do that. They are audited. Regulated. They have third-party auditors coming in to check their books and tie out the metals that they're holding to. So, and that's why there's this kind of licensed, regulated part of the industry. As David said, the dealer side is not licensed and regulated, but that storage where those metals actually arrive is quite regulated if you're doing it properly. So.

I guess let me just hit on a few more things and then, oh, okay. Well, Christian, phew. You just like, bing, buzzer. Let me get that in there. I do like this. What about doing Roth conversions with precious metals? How would that work? Can I do that? What would that look like?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can. So, if you have traditional dollars, you can always convert traditional dollars to Roth. If the dollars are in an asset, we are going to take a fair market value of the asset at the time of conversion. So, for precious metals, we're typically going to look at the spot price price of precious metals at the time you're converting to get a value for what is the dollar amount which is taxable. You know, metals could have gone up or down since you held them. Um, and absolutely, but you could convert into Roth from traditional dollars, and now your money's growing and it's going to come out tax-free. So, um, I don't know, some people kind of like, well, should I convert in the cash before I buy if I want to be Roth versus versus buying it—

it can all depend.

Yeah, it can all depend on really what the price you're buying the metals at in spot. But, um, yeah, so I could kind of go either way on that. But you could absolutely— you could convert from traditional to Roth once you're owning the metals. So if you're sitting in that scenario with traditional dollars, one other thing to think about that is just from a— the tax side of it, is what tax bracket does that push me into? You know, one of the biggest jumps we see clients— this is around $200 grand of annual income—

is—

this is kind of tax lawyer Matt for a second.

We love tax lawyer.

Yeah, yeah. He's sometimes—

he's sometimes a buzzkill, sometimes he's cool.

Yeah, sometimes at the party it's like, oh dude, go away.

Who invited this guy?

You know, every once in a while he can save you some money. So, um, But let's say you're someone in a 22% bracket. Well, the next brackets, I mean, let me just pull them up here for a second. You jump up in brackets pretty quickly. I just want to get them right down here exactly. Okay, so you go from 22, okay, I want to do the married filing joint. Okay, 22% to 24%, and then 32%. So, this is the big jump. It's 24%. So, at your— the max bracket up to $206,000 is 24%. But anything over $206,000, you're at 32%. You start jumping. It's not just like 22% to 24%. It goes 24% to 32%. There's an 8% bracket jump. And it's right in there from $200 grand to $400 grand approximately. And then you start going to 35%, 37%. So if you're in that bracket where you're going to jump, you may want to chunk the conversion over multiple years. So let's say you've got $200 grand in precious metals in a traditional account. It doesn't matter the asset here for the conversation, but— and you're going to convert and now you're going to be jumping to a 32% bracket. If you converted all $200K, well, maybe we just do $100K this year. And in January of 2027, we'll convert the other $100K, assuming your income is going to be the same this year and next. That way it breaks the conversion between the two years and prevents you from hitting another bracket, which could cost you another 8% on, say, another $100 grand, which would be $8,000 that you would have had to pay. Now, if the precious metals go up, Well, over that time period, you're going to have to pay more anyways too. So, it's hard to say, but that's just the consideration to look at is, am I going to jump into another bracket? If so, maybe you chunk it over a couple of years or sometimes we have clients do it over 3 years or more. It all depends on the price of the asset where that's going, which is a little unknown, of course. So—

Meet with your tax strategist on that too. All right. So, let me wrap up here and I'll help bring it home for us, Matt and David. So, Derek, thanks for your input there. He had a comment on, you know, if are many people aware of using self-directed IRAs investing in precious metals out of the entire IRA 401 market in its entirety? I'd say yes, it's by far the number one investment that self-directed IRAs are allocated to. Right behind, it's like private funds, businesses, real estate of some kind. But yes, precious metals does leave. So, thanks for that comment. Wally put some over in the chat. He didn't listen to instructions in the Q&A, but we won't fault you for that. Just a little public shame, but you did make a good point. And this is how we'll bring it home. Please join us in person at the AltAsset Summit if you can make those dates work, October 22nd, 23rd, David will be doing a special presentation there. It is in person. His team will be there with him as well. And so, Wally's question was, is it possible where I can work with an advisor or someone on McIlvany's team where I can just, let's say, put $100,000+ in there and they're kind of trading on my behalf, if you will. What does that look like? Is that possible? Can I, can I do that and work with your firm in that way?

You know, the easy answer today is no, we don't manage with discretion. So we do engage a client when there's a change to be made. There's full visibility, full disclosure, full transparency on any transaction that happens. We've considered creating a metals index, which blends the precious metals to an appropriate percentage given prevailing market conditions and advantages to be captured there. But that's something that would be securitized and has some complexity to it that we haven't hit the green light and probably unlikely to. We really like the model, particularly because it does include engagement with clients and relationship is something that's very important to us. We love to have clients come alongside and and really understand what they're doing, why they're doing it. And so the education piece is not only on the front end, but all along. And it's nice to sort of make a decision, never think about it again. But, you know, markets change rapidly and, you know, some advantages that are here today are gone tomorrow. And just to be able to be clear-eyed and engaged, we love, love the engagement. I do a podcast, have every week for the last 19 years. And that's one of the ways that we keep in touch with folks just kind of on a macro basis, macroeconomics, markets. We'll cover everything from real estate to energy to interest rates to foreign policy. If it affects the financial markets and has some relation to gold, it's going to be a topic of conversation. We also do an exclusive podcast that is just on the metals market, which is also a great value add for just, you know, learning and growing in your awareness and understanding of the metals.

All right. Did we drop there?

There.

Where's the best place to send people, David? Okay, we dropped it in the chat and everything, but let's just say it here for purposes of the podcast. Anyone listening, where should people go to learn more, connect with you guys, David?

Yeah, McAlvany.com. It's McAlvany.com. And from there you can find everything from the podcasts to market reports that we put up on a weekly basis. There's a lot of, a lot of great resources there.

All right, well, thank you, David. Appreciate you being on, sharing your insights on precious metals and also talking about how they work with IRAs and your guys' strategies. Thank you, Aaron, for helping moderate the questions. Appreciate all of you that joined us today and your great questions. Remember, we do a webinar. We're probably doing like 3 or 4 of these a month. How many we doing? I don't, I don't do them all, so I, I only do one a month if it's a special guest like David. But okay, okay. All right, go to directedira.com/webinars. You can see the upcoming webinars, register for them. If you missed any portion of this, this will be recorded and up also at directedira.com/webinars so you can catch the whole recording. Thank you again, David. Thank you everyone for being on. We'll see you next time. Until then, stay calm, self-direct on.