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Speaker 1: Well, a chillions.

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Speaker 2: I'm Joel Webber and I'm Eric Balcunas.

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Speaker 3: Eric, there's a lot of stuff happening in the world

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Speaker 3: right now, but one theme that has been just kind

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Speaker 3: of like on a tear for more than a year

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Speaker 3: or two years even is metals. We're gonna have a

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Speaker 3: gentlemen join us, John Champalia, who's the CEO of sprot

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Speaker 3: Asset Management. Eric, what's interesting about metals and spots approach

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Speaker 3: in ETF investing.

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Speaker 2: Let me give you a statue. About two weeks ago,

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Speaker 2: the silver ETF SLV traded more in a week than

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Speaker 2: any stock on planet Earth, more than Navidia, more than Tesla.

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Speaker 2: A year ago, this ETF was ranked one hundred and

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Speaker 2: sixty eighth. This is crazy what happened with silver and gold?

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Speaker 2: Silver in particular felt like GameStop. It felt like, what

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Speaker 2: in the hell's going on? How does something that's mid

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Speaker 2: size takeover in terms of volume. So silver had this

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Speaker 2: just parabolic move up. Gold has been going up for

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Speaker 2: a year and a half. But between the two of them,

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Speaker 2: I think they combined for I want to say something

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Speaker 2: like sixty seventy billion in volume. That I mean, these

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Speaker 2: are ridiculous numbers, it's going to die down. It has

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Speaker 2: died down a little bit, there's been a sell off,

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Speaker 2: but for the most part, these two medals really just

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Speaker 2: went wild, particularly over the past couple months, and some

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Speaker 2: people are calling it part of the debasement trade. It

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Speaker 2: feels a little like fomo to me. People general investors

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Speaker 2: have for a while now been buying equities like normal,

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Speaker 2: but they've been buying gold. So gold has been a

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Speaker 2: story for about a year and a half. But silver

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Speaker 2: came out of nowhere and just went absolutely wild, and

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Speaker 2: that's just caught everybody's by surprise a little bit. But

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Speaker 2: the ETFs again, those volume numbers were absolutely ridiculous, and

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Speaker 2: then there's some of the things to unpack there. But

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Speaker 2: I think it's just one of those things where you

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Speaker 2: never know, Joel. Just when you know things are like

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Speaker 2: kind of going one direction, out thing comes from the

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Speaker 2: side door and just goes wild. And silver was that thing,

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Speaker 2: And where do we go from here? Both of these

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Speaker 2: metals are like really at extreme positions. So what happens

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Speaker 2: now also worth mentioning.

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Speaker 1: John's been on the podcast once.

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Speaker 3: Before a couple of years ago when we did a

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Speaker 3: uranium episode. So if you want to hear more, you

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Speaker 3: can listen back to that one this time I'm Tryin's

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Speaker 3: Metal Mania.

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Speaker 1: John.

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Speaker 4: Welcome back to trillions, Thanks for having me back.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So we mentioned this, this precious metals just having

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Speaker 3: this incredible run. There's also like no shortage of ETFs

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Speaker 3: that are offering exposure. So so curious what does SPRAT

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Speaker 3: do differently and why does that matter?

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Speaker 4: Right? Well, Sprout has a long history in metals of mining.

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Speaker 4: It's kind of our DNA, it's our culture and it's

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Speaker 4: all we do, so we know it really well. And

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Speaker 4: we do everything from investing in physical commodities and that

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Speaker 4: covers gold, silver, palladium, platinum, copper, and uranium all in

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Speaker 4: physical form, and we do most of the related equity

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Speaker 4: oriented categories and we also do active management as well

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Speaker 4: as some private investments. So we do everything in the

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Speaker 4: capital structure, both physical commodities, passive equities, and active equities

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Speaker 4: in metals of mining. So, you know, we saw a

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Speaker 4: lot of these trends starting to form three four, five

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Speaker 4: years ago, and we built a large suite of ETFs,

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Speaker 4: not just in the United States, but we also have

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Speaker 4: funds in Europe and Canada and they're really designed to

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Speaker 4: give investors opportunities to play a lot of these thematics,

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Speaker 4: which we think are still in the early stages of

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Speaker 4: their development.

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Speaker 3: So Eric mentioned the debasement trade, and I'm curious that

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Speaker 3: really became a theme, especially last year. It seems like

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Speaker 3: it's really gone mainstream. When did that thesis first resonate

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Speaker 3: with you? And what's changed even since then?

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Speaker 4: Well, at Sprott, I can tell you the deplacement trade

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Speaker 4: that that term we've been using since the Great Financial Crisis,

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Speaker 4: and it's only been in the last year, so it's

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Speaker 4: kind of entered the mainstream lexicon. And for your audience,

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Speaker 4: I think we should define what it means because it's

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Speaker 4: not a typical term we use in everyday language. But

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Speaker 4: the basement is a term to describe a situation where

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Speaker 4: very excessive levels of debt, very high levels of inflation

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Speaker 4: are basically eroding your real real after inflation returns, whether

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Speaker 4: you're investing in treasuries or currencies. And it's also a

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Speaker 4: part of currency devaluation. Currency evaluation is very common when

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Speaker 4: countries are in trade wars, which we're in right now,

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Speaker 4: and all of these things kind of point investors to say,

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Speaker 4: maybe I need to hedge myself against those risks. How

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Speaker 4: do I do that? Well. Precious metals, for not one

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Speaker 4: or two years, but for the last five thousand years,

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Speaker 4: have been an alternative form of storing your wealth. And

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Speaker 4: this is one of the reasons why gold and silver

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Speaker 4: and platinum have all been really well bid over the

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Speaker 4: last couple of years, because investors are rotating from let's

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Speaker 4: call it paper assets, whether those are treasuries or stocks

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Speaker 4: in some cases, two more real things that historically have

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Speaker 4: performed well in these par periods of debasement.

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Speaker 2: Let's talk about this so right now. I mean, inflation

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Speaker 2: isn't that bad, Debasement isn't that bad. I mean, it's

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Speaker 2: not like we just had a bunch of qi. It

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Speaker 2: feels a little more like fomo as well. It just

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Speaker 2: seems like gold started going up because people were buying

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Speaker 2: it for that reason. But then I think as it

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Speaker 2: goes up, it gets more fomo money. It just seems

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Speaker 2: like more of a craze than it does seem like

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Speaker 2: a general allocation to it for this long term inflation hedge.

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Speaker 2: What's your take on that.

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Speaker 4: We would describe it as a pivot, and the pivot

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Speaker 4: is really twofold. It's one. I'm going to bring this

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Speaker 4: more on a local basis. It's about running an economy

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Speaker 4: very hot in the United States. That means allowing inflation

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Speaker 4: to be higher than historic targets of two percent. That

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Speaker 4: means running very high physical death sits, which is what's happening.

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Speaker 4: It is also around very commoday to monetary policy, which

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Speaker 4: obviously the Trump administration is trying to engineer with new

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Speaker 4: FED chairman. So if you're running the economy hotter from

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Speaker 4: a fiscal and monetary perspective, I think that introduces a

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Speaker 4: different dynamic. But take a step back and look at

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Speaker 4: the big picture globally, this really started four years ago

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Speaker 4: when Russian invaded the Ukraine, and so what does this

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Speaker 4: have to do with gold? While six hundred billion dollars

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Speaker 4: of Russian assets were frozen with a few keystrokes on

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Speaker 4: the computer. And this was a real eye opener for

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Speaker 4: a lot of emergent markets and countries that aren't so

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Speaker 4: friendly with the United States and other Western countries that

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Speaker 4: their assets could be seized or frozen very easily. And

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Speaker 4: this is what really kick started and accelerated a shift

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Speaker 4: we call it dedollarization, basically where central banks around the

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Speaker 4: world and governments were basically selling treasuries or reducing their

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Speaker 4: dollar holdings, and what were they doing with the money.

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Speaker 4: They were basically recycling it into gold. The Chinese Central

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Speaker 4: Bank was really the primary proponent of this strategy. We

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Speaker 4: know they have hundreds of billions of dollars of treasures

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Speaker 4: that they are selling into the market and recycling in

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Speaker 4: hard assets. It's not just gold, it's infrastructure, it's energy, etc.

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Speaker 4: But there are a lot of central banks doing this India,

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Speaker 4: Poland Singapore. They are moving away from dollars and treasuries

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Speaker 4: as part of their foreign exchange reserves, and they're recycling

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Speaker 4: the money into physical gold. And you're starting to see

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Speaker 4: institutional investors mimic this behavior, which is why last year

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Speaker 4: we saw very good flows into gold based exchange listed offerings,

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Speaker 4: including the sprot Physical Gold Trust. And this trend, I

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Speaker 4: think is starting to trickle down into more of the

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Speaker 4: advisor channel and down to individual investors. They're kind of

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Speaker 4: minicking the behavior of these central banks. And so you

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Speaker 4: might say, well, is this a short term trend or

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Speaker 4: is this part of a longer term kind of fracture

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Speaker 4: of the global world order? And right now it feels

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Speaker 4: like the ladder to us, which is why you have

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Speaker 4: such a constant bid under the price of gold, why

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Speaker 4: it's been so resilient, and obviously in the last few

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Speaker 4: weeks it's hit an all time high.

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Speaker 3: So god, there was a lot there. I want to

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Speaker 3: ask about. You went from the institutional kind of to

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Speaker 3: the retail. So let's pivot, if we may, from the

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Speaker 3: institutional into the retail. And I'm curious, like, what role

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Speaker 3: should metals play in a retail investor's portfolio? Now, I

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Speaker 3: mean there was this sort of like old way and

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Speaker 3: if you're describing sort of a new world, like what

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Speaker 3: is the way that asset managers are financial advisors are

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Speaker 3: starting to talk to one another about this.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean historically goal has always played a safe

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Speaker 4: haven role in a portfolio. It's always done very well,

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Speaker 4: particularly in financial dislocations or calamities. And the other assets

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Speaker 4: that always historically did well are things like US treasuries

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Speaker 4: and the US dollar. But last year the US dollar

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Speaker 4: went down ten percent against a basket of currency, so

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Speaker 4: didn't really provide the shock absorber against things going on

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Speaker 4: with trade wars and tariffs and the lake. So what

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Speaker 4: we see is some rotation of assets away from traditional

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Speaker 4: treasuries to gold, and we think it's displaying a more

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Speaker 4: effective hedge against some of the risks, whether it's currency, credit,

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Speaker 4: equity risk. And we've always told our investors, and this

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Speaker 4: is going back decades, that gold should always be kind

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Speaker 4: of the ballast in your portfolio. You should always have

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Speaker 4: some weight to it depending on what you know, what

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Speaker 4: you're trying to hedge against. But it obviously goes up

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Speaker 4: around eight to ten percent over long periods of time,

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Speaker 4: and then it obviously can can perform well against other

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Speaker 4: asset classes and a dislocation. But we've always said to

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Speaker 4: people you should have somewhere between five to ten percent

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Speaker 4: of your portfolio in physical gold help you stay invested

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Speaker 4: in other asset classes that historically have been more volatile.

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Speaker 3: Gold, but maybe maybe not silver. Right, So what's driving

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Speaker 3: the interest in in silver? Is it just price momentum

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Speaker 3: or is there something else going on?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean silver obviously and gold are very tied together,

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Speaker 4: but there are some key differences between the two. Silver

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Speaker 4: is what we call a hybrid metal. That means it

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Speaker 4: has monetary elements to it and it has industrial elements

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Speaker 4: to it. And I think it's important to take a

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Speaker 4: step back and look at the price history of silver.

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Speaker 4: I mean, silver was fifty dollars an ounce in twenty eleven.

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Speaker 4: It meandered around for over ten years, and in the

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Speaker 4: last I guess three or four months, it was like

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Speaker 4: a coiled sprint. It had a huge catchup trade because

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Speaker 4: gold was rallying first. But there's also kind of a

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Speaker 4: geopolitical angle to silver as well, because silver is a

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Speaker 4: very important metal for anything that conducts electricity. So think

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Speaker 4: about defence industries, evs, things where you need very high

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Speaker 4: levels of electrical connectivity. Silver's your go to metal. China

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Speaker 4: has recently put export restrictions on silver, so there's some

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Speaker 4: challenges there. The other element that's got silver kind of

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Speaker 4: really going is substitution effects. So what does that mean. Well,

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Speaker 4: what it means is if you're an investor in a

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Speaker 4: place like India or another emerging market where you don't

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Speaker 4: trust your currency because of hyper inflation or whatever, gold

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Speaker 4: has become very expensive for those for those people. And

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Speaker 4: so what we see is that as the price of

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Speaker 4: gold becomes unaffordable for some groups in the world, they

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Speaker 4: switched to silver. So a really good example would be India,

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Speaker 4: you know, huge owners of physical gold. When the price

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Speaker 4: of gold kind of broke five thousand, we saw eighty

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Speaker 4: five million ounces of silver in the just a two

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Speaker 4: month period get imported into India, So they're basically hoarding

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Speaker 4: silver now as y're touched at the beginning. Was there

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Speaker 4: a bit of a fomo you know, memification going on

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Speaker 4: with silver in the last couple of weeks. Yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 4: there was a absolute wild trading looking at some of

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Speaker 4: the ETFs you look at, we were watching the options

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Speaker 4: trading on some of the ETFs. It got very excessive,

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Speaker 4: and we've had kind of a correction here, which I

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Speaker 4: think is quite healthy. But we're holding at eighty dollars,

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Speaker 4: so you know, we were fifty dollars an ounce in

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Speaker 4: November and we obviously broke through one hundred and corrected

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Speaker 4: back down to eighty. But there's also a shortage of silver.

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Speaker 4: We've had a supply deficit for five years and that

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Speaker 4: is obviously starting to catch up to the marketplace.

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Speaker 2: So SLV alone traded one hundred and forty six billion

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Speaker 2: in the last week of January, and that's an enormous number.

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Speaker 2: And even leading up to that, we're talking like eight

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Speaker 2: ten times its average. Now, all that volume, all that return,

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Speaker 2: and yet no flows. This was interesting to me. I

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Speaker 2: want to get your take on this, so Joel. Normally,

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Speaker 2: like when gold started to go up, the flows came in,

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Speaker 2: like people were like, oh cool silver. No flows in

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Speaker 2: fact outflows, and I heard a theory and it feels

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Speaker 2: but I want to get your take on it. That

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Speaker 2: silver for a minute there and I'm not sure if

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Speaker 2: it still exists was so hot and demand physically, especially

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Speaker 2: in Asia and China. One guy tried to smuggle silver

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Speaker 2: in through Hong Kong, got busted and they put up

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Speaker 2: the picture all the silver he was trying to snuggle

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Speaker 2: it in these Danish cookie boxes. Anyway, I wouldn't mess

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Speaker 2: with the Chinese government, but that's just me. Anyway, he's

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Speaker 2: trying to get this in. And the thesis I heard

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Speaker 2: was that the traders out there were using SLV for

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Speaker 2: its silver stash. They were actually handing in chairs of

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Speaker 2: SLV to get physical silver back and then sell it

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Speaker 2: in arbitrage it in the open market, especially in Asia.

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Speaker 2: So it was almost like the ETF was getting raided

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Speaker 2: for its valuable thing that it held. And that's why

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Speaker 2: there could be outflows that overwhelmed the inflows from the

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Speaker 2: FOMO people. Thoughts.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think you have to look at

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Speaker 4: it fun by fund. So Sprott has a physical silver

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Speaker 4: trust that's actually been in net inflow, so we've been

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Speaker 4: accumulating new new dollars into the fund, and buying silver

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Speaker 4: with SLV is more of a trading instrument versus a

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Speaker 4: buy and hold, And obviously I think the options market

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Speaker 4: for that is more the tail wagging the dog on

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Speaker 4: that thing, just the way it trades. But yes, you're right,

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Speaker 4: there are some arbitrage opportunities by location. So for example,

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Speaker 4: there's too much metal sitting in North America right now

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Speaker 4: versus places like London, India or China, the other big

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Speaker 4: kind of metal markets. And we know that because there's

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Speaker 4: a price differential as to what the price of silver

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Speaker 4: trades for in Shanghai versus New York, and there is

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Speaker 4: a big spread, and traders are very opportunistic. If that

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Speaker 4: spread provides an arbitrage opportunity, they will physically move the silver,

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Speaker 4: put it on a ship, sail it around the world,

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Speaker 4: and deliver it and the vaults into whatever market. We

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Speaker 4: haven't quite seen that yet because there's not enough arbitrage there.

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Speaker 4: There is some vat taxes in China that makes that

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Speaker 4: arbitrage why than you would think, But we see that

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Speaker 4: all the time when markets dislocate. I think the great

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Speaker 4: example right now is copper. We obviously saw the price

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Speaker 4: of copper at one point trading over ten percent over

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Speaker 4: the price of copper in London and traders were basically

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Speaker 4: loading up ships and rushing it to the United States.

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Speaker 4: So these physical movements of metal actually happen.

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Speaker 1: We do it.

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Speaker 4: That's brought all the time. We have to buy metal

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Speaker 4: and move it around the world. But yeah, there's definitely

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Speaker 4: I think the volatility has been exacerbated by some of

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Speaker 4: the inventory mismatches right now going on.

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Speaker 1: Who's calls when you have to move metal like that?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so we we obviously work with different banks and

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Speaker 4: shippers and believe it or not, silver, It just gives

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Speaker 4: you a quick background silver. So how do you move

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Speaker 4: around these one thousand ounce bars. Well, we put six

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Speaker 4: hundred of them on a semi flatbed tractor trailer, which

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Speaker 4: is a reinforced trailer, and we moved six hundred bars

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Speaker 4: at a time, and sometimes it'll take us six months

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Speaker 4: to move large quantities around to our vaults, but we

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Speaker 4: do it. It's a lot of work, but we have

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Speaker 4: a whole team of logistics people that organize this. And

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Speaker 4: gold is a little different. It's obviously it's obviously in

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Speaker 4: armored cars because of the volume to value, but silver

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Speaker 4: is so bulky you need to put it on flatbed trailers.

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Speaker 2: Interesting about all this, like moving this merchandise around and ships.

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Speaker 2: And I just finished a book project on bitcoin and

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Speaker 2: one of the chapters is called the Store of Value SmackDown,

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Speaker 2: and it's basically gold versus bitcoin. One of the big

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Speaker 2: arguments that the bitcoiners have is, hey, if you want

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Speaker 2: to move bitcoin, you just like basically click a button.

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Speaker 2: You can move it anywhere in the world. You don't

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Speaker 2: have to get it through a border, there's nobody who's

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Speaker 2: going to confiscate it. You don't have to call like

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Speaker 2: a big ship up, you don't have to ensure it.

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Speaker 2: It's just easy. So it's like better version of gold.

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Speaker 2: And obviously it has made that case pretty well. Even

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Speaker 2: seventy thousand dollars after this huge pullback, that's still a

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Speaker 2: lot of money per bitcoin, and it's been around seventeen years. Obviously,

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Speaker 2: gold has really crushed in the short term, and bitcoin

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Speaker 2: crushed maybe we'll call it twenty twenty twenty three and

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty four was up four hundred and fifty percent,

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Speaker 2: gold up way less. So they go back and forth.

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Speaker 2: But what's your take on bitcoin? Could it be used

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Speaker 2: as the same store of value in it as they

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Speaker 2: say a digital gold, and is it even better because

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Speaker 2: you don't have to worry about calling up a ship.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a good question. I obviously get that all

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Speaker 4: the time. I'm going to use your seventeen year term

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Speaker 4: and say that gold's been a store of value for

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Speaker 4: five thousand plus years. So we have a long history

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Speaker 4: as humans in terms of our value and accumulation of gold.

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Speaker 4: So it stood the test of time over millennia. You know,

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Speaker 4: seventeen years. It sounds like a long time, but it's

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Speaker 4: still in its infancy in terms of a new asset class. So,

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Speaker 4: but yes, they have pros and they're very different there.

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Speaker 4: It's not a digital gold. We don't like to think

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Speaker 4: of it that way. It's a very different asset. Last obviously,

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Speaker 4: if it was digital gold, there wouldn't be a forty

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Speaker 4: percent difference in performance just over the last few months.

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Speaker 4: So they have very different audiences. They have some similarities. Yes,

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Speaker 4: you can zip it around digitally, but there's obviously trade

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Speaker 4: offs with security, whereas trying to steal gold is pretty

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Speaker 4: challenging given how heavy it is and how highly secure

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Speaker 4: it is. So they can compliment each other, but we

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Speaker 4: just we don't like to think of them as substitute.

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Speaker 4: That's brought.

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Speaker 2: Hold on, Joel. I have a trivia question for you.

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Speaker 2: How old is gold?

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Speaker 1: I mean, like from the beginning.

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Speaker 2: Yes, here's how old it is. It was mentioned in

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Speaker 2: the Old Testament three hundred fifty times. That's old, man.

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Speaker 2: If you get if you're like getting shout outs in

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Speaker 2: the Old Testament, I mean that is really old. And

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Speaker 2: that's why gold I do think it's it should get

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Speaker 2: respected more from the bitcoinners. It's like you're seventeen years old.

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Speaker 2: This thing is like has been through it, and every

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Speaker 2: human generation has come along has come on and say

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Speaker 2: gold is valuable. So that is definitely worth something. I

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Speaker 2: think they both can exist.

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Speaker 3: But you know, John, actually I'm curious do you think

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Speaker 3: that the kind of the rise and popularity of bitcoin

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Speaker 3: has that actually sparked an interest and expanded the interest

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Speaker 3: in more hard assets that are physically backed.

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Speaker 4: Look, I think there's similarities in terms of what people

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Speaker 4: are trying to do with each asset class. Right, people

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Speaker 4: are trying to diverse away at the fundamental base of

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Speaker 4: from FIA currencies, which are basically paper money which can

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Speaker 4: be printed as free will and debased. There's that term

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Speaker 4: again over time from excessive money printing, inflation, excessive debt levels,

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Speaker 4: et cetera. So there are some commonalities in terms of

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Speaker 4: what people are trying to avoid. So those are the

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Speaker 4: common I think the commonalities between the two. Obviously one

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Speaker 4: is a lot more volatile than the other. We don't

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Speaker 4: see central banks accumulating bitcoin yet. Maybe there are one

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Speaker 4: or two that I am not worre about of. But

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Speaker 4: we obviously have lots of central banks that a store

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Speaker 4: as in there as part of their foreign exchange reserves

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Speaker 4: as a liquid, tangible acid they can easily exchange for

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Speaker 4: whatever it wants to when it wants to. So we

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Speaker 4: haven't quite got central banks buying bitcoin. Maybe I'll Salvador,

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Speaker 4: but time will tell to see how they play out.

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Speaker 2: One more question on this, because one of the other

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Speaker 2: things that we bring up between bitcoiners as well, Okay,

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Speaker 2: gold is definitely scarce because one of the big you know,

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Speaker 2: reasons to buy bitcoin is there's only going to be

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Speaker 2: twenty one million, and twenty million are already done, so

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Speaker 2: you're almost at the capacity and it's locked in. That's

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Speaker 2: hard coded. Now gold two three percent is dug up

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Speaker 2: from the ground a year, right, so there's a little

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Speaker 2: bit of inflation. And then now they're talking about digging

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Speaker 2: up the ocean floor or even beyond that mining asteroids. Joel,

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Speaker 2: there's an asteroid called sixteen psych and did you know

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Speaker 2: it has seven hundred quintillion I think, not gold on it.

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Speaker 2: That's enough for ninety billion dollars per person on Earth.

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Speaker 2: I don't know that could really decrease the price of gold.

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Speaker 4: No, I think that's a pretty far fetch, well a theory.

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Speaker 3: But it also I will pivot that again, pivot into

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Speaker 3: a question about miners. There's the physical and the physical backstaff.

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Speaker 2: Hold on, but I want to get to miners.

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Speaker 1: But well, he would have exposure via miners.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, why don't they send the gold miners into

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Speaker 2: the ocean or to space space?

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Speaker 4: Well, how about when was the last time somebody landed

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Speaker 4: on the moon, let alone an asteroid? So I'm not

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Speaker 4: holding my wreath on that one. But you do raise

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Speaker 4: another question which is obviously being thirsty debated right now,

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Speaker 4: which is basically mining on the ocean floor. You know,

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Speaker 4: there are these polymetallic nodules that sit way down in

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Speaker 4: the bottom of the ocean, and there's a lot of

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Speaker 4: debate going on right now across government agencies and countries

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Speaker 4: around whether that is is fair game or is that

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Speaker 4: basically something we should not attempt to do. And it's

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Speaker 4: still not clear cut, but yeah, there's minerals all over

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Speaker 4: the place, whether they're at surface blow surface, at the

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Speaker 4: bottom of the ocean, so that I think we don't

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Speaker 4: have enough clarity on. But finding these minerals is not

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Speaker 4: easy to do. It takes a long time to find

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Speaker 4: a large scale deposit that has economically viable permitting, building minds, etc.

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Speaker 4: There's a long lead time with commodities, and I think

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Speaker 4: that's one of the interesting aspects of it. You might say, Okay,

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Speaker 4: all these commodity prices despike, so we're going to have

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Speaker 4: a huge supply response, right The answer is no, because

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Speaker 4: it takes so long to find these deposits bring them

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Speaker 4: to market. And yes, the incentives are very high right now,

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Speaker 4: but you know, it will take several years for new

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Speaker 4: deposits to come into production, which naturally, I think keeps

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Speaker 4: these bull markets running much longer than normal business cycles.

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Speaker 1: Okay, related to that, we hear a lot about rare earth.

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Speaker 3: The Trump administration obviously views this is a strategic competitive

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Speaker 3: competition with China. Obviously, there's nothing that looks like a

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Speaker 3: rare earth ETF maybe ever or yet at least, But

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Speaker 3: what would it actually take like, not only for markets,

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Speaker 3: but supply chains and regulation. What would a rare earth

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Speaker 3: vehicle look like?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we're investing a rare earth's it's brought

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Speaker 4: both passively inactive. We have a fun called the Sprought

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Speaker 4: Critical Materials ETF, and that does have exposure to rare earths.

433
00:23:29,680 --> 00:23:31,600
Speaker 4: And maybe we should take a step back and say,

434
00:23:31,600 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 4: what the heck are rare earths. Well, it's a group

435
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 4: of minerals. Most of them I can't even pronounce, so

436
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 4: they're so obscure. But they're very strategically important because they're

437
00:23:40,320 --> 00:23:45,000
Speaker 4: used in very small quantities for very important technologies defense industries.

438
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 4: Other technologies from the magnets are used in electric vehicles,

439
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:53,720
Speaker 4: things like that. Now, so, yes, they're rare. They're usually

440
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:57,360
Speaker 4: found in very small traces in other deposits, so they

441
00:23:57,359 --> 00:24:02,480
Speaker 4: come as a byproduct. They sometimes are produced smelting other materials. Okay,

442
00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:04,960
Speaker 4: why does all that matter? Well, why it matters is

443
00:24:04,960 --> 00:24:09,840
Speaker 4: that China controls between eighty of the processing of these

444
00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:12,640
Speaker 4: rare earths. So it's not so much that they control

445
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:15,679
Speaker 4: of the mining, but it's the processing that they have

446
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:19,480
Speaker 4: a stranglehold on. And we know that this is being weaponized. So,

447
00:24:19,600 --> 00:24:22,960
Speaker 4: for example, in the last few years, China gets into

448
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:26,480
Speaker 4: a spat with Japan, China says that Japan, we're not

449
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 4: saying you anymore rare earths. And this is this has

450
00:24:29,880 --> 00:24:33,600
Speaker 4: not gone lost by many administrations around the world saying, look,

451
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:37,440
Speaker 4: if we got cut off from these supply chains by China,

452
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:41,560
Speaker 4: our industries could be crippled. And this is why the

453
00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:44,919
Speaker 4: Trump administration and even prior to the Bide administration, has

454
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 4: been taking steps to basically build the jargon is resilient

455
00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:51,800
Speaker 4: supply chains, which is code for diversify away from China.

456
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:56,480
Speaker 4: And so what's happening is a lot of energy policy

457
00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:03,640
Speaker 4: and national security driven policy is driving the incentives to

458
00:25:03,760 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 4: produce rare earths. In the United States and other Western

459
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:11,399
Speaker 4: countries to build processing facilities because it's not just the minerals.

460
00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:15,400
Speaker 4: You need the processing, which is very complex to ensure

461
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:18,159
Speaker 4: that we have adequate supply. Now, just in the last week,

462
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:23,119
Speaker 4: the Trump administrations announced something called Project Vault, and Project

463
00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:27,000
Speaker 4: Vault is twelve billion dollars of funding to stockpile critical

464
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 4: materials like rare earths. So this is basically going back.

465
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 4: We're going back to the Cold War where governments basically

466
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 4: stockpiled a lot of different minerals to ensure it was

467
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 4: not disrupted. And you know, the genesis of all this

468
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:43,600
Speaker 4: is obviously in the nineteen seventies when Opek squeezed the

469
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:46,879
Speaker 4: oil price. It was really the wake up call for

470
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:49,679
Speaker 4: government saying, you know what, we're vulnerable here. If somebody

471
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 4: shuts off our oil or rare earth, you know, we

472
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 4: could be really screwed here. So government is basically taking

473
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:59,640
Speaker 4: a very holistic approach to incentivize mining of rare earths

474
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:04,240
Speaker 4: and minerals. In the United States, they're talking about public

475
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:07,880
Speaker 4: private partnership, so that's things like loans to get these

476
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:11,560
Speaker 4: projects off the ground. That Trump administration is even gone

477
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 4: as far as taking equity stakes in some of these

478
00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:18,639
Speaker 4: mining companies wear erth lithium, et cetera, and they're taking

479
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:21,119
Speaker 4: in exchange for the equity off take agreements. So off

480
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:25,240
Speaker 4: take is basically a promise to deliver me future production.

481
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:30,320
Speaker 4: They're even contemplating in some cases price floors, which says

482
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 4: we will guarantee a price of X for all that

483
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 4: future delivery. That price of X may be above the

484
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 4: current spot price, So they're basically putting a floor under

485
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:44,600
Speaker 4: the price so that it incentivizes and allows the project

486
00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 4: to get to completion. And one of the big complaints

487
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:52,520
Speaker 4: about China is over capacity, and they basically flood the

488
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:57,639
Speaker 4: market with heavily subsidized production, which destroys the price and

489
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:00,679
Speaker 4: doesn't allow mines around the world form me ever getting

490
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:03,480
Speaker 4: off the ground. You know, in the last couple of years,

491
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 4: we've heard he's a here's a cobalt mine in Idaho

492
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 4: shut because the price collapse, you know, because China controls

493
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:14,679
Speaker 4: the cobalt supply out of the Congo. So this is

494
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,360
Speaker 4: the game, the chess game is playing right now geopolitically

495
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:22,160
Speaker 4: around trying to wrestle control away from China of these

496
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:25,359
Speaker 4: critical supply chains. It's happening right now in our earth.

497
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 4: It's happening in things like cut, excuse me, copper. These

498
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:32,880
Speaker 4: are all metals that are very strategically important to the West.

499
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: How's that chess match going from your vantage so far?

500
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:38,760
Speaker 4: Well, China has the benefit of playing a long game,

501
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,879
Speaker 4: and we seem in the West to go administration by

502
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:46,160
Speaker 4: administration in terms of new administration comes in and they

503
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:48,920
Speaker 4: flip flop and unwind everything that the prior one did,

504
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 4: so we don't have the benefit of having a government

505
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:55,560
Speaker 4: that can play out the next ten to twenty thirty years.

506
00:27:55,800 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 4: But I think it's basically a woke in the giant,

507
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:01,800
Speaker 4: just like in in the midst nineteen seventies when the

508
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 4: Strategic Oil Reserve and the International Energy Agency was formed.

509
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 4: So it's not a fight over oil like it was

510
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:11,119
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventies, a fight over metals. This is a

511
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:14,679
Speaker 4: very different I think geopolitical struggle right now, and metals

512
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:17,160
Speaker 4: are at the forefront of it. And the reason is

513
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,679
Speaker 4: is because metals are a very vulnerable supply chain, and

514
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 4: metals are so ubiquitous in everything we do in our lives.

515
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:29,680
Speaker 4: Just about every industry, technology, defense, AI, all these things

516
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:33,520
Speaker 4: are very mineral intensive, so why are people fighting. It's

517
00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:37,160
Speaker 4: not about rocks. It's about controlling chips and missiles, it's

518
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 4: about controlling AI data centers. All of these things are

519
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:44,239
Speaker 4: the new front line, and governments around the world are

520
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:51,240
Speaker 4: really responding to this challenge.

521
00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:55,160
Speaker 2: We're going to wrap up here, but I wanted to

522
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:57,760
Speaker 2: pivot to uranium since you are the issue of view.

523
00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 2: RNM jewel Uranium miners are up twenty two percent this

524
00:29:01,840 --> 00:29:05,479
Speaker 2: year and I can't not do it. How much are

525
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 2: they up? Since yours truly pitched this ETF in the

526
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:10,479
Speaker 2: Best New ETF Launch competition in early twenty twenty at

527
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 2: Inside ETFs and came in third place, even though I

528
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 2: should have won. Go ahead and tell you tie hundred

529
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 2: and fifty percent. I remember standing up there. I was

530
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 2: in front of a whole room, and I said, look

531
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 2: at this back test. It came started way up up

532
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:27,840
Speaker 2: or left, down to the bottom right, and I said,

533
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:31,880
Speaker 2: I trust a crappy back test. This thing has been

534
00:29:31,880 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 2: beaten up for ten years, so it had room to run.

535
00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 2: And then I said to everybody, look, everybody here wants

536
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 2: to be like mister environmental, But how'd you get here?

537
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 2: You know, walk if we want to go from A

538
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 2: to Z in terms of like helping the environment, you

539
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 2: just can't do wind and solar. It's just not enough.

540
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:51,960
Speaker 2: That was my pitch. I should have won, you know what,

541
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:53,160
Speaker 2: it was jobs ahead of.

542
00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 1: Rode wasn't in the audiences, I know, And.

543
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 2: Also they had employees from the conference in the competition.

544
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:01,560
Speaker 2: It's just kind of suspect.

545
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 3: I gotta say, I don't know if you're bitterer still,

546
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 3: I can't tell.

547
00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:08,480
Speaker 2: Anyway, I was too ahead of my time. I think

548
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:10,800
Speaker 2: if I had pitched this three years later, I would

549
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 2: have won, But I was super early. Anyway, you obviously

550
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:17,880
Speaker 2: were all over this. How big is this going to be?

551
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 2: We actually reinvented this theme last year's roal. We said,

552
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:23,000
Speaker 2: this is a backdoor way to play the AI revolution

553
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 2: because all these big mag seven companies seem to be

554
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 2: either renting or building nuclear facilities or buying to and

555
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:36,160
Speaker 2: they're using uranium obviously to fund the AI. Huge energy suck.

556
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 2: What is the bull case here? Is it just the

557
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:39,840
Speaker 2: AI or what else is going on?

558
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 4: Yeah? Well I think you've I think you've been winning

559
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:46,080
Speaker 4: continuously for five years with your call. So congratulations. It's

560
00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 4: been an incredible run for uranium and you're right, Okay,

561
00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 4: basically was left for dead. It had a horrific ten

562
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 4: year bear market that basically wiped out most of the industry,

563
00:30:57,200 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 4: and in the last five years the industry has come

564
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:02,520
Speaker 4: back to life. It's really being driven by a number

565
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 4: of really big pivots. One is around decarbonization. Governments are

566
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 4: focused on lower carbon forms of energy, but more recently

567
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:17,440
Speaker 4: obviously energy security because uranium produces just abundant amount of

568
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 4: energy and affordable energy. And you're right, it is base

569
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:25,480
Speaker 4: load power, which means it runs twenty four to seven

570
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 4: three sixty five, unlike wind and solar that run twenty

571
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 4: five to thirty five percent of the time. You obviously

572
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:36,360
Speaker 4: cannot run very energy hungry data centers on intermittent or

573
00:31:36,440 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 4: variable energy. So this is part of this big shift

574
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 4: going on around energy security and national security. Just the

575
00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 4: Quick Factory, About nineteen percent of the electricity United States

576
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 4: today is generated from NUKO, so it's a huge part

577
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 4: of the mix. It was forgotten and it's now going

578
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 4: through a new renaissance where governments are starting to take

579
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 4: you know, nuclear out of the penalty box and actually

580
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 4: provide incentives. The Trump administration has been very pro nuclear,

581
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:09,640
Speaker 4: lots of executive orders, lots of funding available to build

582
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 4: new reactors, so it's coming. But the real story is China.

583
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 4: China is building like six to eight new reactors a year.

584
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 4: And so if you look at the West pivoting back

585
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 4: on top of places like India and China building tons

586
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 4: of new nuclear capacity to increase energy production, you're looking

587
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 4: at a uranium sector that between now and twenty forty

588
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 4: is forecast to double. So again, the cure for low

589
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,800
Speaker 4: prices is low prices, and right now the uranium price

590
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 4: has gone from the twenty dollars per pound up to

591
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:47,880
Speaker 4: the mid eighties, so it's doing its thing. The supply

592
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:51,160
Speaker 4: response has still been kind of lukewarm because the industry

593
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:53,800
Speaker 4: was so shut in for such a long time, and

594
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 4: so capital is finally coming back into the sector. It's

595
00:32:56,840 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 4: no this legacy stigma around the technology is largely gone,

596
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:06,719
Speaker 4: and we've seen tremendous success in our suite of uranium ets.

597
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 4: We have the largest physical uranium fund in the world,

598
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:14,000
Speaker 4: which is about seven billion dollars, and so it's been

599
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 4: a huge win for our clients the last few years

600
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 4: investing in the CUD.

601
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, real quick on that this physical uranium etf Joel,

602
00:33:21,040 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 2: You guys get inflows. You have to go buy yellow cake,

603
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 2: I guess, and store it. How does that work? And

604
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:30,840
Speaker 2: you ever been there? I mean it seems like unlike

605
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 2: gold or silver. You know, there's obviously some danger right

606
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 2: with storing you know, uranium?

607
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:40,840
Speaker 4: No, no danger, I mean, I mean basically what we

608
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 4: store is something called U three awaight uranium oxide, and

609
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:47,760
Speaker 4: it basically looks like a yellow powder and it's it's

610
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 4: stored and steeled drum just outside on a concrete pad

611
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:52,239
Speaker 4: and to stock the barrels up.

612
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 2: Joel. No smoking, you can't let a cigarette in there, right,

613
00:33:57,560 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 2: is that a rule?

614
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 3: I hope there's no smoking anyway, Okay, but.

615
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:06,720
Speaker 4: It's a fairly inert substance. And yeah, we have over

616
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:08,839
Speaker 4: seventy five million pounds of the stuff that we stored

617
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 4: in the United States, Canada and France. And it's it's

618
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:15,919
Speaker 4: obviously a very early stage product. It has to get

619
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:19,120
Speaker 4: refined into enriched training, which obviously then goes into a

620
00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 4: reactor core. But yeah, our investors have been huge supporters

621
00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:26,160
Speaker 4: of the vehicle and it has grown enormously since we

622
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 4: launched it almost five years ago.

623
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:31,400
Speaker 3: Actually, I'll bring this back as a way of asking

624
00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:33,440
Speaker 3: you to answer a question that I teased but we

625
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,200
Speaker 3: didn't ask. You have the physical back stuff, and we've

626
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 3: spent some time talking about that. You also, the portfolio

627
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 3: also includes a lot of miners. When do you, like,

628
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 3: what's the purpose of the miners and like when does

629
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 3: that take trade takeoff versus the physical back stuff? And

630
00:34:49,719 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 3: this goes for a portfolio, right, you've copper miners, uranium miners,

631
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 3: gold and silver miners. Like what's the relationship between the

632
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:01,400
Speaker 3: physical back stuff and the and the miners?

633
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:04,879
Speaker 4: Yeah, great question. I mean we try to offer our

634
00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:09,719
Speaker 4: clients both where we can options in physical metals, and

635
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:12,319
Speaker 4: we do that in about six different metals and then

636
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 4: obviously the related mining companies, and they both have different

637
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:19,080
Speaker 4: attributes the physicle commodities. You're playing the spot market, you're

638
00:35:19,120 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 4: playing a bullish view that the price of copper is

639
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:24,480
Speaker 4: going to continue to go up, and copper recently had

640
00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 4: an all time high like it has for silver, gold,

641
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 4: and platinum. The miners are obviously tied heavily to the

642
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 4: commodity price, but they obviously have enormous operating leverage, and

643
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 4: they also have a lot of optionality with the discoveries

644
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 4: and bringing new discoveries into production, so they are more volatile,

645
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:50,359
Speaker 4: but they can obviously create tremendous value for investors when

646
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:53,560
Speaker 4: they are benefiting from higher commodity prices, but also when

647
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 4: they're bringing new production to market. And right now, a

648
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:59,839
Speaker 4: lot of these mining companies are minting profits because the

649
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 4: body prices are high and they are finally getting capital

650
00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:07,160
Speaker 4: to move their projects forward. You know, there was a

651
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 4: long period of time where nobody wanted to invest in

652
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:12,359
Speaker 4: this segment. Everybody was invested in having a good time

653
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:15,960
Speaker 4: in tech stocks, and we're seeing a rotation going on

654
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:19,080
Speaker 4: right now where capitals finally in the last i would say,

655
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 4: twelve to eighteen months coming back into these sectors, which

656
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:25,279
Speaker 4: is allowing many of these companies to move their projects forward,

657
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 4: which is how they ultimately create value for investors. So

658
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 4: we find most investors will invest in some ratio between

659
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 4: the two. Sometimes it's driven by relative value, sometimes it's

660
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 4: risk tolerance. So a lot of our institutional investors they

661
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:45,359
Speaker 4: like to own, you know, the physical commodities sprinkled with

662
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 4: some of the hot sauces. Eric likes to call it.

663
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 4: So we don't have a prescribed formula, but we find

664
00:36:51,200 --> 00:36:54,400
Speaker 4: most of our investors hold these things in tandem.

665
00:36:55,239 --> 00:36:57,800
Speaker 2: And is there any commodity just you know, last question

666
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 2: that people are forgetting about, Like we just went over

667
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 2: some of the big ones, like how do you have

668
00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:04,920
Speaker 2: a nickel etf like? Is there anything? Like?

669
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:07,200
Speaker 1: But everything's up right, is it? But Eric Tright, is

670
00:37:07,200 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: there anything that we haven't?

671
00:37:08,200 --> 00:37:08,399
Speaker 2: Yeah?

672
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 1: I thought? Or what else? What do you think?

673
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:12,120
Speaker 2: Dark horse commodity right now?

674
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:16,359
Speaker 4: Ooh, the dark horse commodity. That's a good question. They've

675
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 4: all they have all been moving together, which is very odd.

676
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:25,239
Speaker 4: Commodities typically all have their own little cycles. Dark Horse commodity.

677
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 4: Maybe lithium. Lithium kind of came back to life last

678
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 4: year after getting really washed out after a period of

679
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:36,919
Speaker 4: excessive pricing. That lithium has kind of come back to life.

680
00:37:37,840 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 4: Nickel is is stabilized. There was a period there where

681
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 4: Indonesia was kind of flooding the market with nickel. That

682
00:37:45,120 --> 00:37:48,080
Speaker 4: seems to be being put in check a little bit

683
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 4: as they've realized that they've disturbed the market. But the

684
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 4: other one that we're excited about is copper coppers finally

685
00:37:54,640 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 4: starting to hit new highs and what you find when

686
00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:59,759
Speaker 4: these metals finally break new highs. It provides kind of

687
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:03,759
Speaker 4: a logical signal to investors. And the copper miners have

688
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:07,400
Speaker 4: done incredibly well the last couple of years. They're really

689
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 4: printing money right now. And copper is so important for

690
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:14,840
Speaker 4: so many different industries that and so much of it

691
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:18,360
Speaker 4: is around electrification right now. So copper is another one.

692
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 4: We're pretty excited about it. John.

693
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 3: Final question, it's a personal one. I'm curious, is your

694
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 3: personal portfolio does it have anything other than medals in it?

695
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 3: Or like, do you own stocks and bonds or is

696
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 3: it just metals?

697
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:37,360
Speaker 2: Oh, but goal miners don't count. I'm talking like regular stocks.

698
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:41,240
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, I invest in all kinds of tech stocks

699
00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 4: and yeah, absolutely, I mean I get I have a

700
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:47,880
Speaker 4: lot of economic exposure to these metals through my work income,

701
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,719
Speaker 4: so I have a great hedge there. But yeah, absolutely,

702
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:54,800
Speaker 4: I mean I am a proponent of having a diversified portfolio.

703
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 3: I'm going to ask a follow up question that's also

704
00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:00,040
Speaker 3: one that we ask a lot of in trillions. I

705
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 3: gotta say goldbug g Bug, great ticker. Yeah, that's a

706
00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:07,000
Speaker 3: world class ticker. Is there any ticker that you think

707
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:07,919
Speaker 3: is better than that one.

708
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 4: That's a really great ticker, and when I found out

709
00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:12,839
Speaker 4: it was available, I said, let's grab it right away.

710
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:14,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like.

711
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 2: I mean, he made like glitter g ltr. That's the

712
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 2: Aberdeen Physical Precious Metals Basket, which is a gold, silver, platinum, pladium.

713
00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:25,720
Speaker 2: That's pretty good, right.

714
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: Any other ticker envy? John?

715
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 4: Uh, you know, I was a little disappointed, to be

716
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:34,160
Speaker 4: honest with you, when the ticker gold just got reassigned

717
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:37,160
Speaker 4: to somebody after Barrick Mining dropped it, which was.

718
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 2: Who got it?

719
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 4: A puzzling thing. A company involved, I can't remember the

720
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:44,640
Speaker 4: name of it, but a company involved probably met total

721
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 4: kind of cold you know, kind of precious metals and

722
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:51,680
Speaker 4: coins and stuff. Okay, but that that's a killer ticker too.

723
00:39:51,719 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, John, thanks so much for joining us

724
00:39:54,239 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 3: on trillions again.

725
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 4: Thanks so much. It was great to be back.

726
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time. You can

727
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 3: find us on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

728
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:11,080
Speaker 3: or wherever else you'd like to listen. We'd love to

729
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:13,239
Speaker 3: hear from you. Hit us up on social I'm at

730
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:16,840
Speaker 3: Joel Weber Show. He's at Eric Balchina's Trillions is produced

731
00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:17,800
Speaker 3: by Magnus Hendrickson