Brien Lundin — research hub
Brien Lundin · editor and publisher of Gold Newsletter and host of the New Orleans Investment Conference, roughly 40 years in the resource-newsletter business. He talks in frameworks rather than tickers — how to tell a discovery from a story, and which project risks a high metal price can absorb and which it only disguises.
▲ Positive
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► Neutral / referenced
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▼ Negative
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Overall thesis
In one line: Two concurrent bull markets, one in gold and silver and one a commodity super-cycle, are being fed by a US debt that can't afford the Fed's hawkish talk. Gold and the bond vigilantes are pricing the same dollar debasement, and gold's seasonal low is behind it. Meanwhile a $4,400+ gold price has removed the sector's old filter, so the job is to find the tests that still discriminate. The money should sit where the sequencing says it will be paid next: the debt-free majors and mid-tiers that must rebuild their pipelines, the developers they will bid for, and the explorers, the only rung that hasn't moved.
Grounded only in what he says on 2026-SEP-08 (Kitco, mining-first) and 2026-SEP-10 (Investing News, macro-first). Two appearances two days apart, so this thesis is still partial and will be revised as more are processed.
- Gold and bonds are pricing the same thing. Since the end of June, gold and the 10-year yield have risen together. The bond vigilantes are demanding compensation for dollar depreciation, "the same reason you want to buy gold". So he asks why yields are rising before reading a higher yield as gold-negative. With the 10-year approaching 5%, the widely watched tripwire for a stock market valued above its 2000 peak, he calls the setup "very fragile" (2026-SEP-10).
- The seasonal low is in; buy dips and skim froth, but only in the investment sleeve. Gold bottomed in early August inside the mid-July to mid-August seasonal window, "right on schedule". It then rallied 10–15%, the miners 30–50%, and RSI went from oversold to overbought fast enough to need a pause. In a bull market buy the dips, and skim fevered rallies "in your investment end … not in the insurance end". His own confessed weakness is the sell side: "I'm a very good buyer and a lousy seller."
- Price fixes the spreadsheet, not the rock. Low grade, refractory metallurgy, a brutal strip ratio and missing infrastructure all resolve into operating or capital cost, and the margin now pays for them. The two that stay fatal are permitting and dilution; bad management is disguised but not cured — a mistake costing $500–1,000/oz still leaves roughly $2,000/oz.
- Rising AISC is now a good sign. He explicitly wants to see all-in sustaining costs increase alongside rising production: at these margins the only rational move for a major is to push maximum tonnage through the plant. No real supply response for four or five years regardless — that is how long a mine takes.
- Sequencing: the majors have to rebuild the pipeline. Producers are net debt-free and building cash, with dividends and buybacks capped. The next phase of the bull market is therefore forced M&A for big development assets, which is when the old optionality plays (up 3–5x off oversold lows, but no ten-baggers yet) finally get paid. Developers can now afford to build their own mines, so they feel "no urgency … to be acquired". Forced buyers plus optional sellers is his setup for bidding wars (2026-SEP-10).
- The producers themselves are the unusual trade. Majors and mid-tiers offer "more upside potential with commensurately less risk than I've ever seen before". It is "the first time in my career" that big producers offer junior-like upside: 3–5x if they get valued correctly, plus overshoot as generalists arrive. But they are timing mechanisms, not long-term investments. Developers are catching up. Explorers are the last rung to move and, after two of the best drill seasons of his career and a market now rewarding good results, offer the biggest upside.
- Silver's industrial demand now counts. After "really discount[ing]" it for his whole career, he says years of deficits have eaten the above-ground supply. In January "investors and industry were bidding for the same ounces". Silver remains gold's higher-beta leading indicator: riskier both ways, and more profitable if bought before the spikes.
- Central banks are now the floor, not the engine. Their dollar-cost-averaging has evolved "from being a driver of the market to a support below the market"; western traders and algos set the short-term price. The PBoC bought ~650koz in August, a 22nd straight month.
- Copper is the most compelling story in the complex — record $14,617/t on the LME, no way to innovate around most applications, 15–20 year lead times, and the steepest demand curve he has seen thanks to the AI grid buildout. Strategic buyers (hyperscalers, governments stockpiling critical minerals) will overpay, and he thinks they are right to: "security of supply overwhelms price." When the tariff-driven record reversed on 2026-SEP-10, he said the fundamentals "remain in place". Copper and copper plays are "set it and forget it investments", and the lagging copper equities should catch up "shortly".
- The Fed mispricing is the gold opportunity. The market is pricing a Warsh rate-hike campaign that "just cannot be afforded" with debt service near $1.2T a year, already above national defense. The September meeting is a coin flip for at most one quarter-point hike "just for show". Warsh "was put in office to … lower interest rates over the long term" and will be forced to, probably by redefining the inflation yardstick. Talking bill yields up is itself dangerous, since bills fund the government: "bond vigilantes turn into bill vigilantes". Every Warsh soundbite knocks gold down and the smart money buys it back, a repeatable entry inside an intact uptrend. For year end, 5,000 is "a pretty good bet" and "easily" reached; 5,500 would be difficult.
- Debasement is a long slide, and each rescue must be bigger. The $40T debt got a couple of hours of TV coverage. A $5,000 pre-midterm payment pledge and the unbudgeted cost of restocking munitions spent on Iran steepen the deficit further. He thinks the next crisis is not avoidable, and the rescue will have to exceed COVID's "to get the same effect". The "debasement trade is something that's going to come back into fashion", and two concurrent bull markets result: the monetary metals, plus a commodity super-cycle built on years of underinvestment.
- Government take is a cycle, not news. Royalties were the biggest contributor to rising costs last quarter (6% of an ounce's cost in 2021, 12% now). His response is a jurisdiction rule rather than an outrage: prefer North America, Mexico and Latin America — but he likes Kazakhstan right now and treats Ghana / Burkina Faso / Mali risk as knowable and priceable, case by case.
- No theme investing, and no tickers on air. "I don't take a big theme and then drill down into that sector. I look at each case on an individual basis", with a time-bound bar: the company must be able to make his readers a great deal of money in a fairly short period. Two interviews in a row with no company named ("I judge each company on its own merits, not where it is in the food chain").
The product — Gold Newsletter & the New Orleans Investment Conference
What it is: two linked businesses run by Brien Lundin over roughly 40 years in the resource sector. Gold Newsletter is the subscription research letter — he speaks throughout of "my readers", "my subscribers" and the portfolio he runs for them, and of finding companies with "the potential to make an awful lot of money for my readers in a fairly short period of time". The New Orleans Investment Conference is the annual event he hosts (28–31 October 2026), deliberately built without a house view: "we don't try to convince our attendees of anything."
Grounded only in what he says on 2026-SEP-08 and 2026-SEP-10. The picture is partial and will be revised as more appearances are processed.
| Offering | What it is | How he runs it | Seen in the index |
|---|
| Gold Newsletter | The subscription letter, and the reason he is picking individual companies at all. A model portfolio sits behind it: he refers to "one of our biggest winners right now in our portfolio", and on 2026-SEP-10 said his last issue was "one of the longest in our history. Just covering all the news that's coming in from our portfolio". | Bottom-up and explicitly anti-thematic: "I don't take a big theme and then drill down into that sector. I look at each case on an individual basis." Every candidate must have something that "really pushes them off the fence" and a path to a large return "in a fairly short period of time". | — (no tickers named on air) |
| The portfolio's sell discipline | Standing advice to subscribers rather than a separate product — and the place he is most candid about his own shortcomings. | "I do preach that my readers, my subscribers need to always take money off the table" — buy the dips, skim the froth off an overheated market. He told readers and live audiences to take profits into the January/February froth, and admits he personally rides stories too long: "I'm a very good buyer… I'm a lousy seller." On 2026-SEP-10 he narrowed the skim rule to the investment end of a metals and mining portfolio, "not in the insurance end". | — |
| New Orleans Investment Conference | The annual event he hosts, 28–31 October 2026: a room full of people who disagree with the consensus, and with each other. Its pitch is "much more value than what investors are paying for", and the attendees are part of that value: "your fellow attendees and what you learn from them". | No house theme by design: "we take the best thinkers out there… people with good arguments, some of which I may disagree with, but are well reasoned." Expected topics this year: metals and miners, the bond market, debt affordability, whether the Fed can run a hike campaign at all, and the Fed/Treasury interplay. The 2026 roster runs to dozens of names (Grant Williams, Doug Casey, Danielle DiMartino Booth, Peter Schiff, Tavi Costa, Frank Giustra, Lobo Tiggre and more): "you can find three or four of our speakers at some other conferences, but you won't find 30 or 40." The exhibit hall is sold out and the schedule lets early leavers watch the recordings. | — |
| The exhibit hall | The deal-flow half of the conference — juniors through developers and some producers, exhibiting to attendees. | Framed as the event's real payload: "the biggest winners over the next year are almost always found on that exhibit hall floor every year." | — |
| The frameworks themselves | Not sold separately, but what he actually hands over in public appearances — the project-killer checklist, the AISC inversion, the burning-match rule, the food-chain sequencing. | Taught as re-runnable tests rather than conclusions; the actionable insights page for each appearance distils them. | — |
How it serves retail investors:
- Method over names. A 49-minute interview with zero tickers is not evasion — the transferable content is the screen: which project risks the price absorbs, which it disguises, and which stay fatal.
- Explicit sell discipline. Most resource commentary is one-sided. He preaches skimming froth as loudly as buying dips, names the specific missed opportunity (silver at $118/oz), and owns the bias rather than hiding it.
- Jurisdiction risk framed proportionally. With this much on offer in tenured-mining-law jurisdictions, "you don't need to go too far out there into riskier regimes" — while still allowing that some projects justify the risk.
- A deliberately non-echo-chamber event. The conference books people whose arguments he disagrees with, which is the opposite of how most gold-sector events are curated.
- Forty years of pattern recognition, stated as cycles. Governments renegotiating royalties in good markets, the 2008–2011 diesel-eats-the-miners episode, the burning-match dilution problem — each given as a recurring shape to watch for rather than a prediction.
Transcripts
One dated page per appearance — each has its stock table, talking points, and the saved transcript. Newest first.
To process — backlog
Appearances not yet processed — newest first. None queued yet.
For personal study — not investment advice. Source material © the respective publishers.