00:00 The universe of silver stocks that are in my portfolio seem to be from my point of view at
00:05 least discounting 37 to $42 silver in a $55 world. That's not an unattractive scenario to me. The
00:13 deterioration purchasing power for the US dollar will lead to the generalist investor coming back
00:18 into the precious metal space. History teaches us that when that happens, silver begins to outpace
00:23 gold. Should this such circumstance come to pass, I suspect I'll be ludicrously rewarded.
00:29 Agnico Eagle, Franco-Nevada, and Wheaton have been crushed, which I think for most investors is a gift
00:34 from God because we are with regards to mining stocks in a risk-off environment. I've chosen to
00:40 take more risk in my portfolio. You're making a speculation on the expectation of potential
00:45 future cash flows. How do you navigate through all that and separate the wheat from the chaff?
00:51 Rick Rule, great to have you back on Commodity Culture. Now, it certainly is interesting times in financial markets and the commodities sector as well. I want to kick the conversation off
01:00 with silver because you've said you love to buy things that are hated. You sold a lot of your
01:05 physical silver in the runup to triple digits to all-time highs. You rotated some of that into silver miners, which I want to get to later. But at these prices and with sentiment so low, are
01:16 you looking at silver bullion as a potential buy again here? No. No. In my speculative portfolios.
01:23 The easy money is made on hate. And silver isn't hated. Some people who paid too much
01:28 for it in January hate it, but the market as a whole doesn't hate it. When you and I first started talking, Jesse, I don't know, five or six years ago, both for your own channel and for
01:38 VR, silver was legitimately hated. The stuff was trading for about 20 bucks an ounce.
01:44 The youngsters who hurt themselves in the so-called silver squeeze were vituperative
01:50 in their hatred for silver. You could look at any sort of social media discussion group and if there
01:56 were 20 comments about silver, 18 were people who were describing it as a four-letter word. That
02:04 was hate. In commodity markets, buying hate and being patient is the surest way to make a fortune.
02:14 Silver isn't hated yet. It's disappointed, but there's still hope in the market.
02:20 I look for a market where the people who were hopeful now despise the sector
02:28 and we're not even close to there with silver yet. I want to talk about silver miners because I know you're bullish there. We've obviously seen that sector in a downward trajectory recently. Perhaps
02:39 no surprise given what the price of the metal has been doing since hitting all-time highs earlier this year. Do you see silver mining stocks as on sale right now? And what are your overall
02:48 thoughts on where you see the miners headed over a multi-year time frame? I don't see them on sale.
02:54 I don't see capitulation bargains, but I see some stocks that are arithmetically attractive,
03:02 which is to say, I see companies that are selling at discounts to my calculation of their net asset
03:09 values where they have sufficient development pipelines and they're generating sufficient cash
03:16 that their net asset value will increase over the 3 to 5 year time frame without any
03:21 help from the silver price. The universe of silver stocks that are in my portfolio
03:27 seem to be from my point of view at least discounting 37 to $42 silver in a $55 world.
03:39 That's not an unattractive scenario to me. I believe that renewed momentum in silver
03:47 will occur as a consequence of renewed momentum in gold first. In other words, I don't think that silver will be the first mover. I believe that the deterioration purchasing power for the US dollar
03:59 will lead to the generalist investor coming back into the precious metal space. And when the generalist investor does, history teaches us that when that happens, silver begins to
04:09 outpace gold. So, I'm not looking for this to happen anytime soon. But I also know that the silver stocks are the most volatile, one of the most volatile classes of stock on the planet.
04:19 And should this circumstance come to pass, and I believe there's a probability that it will,
04:25 I suspect I'll be ludicrously rewarded in a fairly short period of time, but that
04:32 fairly short period of time may not happen for 2 or 3 years, which I'm comfortable with. In terms of silver itself, then do you think we could see further downside up ahead? Obviously,
04:42 predicting prices is a mug's game, and I know you're a very long-term time horizon investor, which is why I love talking to you because in my opinion, short-term price action is for
04:51 entertainment purposes only. We're invested in silver, for example, in silver miners because we see a long-term thesis playing out eventually. But in the near term, do you think we could
05:01 get back to that $30 level in silver? And at that point, would you be stepping in to buy?
05:07 If you give me the use of the word could, I can sell you anything, Jesse. I believe that in the very near term, the US Fed has lost control of the long interest rate,
05:21 the 10-year and the 30-year rate. I think they'd like it lower, but I don't think there's much they can do about it. They can still control the short rate,
05:29 but it looks like they've lost the long rate. If long bond rates continue higher,
05:35 I think that's tough on precious metals prices. So it wouldn't surprise me that the balance of 2026 continues the trend in motion, which is to say lower.
05:44 Paradoxically, I hope that's true. Although I have a portfolio that has a lot of physical gold
05:51 and an awful lot of precious metals mining stocks, I believe the next 5 to 10 years
05:56 will be extraordinarily good for that sector. And I want to buy more. Given the fact that I want to buy more, it's in my interest to have that stuff cheaper, not more expensive. It's wild
06:07 when I hear discussions about precious metals at conferences that you and I have both been to
06:14 where people express a preference for the sector and then want it to be more expensive.
06:20 It's like a kid that walked into a grocery store and asked the grocer to increase the price of a candy bar from a buck to a buck and a quarter. He wants the candy bar. Why would he want to
06:28 pay more for it? So, do you think this is a time to be prudent and perhaps have some dry powder on the sidelines as opposed to being all-in on the sector if we do see a fall in prices?
06:40 Because there's obviously that school of thought timing the market versus time in the market. I think dollar cost averaging is a very effective strategy for most people, but I also think you can
06:48 also keep some additional cash on the sidelines in case these major bargains unfold. What
06:54 are your thoughts there? I think you have to keep cash on the sidelines because I think there's a possibility. Notice I didn't say a probability. I said there's a possibility that we could face a
07:07 liquidity-driven shock in equities markets. À la 2008. I don't think this is a probability,
07:16 certainly not a certainty, but I think there's say a 25% probability that in the next two years
07:24 we could experience a 50% decline in equities markets. And when you experience that broad-based
07:30 decline, the tertiary equities, the marginals, fall farther than the rest. There's no industry
07:36 in the world more marginal than junior mining. So having some cash set aside in the off chance
07:46 that there are stupendous rather than relative bargains is something I've chosen to do.
07:53 In the 2008 crash, I came into that crash by then as a fairly experienced investor
08:00 and I had a lot of liquidity and the consequence of that is that not 2008 but rather 2009
08:08 was easily the best investment year of my career. I had the tool, the cash, and I had the courage
08:14 from education to take advantage of it. So, I'm maintaining fairly large amounts of liquidity,
08:21 not making a market call per se, but really gambling against the possibility
08:27 rather than the probability that we have a decline. And it's expensive, Jesse,
08:35 to maintain liquidity. Most investors look at it in terms of the opportunity cost, which is to say,
08:40 if I had had this money in the market, I would have made XYZ. That's looking at it incorrectly.
08:47 The correct way to look at it is the money that you get paid in interest
08:52 relative to the deterioration in purchasing power of the currency.
08:58 If you believe as I believe that the US dollar is experiencing an 8% compound decline in purchasing
09:04 power and other currencies are doing worse, you need to understand that if you're getting paid
09:10 4 and a half percent owning a bond, you're not making four and a half, you're losing three and a half. So maintaining liquidity has a real cost. I believe that the best way to think about that cost is an
09:22 option on having the liquidity to take advantage of liquidity squeezes when other people are taking
09:28 advantage of by liquidity squeezes. The sponsor of today's episode is Arch Silver Gold Osmium. Owner
09:35 Ian Everard is praised even by his competitors as one of the most honest and level-headed bullion
09:40 dealers in the United States. They have some great prices. You can see some of them displayed right
09:46 now on screen. Take advantage of these specials today by reaching out to Ian at 307-264-9441
09:55 or by email at ianarchsggo.com. Make sure to tell them of course that Commodity Culture sent you.
10:01 And now back to the interview. Let's shift to the gold sector. You've already touched on it, but we're seeing of course a similar situation to silver though far less volatility in both
10:11 directions. Central banks are still buying. Government debt and deficit situation isn't going away. Currencies continue to depreciate. Trust in government institutions crumbling by the
10:22 day along with all the other tailwinds behind the sector also looking strong. Is this a time to be
10:28 adding to the gold stack or perhaps establishing a position for those who don't yet have physical
10:33 gold? If you were to enter the sector today, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think you have to.
10:39 Your listeners may not have to because they have probably done it over the last 5 years
10:45 but the fact remains in the US market, the market I understand best, that the market share of precious
10:50 metals and precious metals related investments relative to all other savings and investment classes is only one half of 1%, which is to say in the US market precious metals and precious
11:02 metals related assets comprise less than one half of 1% of total savings and investment assets.
11:08 This is silly. This is truly silly. The four decade mean is 2%.
11:15 If you had reversion to mean, you would quadruple demand for precious metals related assets
11:20 in an economy that's 24% of the world economy. This is truly wild. Now I'm of the belief
11:27 that the precious metals likely trade sideways for the balance of 2026.
11:33 Higher US interest rates and more recently higher Japanese interest rates have meant that it's
11:40 more expensive to own gold than it used to be and it also increases the relative attractiveness
11:46 of bonds, another traditional safe haven. I happen to believe that the long
11:53 bond game is a mug's game for reasons that we've already discussed but that doesn't matter. The
11:59 bond market is much bigger than the gold market and right now seems to be doing better as a
12:05 consequence of the interest rates and it wouldn't surprise me to see that circumstance continue
12:10 through at least the balance of 2026. I certainly hope it's the case. I save systematically in gold.
12:17 And given that that's the case, I would rather pay less than more. Are you seeing any attractive
12:23 bargains when it comes to the biggest and the best gold producers at present? I mean, we saw Agnico
12:28 Eagle, for example, report record Q1 earnings and proceed to drop, I don't know, 20% from
12:35 there or something like that. The majors who are essentially printing cash in this gold price
12:41 environment are all taking a hit. What are your thoughts there on those big producers and
12:46 on the royalty streaming side of things as well? Agnico Eagle, Franco-Nevada, and Wheaton have been crushed,
12:54 which I think for most investors is a gift from God. I think the beta that we will enjoy in
12:59 the gold sector over the 5 to 10 year time frame is so big that you don't need to chase alpha.
13:05 I would define beta as the outperformance of the gold sector relative to the broad market. You could buy the best of the best and not take any single company risk or operating
13:13 risk whatsoever. And you can buy it at really really really attractive arithmetic multiples.
13:24 I would be doing that myself hand over fist except for I've been doing it hand over fist for five years. I've chosen now because we are with regards to mining stocks in a risk-off environment.
13:36 I've chosen to take more risk in my portfolio for various reasons. But I'm not suggesting that your
13:42 listeners who are unwilling to do as much work as I am willing to do or unwilling to take as much
13:48 risk — for most investors buying yourself a package of Wheaton, Franco-Nevada and Agnico Eagle
13:57 and then reading books you like, looking after your garden, playing with your kids or your grandkids. It's the right course of action. It's only the freaks like you and I
14:08 that need to come farther down the quality train and get in the way of later money.
14:13 Well, to be clear, I don't go down that quality train. I stick to the big producers and
14:18 the ETFs for the gold and silver space. Where I do get into the weeds is in the uranium sector. And I
14:24 want to talk about that next because this does appear by all sentiment indicators online to be
14:30 somewhat of a hated sector at the moment. We're seeing a significant selloff in the equities.
14:35 X is filled once again. This seems to be a cycle that happens every few months. Uranium speculators
14:41 bemoaning the sector, throwing in the towel, calling out newsletter writers, telling them it's
14:46 your fault. Why did you tell us that uranium isn't a bullish setup? Now, obviously uranium
14:52 stocks are also extraordinarily volatile. We can see — you mentioned the silver sector. Uranium is very much the same. You can see high single-digit to low double-digit gains and losses
15:02 within a single trading day. That's a normal occurrence in the uranium equity space. Wonder
15:08 what your thoughts are right now on the miners and would you be entering the sector at these prices? For the high quality miners, this is a no-brainer. It's a total no-brainer. Now,
15:19 let's get this straight. The easy money's been made in uranium. The easy money was made when
15:25 uranium was sub 20 bucks. Either the price of uranium went up or the lights went out, right?
15:33 That was just a no-brainer. When you talk about capitulation in the sector, what you're
15:38 really seeing is a question of faith among the faithful. The investment in the uranium thesis
15:45 is really confined to a fairly small group of people. With regards to sentiment,
15:52 you and I are part of an extremely small population that cares about uranium juniors.
15:59 So, we're talking about an expression of sentiment in a community that worldwide
16:06 probably numbers 30 or 40,000 people. For fun, I would say the most prominent uranium oriented
16:14 newsletter writer is Justin Huhn, a guy I have a lot of time for. And sentiment
16:20 expressed in discussion groups about Justin right now is about 60% positive, 40% negative. Hate
16:30 would be represented by 90% negative. So we're not there quite yet in your opinion? No,
16:36 not even close. Wow. Not even close. But we do have a situation separate. You know,
16:41 I'm not a trader. A 5% swing in a day to me is just amusement unless
16:47 I happen to be on the bid in which case I'm delighted. But it's important to note
16:56 that when people talk about uranium stocks, the universe of uranium stocks probably 120 or 130,
17:03 there's probably eight or nine that are worth considering. If you take that 130 stock universe, you need to understand that at least 90% of it
17:12 will eventually return to their intrinsic value which is zero. And so probably the first thing
17:18 that you do or maybe the second thing that you do is you work very hard on paying attention in
17:27 your portfolio to those companies that are viable at the current uranium price and that have
17:34 a reasonable strategy for playing the game over the next 5 years. That makes it an awful
17:41 lot easier. I'm not trying to say that you can't make money on some penny dreadful that is looking
17:48 for uranium that exists in the same concentration as seawater. And if the uranium price goes up,
17:56 the fact that they have uranium on the name of their share certificate doesn't mean that that thing won't go up too. It just means that you're taking an existential risk with the stock,
18:05 which is a mistake. Yeah, I think a lot of people approach the sector that way, assuming there'd be a mania, that a rising tide would lift all boats. And I think that's a big part of the
18:15 moaning and crying that we're hearing. But when it comes to the uranium sector, how do you find those companies that are worth it? Because like you mentioned there's so much uncertainty
18:26 in terms of mining operation and there's only really three pure play uranium companies in
18:32 the world that are producing any commercial scale — Orano, Kazatomprom and Cameco. Aside from that
18:38 you're kind of venturing into the developer space and you're making a speculation on the expectation
18:45 of potential future cash flows and of course that depends on the timeline for getting there, the
18:50 hurdles in the way. How do you navigate through all that and separate the wheat from the chaff?
18:55 I benchmark every company in a sector by the company that I consider to be the best company in the sector. I consider the best company in the sector in the uranium sector to be Cameco.
19:05 If I'm willing to come down the quality trail to NexGen, I have to get a substantial premium
19:12 in the delta between price and net present value before I'll take the risk. I've done that
19:20 because I believe despite their outrageous general and administrative expense
19:25 that that deposit is so superb that it will finance itself over time. So I've done that.
19:33 But most of your listeners don't know how to do it or if they do know how to do it
19:38 are unwilling to do the work required to do it. And those people should buy the best of the best.
19:44 Specifically if you think the uranium price is going up the right thing to do is buy uranium. Now don't buy it in a cake and put it in your basement, rather buy the spot physical
19:55 uranium trust or something like that and buy Cameco and then do nothing for a while.
20:04 Could it fall 25% from here? Yeah, absolutely, positively could fall 25% from here. If they
20:12 are able to monetize their pipeline and if they are able to through Westinghouse
20:19 follow through on their game plan of selling watts as opposed to merely selling uranium,
20:24 this is a company that over the next 10 years could grow three or four or fivefold in market
20:32 capitalization. So you have the juxtaposition between a potential 25 or 30% loss and a three or
20:38 400% gain. The catch for most people is that that occurs over 5 years or 7 years or 10 years which
20:47 seems to be a time frame that many people are unwilling to assume despite the fact that
20:54 they're going to have to assume it whether they want to or not. Coming down into the smaller ones,
21:00 you need to look at first of all scale. Too many people make the mistake of investing in small
21:07 mines and everything that can go wrong with a big mine can go wrong with a small mine. But only a
21:13 small mine can make you big money. So you have to look for scale and then you have to look for
21:19 economics. In other words, is the net present value of the deposit at this uranium price
21:27 substantially greater than the combination of the capital cost to put the thing in production
21:33 and the market cap. In other words, are you getting paid to take the price risk? Yes or no? And what are the expected timelines to begin the cash flows?
21:43 And what are the challenges that the company faces eventually getting into production? Most people
21:52 that I've met, Jesse, are unwilling to undertake that calculation and further don't know how.
22:02 I think you know that over the last 35 years I have graded for free almost 100,000 portfolios.
22:12 I do that at my website Rule Investment Media and I've learned a lot about the mistakes that speculators make. And I would say that the most egregious mistake that investors make is they
22:22 don't work. I urge people to own the number of speculative stocks which corresponds with the
22:30 number of hours per month that they're willing to work to understand their investments. And by work,
22:35 I don't mean listening to Jesse Day YouTube videos, although I encourage that
22:42 activity, too. I mean reading 10-Ks, reading 10-Qs, reading resource statements, reading
22:47 insider filing statements. I grade numerous portfolios that have 50 or 60 stocks in them.
22:56 And the people spend at most an hour or two a month understanding those stocks.
23:02 That doesn't work. Those people should buy the best and then do something sensible with their
23:09 time. Play with their kids. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I want to talk about the oil market for a moment because a lot of people are confused. The war in Iran is heating up. Both
23:18 sides launching strikes. The Strait of Hormuz is still essentially closed. The Strait of Bab al-Mandeb is now under threat of being closed. Energy infrastructure being struck
23:28 and decimated not only in the Middle East but in Russia as well as a result of the Russia Ukraine conflict. And yet oil is not skyrocketing into the triple digits as most were expecting.
23:38 We're also hearing reports that actual physical barrels of oil are selling for a far higher price
23:45 than the ones we see in the futures markets. Why the disconnect? And do you think patience will
23:50 ultimately pay off for those long oil? In answer to the last question, yes,
23:57 but having nothing to do with war, having everything to do with the deferral of sustaining
24:03 capital investments by the oil industry. Ironically, the investors are paying companies
24:11 which prioritize return to shareholders over sustaining capital investments. In other words, investors are looking for dividends even from companies that are cannibalizing themselves.
24:21 I'm not smart enough as a geopolitical analyst to know what's going to happen in the Middle East. I have no idea. What I do know is that when you constrain supply,
24:31 you end up rationing, at least for a while, oil by price. I don't know if the constraints that
24:38 we have now are temporary or other than temporary. I don't know if we'll have an armistice and
24:45 I don't even know how to know. So, I don't trade it. What I do know is that the industry is underinvesting to the tune of over a billion US dollars a day in sustaining capital.
24:56 And it's worse now that the war is going on. Obviously, Iran isn't making sustaining capital investments. They're buying bullets or whatever it is they're buying.
25:04 And far from reinvesting, we're blowing up productive facilities as you point out.
25:10 I have no idea what that means in 2026, but I have a really good idea what it means in 2030.
25:16 And that means that the supply induced price increases that we're seeing become structural
25:26 due to underinvestment rather than artificial due to war. And they can't be cured by an armistice.
25:34 This is a really really really simple no-brainer. And capital to the
25:40 oil industry continues to be constrained because institutional investors seem to have been taking
25:45 their thought leadership for 10 years from that noted energy physicist Greta Thunberg
25:51 and Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden. They seem to be laboring under the
25:57 misapprehension that peak oil demand occurs in 2030. My suspicion is it occurs in 2060 or 2065.
26:07 They were not financing sustaining capital investments because they didn't institutionally
26:12 see the need of maintaining production in a commodity that they thought was going into terminal decline with regards to demand. The problem with that is they were wrong.
26:24 George Soros once said that he made his fortune by finding popularly believed fallacies
26:34 and betting against them. And this is one such fallacy. And when it comes to the oil sector, are
26:39 we in a similar situation with gold miners that you can kind of go for the biggest and the best here? Because a lot of these companies are paying generous dividends. They're buying back shares.
26:48 And if the price of oil over the long run is to the upper right of the screen, the share prices will also benefit tremendously.
26:54 What are your thoughts there? Absolutely. I would deemphasize dividend yields. I would look for companies that were making sustaining
27:02 capital investments or better yet doing both. And your suggestion, which is to say that most
27:08 of your listeners would be better off buying the best of the best, and leaving the rest of it to
27:15 you and I is probably true. I think for many investors having a one stock portfolio, Exxon,
27:23 and then doing nothing for 5 years is a highly intelligent strategy. I'm incapable
27:30 of doing that. I'm psychologically incapable of doing that. I'm always looking for an edge.
27:35 I'm looking for the fact that for companies that haven't been as diligent with new capital
27:41 and sustaining capital investments that the only way they're going to live is to acquire other companies. And I look to buy the companies they're going to acquire.
27:50 Over time, that's given me a better outcome than people who just bought Exxon on a time and risk-adjusted basis. I'm not so sure that my strategy is the right one.
28:03 But I hope that this conversation steers your listeners towards the Exxons and the Franco-Nevadas
28:08 of the world. Yes, I think that is incredibly sound words of wisdom there. Are there any
28:13 other areas of the markets right now, commodities or otherwise, that you think present an attractive value proposition for speculators? Well, I don't think that we exhausted the uranium
28:23 subject. I think it's important that your listeners understand that one of the
28:28 certain outcomes of the conflict in the Gulf, ironically, is a better market for uranium.
28:36 The last period of major new plant construction that we had in the uranium business coincided
28:42 with the end of the Arab oil embargo. 1973 was the last time that humankind expressed a concern
28:51 about energy security on a geopolitical basis. The war in the Gulf has renewed interest in that.
28:57 If you look back to 1974, that saw the commencement of the Japanese nuclear fleet,
29:05 the third largest nuclear fleet in the world. It saw the commencement of the French nuclear fleet, the fourth largest nuclear fleet in the world. Uranium is the only commodity that's dense enough
29:15 that you could hold enough material in one small warehouse to power Japan for 5 years.
29:21 There is no other commodity that gives you the energy security that uranium does. Uranium
29:27 is already having a boost as being dispatchable non-carbon generating base load fuel. Now it gets
29:34 the boost of energy security. Will this matter in 2026? Likely not. Will this matter 5 years
29:44 from now? Desperately. Probably more than small modular reactors. Probably more than data centers
29:52 or at least it will exacerbate those trends. And so I think it's important
29:58 in considering the length and breadth of natural resource investments, if you care about uranium,
30:03 to think about the structural changes in the uranium market that will occur as a consequence of
30:10 the new concern around energy security. I want to switch and finish things off with a discussion
30:17 on investor psychology because we're seeing all this volatility in markets, capitulation on social
30:24 media, insider trading and market manipulation by the political class and other insiders. Obviously,
30:30 the war raging, markets moving one way or the other depending on what President Trump posts on
30:35 Truth Social that day. I wonder if you could speak to how we can keep our heads on straight,
30:43 ignore the noise, and stay focused on what really matters as investors and speculators. Well, I
30:49 think first of all, listen to what you just said. You look at the panoply of risks in the world.
30:56 I hate to personalize it, but Trump, various ones. The greatest risk that you face,
31:02 Jesse, is to the left of your right ear and to the right of your left ear. If you focus on that risk,
31:09 you minimize all the other risks. And the way that you do that is that you declare war
31:16 on the way you feel. It's important as an investor that you think as opposed to feel.
31:25 It's important that for the most part you ignore news. Don't trade on news. Unless you
31:31 understand the news well enough that you're past the headline, that you think about the implication,
31:40 because Jesse, you can never know when whatever the Iranian Ayatollah and the Israeli Ayatollah and the American Ayatollah
31:55 decide to end hostilities. You never know. You can never know the outcome of that. The idea that you have the ability to trade the news in the Gulf is zero.
32:06 But you feel the headline. You feel the fear.
32:12 You look at the day-to-day price action. You think there's information there. There's not. There's no information there. There's entertainment there. If you get beyond that to think about
32:20 the implications of the war in terms of, as an example, structural demand for uranium,
32:27 that gets you into the realm of thinking not feeling. The second thing is don't believe in the tooth fairy.
32:37 Don't believe in something for nothing. Don't believe that you can engage in speculation if you
32:43 aren't willing to tolerate volatility and real risk and if you aren't willing to do the work.
32:49 And the third is that the greatest financial edge on history is compounding. It's simply time.
32:58 Buffett said that he made most of his fortune by sitting, not thinking. He said in one of his missives to shareholders that he searched for investments
33:10 that demanded of him sloth and lethargy both of which he had an abundance. I think that's very
33:18 very important. I've graded, as you know, almost a 100,000 portfolios in 35 years.
33:25 And I've learned if a portfolio really interests me, I reach out to the person who submitted it to me. And I ask them questions about it, how they came about assembling this portfolio,
33:34 what were they thinking about, all that kind of stuff. A lot of people,
33:39 a surprising number of people have the strategy right. They're actually semi-contrarian,
33:45 but they get the tactics wrong. If you believe that there's a 5-year move in the copper price,
33:51 but you have trauma holding stock over a long weekend, the dichotomy between your strategy,
33:57 the five-year strategy, and your tactic, the two-month tactic, dooms you to failure.
34:06 It just dooms you to failure. Too many people regard the market as a subject,
34:12 and it's not. It's a facility for buying and selling fractional ownership of the business. Before you worry too much about the wrapper, the market, pay attention to the delta, if any,
34:25 between the price and what you think the underlying company is worth, which is to say the value. If you do that over time, you'll have good years and bad years, but you'll do well.
34:35 There was this guy who preferred not to work hard as opposed to working hard,
34:43 but he paid strict attention to value and to what he believed was structurally enhanced value.
34:54 And beyond that he did nothing. His name was Warren Buffett and he did pretty well,
35:00 you know. He did pretty well. Great thoughts. Rick, tell us about Battle Bank. Tell us about
35:06 Rule Investment Media. Tell us where people can access the replay of the Rule Symposium.
35:12 Thank you for the opportunity of three commercials. That's attractive. Let's start with the low test one. If you go to my website, Rule Investment Media,
35:21 and you list your natural resource stocks, I personally will rank them one to 10, one being
35:26 best, 10 being worst. I'll comment on individual issues if I think my comment might have some value
35:31 to you. And I'll do that absolutely for free. Be a little patient. I'm about 300 rankings behind and
35:37 I do them all personally. Go to Rule Investment Media. By the way, natural resource stocks only. No tech stocks, no pot stocks, no crypto. Leave an old guy to do what he does well.
35:48 Moving on to the conference. We're coming off the best conference that we've given in
35:53 31 years of giving conferences. This is truly where everything I began trying to accomplish
36:00 in 1995 I accomplished. We did that because of the interplay of the conference and
36:07 the Rule Classroom where conference attendees and anybody else for that matter can access
36:14 300, 350 hours of instructional material for free. We also did it by interviewing every
36:22 exhibitor at the conference before the conference so that attendees arrived at the conference better
36:27 able to allocate their time and attention. A lot of the advice at the conference was timeless.
36:33 And the consequence of that is that we make the conference recording available to people
36:40 who attended the conference and people who didn't attend the conference. A lot of other conference promoters do that. But we do one other thing. We give you an ironclad money back guarantee.
36:51 If you buy the recordings and listen to them and you don't think that I gave you your money's worth, no problem. I'll give you your money back. Now, content's been good enough over 31 years
37:00 that we've had to refund about one-tenth of 1% of the tuition that we've charged. But that tuition
37:06 back guarantee is your guarantee that we're confident our content can and will make you money.
37:14 And then finally, Battle Bank. This is easy. If you're happy with your current bank
37:19 and if you don't mind not getting paid interest on your checking account, you don't need to pay attention to Battle Bank. But if you're interested in interest
37:28 or if you're experiencing service failures with your bank, then you might want to consider Battle
37:33 Bank. There's $3 trillion on deposit in the United States that doesn't earn interest. How stupid is
37:38 that? You're taking a risk with your money and you're not getting paid to take the risk. This is like felony dumb. People think Trump is a risk. Not getting paid interest. Now that's a risk.
37:50 What do we do at Battle Bank that's different? Well, the first thing is we pay you interest. Sort of unique. We don't have 16 savings products to confuse you. We have one high yield money
37:59 market fund that you can write checks against or not. Your choice. We also allow you to save in 20
38:06 currencies, not just the US dollar. Next 10 years, that's going to come in handy just like it did the decade 2000 to 2010. Don't believe me? Just watch. The third thing we do on the lending side of the
38:18 ledger is that we believe precious metals are good security. Good security. So, we lend against them.
38:24 Most banks can't spell gold, but at Battle Bank, if you're a stacker, we think your gold is
38:29 good collateral. I've learned something else lending to people who've owned gold for 25 years,
38:34 which is to say that people who are prudent enough to save in gold are prudent enough to borrow money intelligently. In other words, they're good credit risks.
38:43 So, if you are interested in accessing the capital that you have tied up in your stack, maybe you want to take advantage of a distressed real estate bargain or something like that,
38:53 talk to Battle Bank. That's the business that we're in. But if for any reason you're unhappy
38:58 with your current bank, check out battlebank.com. It's named Battle Bank because we want to battle
39:03 for your banking business. Excellent. I'm going to put links to everything discussed. The Rule
39:08 Symposium replay, ruleinvestmentmedia.com and Battle Bank will be in the description below.
39:14 Rick, as always, incredible conversation. Thank you for coming on the show. Pleasure, Jesse. If we don't talk, I look forward to seeing you at the VRIC or some other place at some point
39:23 in time. Thanks for this conversation. Thank you for joining us today. This episode brought to you by Arch Silver Gold Osmium. They got some great prices right now on gold and silver bullion
39:32 products. Reach out to owner Ian Everard today at 307-264-9441 or by email at ianarchsggo.com.
39:42 These prices are subject to change without notice and while supplies last. So reach out today and let
39:47 him know that Commodity Culture sent you. And we're building a community on WhatsApp. We're
39:52 having lively discussions and debates. The latest one about Bitcoin versus precious metals.
39:58 You also have the opportunity to ask questions to my upcoming guests as well as share investment
40:03 ideas amongst the community. The link is in the description below. Really look forward to seeing you there and I'll see you guys in the next episode. Commodity Culture is a series
40:14 on commodities and natural resources. If you would like to see more, be sure to subscribe
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