Why the Bounce-Back in Metals Could Mean a Strong End to the Year - Weekly Wrap-Up (Nov 1, 2019)

Announcer: You are listening to the "Weekly Wrap-Up" on Sprott Money News.

Craig: Well, hello again from Sprott Money News and sprottmoney.com. It's Friday, the 1st of November, just 2 months to go in 2019. This is your "Weekly Wrap-Up." I'm your host Craig Hemke. Joining us again this week, Eric Sprott himself. Eric, happy November.

Eric: Hey Craig, glad to be here. Lots of interesting things going on in our world because some stocks are beaten and going up nicely and some stocks are not beating and they're going down significantly. And gold's acting well, silver is acting well. So, lots of interesting things going on.

Craig: We have a lot to talk about, no doubt about it. And we have something interesting to announce this week. Not the usual stuff. This is something new for people. Please pay attention. For all of you listening today, I want to let you know of a special event coming up in Winnipeg. All right. So, you got to go north of the border, if you're in the U.S. But this will be in Winnipeg. Sprott Money is co-hosting along with the CCMEC, a client appreciation event on Sunday, November the 17th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. called The Art of Discovery, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery's Inuit Art Centre. You can enjoy a reception of wine, hors d'oeuvres as special guests as you take a tour of the wonderful collection of Inuit art on display, much of which was kindly donated by the Sprott family. The reception is free, but space is limited. So, you need to RSVP, if you can make it to Winnipeg on Sunday, November 17th. You can visit sprottmoney.com to register and learn more. It's a great warm-up for those of you attending the CCMEC Convention the next day. Again, just go to Sprott Money. It's free. Hey, we gave away a little bit of Eric's gold a couple of weeks ago. And now we're giving away some Eric hors d'oeuvres.

Eric: And art.

Craig: How about that? I like it.

Eric: Yep.

Craig: I didn't know you were a big collector of Inuit art.

Eric: I am...was a very, very large collector of the Inuit art and I gave most of it to the Winnipeg Art Gallery when I sort of officially retired because it was in the office and it was mine. What am I going to do with this stuff? So, that seemed like a very nice place. There's a big First Nations population out there. So, I thought that was a great spot for it.

Craig: That's very, very cool. My friend, what also is very cool is the bounce back we had in the metals this week.

Eric: We had a nice rise here. And we got through the 50-day moving average. We broke the downtrend I think in both metals. Until the jobs report today, I would have thought that we would have a pretty significant run forward here and we may yet have it, even though the jobs number came out and supposedly it was better than expected. You know, I've never believed the jobs report ever. Particularly when...like last year, I think for 19 up to September 30 or something like that, whenever they cut euro, they just eliminated 500,000 jobs halfway through the year, you know because of some revision that took place. So, you never know how real these numbers are. I'm actually looking forward to reading a book by Robert Kiyosaki called "FAKE" because when I look at a lot of the stuff that we're asked to devour, I get the sense that a lot of it is...it got a little bit of a BS component in it and everyone wants to make the world look like it's better. But it's not really getting that much better.

And in fact, some of the real surveys, the ISM, the PMI, the Chicago, the dah, dah, dah, I mean, the numbers are rotten. The consumer comfort, consumer confidence, like man, we're in a downtrend. And I think one of the guys that you interviewed, David Jensen, said, "Hey, money supply have been going down and we're going to have a decline in economic activity." And it's happening. So, I think that's what we have to look forward to for the next 12 months.

Craig: No, you're absolutely right. The data is miserable. The fed is allegedly data-dependent and they cut the fed funds rate again this week and gave no indication that that trend is going to reverse. And Eric, there's a constant demand for more and more dollars to service all of the existing debt. I don't see how it can ever reverse.

Eric: No, it can't. And you know, one of the other things that I greatly believe in and I believe in it for the world, okay, is that the underprivileged, the people who are in the lower half of earners, they keep facing inflationary pressures, but their income doesn't go up. And I'm reminded, I was reading about the Halloween candy, I think it went up 3.9%. Okay? Well, a guy who had a job making $50,000 has to spend as much on Halloween candy as somebody making $100,000. And you know, he just gets squeezed. And that's not just in the U.S. or Canada that it's happening. It's obviously happening in South America here. I mean, you see these countries where some guy says, "Well, I want to raise the transit fares," or something and there's a revolt or, "I want to raise gas prices because we can't take anymore." They know it. They're already delinquent on their credit cards or their payments and getting bills in their mail saying, "You're overdue and all that." That's throughout the world. Okay? That's just the way it is. And you know, "We can't take anymore." I don't know why I'm expressing it that way because I can handle it, but I know what they're...I have a sense of how people are feeling about it. It's endless.

Craig: Precisely.

Eric: So, there's not much uncertainty as to where we're going here.

Craig: Eric, you know, an exact example of that fake as you said, I remember Jim Sinclair used to call it "MOPE." Remember that? "Management of perceptions."

Eric: Yeah.

Craig: We had the GDP numbers in the U.S., the first guess of the third-quarter GDP and that came in magically above expectations as well. But of course, what they're quoting is real GDP, which is adjusted for inflation. Well, if you can understate inflation, then you get a positive number, right?

Eric: Yeah.

Craig: So, they come in at 1.9%, but if they'd measured inflation, just 1% higher, it would have been 0.9%. I mean, all these stuff [inaudible 00:06:09].

Eric: And how about they did inflation, right, and said, "Inflation is 4%, not 2%?" There would've been no growth.

Craig: Right.

Eric: And that's the whole crux of the matter mathematically. You know, we know inflation's way beyond 2%, way beyond that. And the average guy...I mean, look at rent increases, and the cost of a house, and the medical bills, come on. You know, you don't have to...you can be half-awake and figure this stuff out.

Craig: If you are this week, which is...I'm just teasing you.

Eric: I'm fully awake this week. Yes, I am.

Craig: Fully awake this week.

Eric: Thank you for reminding me.

Craig: All right. Let's move on. We got to talk about the situation on the COMEX, which is the primary price discovery spot for the world anymore. And every evening, we get a preliminary report that is then finalized, the numbers never match up. That's probably a topic for another day. But anyway, last evening on the big rally out of the FOMC yesterday, we saw on the preliminary report, open interests rise 34,000 contracts to 682,000 blowing away the old all-time high, which was actually just a week ago at about 660,000. I suppose you have some thoughts on that.

Eric: Well, it's mind-boggling. You know, we had a 5% increase in the open interest on a roughly $15 rally, 1% rally in the price of gold. And the thing I find just so frustrating with the COMEX is that every contract that is bought by a person who thinks the price of precious metals is going higher, one for one is sold by a commercial bank. It's just the way it is. Okay?

Craig: Yep.

Eric: So, you know that if the short position went up by 34,000, it's 34,000 contracts sold by the commercials and bought by people who recognize what's happening and say, "Oh my God, this has got to be a great investment, both gold, and silver." And we, again, referring to David Jensen, we got to get into a palladium-type situation, where the guys on the floor know that the paper game's over and they can't stop it anymore. And I suspect that we may not be that far away from it in silver. Ted Butler's writing about the silver whale coming back and then buying another, I think, it's 100 million ounces. He's speculating here. But you know, you keep taking this out of the system and other people in the world focusing on, okay, where do I put my money as my local currency's getting trashed? Okay? And most local currencies, i.e. whether it's the rupee, or the Brazilian whatever, or the Argentinean this or that, oh my God, have they've gone down in value, how do you save yourself, gold and silver?

Well, hey, why don't we all act like the Indians, instead of buying gold, they start buying silver by humongous amounts, where they now consume about 40% of the silver in the world? So, you know, it's just going to take a few more people going there and we're going to be flying in here. And I think particularly in silver.

Craig: And Eric, it just gets to the fundamental flaw in the fraud of the pricing scheme in that, you know, if it was an equity and there was a rush of demand to buy it, price has to move up until people that currently hold it are willing to sell it. And that sort of happens a little bit in gold futures. But also, the banks just simply supply more contracts, they create them from nothing. So, price doesn't have to move up. You don't have to find willing sellers. The banks just create new ones and shove them out there.

Eric: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. There was an article that a former governor of the CFTC was giving a speech and he said that between the treasury, the fed, and I guess, the CFTC, they started bitcoin futures to end the rally in bitcoin. And we know that, you know. And the day the future started, it was over for bitcoin. And of course, we see it happening every day in gold and silver. We know exactly what goes on, that the pockets are so deep, and so careless, and so stupid. They'll just do anything to have people believe in the fake thing that they want them to believe in. And so, yeah.

Craig: And Eric, that was the former head of the CFTC, Giancarlo.

Eric: Yeah. Right.

Craig: Unbelievable. So, Eric, people always ask me, I mean, can we acquire enough physical to break it? I mean, because that's clearly the only way it's ever going to fail. I mean, what else can be done?

Eric: Yeah. Well, we certainly can acquire enough silver. So, let's say there's 2 billion ounces around $3.6...sorry, $36 billion to buy it. Okay. Thirty-six billion dollars in this day and age is not a lot of money. You know what I mean? Like, if some major institutions decided to go in and buy this stuff, I mean $36 billion might be a drop in the bucket or some central bank. How about the Mexican Central Bank?

Craig: Or Putin.

Eric: Let's just step in there and buy the $36 billion tomorrow. We're the biggest silver producer in the world. Why don't you do what's right for your countrymen and buy the goddamn silver?

Craig: Yeah, yeah. Or Putin. You know, everybody thinks he's... Yeah.

Eric: Or Putin. Yeah. Forget the gold for a month. One month. Yeah.

Craig: Well, all right. My friend, it's an interesting time, that's for sure. But price does look good. I mean, let's not get away from the main point. We began the year at $1280 in gold, we're now north of $1500. We began the year in silver $1550. We're up here $1800. They're both up 20%. That's the best year we've had since 2010. So, I suppose we should probably keep our eye on the ball.

Eric: We're looking a lot better here. And I think notwithstanding, you know, we're looking at a day when gold's down because of some jobs report, but I mean, that'll be illusory after a while. And we'd probably end up right back up there again. I did wanna mention two things that I found very peculiar. The World Bank has suggested the price of gold is going to $1,600. Now, I don't know why the World Bank does that, but there you have it. Okay? The World Bank coming in. Okay. And then the World Gold Council comes out with a report saying, you know, people should take 1% to 1.5% of their bond portfolio and put it into gold. Well, of course, if it was 1% to 1.5% of your total fund, that would increase the demand for gold by 200% to 300% gold equities. Because it's only one half of 1% of people's holdings right now. So, if you want to get to 1%, you got to double, you want to get to 1.5%, you've got to triple. So, I found that was a very interesting study. So, hopefully, those...I find it interesting that those organizations are sort of getting behind gold here now. So, it was very constructive.

Craig: Yeah. Why would you not swap into some gold when you've got a negative-yielding bond on your hand?

Eric: Exactly. That was exactly the point. And really negative...not only is it negative-yielding, in real terms, imagine how negative it is. Imagine if you're getting minus a half actually for the bond and then your inflation was really 4%, you're losing 4.5% purchasing power per year.

Craig: Yep. Exactly.

Eric: And gold's up...what did you say it was up this year by?

Craig: Twenty.

Craig: Oh my God, 20%. Okay. Let me see. I could lose 0.5% or make 20%. Oh, that's a tough, tough one.

Craig: Yeah.

Eric: Okay. Let's move on.

Craig: All right, my friend. Anything else on your mind before I ask you about a few shares?

Eric: Oh, yes, there was one other thing. I want to talk about the reimposition of the uptick rule. I had a group of people come to see me and say, "You know, we're going to push the TSX Venture Exchange to reintroduce the uptick rule on short-selling." There's nothing I would believe in more than that. This ability of people just to smack stocks down is so discouraging, is so unproductive except for the guys doing it. It's so unproductive for the customers of the TSX Venture Exchange. Okay? And they should review that. It's unbelievable that they got rid of that rule back in 2012 and I got to really fight hard to get it re-instituted.

Craig: How do we do that, Eric?

Eric: How do we do it? We've got to embarrass some people. We've got to prove to them that, you know, the ultimate consumers of your product are people, people, not people...companies trading securities against you. They're providing nothing. They just eat your lunch every day. And make the amount of money that we can invest in a good company, smaller every day.

Craig: Right. Just taking, they're just taking.

Eric: They're just taking and giving nothing.

Craig: And in the meantime, these companies have real employees with real families and they're trying to do a real job.

Eric: Right. It's ridiculous. It never should've happened, ever, ever, ever.

Craig: I like it. We'll keep us posted on whether you can get that done up there.

Eric: Will do. Okay.

Craig: We have a couple of names that came in, a few that we've talked about before. I know Eric doesn't have an opinion on things like BTU Metals or Greatland Gold. We don't know anything about those, Pretium. But I do have a couple that I know Eric's got some thoughts on. Eric, let's start with Brixton Metals.

Eric: Sure. Well, first of all, I know Pretium. Okay? But I'm not intimate with it. I know they had a lousy earnings report and it was one of the stocks that got beat up just yesterday. But I'm not a student of it, is probably the best way of putting it. Now, Brixton, I am an owner of Brixton. And the stock was up sharply yesterday. They had a drill result that came out, I think, the day before. It looked okay/good. But they have another nine holes and I suspect with the kind of move it had yesterday, well, you know what, maybe one of those holes was pretty stunning. I don't know. We'll see. I don't have a reason why it went up almost 20% yesterday, but it's nice to see. That's Brixton.

Craig: Eric, you might have a Jaguar in the garage. Do you have any opinion on Jaguar Mining?

Eric: Well, I should have an opinion. Let me see. I own 45% of it, so I guess I should know a little about it. We refunded the company recently along with another major investor, Hathaway, John Hathaway. The production for the quarter I think is going to be sort of not special. I mean, I think it's going to be like 18,000 ounces, something like that. But with what they have in line in terms of the funds available for them to get the development started a little further ahead, get new equipment, you know, I'm hoping that, you know, by the end of next year, we could be looking at a company that instead of producing 80,000 ounces a year, might be producing 100,000 ounces a year. And if they can produce 100,000...I mean you get the extra 20,000 for free. So, it would make a big, big difference. I think the stock is...obviously, I am a believer in it. But I'm biased, so we'll just leave it that.

Craig: How about Discovery Metals?

Eric: Well, I bought Discovery because they bought a company in Levon that supposedly had a billion ounces of silver. And of course, you know, you could see the emotion I speak to on silver here. I just find it incredulous that it would trade at 83 to 1, incredulous that it would trade at that. There's just no way on this earth that it...but there's one way. You know, it's just the guys on the COMEX don't care what the price is and sell it, sell it, sell it, sell it. And who cares about these relationships? You know, that's for another day. But as I say, I hope silver will do what palladium's doing, where people recognize that there's going to be a bit of a shortage here. And I see big things for silver and if a guy's got a billion...Levon was taken over by Discovery Metals. And between that property and other properties that Discovery has, most of which are silver-oriented, it could be a great silver asset going forward.

Craig: And lastly, any extra thoughts on Wallbridge? We discussed that last week, but what else do you have?

Eric: Well, you know, I spend a lot of time looking at these things and the more I reflected on that drill hole that they had announced about two weeks ago that, that was a drill hole in one of their northwest-southeast structures. They have a number of northwest-southeast structures, one of which had an intersection, I think it was 17 grams over 11 meters. Okay? Which again, is a great hole. And of course, the whole question is, well, do we have a whole bunch of structures that go a kilometer long that as we go deeper, the width is expanding and the grades are improving? And I would remind the listeners that Wallbridge when they were doing some of their drilling up in the discovery zone, I mean, they were getting a hundred...what I call, triple-digit grams over fairly wide widths up there. Which you're saying, "Well, I guess, it shouldn't be that unusual that you would have good grades down below." The grades up top had to come from somewhere and they don't come from above. They come from below.

So, you know, this, I'm hoping, really hoping it could be, you know, some multiple of 10 million. That's what I'm kind of hoping here. And the question is, well, how many multiples of that will it be? We'll see.

Craig: Wow. All right. Well, before we wrap up, just another reminder, if you missed it at the beginning. This is a free deal, stop by Sunday, November 17th for the special event that Sprott Money is co-hosting in Winnipeg at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Sunday, November 17th. All you got to do is go to sprottmoney.com to RSVP. While you're there, hit the Deals tab on the Sprott Money homepage. You'll also find that we are still in the midst of the Sprott Money autumn sale, all kinds of great, great pieces of bullion and coins on sale to add to your stack. Because that's the only way we're going to defeat these banks as we've discussed, is through physical metal. Eric, thank you for your time, very much appreciate it. I hope you have a good weekend.

Eric: I'm sorry I got so emotional, but you know, I am a little bit involved. So, anyway, I hope you have a great weekend too.

Craig: No reason to apologize, my friend. From everyone here at Sprott Money News and sprottmoney.com, thank you for listening. We'll talk to you again next Friday.