Eric Sprott's CRITICAL Mid-Year 2026 Warning

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Hello again from Sprott Money, SprottMoney.com. We're about the midpoint of 2026. And it is time to wrap up the month of June, wrap up the first half of the year that has certainly been eventful. And we're going to do it in a way that we've kind of gotten to a little rhythm here. Every six months or so, we like to check in with Eric Sprott himself. And so it is a pleasure to welcome him in today to sum up the first half of the year. Eric, good to see you, my friend.

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Hey Craig, good to see you too. not good to see what's happened so far this year and the trends that we're in right now with gold and silver absolutely getting beat up. but let me assure the audience that I still have full belief in where we're ultimately going here. And when I look back at what happened to I use silver because it was so dramatic when on I guess it was Jan 30th when it broke down and went down.

What was almost fifty five, sixty bucks in it in thirty hours? Yeah. Now, look, I've been around a long time. I've seen this thing that before, okay. I saw what happened in 1980, I saw what happened in 2008, I saw I saw what happened this time. And the same old player, right? they announced that some guy named Kevin Wars is gonna be the chairman of the Fed, and all of a sudden they gotta knock silver down. Like I just don't get it. And meanwhile, you know, if Kevin Wars

Sprott Money Inc. (03:02.392)
But silver goes down and gold goes down. And it's the same old reason that the commercial banks are short these products. They were losing, my God, their losses when silver was 120 were just incredible. They had some huge expires of options coming up the next day, Jan 31st. Huge expires on SLD options, as an example, because I was watching those closely. I mean, they would have lost tens of billions of dollars had they closed at that price the next day.

Well, isn't it funny? It didn't close there the next day. It closed very, very, very far from there the next day. And I just think, you know, this is anomalous. We all know what the fundamental picture in gold and silver is, particularly silver because it's an industrial product. You can see the uses and the demand for it and the shortages for the last five years and now a sixth year. We can see the goings-on in the silver trading on the COMEX.

we know that people have gone to jail for manipulating the price of silver. People from very big banking institutions in the United States have gone to deal for this. So there's no surprise that this goes on. And let's face it, the banks got totally caught offside because they're the only shorters really, right? Between the banks and the few guys that trade this for a business. They're the guys really the only guy short. So they were losing gargantuan amounts of money.

And here we have this huge correction. Of course, everyone gets blown out. And of course, the CME Chicago Mercantile Exchange helped everybody by instantaneously having all kinds of margin rate increases. I think there were four or five of them. And the guy guy's already losing money. He's got to put up money at the margin. And this guy comes in with a margin rate increase. He's seen the play before. Yeah. Yeah. 1980, same thing when the Hunt brothers had it squeezed. Well, we're going to change the rules. You can only go you can only go short. You can't buy anymore. Well, so what happens to the price of silver?

It goes from 50 now to five. Changed the rules in eight, you know, with all those margin rate increases for whatever reason that they finally got the ball rolling on the downside, and they just, you know, they tamp you to death. We've all heard those of us in the silver business heard about tamping. We've heard the former head of the CME. Is it the CME? Yeah, who

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Said yeah, when we actually looked at the evidence where there was lots of evidence of manipulation, but for some reason we hesitated to charge them. He said that. He was he was about to pass away, unfortunately. you're talking about Bart Chilton of the CFTC. Yeah, Bart Chilton, yeah. He said that in an interview. It's available to everyone, okay? Yeah. He named names too. Yeah. so I stand by the case that

But gold and silver will bounce back further for all the same fundamental reason. I could go to the the whole debt situation, the currency debasement that goes on. I mean, it's just incredible. It's and it's not getting any better when I see what's going to happen to the US coming out of this Iran war with the $300 million claim and the return of billion and the return of the $100 billion and all the costs of the war, which was fruitless. I mean, the whole thing was in my mind fruitless. I accomplished nothing.

In fact, it was bad. It was bad from a USA perspective. And unfortunately, from a USA perspective, they just keep losing allies more and more and more. And when you lose an ally, he doesn't want to own your currency. Okay. So I'll think we'll be right back to that. Dollar weakness, gold strength, silver strength. The fundamentals will support the silver story. And there's hardly a day that goes by when you don't read something going on in the electronics kind of business that isn't so powerfully.

Great for silver, whether it's the solid state engines, the AI plants are putting up. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And I I think we underestimate what really could happen. And one of the things I do fall back on is the knowledge that when silver and gold were currencies, silver traded a 15 to 1 ratio to gold. When when gold was at 4500, silver should should have been 300, but it's been suppressed.

For all these 50 odd years by banks who've been short the whole time. I mean, it's shocking to think that we had that. As you know, I don't have a love on for banks. and and I I maybe I could get mad at myself for playing in a in a game where you know it's manipulated. Right. Sort of you probably feel a little bit stupid because of it, right? And you even this time around thinking, no, there's no way they can knock it down that far. That's impossible.

Sprott Money Inc. (07:50.614)
The impossible happen in 30 hours. 30 hours. Yeah. And it as we record this late in the day here on Wednesday, June 24th, we're right down to what we seem to be pretty key support levels, you know, that a lot of us be kind of targeting ever since all this nastiness began. so we're we're gonna talk a little bit about what should drive prices back higher. reminder though, for everybody, Sprott Money named after that guy right there.

is a great bullion dealer. They will sell you physical metal and store it for you as well. They are the sponsors of all these podcasts, so be sure to visit sprottmoney.com when you're done watching. And add to your stack. Eric, I I I wanted I wanted to start here because it's all about perspective, right? we've been doing this, we used to do this weekly way back in the day, but you know, we do it now about every six months. I like to check in and see what you're thinking. We're getting we're getting a little older, Craig. We well.

Speak for yours no, anyway. Yeah, no, you're right. Speaking for my I am speaking for myself. Let me lay this on you. Because again, it's all about perspective. the last time we spoke, back in December, gold that closed that day 433, and silver closed 6550. If we dial it back to last June, the previous time we spoke, one year ago, a little more over a year ago, June the twelfth, gold was thirty-three eighty-seven.

Silver was 36, 35. Yeah. So I'm sitting here today looking at four thousand dollar gold and fifty-seven dollar and fifty cent silver on the close this afternoon. Yeah. Yeah. What's changed? I mean, yeah. I mean, what has changed? Yeah. After giving up a lot, you know, and your best returns are when something's gone down and hit bottom and everyone realizes we did the wrong thing. And that's I want to talk about everyone.

maybe sometime realizing we all did the wrong thing. Because one of the things that's has hindered the stock market, sorry, the the precious metal market is the stock market. Yeah. Because it's been a wonderful place for people, particularly speculators, leverage speculators, to make outsized returns very, very, very quickly, particularly with as if they were focusing on certain certain things. But when you look at the economy and the status of the United States government.

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The fiscal situation, the the weakness in home sales, the weakness in commercial real estate, the weak weakness in private credit. You can't even get your money out of a private credit. Right. Private equity fund. You can't get your money out. I mean, they've they've starting to seal the doors here. That's how bad it is. So and the whole bond market has been no panacea for everybody. So the only thing that was working is the stock market.

And and it was a very focused group of stocks that were working. For the most well, first of all, it was the Meg 7. Then we moved into AI. Yep. And recently, like last week, there's a number of companies announced that, you know what? We got a problem with our AI budgets here. We're letting all our staff use AI, but the cost of using it is very, very high.

And companies like I get some names here. Walmart, Amazon, Meta, Uber, Cisco, and I think Google as well, have said we can't keep spending money on AI like this. Because when all our employees use it, and you know, you ask somebody asked some huge computer complex, you know, what's the favorite name of a cat in New Jersey?

You know, and then they fire up all this equipment, you know, to get the imagine the cost of firing up the equipment to get the answer. And everyone's using this thing all the time. And even the guy at Chat GPT, I swear this is about six or nine months ago. He said, you know, the insane thing is the more people use our service, the more money we lose. That's not supposed to work that way. No, it's not supposed to work that way. And everyone assumes it won't, it will change, but I'm not so convinced with

This early on, these big companies say, hold hold on here. We got to cut back on this. This is not working for us. And we don't even know if the the pricing of the product is even where it should be to support the capex and the cost of production. Right. Right. So if this AI starts falling apart, I mean there's nothing left in the market that's looks healthy.

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Well, you're getting me to think I I just put a tweet on my X account today about if you go back the chart is actually almost identical. You go back to March of 2008 before the great financial crisis and the crash, gold intraday got like to ten thirty five. Yeah. And then fell by I think it was seven months later, down to six eighty three.

Something like that. 685 is a $350 drop. So 34% before the stock market crash. Well, that's almost exactly what gold is down right now from 5,500 down to 4,000. I mean, history like obviously didn't repeat, but I mean, with what you're saying about AI, is it rhyming? But it sounds the same, of course. Yeah. And uh-huh. Look, I I was there in 2000. I could see the the Nasdaq bubble.

And that's when I started my hedge fund so I could go short the market and long precious metal stocks. I was there in seven, eight, nine. You could see it, you know, right before your eyes what the hell the problem was with all the leverage in the housing market. And sure enough, yes, we had to put put up with what exactly what we're putting up with now before the metals finally went. So if the market rolls over here because we've had it wrong.

Which we might very well have, I suspect we have, with so many areas of weakness already. Yeah. Housing market, commercial real estate, private equity, private bonds. it's just endless all the things that are having trouble. And luckily, one sector kept us up there. Now this sector is really questionable right now. Right now. I wouldn't have said it as forcefully had I not read about these companies that are cutting back. Uber, for example, they said they spent their 2026 AI budget.

In four months. They spent all that they budgeted for AI in four months. That's not sustainable. so Eric, what do you I mean lead this then to what what do you think of Walsh? because again, when he was announced as a name that coincided with January 30th, he's gonna be this big hawk. I you know, he's trying to claim that he's gonna be this inflation guy and he's got the dual mandate and they're gonna get price under control and all this stuff, but

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I d doesn't he have to keep the plate spinning first and foremost and the the machine greased?

You know, I just gonna say, I think the problem he has is the whole keeping the economy going is not something that some central banker can just sit there and make happen. As you know, they they they they do it wrong all the time. Mm-hmm. You know, and he might be saying, Well, I'm not gonna I'm I'm gonna raise rates, but meanwhile, now that the market's the stock market's finally giving it up a little, we could see yields coming down here. I mean, look at the housing, look at the new home sales that were down whatever percent.

Today, you know, people are buying way fewer houses than than they used to. I think we're down to like 583,000 new homes. And if my memory serves me, it used to be like 850 annualized rate. That's a big difference, 850 to 580 or something. So he's got problems in front of him. And of course, he's got this whole deficit thing that we're not resolving at all. And we're making this. So

I think that people should be very calm here. I if I was to advise anybody of anything is stay out of AI levered. I mean, that is the last thing. When I when I read about the fact that so many people have these one day option trades. One day. Yeah. You're right, right. You make a fortune. You're wrong, you lose you lose everything, right? And so there's probably a lot of money lost here recently with AI weakening and Mag Seven underperforming. So

I think there's still gonna be a great opportunity to play gold and silver. So we've we've come down dramatically, obviously. let me lay this one on you. I saw a chart yesterday. I've never seen this before. Guy measuring the silver price against M2 money supply, which I will point out, I just saw today is at the highest year-over-year growth since June of twenty twenty-two. Okay, so this notion that

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money supply is contracting and that the you know dollars should be getting strange to nonsense. regardless though. this guy plotted the chart, Eric. I thought it was fascinating. if you price silver as a function of M2, where it peaked in January is almost identical to where it peaked in twenty eleven. And so the pullback then, if we're down, I don't know, sixty percent

That's the same as being down to twenty dollars in twenty eleven. I mean, we gotta be kind of relatively close to a low if you look at it that way. I just thought I'd see what you think of all that, given that money supply keeps expanding. It's gonna be close. Well, there's look at they just have to keep printing money. Okay. And they do. Right. And they say they've got, you know, they're selling bonds and they sell some bonds, but they're also buying them all the time. And you find out later that they were buying and and playing in the market. In fact, would I be surprised to find out?

That the the government might have put a lid on the price of oil. Right. With this whole mouse thing going on. First of all, selling the SPR, who's to say they weren't in the derivatives on the Comacs? Yep. I would not be at all surprised was the fact. So anyway, it's we have a our part of the world, particularly the the developed part of the world, is not doing well. And the people who buy gold and silver.

They're not on our team anyway, those guys. The guys that buy it are China, India, Asia. You know, and they're not. We saw gold imports into China. I think there were 164 tons in May. 164. That's 2,000 tons annualized. We only have 4,000 tons. We mine three, and and I think we have a total of 4,000, including recycling. Well, there's the f half of it gone if China keeps that up, okay?

And I I can take up probably another four or five hundred that China produces themselves that they don't export. And then put it, throw in the Indian demand. My God, I I don't know. There's going to be shortages of these products. Well, there's never a shortage of gold because there's all the gold in the world still with us, right? But we don't have all the silver. We might only have 2% of the silver we've ever mined, because most of it's in such small little places that you can't recover it.

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So I think that you wait till we're gonna open up on Monday. What are the Chinese gonna do? You know, they're they're bringing back these bank accounts where people can buy gold in the bank and get get their money back traded into gold. That starts on July 1st. we've had some negative changes in India, and I think those could easily be reversed here. You know, there was a time when the Indians were buying so much silver that they they had to

stop from buying them in the etfs and the same thing in China. Well maybe they'll say okay fine ETF, start buying again. Let's bring let's bring that two and a half billion people back on into the game and have the buying things. That'll change things fast. So I'm I'm hopeful. And by the way, as you well know it's quarter end. Right. And quarter end is when banks to dress things up a little okay I've seen it so often it drives me crazy.

Hopefully we get through this quarter and it'll be clear sailing after that. Yeah. let me ask you another question that's been kind of bandied about a lot. as we head up to the tw 250th celebration of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence. what do you think of this idea of revaluing the US's gold from $42 an ounce up to the market price to create kind of this net, net,

Deficit neutral cash creation. what do you think of that idea? Is it a possibility? Well, I know people write about it and talk about it. And of course, I listen and read what they have to say. I do not pretend to be an expert on a US reset of the gold price. first of all, it might be a a phony thing anyway. I read I've always doubted that the US owned any gold. Yeah.

Mr. President Trump was gonna audit Fort Knox, but for some reason he's never got around to it. Yeah. Not that he doesn't change his mind that often, but you know, Fort Knox is not that far away. Just go down there and check it out, man. Tell me what you got. You are the president you might revalue it and you don't have any. Yeah. It would be kind of an odd thing to do. It would be kind of awkward. You pretend you have it. well I've heard those things and and of course something that's added a little bit of color to that is the fact that the US Mint

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Is bringing out their celebration coin on July fourth. And the gold coin, which is in the shape of the Liberty Bell, it's one ounce of gold, but they're charging $19,000 for it. Right. And like, what are they charging for the silver coin? Like $750. Yeah, like a 13 to one ratio. $750. Yeah. Maybe they got the memo about the reset, you know, being a government agency. I don't know. Makes you think though. Yeah.

I mean you could see there have been ideas bandied about that this was a way they were gonna you know Trump wanted to start a sovereign wealth fund and a Bitcoin fund and all these other things and that's where you'd get the cash. I don't know. And I frankly I don't even know where, you know, if they did revalue the price to five thousand, that doesn't necessarily mean that gold's at five thousand, actually trading there. But I just didn't know if that was something that was on your radar, if that's something you

Really, I mean I I watch for things like that because people talk about it, right? Judy Shelton talks about it. Yeah. Andy Scheckman talks about, you know, the fact they might issue some bond backed by gold at twenty thousand dollars an ounce, something like that. And they're not dumb people, they're smart people. So there's there's some possibility of that. And of course, let's look at the the the real issue. The issue is that the US is in trouble and they're bankrupt. They've always been they've been bankrupt ever since I got into gold and silver. Right. I mean they got 200 trillion of

Unfunded liabilities, 200 trillion. What's your share of that? Don't think about it. It's been a bad enough day. You had to pay off your part of the debt. You'd be in trouble. all right. So you feel confident that yeah, we've had we had the quite the run up since December, the last time we spoke. And now we've given all that back. You feel confident that.

We're not going to go wandering in the desert for another five years like we did the last time we went through this. Feeling confident is a very difficult thing to do in the president's. Yeah, that's true. Feeling that you know the fundamentals suggest this is what should happen. I feel very strongly about it. Okay. Do I know whether you know the CME is going to come out and say, well, nobody's going to buy silver anymore? And the CM, I actually like that if they said it. We'd like we'd want to get them out of the silver market.

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They're not in the silver market. They're in the paper market. Yeah. We'd we'd like them not to be there. Okay. so yeah, it's hard to predict that. And you know, you still got that situation where the banks, I mean, if the price of silver rallies a lot here and goes back to 122, they're gonna be losing a lot of money on their silver position. So they're you can't be confident of when it's gonna turn. You can't be confident of when it can turn, but you can be confident it should turn, which I am. Yeah.

Have you have you been selling any? There's some people like even Rick Rule was out. Yes, I sold some silver at 110. I well, I had had some levered positions, so I've had to stay in front of the margin clerk. Yeah. And I've chased it after you doing it, but you know, I'm not gonna sit there and keep buying all these new issues, you know. Yeah. Making my financial situation more precarious.

Okay. By the way, I by the way, I wouldn't be surprised. We should be seeing one of some of these senior mining companies doing something in terms of takeovers, right? These things are dirt cheap. Where are you, boys? Come on. Right, right, right. Sitting there with all the cash and their well, they are buying their stocks back, which I guess is good. I should talk about the IPOs. You know, one thing that Eric knows from his living through these markets, huge IPO issuance is very bad for stock.

Because let's take the 85 billion that our friends at SpaceX got they're not gonna buy stocks with it. So they get 85 billion from people playing the market, which they take out of their accounts or sell this to buy that. So they have to sell something, yeah. And and he's not putting the money back in the stock market, it's not going back in the stock market. All those AI guys that are raising money through through bond issues and

stock offers which google's doing 80 billion and anthropic's talking about an issue and chat gpt or open ai is is talking about a stock issue these are big issues this is money that c comes out of the stock market yeah liquidity that leaves the stock market yeah and it's it's a bad it's a bad omen for stocks it is and we're going through it right now like the dot com stuff you were talking about you know these IPOs were coming out sucking up all the cash twenty five years ago.

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That's what happened. Everyone is doing an issue because there's stocks up here. Mm-hmm. And all of a sudden there's no money left. Yeah. Hey, Eric, I want to before I forget, I want to ask you one more thing. You were talking about the CME and the banker playground and everything else that they do there. Are they running out of suckers in that the open interest, total contract open interest for both gold and silver is at multi decade lows and has been for months. What do you make of that? Yeah.

No, I mean, is it any wind you can knock the price of silver down? There's nobody trades there. There's nobody there. Yes, you get huge volatility.

No, I just, I mean, maybe some maybe more people go into the physical silver market, but you don't see that on although we do see it on COMEX, like in gold in particular, almost every day somebody's taken a billion dollars worth of gold out of COMEX every day this month, including I think on Tuesday. Another billion dollars of gold is is for delivery in the spot month. And the the

The next month, August, sorry, no the July month, it's getting bigger in open interest too. Yeah. And they they never get off this stuff. You watch the change in you know rotation from the front month, which is a delivery month, to the outer month, there's almost contract for contract just rolls into the next month. They never get off the short. They can't get off the short. Well, they can't get off the short of no players too. So

But I mean, like back in January, I remember six years ago when we were still doing the things weekly and you were like, hey, watch the EFPs every day. And you got me watching that, geez, I think it was like 17 or 18 when that started to spike. And it by the time we got to January twenty twenty, they were doing twenty-five and thirty thousand EFPs a day and open interest was eight hundred thousand contracts. And now here we are six years later, they're doing a couple hundred EFPs a day, and open interest is three hundred and fifty.

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Yeah. I mean the interest there, I guess well, you know what? I actually had some SLB calls for a while and they did wonderfully for me. But I actually sold them before it would took the big run. And I thought, you know what? I don't think SLB's got the silver. I don't know that I want calls on something that may not make it. And I still have that view. By the way, I meant to add one thing.

The whistleblower out of the UK. Andrew. Yeah. Andrew McGuire. Andrew Maguire, yeah. He keeps dropping references to to Jane Street. Yeah. You know what Jane Street is? This is a guy who plays the ETF against the stocks. Yeah. I and I was thinking this myself. You know what? If I was Jane Street, if I knocked the price of silver down and the Comex.

I got two hundred different securities are gonna go down.

That I'm gonna arrange to have go down big time by taking this one down myself. And I'm gonna make a fortune on all the other 200. Whether it's PSLV, SLV, all the silver stocks, all the gold stocks, all the e various ETFs, the levered things, and like it's it's a it's very worrisome to me that this goes can go on and does go on. And we know what goes on in the sense that.

I think they made 39 billion last year in the stock market. Right. And they did something like 25% of all the ETF trades. It's just shocking. But I and I worry about that in a something as small as the silver market. Like, you know, some guy went out and sold a billion dollars worth of S not SLP, but futures on silver, everything goes down. And if you know you're short.

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Ten billion and you use a billion to knock it down and cover the ten billion short and you lose a little on the billion that you sold on silver, but I think it's a pretty good trade. So that worries me that that might happen. Or does happen. Does happen. It does have and I mean yeah, would they make Jane Street profit in the fourth quarter alone last year was like nineteen billion dollars or something trading profit. I and you remember then they had that noted, you know, or reported massive position in the SLV.

That then disappeared. And you're so there's a lot to that. I wonder though if they've bled the stone as much as they can, Eric. Maybe they'll come back in on the long side again. Hey, they might have pushed it up, take, took the run. Yeah. Push it down, take the run. Yep. There's a lot of leverage there. And the the fact that somebody that most people haven't even heard of could make that kind of money just by picking off the market. You know. Yeah. Is the answer just

Well, we've always doing anybody any favors, okay? They're not doing the general public any favors. For sure. For sure. End empire kind of stuff. They're everyone just looking out for themselves, like the politicians and the bankers and everybody else. But Eric, for the is it the answer what we've always talked about? Just, you know what? If there someone's gonna sprott money, is gonna sell you an ounce of silver for 55 bucks, take them up on it.

Sprott Money Inc. (32:04.552)
I lost ya. Yeah. No, I I we've got to be close. We gotta be close. Yeah, we have a bad internet connection here, I believe, but maybe it's strengthened up. we're gonna be very close. We're gonna be very close. let me And there's lots of people recommending precious metals that aren't just precious metal freaks.

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Including the guy at Morgan Stanley who said you should have twenty percent of your bond money in gold. Right, right. you know, Jeff Curry, Jeff Curry, who was always the analyst at Goldman Sachs, the commodity head commodity guy Goldman Sachs, said about a month ago he thought gold was going to go to four thousand before it went to ten thousand. So it all right, hey, I wish I had said that.

I exactly. I you oughta hire him. Eric, let me kinda take some time and just pick your brain a little bit about the stocks. I know a lot of people watch and just kinda like to get a feel for what your current s thoughts are on the sector. you know, what the companies if you a few if they if there's any ones you're adding to or you're excited about, that sort of thing. So I just kinda leave it there. That's the question. Where do you stand? I think it my first move when I

decide that I want to get introduce more funds into the precious metal markets, it will be some derivation of silver stocks. Okay, I think silver stocks will do by by far the best. And and I I don't mean a particular company, but I mean like the SILV, maybe the amplified silver ETF, something like that.

I I think they'll run real fast here. And I I I really own everything that I've ever had for the longest time. And I'm rarely a seller. Most of the things I own that are significant, I have big percentages that I have to report the sales all the time. So I don't think there's any I mean, I probably sold some USA silver somewhere along the line because it went into some index. I I use that opportunity when something goes into an index sometimes. You get some liquidity that you otherwise wouldn't have.

particularly for someone like me who owns a lot of positions that are big, that you know, my own influence on the market would not be positive if I was a seller. So I tend just to, I try I'm I'm a believer in a long-term hold. In fact, I thought you saw that Charlie Munger said, you know, it wasn't, you didn't it wasn't how careful how you bought it. It wasn't sorry, important how you bought it wasn't important how you sold. It's important how patient you are.

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Yeah. That's the biggest thing. Just be patient. Let it work for you. last we spoke, you were, and I've seen you since mentioned quite a few times companies like Highcroft being something that you you're still excited about. I don't I don't want to actually get you talk about anything specific. No, no. I like Highcroft. It's my biggest, it's my biggest position. Okay. they had a new MRE. They've had two point six billion ounces of silver equivalent.

Point six billion. That's a lot. That's more than almost everybody, I would point out. Okay. they've had some wonderful drilling to find high grade, they have a new high grade silver deposit. They're still drilling out. I think one of the reasons, other than the price of silver, that it's gone down recently, we haven't had any drilling news for a couple of months. Yeah. And you need that. Yeah. they came up with a PEA that said at current at spot prices at the time that the

net asset value is ten billion dollars. Well today it trades at two and a half billion dollars. So it's that's 300% upside. And that presumes the the ore body doesn't get bigger, that they don't find better ways of processing the ore, which I think they're looking at extensively. And I think they're gonna have some something interesting to tell us about that. So no I I like it. I still own every share I ever bought. So fingers crossed.

And another one stock that I own that I probably should talk about again is Free Gold Ventures. You know, they got over 30 million ounces of gold now. it just gets bigger all the time. The grade keeps going up. It's in Alaska, it's 25 kilometers from Fairbanks, it's five kilometers from Finn Kinross's Fort Knox. I mean, it just it's gonna be a mine someday.

And yes, I think we've all s hugely suffered by the lack of interest in these things. There's just a general lack of interest. Yeah. So I think it'll if if the market wants to roll over here, while almost every subsection of the market's already rolled over, if the general market wants to roll over because AI doesn't make it, then I think people will have to look again at the precious metals. Well, I we

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We received a couple of questions. The folks at Sprott Money put out on Twitter, I think, and a couple other places, asking to see if people had a couple of questions for you. And that was one of them that was mentioned a few times, you know. I mean, obviously GDX going from thirty to a hundred and twenty or whatever. That's a pretty substantial move, whether the generalists and the retail investor are involved or not. But I still I doesn't seem to me that this is a like a what people are investing in at present.

In the mining sector. Yeah, I mean, we all talk about when's that gonna happen. What what do you think will what will it take? One of my favorite questions to all underrators when a deal's being done and it's completed, I say, Well, were there any generalists in it? And there haven't been many generalists. Okay. Guys that have had a previous leaning towards gold and silver. So we don't we haven't seen that the groundswell of optimism when we we're probably down to awaiting well under one percent of all.

financial assets. Yeah. Again. Again, one percent. And yet gold is a bigger reserve asset for central banks than bonds are, than US bonds are. Yeah.

Yeah. Time will come. Yeah. How much what what again, what was the IPO for SpaceX? 85 or 87 billion. Yeah. Yeah. How many GDXs can you buy with that? So yeah, that day hasn't come yet. another question we got from Philadelphia. It's all the money they make, It's all the money they make. That's right. That's right. That's I get that part. You're actually lighting you are literally lighting money on fire in a rocket company. Well then he turns around and does it.

What these he's got a $25 billion bond issue coming out or something or more? Yeah. I don't know if it's officially announced, but excuse me, it just raised it, did this IPO. Now you're borrowing from the bond market. Yeah. Do you think a lot of money there, my friend? Bitcoin's been struggling quite a bit too. I mean, it's going down at just like gold and silver are. Do you think? I don't know. What do you make of that? Could that draw some attention back to the metals? I've never really been a believer in Bitcoin. When when I'm

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Gold and silver. I I I would never trade gold and silver for Bitcoin. And I some people believe it will hold its value when people turn their back totally on the dollar, the US dollar. I'm not in the camp. Yeah. I don't want to think about it, quite frankly. Yeah. all right. Another question I had, it was mentioned a couple of times, and I thought this was an interesting one.

You've made some mistakes along the way. You've been at this for twenty five years, focusing only on gold and silver. what have you learned from some of your mistakes?

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Well, here's what the one thing I'd say I've learned, and it's not so much from the mistakes, and I've probably readily admitted that I probably had more losers than winners, because that's a tough damn business we're in. The gold and silver business and turning rocks into money. Yeah. That is tough. Okay. It takes so damn long. I mean, I could say of of for example, free gold. I mean, geez.

I've been in it for probably seven years now. The deposit comes from six million to thirty million houses and then nobody gives a goddamn. Yeah, nobody cares. And everybody knows, you know, it'll be another seven years before you could turn anything into money, probably on that. And that's the problem. We got to wait for the money all the time. But but when you get you finally make the money, the market takes notice. Okay. I can go back to the Kirkland days when Foster will develop, we start earning all this money. Well then the stock goes crazy. Okay. Yep. So and the thing I have learned.

Is that when you have a winner, press the bet. You know, if you know it's all coming up the way you thought it was, just keep buying the stock. So that when the the payoff comes, the payoff is way bigger than what it might have been when you started. I'm not a great seller of losers. I'm not. I'm a I'm an owner. And you know, lots of things that I was losers on in the last two years have turned out to be winners this last year. Not that I've sold them.

But you know, yeah, I would say almost any stock that was in gold and silver trading at a dime is now probably trading at 50 cents. Yeah. Maybe on its way back to it, we'll see. But they all went up, right? And there's there's merit in them because as the price of gold and silver went up, the economics of their deposit, if they had one, were changing dramatically, exponentially. So

So yes, we're all make we all make mistakes. one of the things I've been good on is seeing that markets are overvalued. I'm not talking about this sections of the market, but the general market. And I mean, I was not fooled by 2000. I was not fooled by seven, nine. I've rarely I was not fooled by the COVID thing. I could see the earnings early signs of this. this could be a problem. Yep.

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I quickly became a spec skeptic on the vaccines. I actually did a comment on this interview once. yeah, and actually, one of the things I'm doing is I'm spending a little time and money on the study of diet as a methodology of curing disease, curing. And we've seen some guys do some great work on dementia, where they think they could reverse it, cancer.

Where they think they can reverse with diet of all things. No drugs. Just eat good food. Don't eat crap. And you're more likely to stay healthy. So that's taking up some interest. And by the way, I have two other things I should like to talk about. One is I've I've been a a manganese monosulfate believer. Manganese monosulfate goes into solid state batteries. It's the primary ingredient in it. And I it looks to like the solid state battery is gonna make a lot of headway here soon.

And then there's these little weak companies in Canada that nobody buys. I own three or four or five of them. There are only about six or seven of them. But I think the outlook for that product, that that ore is going to be spectacular. So I'm just putting it on the table. The other thing that I spent a put a lot more money in it recently is there's a company in Saskatchewan that has drilled a a well that has found natural hydrogen.

Hydrogen turns out to be a wonderful fuel, by the way. There's no carbon in it. So for example, Rolls-Royce is producing a jet engine that runs on hydrogen. Lighter. Volvo's working on cars that run on hydrogen. And most hydrogen is made through electrolysis and it's expensive. You know, breaking up water. These people think they found huge potential reserves of hydrogen in Saskatchewan.

I would encourage people to go to their website, it's Max Energy, simple as A X X on the Canadian Exchanges. and they think they might

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This could start something big for the world in energy. Yeah. Now I would like that. I'd like to be involved in something like that. If it really happens, we'll see if it really happens. Mm-hmm. Well, my friend, we've come to the end of our time. it is like I said, middle of June. By the time we're scared, that's a scary thought, Craig. My friend, we've come to the end of our time. Yes, we for this, for this interview, this discussion.

It w what's crazy is I look out now, yeah, is it blue sky, green grass? I'm looking out my window, I see the same thing. By the next time we do this on a semi annual schedule, the next time we do this will be almost be Christmas. I don't know. I won't be in Canada. No, that's for sure. Yeah. What let's just leave it there. What n not like prices and stuff. Wha what do you think? What do you think will be some events? What's what

Will you be watching between now and then? I think people are going to figure out that the US economy is in trouble. Okay. That the debt situation is a bigger problem than we're giving you credit for. That there's parts of this of the investment market that are very, very weak that somehow we keep sweeping it under the carpet. But there's lots of problems out there. I mean, just think of the private equity people who can't get their money out. Right. Normally that would cause a market to break. Well, we just kept running up there like, you know.

Everything was wonderful. Well, if the AI thing turns out to not be that wonderful, we're gonna pay the price. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. anything else on your mind as we wrap up? We'll leave it at that. Okay. We'll leave it at that. It is almost cocktail hours a matter of fact. I'm I'm I've lost my internet connection here. yes, you have frozen up. So maybe what I'll do in in the in lieu of you coming back is I'll just begin to wrap it up on my end.

it has been great visiting with Eric Sprot, it always is. I always learn something, and I suppose you have too. anyway, we're wrapping up June. It's going to be a new month and a new quarter beginning in July. The good folks at Sprott Money will have all sorts of content and all sorts of great deals coming at you as we go through July. So please keep an eye on this channel. Like or subscribe wherever you've been watching this, YouTube or whatever. But also

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Visit sprottmoney.com. Sign up for the newsletter. check out the great deals they have on both precious metals and storing that metal. And again, always just keep them in mind as they are the sponsor of all this great content. Eric, thank you so much for your time. And from all of us at Sprott Money and SprottMoney.com, thank you for watching. And again, we'll have more great content for you as the calendar flips to the month of July.