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[music] >> Hello everyone, welcome to the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. How you all [music] doing today? >> [music] >> Welcome to VRIC Media, your most trusted voice in metals and mining. I'm your host, Darrell Thomas, and today we have the pleasure of interviewing CEO Jay Martin of The Jay Martin Show and also VRIC Media. How you doing today, Jay? >> I'm so good, man. Good to see you. >> Yeah, looking forward to this. >> Yes, indeed. I'm looking forward to it. Uh so you recently put out an amazing piece and I would like to dive into that. And so you flagged a a new story that's not a lot of people has been paying attention to and I'm curious just dive a little deeper on that. But what is happening with the banks in China and gold? Like what is happening there?
>> Well, China is trying to show the world the real price of gold. And um they've been making this claim {slash} threat for a few years. And the reason is is they've been the primary buyer and holder of gold and Eastern economies generally have been for the last 5 10 years. Um and they're making an argument that the real price of physical gold has been suppressed. The reason they're making that claim is because the majority of gold, like the vast majority of gold, when it's bought and sold isn't physical coins or physical bars trading hands. It's contracts on those physical bars and physical coins. Most people when they buy gold or they say they've invested in gold, they're not like you or I where they buy physical. They're all they they buy the paper contracts, right? And because most people don't ever claim the physical ounce that contract claims to own, the owners of those ounces that sell the paper contracts can in theory sell more than one contract for every ounce of gold. And we know this to be true, but we can't measure how off it is or how many more claims there are than than physical because there's too many sellers doing it too many places and too many different ways. And so it's not really a measurable problem. You know, the estimates are that in the silver market there's something like 400 paper claims on every ounce of silver. I have no way to validate that. China's trying to do that right now with gold. And so what they've done is for their primary banks in China starting with the ICBC is as of July 24th, they have halted all trading of paper contracts on gold. And so retail investors can no longer buy paper contracts on gold. So they're planning to evaporate the paper contract gold market. The reason this is significant is because the price of anything is determined by the supply and demand of that thing. And if you can inflate the supply of something, the price will drop because the market will assume there's a lot more of that than there actually is, that thing's not as scarce as it might be, so I shouldn't pay as much as I otherwise would. And that might be the case in the gold market. China's making the claim that maybe let's use a use a number like 10. There's 10 paper claims on every ounce of physical gold. If we can destroy the paper gold market by banning it from retail investors, so they they're no longer allowed to trade that. If they want to buy gold, they have to buy the real thing. We're going to have true price discovery on the ounce of gold. And if this is actually happening and I I believe it probably is, what we'll see over the next few months is a big disparity that begins to occur between the paper gold price and the physical gold price. See, if the market is like highly trustworthy, you or I would pay the same price for a claim on gold or the gold itself if we had assurance that that claim actually did entitle us to an actual ounce of gold, but if we get suspicious that you might have a claim on the same ounce that I do, right? That claim's worth a lot less to me and that physical ounce is worth a lot more. And so, what I expect we might see over the next few months. So, we've seen this in the silver market in 2022, uh we saw a massive like 40% um difference in the price of a physical ounce of silver and the paper price. Because the market got suspicious about how much paper claims there were on every ounce. I expect we'll see something similar in the price of paper gold and physical gold over the next 6 to 12 months. There will begin to be a disparity where the paper claims evaporate, the demand for physical goes way up, and that will bid the price of physical way up, and the price of paper contracts on gold will go down because the trust will decrease and people will be a lot less willing to pay for those in general. They'll pay a lot less for them. So, China's effectively executing. Now that they control a large enough share of the gold market to do this, they're executing in true price discovery on the gold price and I think it's going to blow a lot of people away. Time will tell, but they're beginning that process. July 24th, they they just enacted this law and over the next few months, we'll see how real it is.
>> Yeah, it reminds me of earlier this year when the silver spot price would trade higher than the the futures contract price. It seems like that could be the case with gold in the future with what China's doing. Is that correct?
>> Yeah, 100% 100% and I I think they'll validate that very effectively and you know, it's it's like why does this matter to people? Like it's it's a headline that you might think, "Oh, if I'm not a gold trader, like why do I care?" Uh it tells us a lot more about the broader economy and that's why it does matter to people. You know, it tells us a lot about the value of a dollar, a lot about the value of of an ounce of gold. And um you know, if you look at like just general affordability today, Daryl, like it's on the front page of everyone's news feed and everybody's concerned about inflation, price of gas, price of housing, um affordability, retirement, bills. Like, it's it's a major concern, and arguably the number one concern when it comes to the election cycle in the United States and Canada, European countries. And there's enough confusion about that that, you know, something like this could really shed a light on what's really happening to the value of a dollar and what the value of a dollar could do versus what it used to do. And people make a lot of assumptions about that, about the concept of inflation, for example. You know, we all I mean, know, and a lot of mainstream generalists know inflation as the price of things generally goes up over time, right? And it's a curious belief when you think about it, because the price of things in an economy that's become more efficient and more globalized, like which has happened over the last 40 years, the prices should come down, right? If you look at the price of a house from like the mid-1970s, you pay around $44,000 for an average house in America. Today, that average house is around $450,000. It's gone up by 10x since the 1970s, and people may just say, "Oh, yeah, that's what housing does. It goes up over time." Same thing happens with cars, right? An average car, mid-1970s, $4,500. Today, that same average car, $45,000, right? That's the average price today. Another 10x increase in that price. And you know, a week's worth of groceries in 1976 was like $62 for the average American. Today, it's nearly 350. It's 5x more. And people will nod their head and say, "Yeah, like prices go up over time. That's inflation." But, what else has happened during that time period? Globalization, like we've gotten a lot better at sharing our natural resources. We've gotten a lot better at accessing cheaper labor pools, cheaper economic inputs. You know, for my entire life, the whole world's been a global marketplace. Whatever you wanted to buy, you could go to the cheapest seller and get it. That, in combination with massively advanced technology and our ability to manufacture at cheaper cost, quicker, with less human labor hours, should like intuitively bring prices down. We can do more with less. We can access cheaper goods, cheaper labor sources, and produce faster. That's a recipe for deflation, prices coming down. So, why have prices 5x to 10x over that same time period? It's absolutely illogical, but nobody stops to ask the question. If you measure those same goods, however, in an ounce of gold, you'll find the other side of the exact same story. That house that was $44,000 in 1976, you know, used to cost about it was 150 oz of gold, you know? And it's at at $175, it would have been around 300 oz of gold. It's now down to about 100 today, right? So, it's actually fallen by about 65%. The car, same thing. In ounces of gold, prices have come down by about 80%. Price of groceries, price have come down by about 80%. And that's what you should see, right? And this this this is with a arguably suppressed gold price.
>> So, we're going to know a lot, I think, in the next few months. It's not something that will be revealed immediately, because price discovery takes a lot of time, and trading habits need to adjust, but I think this will be very telling in the year ahead.
>> Yeah. Yeah, it's very very important topics. I'm sure the audience, you know, have felt uh their pockets, you know, being impacted by the cost of goods, services, and continue to increase in price, while the purchasing power of their currency continues to go down. And when you measure that in gold, you see that folks that have saved in gold have done really well in these types of environments. Um So, take us back. So, is this the first time this has been done in history or has this been done before what China's doing with the gold market?
>> It's it's not dissimilar to taking the US dollar off the gold standard when Nixon did this. You know, effectively we lived in a world where US dollar was a claim on on gold, right? And ounce of gold cost you 35 US dollars. And the whole world could trust that system and they trusted that system because they believed that the United States would redeem, right? Gold for dollars. That was the promise at that rate. Um but as the US grew in in power and population and entitlements, quite frankly, uh they got over their skis with costs and had to start spending more money than they were earning and beginning to run deficits and you cover deficits when you're the world reserve currency supplier by printing more currency. And so if you're printing more currency but you're not printing more gold, the you know, the number of dollars relative to the amount of gold in your vault becomes disproportionate. It's the same as selling more claims. I mean that's it's exactly the same situation. If I have an ounce of gold and I sell you a claim on it, that's fair. But if I sell a claim to another people, that's dishonest. Well, it's the same if I tell you you can redeem this gold for 35 US dollars, right? But I keep on inflating the dollar supply. It's like I'm selling more claims on that limited supply of gold. It's the exact same dynamic. And countries paid attention to this as the United States began to inflate their currency through the late 50s, early 60s, late 60s, and into the 70s. And so we saw many countries begin to redeem their claims on gold. And the United States, in order to protect the gold price and keep it suppressed, had to sell a lot of the gold out of their vaults um to flood the market with physical not because they wanted to sell it, because they wanted to keep the price down. They wanted to flood the market with supply to tell the world don't worry gold is still only worth $35 an ounce, right? Paper is still as good as gold. But eventually the selling selling overwhelmed the United States. That's why Nixon closed the gold window. I think it was, you know, a matter of national security to defend the predators on the dollar, but really it was like we can't keep this up. We're going to run out of gold. We can't keep flooding the market to keep the price down. It's a limited supply. The paper money, we can inflate that all day, but eventually we're going to sell all the gold and we won't be able to keep up with the buying uh with the selling. So, it's the exact same scenario, right? Uh as inflating the dollars and suppressing the gold price that way that we're seeing today. This time it's happening intentionally. China's forcing the move to show the world what it's really worth. Their suspicion is it's a lot higher than today, which you know, gets back to that inflation story. If the price of physical gold is being suppressed because you've got 5 10 20 claims on each ounce, then the price of gold should respond accordingly. 5 10 20 x the price, right? Because the price isn't determined by fictitious contracts. It's determined by the real amount. If the real amount is a lot less than the market thinks, that scarcity will breed price increase. And those numbers we just talked about like the inflated value of a house in dollars versus the deflated value of a house in ounces will be a lot more stark than even the numbers we just ran through.
>> Yeah. Yeah, that that makes total sense, especially just seeing how many dollars were being printed and whenever countries were claiming their gold back, um you know, we could have easily ran out of gold. And so Nixon had to close the gold window. And it's similar to what you mentioned earlier with the paper gold market. Like how many claims are on 1 oz 1 oz of gold or 1 oz of silver. And so if everyone came and demanded that bar of silver, that bar of gold, you know, that could be very problematic for many of these uh LBMA's, the COMEX's, and and so on and so forth. So, what actually is paper gold? Why does it matter so much? Some people buy the physical, but it seems like a lot of people are investing in like the GLD, the ETFs. Um some people are in the futures contracts. You have some people that are traders, and some people I I assume are buying it to to hold it to protect their purchasing power somehow. Uh what is this paper gold and and why does it matter to the average person?
>> Well, it it matters because it's easy. If you have read or have heard or you believe that gold is a safe store of wealth, if you believe that it protects you against inflation, if you're just maybe turning your head to news today and seeing central banks all over the world buying more gold. If you're watching the price go up and you want to participate in that. People are accustomed to frictionless buying. And buying physical gold is quite frankly really annoying. You have to buy an asset, you have to have it shipped to you. There's security and transport involved in that, and then you have to store it somewhere. Uh and selling it is the same headache, right? You have to get to an exchange somewhere and and sell it physically like you're selling a used car or a bike. In an environment where people are accustomed to making trades with the click of a button on their cell phone, that's a real annoying process. So, that's why most people don't bother doing it. And in addition, you know, there's a lot of traders in the market. They're watching the frothy uh gold price that we experienced in November, December, January. They're not looking to buy and hold. They're looking to buy and sell, you know? And if that's all you're looking to do and and capture momentum, then the paper contracts are the move for you. If you're a day trader and you think you can outsmart the market, then you want to be agile. You want to be quick, and you want to get in and out of this as quickly as possible. And so, that is the mechanism to do that, right? But as the gold market heats up and becomes more attractive, the demand for paper contracts goes up too. And I suspect the disparity between the physical price and the paper value will continue to widen. You know, it's it's uh it's it's it's that simple. And and I own physical gold. So I can speak personally about how annoying it is to purchase, store, and keep, right? Um it's not something that I can foreseeably dollar cost average into every week. Because the shipment costs alone would probably discourage that advantage, you know? And it's an annoying thing to do every week. So, generally speaking, I might buy gold in massive lump sums, once a year, every 6 months. I've gone a few years without buying gold, right? Just because of the headache of logistics. So, for that reason, it's there's way less participants in the physical market. It's far easier to do something from right here. I could buy 10 oz off my phone and call it a day and think I own gold, therefore I'm safe, because the media told me that gold protects your net worth. So, I thought. Not if you don't own it, though.
>> Mhm. Some people feel like the price of gold and silver are are suppressed. And some people may say that's conspiracy. You know, they they may say, "Hey, you all are just uh conspiracy you know, coming up with these conspiracies about the price suppression and and and with with this paper market and everything." So, how will we actually ever know like whether the price is suppressed or not?
>> Yeah, I mean I tend to hear those claims like, "Oh, it's a conspiracy." Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I just say follow the incentives. If you can sell something 10 times and get away with it, there's a lot of people that will do that. And so, I think it's really that simple. In terms of is there a bit of funny business going on? Yeah, inevitably. Human beings will be human beings, and if they can get away with something, a lot of them will try. The way we'll know, however, and this is the part that really matters, is that we will begin to see a premium on the physical gold price. You'll be able to buy paper gold for whatever the market says, but if you want to buy physical, you're going to pay a lot more for it because the demand for physical will go up as more people realize the paper contracts don't actually entitle you to anything. And if you ever wanted to redeem that claim for the physical gold, the gold may never actually show up. And that will create more demand for physical and the two assets will separate, right? Demand for physical will start moving faster than demand for paper and the price will move accordingly. And we're already seeing this. And the other place you can look is central bank gold purchasers because let's just say they they probably know a little bit more about uh about country reserves than you or I might have access to. And if you look at the acquisitions of physical gold by central banks over the last 4 years, you'll see what started in 2022 as record buying that exceeded anything we'd seen in about 50 years until just last quarter records we haven't seen ever in the first quarter of the year. So, for some reason, central banks all over the world are buying physical gold much faster than they're buying anything else. And the majority of those countries are also taking possession of it. So, they're not trusting it in London or New York. They want it within their borders. Which is risky if you're holding billions of dollars of physical gold and you live in a risky neighborhood, right? Like pick one on the global chessboard, right? Who's on the other side of your borders? Do you trust all your neighbors? A lot of countries don't have that privilege, right? Canada, United States very lucky, ocean on two or three sides and a friendly neighbor across the border most of the time. We can get into that. But if you don't have that privilege, holding your physical gold within your borders is a risk in itself. So, accepting that risk over trusting New York or London is very telling. So, watch the price disparity between what a physical ounce costs and what a paper ounce costs. Watch the Watch the trends and trajectories of central bank gold buying. And watch how many of those central banks are actually pulling that gold within their borders. And it's telling that the World Gold Council is arguing that the majority of central bank gold buying actually goes unreported. So, we have access to numbers that are reported, but this isn't globally regulated. And so, we'll never know for sure. China, for example, is the world's probably largest gold producer. They're also the world's largest gold importer, right? They don't export any of what they produce. We don't know how much gold they have. Now, if you were concerned about price discovery pushing the value of physical ounce far higher than it is today, and you're a central bank of a sovereign nation, and you have your your sovereign treasury to take care of, you would want to acquire as much of that asset as you could without spooking the market and pushing the price up. So, doing it discreetly would make a lot of sense. If you believe there's a transition coming where the world will begin to question the value of paper promises and really value physical things. And I think that's probably what's happening.
>> Yeah. So, central banks are buying What does this speak to as far as trust between uh different nations? Especially if central banks are buying gold. Like buying gold Typically, I would think of it as a Okay, this is money. Like you're buying money. You're protecting You're protecting your currency and such. But we live on a dollar system. And so, is that a signal of a uh lack of trust between these nations?
>> Yeah, 100%. I think it's I think it's a handful of things. I think I think [snorts] that central bankers, love them or hate them, are more likely students of history. It's their job to understand currency cycles. Hopefully, most of them spend a bit of time studying that. And you know, all we should understand, the most important thing to understand about our, you know, dollar cycle, our currency cycle is that there is a definitive beginning and there will be a definitive ending. And there always has been in every world reserve currency that's ever come and gone. And you can study recent cycles like the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the British. Today, we're in the American world order and American global reserve currency, but this is the same movie that's been on repeat for a thousands of years, many different places. And you'll see the same activity at the beginning, same activity in the middle, same activity at the end. And if you get familiar with those cycles, it gives you a bit of insight into where we might be inside this current world order. And the hands show us that we're probably closer to the sunset than the sunrise. You know, Luke Gromen's got an excellent quote when it comes to gold ownership specific to central banks. He said, "There's not very many moments where you want to own gold throughout history, but there's a few moments where it's about the only thing that you want to own." And those are the moments where we transition from one currency to whatever happens next. It's those in-between periods where people really get wiped out and where treasuries become reduced to zero very quickly. And it's in those seasons that you want to own the inconvenient, clunky, heavy, tough to secure asset that does hold its value. That does not transact nearly as effectively as a currency does, isn't quite as liquid, and is a bit of a headache to own, but it's the one thing that does hold your purchasing power, and that is physical gold. And so, I think the acquisitions of physical by those central banks is emblematic of more questions than answers around the future value of the US dollar and the future security of what's historically been for the last 40 years the world's saving asset of choice, which is the US Treasury. You know, this is where central banks have parked their savings for my entire life until very recently gold took over US Treasuries as a higher value per reserves of central banks around the world. Now, that's partially because the gold price has risen, but that's the point, right? We we measure things by their value. So, that shouldn't be a that shouldn't discourage you. What you should pay attention to is how many countries that are selling Treasuries to buy gold. That's that's very telling. And you know, there's a handful of reasons for that, but effectively, you know, the the the dominoes are falling this direction and and they will eventually knock the big one over, which is the shifting of currency. And I don't think that's happening tomorrow or inside the next 5 years, but I do believe inside my lifetime we will see the world transition off of US dollars and on to whatever's next. I'm highly convicted in that. So, if you're following that story and you believe that to be true, but you can't predict if it'll be in 5, 10, 15, or 20 years, you do want to get ready for it because what happens between now and then will be continued depreciation of the dollar and therefore continued appreciation of everything you can't print. So, position yourself now is the smart thing to do if you're a sovereign nation and you're talking in terms of tens, hundreds of billions of dollars, and that's the position that we're seeing occur right now.
>> Okay. Uh so, talk to us about the Shanghai Gold Exchange. Um it's been thrown around a lot in recent months and within the past, I think I heard about it in the past year. Shanghai Gold Exchange, what are they actually doing to you know, influence the price of gold? And then also, there's some news about um China expanding one of their vaults and such. What does that mean for for the market?
>> Right. So, those those two things they correlate directly with each other. So, the Shanghai Gold Exchange is effectively a physical gold marketplace. So, you want to buy or sell gold, ounces have to move at the Shanghai Gold Exchange. So, this is a instrument that will assist true price discovery and and force honesty in the gold market. There's a handful of other reasons China's launched the Shanghai Gold Exchange. This allows other countries another mechanism to transact global trade outside of the US dollar system, but in the context of this conversation, that's the role it plays. The vault that you're talking about is actually in Hong Kong. And the reason that vault is in Hong Kong is because China's capital controls are strict enough that most of us can't trade inside of China. And there's really strict limits on how much capital a Chinese citizen can export from China in a given year. I think it's like the equivalent of $50,000. But, money can flow from China to Hong Kong to the world. So, Hong Kong is like the spout where the rest of the world can access China and China can access the rest of the world. So, the vault that you're talking about to store physical gold that might be traded in Shanghai will be stored in Hong Kong. And they're recently uh executing a massive construction project on that vault. The vault historically held around 200 oz of gold. They're rebuilding it to store 2,000, sorry, tons, 2,000 tons from 200. So, they don't have 2,000 tons to store today. What they're building for is their prediction of the future. They believe in everything that you and I just discussed that the demand for physical is going to skyrocket. That the Shanghai Gold Exchange will set the standard for how gold should be traded. And that therefore the majority of the world is going to want access to that, they're going to have to do that through Hong Kong. And so Hong Kong will become the new London, the new New York, where physical gold can be stored and kept for people that own it. Traded through the Shanghai Gold Exchange, just meaning, and we'll see, all systems start honest. This one will start that a claim on gold actually entitles you to the ounce of gold. I think if it works, eventually purse strings will loosen as they always do. But for now, this is the mechanism that would trigger uh true price discovery.
>> Okay, so what would you need to see that would cause you to rethink your thesis here?
>> I would have to see fiscal responsibility in the United States. I'd have to see the $2 trillion deficit reduced to a palatable amount. And I don't know what what amount is palatable. $39 trillion in debts being spoken of sincerely with a plan to reduce it. Because without any of that, the only direction this train goes is further down the path of dollar devaluation. To quote Lyn Alden, uh nothing stops this train of dollar inflation. And and I believe that. There's We're at a point now where the interest on the United States debts is the single biggest line item in the budget. Countries are paying attention to that. They are less certain that the US Treasuries are a good place for their savings. But the United States, when you offer when you operate on a $2 trillion deficit to keep the lights on every single year, you have to keep raising debt as much as you can, every single year, every single quarter. And so they need to keep selling US Treasuries, which are just IOUs, right? Think of the US Treasury market is like the United States credit card. And you or I could live above our means for as long as we wanted, as long as there's a bank that's willing to keep increasing the limit on our credit card. We can just keep running the card, it's all good, as long as the bank says yes. In this scenario, the Treasury market is the credit card, and the rest of the world is the bank. And as long as the rest of the world keeps funding the US Treasuries, the US will have a surplus of cash to keep running even though it spends more than it earns. Nobody else could do that. But as long as the Treasury market is still appealing, and cash keeps flowing in from other countries, that deficit is sustainable. But the problem is more countries, as we talked about, are thinking it isn't. And they're making different choices with their savings. So in response, right? If If the bank called you or I, Daryl, and was like, "I'm cutting off your credit. No more. You spent too much money." Well, our argument might be, "Look, I'll pay more interest. All right, you can charge me whatever you want. I'll pay you more for it. Let Please let the party keep going." And that's the equivalent of the United States raising the yield on the on the Treasury. They're willing to pay more to borrow. And that increases the interest rates and increases the interest payments, etc., etc. Um I I I that's what I'd have to see change. I'd have to see that change. Fiscal responsibility, massive cuts to entitlements, probably military spending. We'd have to see the rest of the world renew their appetite for US Treasuries in a major way. It would give me confidence. And if the United States can't get their deficit under control for some reason, the rest of the world will become comfortable again funding it. And if I began to see those things, then yeah, I think that would delay the end game. But that's the keyword. It would delay it. It wouldn't change it. Right? Once again, like we need to know the narrative we live inside, the story we live inside is the story of the American world order. We know when it began. We know we're inside it. We also know it will end. We don't know that part when it comes to when. All right? But But every previous empire has ended. This one will, too. It's going to be impossible to call. A number of dominos will have to fall first in a variety of orders, different events like renewed or decreased appetite for US Treasuries, renewed or decreased war in the Middle East, and disruption to the energy market. These things may change the speed or direction the dominos fall, but it doesn't change the end zone. We're still going there, right? Just on a different timeline. So, you know, things like that may change the the cadence, Darrell, but they don't change my outcome whatsoever.
>> Yeah, so pretty much we'll have to eliminate uh fraud, waste, and abuse, and actually balance our budgets, and be fiscally responsible for you to rethink or to even change your mind on where you think this is headed.
>> 100%. Sell me that story, and I'm all in then. 100%.
>> Got you. Got you. Uh so, where can the audience What can the audience expect next uh from you on your show, and plug the audience with uh where to go to watch some of your content?
>> Well, you know, right here, VRIC Media is the channel built for mining investors, built by mining investors. And so, anybody who's curious, I mean, on the Jim Rickards Show, I publish an episode every single Saturday, and we dive into what we believe are the most important important geopolitical or macro trends, but we look at everything through the lens of supply and demand. The thesis is really simple. The world's pretty complex. It's pretty chaotic. It's hard to understand. So, if you can step back and look at whatever headline you're studying, whether it's some political rhetoric or trade aggression, or a hot war, and just step back and view that thing through the lens of supply and demand of raw materials, things get pretty clear pretty quick because behind the scenes almost all the time that trade aggression or hot conflict is two parties, somebody that has something, and somebody else that wants it. And if you understand the dynamic, you understand the incentives, right? And that's really what it all comes down to. The world's run by incentives, and incentives are governed by the supply and demand of raw materials, the things the world really needs. So, on the Jim Rickards Show, we unpack that every single week, and it's super super fun. And people often ask after watching an episode or or or watching yours, they're like, "Well, what are you doing about it, right? You're an investor. You manage your family's money. What are you doing in this scenario? And you know, I'm investing in the things that the world can't print more of but needs more of. The raw materials, right? The copper, the nickel, the rare earths, the uranium, the gold and the silver. I invest in all of those things. And if anybody's curious about how to do that, you know, we have a platform called the Commodity University where we've got a whole catalog of courses, we've got a dozen instructors, and monthly mastermind programs for anybody that wants to figure it out. And we cover everything from commodity industry basics and fundamentals through to how do you evaluate a mining company before you allocate some capital? And if you want to study that and workshop that with a group of peers at the masterminds, like come join. It's the commodityuniversity.com. Join the community. It's a risky business. You shouldn't do it alone. Join a community and do it alongside some peers. It's actually also, just by the way, super fun. I love the masterminds. We hook up once a month and we just get to jam on anything people are looking at buying or selling and why. We unpack the thesis and we cover whatever major headlines are impacting the supply of raw materials. So, it's super fun. And, you know, our mission behind that is like, let's create the most dangerous generation of mining investors because they ask better questions than any who've come before them. And we're trying to arm this next generation with the intelligence to put their capital where the puck is going, not where it is. It's not in big tech. That game is over. Look at where the smart money's moving. It's out of big tech into the big boring utility companies, raw material companies, the long bets, the long bets that I think will define the rest of my life. You know, our life thus far has been the era of globalization, cheaper access to a wider variety of goods. And you might as well just buy rent companies and service providers and subscription businesses, the big tech platforms. But, I think governments around the world have woken up and you're seeing initiatives everywhere from, you know, the critical metals list in the United States to plan Mexico to the special projects office in Canada fast track New Zealand in New Zealand. These are all government policies that are destroying the regulation hurdles that prevented capital from getting to the mining sector. Every country has their own initiative to pursue capital entering their metals and energy sectors because they've woken up and realized holy smokes after 40 years of outsourcing, we don't own anything anymore and that's a problem. We're totally dependent on foreign countries and developing nations and potentially hostile partners for all the economic inputs we need and that's a problem. It's good news for mining investors if you'd like to invest when things are cheap and might get more expensive. And so we we talk about that a lot, but but that's my passion that I love studying it and and I love the game of geopolitics. It's like a real life chessboard Game of Thrones happening in real time.
>> Yeah. >> There's not a better fiction anywhere.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, appreciate you for coming on the show, Jay. You all have the information. Be sure to go check out the Jay Martin show as well as the Commodity University. And subscribe if you haven't subscribed yet. We'd love to have your support and thank you all for watching.