Fabi Lara: Dissecting How Long This Gold Bull Market Will Last

Hello everyone. Welcome to VRIC Media, your most trusted voice in metals and mining. I'm your host, Daryl Thomas, and today we have the pleasure of interviewing Fabi Laura of the Next Big Rush. So, how you doing today?

I am doing really well, Darl. Uh, well, everything seems to be up today, so by definition, I am doing very well. Thanks for having me.

Yes. Yes, for sure. Yes. It seems like for me, well, for me it's like, okay, my wealth is like increasing. It it kind of feels, it feels weird in some ways, but it's like, oh, this is a reality. Yeah. Finally, I was lucky enough or maybe not lucky enough uh because in my in my mind it should have played out in a different manner to be part of the mini bull market that we had in 2016. And it kind of left a taste in my mouth of okay, this is a short version of what a bull market feels like. But it didn't, you know, have any follow on. It just kind of died. It lasted 6 months and it was kind of a a bear trap. Now we're living what is either a proper bull market or the continuation of a bull market. You can argue that started way back in 2002. uh you know back in in the day when governments were selling gold and then really smart people really smart gold bugs were starting to buy gold because it was sitting at 200 bucks and so we're living this next leg of this really exciting bull market but now I'm invested and and it's nice to be in the industry working behind the scenes and you know trying to take advantage of what's happening around us finally.

Yeah, it seems like in the last uh few years I I've only been like seriously investing in in this sector since uh 2020. And you know, there were some volatile times uh through through that 2020 uh period, especially with some of the uranium equities and such as well as uh I mean gold had you know ran up to $2,000 and then came back down. I think it touched 1,600,700 at one point. um you know and just to keep operating with that conviction. I I think that for me uh having experienced the prior bull market, you know, like I I had to really hone in on my conviction on on the asset and such and like really like, okay, let me let me stick it out. Let me stick out these volatile times. Let me focus on the long term. I I didn't get a lot of uh a lot of uh consoling from uh people like Rick Rule and yourself and and others just to just to kind of weather those storms. And so uh so yeah, I'm definitely appreciative of folks that have that have been uh in this uh investment sector uh longer than me.

Uh so I I do want to jump into gold. Let's start there. So obviously gold has been moving. Uh the big the big story has been central banks buying gold. I actually recently saw a chart where the tonnage has increased for significantly for uh many nations um and it and it's outweighed the the decreases in the um as far as the sales of of gold uh reserves. And so uh multiple things have happened since then. Um I saw that the Morgan Stanley chief investment officer come out and say that 20% should be allocated to gold. uh as well as I saw from Black Rockck uh they are bullish on gold especially in a uh rate cut in environment. Um and then you also have Goldman Sachs with a $4,000 uh gold target and they were saying u from what I was reading um that they um really suggest a allocating a percentage to commodities and especially gold. And so it seems like the uh sentiment is starting to shift. Um are we seeing some of the big money come in yet or are we still waiting for that to to transpire?

Both. So we're seeing central banking central banks uh buying and pushing the numbers up in a way that gives us confidence that this is more of a long-term play because thank goodness they're not short-term traders. Otherwise, it would send all the wrong ideas to the market and they wouldn't have what they're after, which is security, right, for their own currencies and and their economies. But if you think about the history of gold in people's portfolio and what that used to mean even you know back in the 90s and and 80s and 70s it was common place to recommend a 2% holding and it was common for you know globally for for there to be a a 2% holding of gold and that be the standard. Nowadays that's 0.5%. And so even though we we have to take a look at okay who are the players in the market and what does it mean when each of them moves. So you have central banks buying uh and even if central banks aren't massive purchasers of gold going forward as long as the next players down meaning um you know big endow endowment funds and big hedge funds and you know funds of funds in general start to buy the idea of holding just the historical norm the standard of 2% gold. It means that the demand for gold physical format should quadruple from here which you know when you say that and we're at an all-time high uh you know around 3700 I don't always like to to say the exact number because as soon as this video comes out it's going to be something completely different especially you know we're in a bull market and so it's it's very volatile 5,000 super volatile but as it stands we're we're about 37 700 3700 uh US dollars and people are saying you know 4,000 5,000 10,000 and beyond is quite normal. It's hard for us to fathom that that a little coin you know just over 31 grams can be worth that much. But we also have to remember that if funds just revert to their historical norm then quadrupling the demand for physical gold is going to be absolutely insane. Then there's the question of okay how are they going to do that? Are they going to do it through um you know paper trading and paper gold which means you don't really need the underlying gold as much because they can you know expand and contract uh the contracts and how much physical you need versus you know the paper amount. And so there there is some um range of how much increase we would get, but there is there would definitely be an increase that would be sizable enough for us to go to over, you know, call it 5,000 gold. Um, conservatively, I don't really think of that very much. I don't spend too much time trying to focus on, okay, how high can we go? I try to see more of what are the the people who are buying gold doing right now and are we going down the pipeline of um you know the the next guys up? Are we at a level where retail guys are buying gold? Are we at a level where you know we've had the run in gold producers? Have we had a the the stage in the bull market where gold developers are really running? And so when you when you take a look at everything that's supposed to happen in a gold market, gold moves, then the producer, the best producers move, the not so great producers move, then the developers move, then the exploration companies move. If you go down that, you know, chain, the developers are still so so so cheap. the ones that have gold, known gold in the ground, compliant resources, but that, you know, aren't that close to to actually mining the stuff. You know, they're they're just expanding their resources. Those companies are pennies on the dollar right now by any sort of measurement. And so when I look at that, I'm like, okay, we still have some time. I don't know how long we have. Um, and I try not to think of time in months and years. I try to think of time in a bull market as moves in price. I think that matters more because the last 3 months of a bull market of a real bull market are completely insane. And I think we have a very decent ways to go to the point where if people are coming in right now, I think they should be cautious. I think they should be picky on what stage of development that they go in, but I do believe that there's a lot of room yet to make really good returns.

Yeah. So, I'm curious in your thoughts on uh so obviously you mentioned like some of the developers, you know, they they have known gold in the in the ground. They have uh proven and probable reserves. um but they may not necessarily have the uh capital to get the mining um the mining process started or whatnot. And then you got exploration companies. So uh typically, you know, what we've seen is during a time period where uh banks aren't necessarily lending as much and especially if they're trying to reduce risk, uh you have those royalty and streaming companies uh step up and um you know uh provide financing for those projects. So now uh as we begin to uh shift to a lower interest rate environment as well as um you know gold the gold price you know measured in dollars at all-time highs. Um, I would think that some of the the bigger lenders, the bigger money, the banks would see this as like, okay, this is a a golden opportunity uh to to u put someone put a company in position to actually start producing this this asset um that is going to print cash.

Yeah. So this is the interesting thing where I kind of go against the grain when it comes to trying to pick companies and deciding whether a company is going to produce or not. So there are two schools of thought in the mining investing world. One is okay. So you have these developers that should in theory go into production and that's where you make the real money because of the cash flows from what they're producing the gold, silver, etc. And it's somewhat expected especially in Australia it happens more often where the company is expected to you know put go through all the different stages and put um um build a mine basically and put the project into production. I am of a different school of thought. My thinking is okay things are getting better and it is going to get easier and easier I believe as long as the bull market you know uh continues to finance the mine for the price increase and the market cap increase of these companies to attract more financing options. There are companies where you're obviously sitting on a billion dollar resource and not even a resource. Let me correct myself. A billion dollar resource in situ doesn't mean much. An NPV of a billion dollars is what I'm actually looking at. Okay? So it's really a lot more than a billion, but they've decided that because of all the discounts, etc., the whole project should be worth, you know, a billion dollars. And these companies are trading for less than a hundred million. You know that big disparity and there are many of them out there. When you see that there is a lot of room for them to run and for you know potential financial suitors to come along and help them out in the next step of development. My thinking is if you are recruiting good enough guys to develop a project and to find the ore body, find the deposit, define it. Um, it's very difficult to then change up all the different pieces of the puzzle to make it so that you have the best mine engineers and the best finance seers to actually build a mine. I think that building a mine is a completely different ballgame than finding a mine and defining a mine. So my thinking is okay which companies now have not the best shot of ever producing? That doesn't even really come into my questioning. My thinking is okay who has the best chance of being more and more attractive as a stock? Because remember and this this is a a very powerful and painful lesson. There's a company out there called uh Largo Largo Resources. It bear with me. This sounds like I'm going off a tangent. I'm not. Largo Resources is a venadium producer in Brazil and Largo has gone through the stages of development and actually produced and their market cap has expanded to fit the stage of development. But because they had to print so many shares and raise so much money and they encountered so many issues because obviously like venadium is very um exotic and it's hard it's hard to put a mine into production and so because of that you look at the market cap and it's grown a lot but you look at the price like the share price has not appreciated in the way that it should have been if you zoom out enough and you really take into consideration everything that they've done you know with um the project. And so my question as a small investor is not is this going to get built? Is this going to um you know become a profitable mine? My thinking is the second level from that is does this look like it has a shot at being built so that somebody else can buy it and they can figure it out if it's possible or not to build that mine. let's focus on getting a team that knows how to find a mine and let's get somebody else to do the dirty job of actually building it because that's a whole another ballgame and I I think that it that's where a lot of the problems really come to life and that's where my focus is and I would I would invite all small investors like myself to start questioning what your thesis is and bring it back down to okay how are you going to make money from this? It's one thing for the company to make money. They're going to make money whether you make money or not. Remember that. I've crossed over to the dark side of companies and you know, I'm dealing with management teams all the time. They get paid whether we as investors make money or not. They have um shares, they have sometimes, you know, they're employed by the company, they have RSUs, they have options, they have a plethora of different ways of being uh rewarded for the work that they're doing. That's all fine and dandy. We need good people. We need to attract good people. And that's great. But at the same time, I think some investors get lost in the project and how is the project going to get advanced? How is the project going to be financed? and looking at the stock and how you're going to make money from it, I think is where people should focus more on, especially for smaller initial investors.

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Yeah. So uh I mean a big focus needs to be on uh capital management. How are they uh managing capital? I mean, if if they're diluting the SH shareholders and and they're still getting paid as if the gold price increases, right, then that's we we get left holding the bag, you know? So, yeah, that's definitely important.

Um, so I I do want to touch on the uh aspect of I was talking with some folks and obviously I'm I'm a big proponent of holding my physical gold, but um you know obviously that's something that I'm not going to sell. It's insurance for my money and my wealth. But as far as like it's uh growing it um you know I I invest in equities. And so, uh, just thinking about where we're at now. Um, I mean, you have, uh, I I haven't looked at the recent the recent numbers, but I remember the GDX and some of these mining stocks were up, you know, over 70% on the year and such. And obviously, you can go down the chain to the uh, developers and and the explorers and such. Um, how much higher can could these, you know, miners go and such? And then also like do you think like there's still um a lot a lot more upside potential with the as you go further down the chain? Is there more upside potential as you go down the chain?

I would tend to think so. Yes. And how much higher can we go? That is that is a loaded question. Reason being it really depends on whether you're going for simply a small company versus a real exploration company that actually hits something and finds you know a worldclass deposit. So right now there's a bit of a resurgence happening for example in the Yukon up in Canada uh companies there are looking for gold and because of uh snowline gold which is defining you know 7 to 10 to upwards of 10 million ounces of gold. And so that kind of wet the appetite for other juniors to now start exploring in that region. And some of them are really catching a bid before they ever start drilling, which good for them. They're raising on the back of that and and they're drilling. They're expanding their drilling programs, which is great. And so my question is more about the individual company of okay, how much higher can this company go? and most importantly what sort of expectations have been placed on this precise company. So there is a company I'm not going to name any names uh because they're good people and I don't think they did anything wrong but people can be upset when they lose money. And the this they they found some gold in Saskatchewan and it was a really good hit but it was one drill hole I believe and there was this massive expectation that they were going to find this amazing deposit. They went back there and drilled a lot and the expect it's not that they didn't find anything. It's just that the expectation was so high from the first drill result that all of the people that were bidding up the price and it went up to over a dollar. They were, you know, disappointed because in speculators minds, if you hit say 20 m of 2 g per ton gold, in the next set of results, for some reason, they expect like double that. There's always this expecta expectation of you know the results improving when there's nothing about you know exploration that dictates that that's how it needs to go. And so it it's company by company basis. And so that stock even though you know they have a much better idea of what they have it's down I think by I think it went down as much as 80%. And it was like this right as soon as they put out results. On the other hand there's a company that shall rename unnamed as well for other reasons because I haven't really finished buying the stock. They have a project in a jurisdiction that's kind of hairy. Give me the name offline. I I will I'll tell you. I'll tell you in private. Um there's a company that has really good rocks and the geology is really sound. Nobody knows it exists. And if I told you who's invested in it, you would buy it. And if I told you how much it's going for now, you would buy even more. And nobody knows about this company, right? So the I if that if this if this little company which is sitting at less than a million dollar market cap, if people only knew of the level of geological interest there is on that particular flagship project, it could go up five times without anything advanced in the project in and of itself. No difference, just people know about it. Could go up five times. Easy, easy, easy. Now, what if they then find something? Then we're probably talking 10 times on top of the five times, which makes it a ridiculous number. So, it goes back to what is that company doing right now? How much have they ran up? And why have they ran up so much? Is it because, and this this takes, you know, some digging. This is why, you know, I've I've partnered up with with a a company called uh orstocks.com and they basically let you use AI to research junior mining companies. So, I go in there and I personally do this and I try to figure out, okay, uh when was the last time they had a marketing contract on? I'm all for marketing contract, you know, that's that's part of my work. When was the last time they had a market marketing contract on? what happened to the share price while that was on and did they have any results to sustain the price? If they didn't then you know that the expectation that they hit something is big and if they don't hit something absolutely amazing then the stock price will fall. So it's very nuanced and you have to dig a little bit deeper into each individual company. Unfortunately, it's not like a blanket way of investing where you can just say, "Hey, just, you know, buy anything that has gold or silver in the name and you're going to be fine." Uh, unfortunately, uh, it doesn't work like that. And with the use of AI, I mean, I'm not the only person using AI and there are a lot more people you using Grock, using you name it. A lot of these tools are you like they they don't even have updated information and still people are using them. And I'm all for you using um technology as much as you possibly can to make sure that you cut through the noise and you get to the information that you want. Uh this is going to be the way to invest moving forward and it's going to be you know very case by case bas basis more and more I believe.

Yeah. So is is this a type of alpha that um subscribers to the next big rush uh get access to?

Um, I mean, yeah, I don't I don't I don't have paid I don't have a paid subscription. So, this is the kind of alpha that my very closest friends get. And no, I don't I don't comment if Bobby should do a paid subscription. Y'all put it in the comments. Yeah, put it in the comments. I mean, if there's enough demand, may maybe I'll do it. But, you know, this this is just I love looking at the tiny little companies that nobody knows exists. And now with this AI, it's much much easier, much faster for me to find stuff and to figure out if it's something worth, you know, uh, speculating in or not. And word of advice, like, okay, I don't give financial advice, but this is this what I'm going to say right here is financial advice. Make sure that when you're building your portfolio, if you're buying something that you believe has massive leverage and has massive potential of going 10 times and upwards of that, you don't need to go in big. Okay? When something really works out, you never feel like you own enough of it. That's okay. But what I absolutely hate seeing is that, you know, as we're going longer and longer in this current bull market, you're going to be seeing people do absolutely insane things. They're going to sell their homes. They're going to sell their cars. They're going to put money into crazy stocks that have silver in the name and absolutely no silver in the ground. I know cuz I've done this. I mean, I haven't sold anything of value, but you know, when I only had a few thousand to invest back in the day, I put comp I put, you know, money into companies that had the right thing in the name without actually checking anything. Uh, so I'm guilty of that. And so as you see crazier and crazier things happen and people probably are going to like tattoo silver stuff on on their bodies and do all these uh sort of uh cultish things. Um don't be tempted to go all in on something that is so very frail and so um so as asymmetric. Basically, if it's asymmetric, then the research should be, you know, your vote of confidence, not the amount that goes into it. The amount that goes into it should only be very large if you think it's a safer investment. So, that is my financial piece of advice. Uh, put in uh more where you have control of it. For example, I'm comfortable buying stock in the company where I sit on the board of because I actually influence the outcome of the company directly. Uh if it weren't for that, I wouldn't, you know, be comfortable holding a six-figure amount, which I do now. And I advise everybody to take that into consideration unless you can change the outcome of a company's future or or heavily influence it. Don't go all in. Um and don't go too heavy because if you lose, you lose big.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Uh, don't uh go um got a hunch, bet a bunch. Yeah. Rick Rick's favorite line.

So, uh, so just thinking about, um, thinking about where we are in in the bull market. I mean, obviously, you know, we can't like pick tops and bottoms, but it seems like I mean, the reality is like we had a huge move really fast. Um and then when we compare to you know prior bull markets especially the early 2000s to uh about 2011 um that was you know about a you know 8-year period of of a constant runup and obviously the great financial crisis um you had a dip there but then it ran up again for another 3 years. So I mean thinking of that being almost a decade long bull market bull run. Where do you think we are in where we're currently at? I mean especially with the the recent uh move that that was just very fast, right? Seems like for sure.

So I do expect a correction from here especially in silver. uh people get very excited for silver and there is a lot of manipulation happening in the paper silver market and I'm sure some of your hosts or some of your guests are a lot more versed into you know how it actually happens than myself. I don't really go into much of the manipulation part because I think that most of the financial system is manipulated anyway. So my question is, okay, how do I work through that? And how do I make money even in the manipulated assets? And so I do expect, you know, the silver shorts to have a little bit of a win here, a little bit of a breather. If the equities correct nicely, I would like to buy more silver stocks cuz I don't have much uh if any silver exposure right now. I have, you know, exposure to gold projects. I have some silver, but not purely silver place. So, I'm looking forward to a possible correction in the short term. Uh, gold as well, but in in the long run, I do believe that we have a long ways to go in this bull market. Like I said, price-wise, not so much time-wise. I can't really you know uh predict how long we have but uh if you if you take a chart of the gold or the silver price more the gold price cuz silver gets absolutely insane and you step back and you zoom out uh then you can truly get a grasp of how quickly we're running and I believe that uh one of the ways that You could try to verify if we're at a top or not or getting close to a top is something I did years and years ago and it worked extremely well. If you go to Google Trends and there might be a different way of doing this through chat GPT because now people are using AI instead of Google. Um, but if you take the equivalent of Google Trends and see the search volume for how to buy silver, that is a question that is only asked by truly newbies in the space. And so that happens when we're very close to a top or at the top because the people who literally don't know how to buy a silver coin, they're the last ones in and there's nobody after them. Like who could be more of a retail newbie investor than somebody who's asking how to buy a silver coin, right? Like there's nothing that is a lower level than that. I should know cuz that that was me, you know, in 2010. And so when you see that and you see that that peak is considerably higher than the 20 11 peak, then you know that you're much much closer to another uh peak because there's no reason under the sun why this silver bull market should not eclipse the last one. And so I would, you know, take a look at that. I would take that as a pointer. I would take retail uh sentiment as that pointer to decide whether you're selling or you're buying. And I mean take profits as you go. You know, don't I I'm not a proponent of selling half of my position when I double because junior mining is so is so risky that my expectation is never a double. If I want to double, I'll invest in something else. I'll I'll invest in real estate. I'll invest in other vehicles. If I want a junior minor to go up in price, I'm expecting at least a three bagger, five bagger or more. And so what I do is I I wait for a little bit more of of a run and then I start taking profits. So uh the idea of going all in and then waiting and then going all out is it's very flawed and very very difficult to nail. So yeah, short answer is I don't know. But I will be watching sentiment because it becomes really wild and when people start saying on Twitter that silver will always be you know three figures and that it's never crashing and that it will now be instituted as you know uh money uh instead of gold or with gold etc. people start kind of going a little bit overboard, I would start um selling my positions. And the reason why I'm I'm talking about silver and not gold is because usually gold starts a bull market and then silver takes over and silver is starting now. The, you know, it's starting to boil. The it's start it's starting to to stir the pot. you know, the silver bugs are coming out of their rocks and they're starting to to celebrate a little bit, you know, rightfully so. Uh I think my silver coins from when I bought in 2011 are finally at a profit, so I'm like, "Yay, silver." It's it's been, you know, 15 years, but finally, thank you very much. My child plays with my silver coins every now and again and it it wasn't the problem, but now I'm noticing like, gee, each one of these little things is worth over 40 bucks. I'm not going to let her play with it. You know, that's that's some dangerous stuff there. And yes, watch sentiment. Uh cuz that is a big big tell in the silver space.

So, so I heard that the inflation adjusted number for silver uh should be above $200 an ounce. Um when you're factoring back in the all-time high that was made in in the u I think it was the ' 80s, '7s, '8s. Um so, I mean, if silver hits triple digits, I'm offloading physical and stocks. Like, I'm I'm definitely going to cash in. But uh you know just thinking about um is is that is that something that's in your view? Do do you think uh three figures three figure silver is uh I mean anything's possible but do you think it's realistic realistic number?

I think it's very realistic because the the gold silver ratio is a ratio that people look at and it's a ratio that people like to compare with historical norms and most historical norms would point to, you know, $100 plus silver as long as gold is sitting at the levels that it's sitting now and and going to where we think it's going to go. So, I don't think that it's, you know, completely insane to expect silver to to hit that. I think going back to this the manipulation story, I don't know if it's realistic to expect it to stay there. And that's the big question. Yes, I would be offloading silver um when it does cross that magical number. And and something that people have to be both cognizant of and realistic about is when we're at a top of a bull market, psychology reigns, which means you're going to have to go almost against your gut. It's going to hurt to sell and there's going to feel like it's a different paradigm. You're going to literally feel this time it's different. I know cuz I was on stage, you know, next to Rick Rule and I was saying, I think this time is different for uranium. And literally like the next week it started to go down in price. And so don't be tempted to believe your own story and your own uh portfolio that this is a new paradigm. If you believe it could be a a different paradigm altogether, there's got to be numbers associated with it. You know, going to uranium, which is something that I love talking about. I'm still invested in uranium. you know, after 11 years, I've taken some profits. You know, I've I've had good profits and gone in and out of of certain areas, but I'm still very much invested. And I think the real reason is because the paradigm has actually shifted. And I can go back and say, okay, demand and supply expectations and numbers look like this today and going forward, they're going to look something completely different. And this is the real reason why. It's not an imagined. It's it's not a hypothetical reason. It's like, okay, the nuclear power plants are getting built. They're getting they're being um approved, planned, and built. And so you can actually uh try to forecast the numbers changing. And always go back to the numbers. If people are buying silver, um it's good to go back to okay, what's the supply and demand situation? Because if there can be a lots of supply to come into the market very quickly then that all you know comes crashing down. The manipulation part is that the people who hold the lever can say okay we need to hold one ounce of physical silver for every 500 um you know paper silver you know a contract of 500. Let's just call it 500 to one just for you know simplicity sake. And then they can turn around one day and say, "Okay, you can trade a thousand instead of 500. We've just changed the rules and people can't do anything about it." Right? It is manip it is manipulated by design. the whole point of you know the the places where I I don't want to be I don't want to target you know certain uh certain um departments of companies or institutions or anything like that but we all know who they are and they they have to manipulate it because if if they were to just truly sell the metals they wouldn't make any money there's no money to be made uh in just you know adding a couple of percentage points to silver and gold. You can make some money as a small business, but as a large corporation, there's just not enough meat on the bones. And so, because they can pull that lever, they can create a bull market in silver, but they can also kill a bull market when they change, you know, the the numbers, the only weapon against it is to call for delivery. So, if you buy enough contracts and you can actually call for delivery and receive the delivery of your silver bars and your gold coins, then that is real demand. That is real demand. H but that, you know, I don't I don't know if that's a campaign that's worth really investing in, but it's something that it could break. I mean, the silver market could break if enough people ask for delivery.

Yeah, I got to dive more into the history of of the manipulation in the silver market. Um, I mean, I know like obviously 1964 is when they started removing silver out of the coins. Um, and then and then a lot of that from what I read there was because people were hoarding silver and so there was a shortage and so they started, you know, replacing the the metal with u other metals, base metals and such. And then um you had the Hunt brothers where the rules were changed underneath them when when they were doing their thing. And so um I I wouldn't doubt that the rules would get changed again and and that further manipulation could could happen. And so I'm I'm definitely uh you got me curious on that one.

Uh, so uh let's go ahead and and pivot to uh uranium. So, uh, obviously uranium, uh, went over $100 a pound, cooled off to, uh, the 60s, and then now it's sitting at 77. The stocks have, uh, rallied significantly. I mean, some of the stocks that that I've been invested in are like up higher than um than where they were when ruranium was at $100 a pound. So, which was kind of interesting. I was like, "Okay, the these are I'm" I'm like, "Is is this just front running or what?" Like, "What's going on here?" Because um I mean, when I'm invested in um some of these companies and and they were lower at a higher uranium price per pound and then now they're higher at a lower uranium price per pound. So, were they just mispriced when that uranium was at $100 or what? or and I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the uh Trump administration and and some of the um executive orders and uh relieving some of those uh that red tape and uh you're getting a lot of investment uh from AI companies and all of that. So I just want to get your overall look on uranium.

Love uranium. Um I have said this for a long time. US-based uranium I think is where it's at. Obviously you have some massive exploration potential in the Aabaska basin. Also the theon basin um there is something very very interesting going on in there because they're trying to find the next aabaska basin but there are only you know a handful of players up there. So geologically it's very similar but they're trying to make this like the new frontier for high-grade uranium. So super interesting. I'd invite people to take a look at the companies working up there as well. But when it comes to US uranium, we kind of know where all the uranium is, you know, from a a global um idea of the US because it produced so much in the past. So the US was the largest producer of uranium uh way back in the I believe 60s or 70s and it all came crashing down um due to many different reasons uh prices three mile island um and you know the fact that you could produce a lot more uranium cheaper outside of the US which is true nowadays to this day uh US deposits are usually usually small in size and they aren't very high grade, but they're usually pretty close to the surface. You can use ISR, which is institute recovery. You're basically pumping solution into the ground and and collecting the uranium, so it's cheaper to do that in most instances. There's some players trying to go hard rock and and he bleaching as well, which I'm very looking forward to to seeing what happens in in the uranium space um with new technology. But the moment that Trump got back into office, it became a whole different four-year run for uranium in the US, right? because he wants to bring it all home and he wants to, you know, beef up the whole cycle in house. So, wants to make sure that we don't really need um and I don't I don't know why we say we. I'm not American, but that but that you guys don't really need to to source uranium from outside the country. And that is value in and of itself. Now it is very true what you said that the stocks and the prices have not traded in tandem whatsoever. So this is what happened to the stocks. They peaked in November of 2021 and they've come down since then. Then the price then ran up to you know 105 107 whatever the the final price was. um I believe uh 2023 it was either 2022 2023 it was it was like an an end of year beginning of year kind of scenario and then it's come down quite a bit and now now it's going up again now what we're seeing and I'm talking about very recent activity we're looking at companies running and the price running when I say the price I'm going very practical here talking about the short-term spot price. So spot market is very small. It's about 20 uh 15 to 20% of the yearly traded uranium. Most of it is contracts. We don't really hear about the contracts until it's like a month later and the numbers are really iffy and they're kind of not accurate at all and they're full of like floors and ceilings. it's hard to to really get a good sense of what the prices are really at when they're signed. So, what we have is a bunch of retail investors that are looking at the price starting to run and they're bidding the equities as well. My feeling is that people are becoming more and more pro the idea of investing in junior mining stocks and because they've had recent runs with the gold stocks that people are making a little bit of a profit and they don't mind putting into the uranium stocks right now. I welcome this move. I think it's healthy. I think it makes more sense and uh historically this time of year is extremely positive for uranium. So I do expect this for you know for once to be a proper run where the price is running but also the equities are following it and I do see more interest in uranium. I can tell because I get more followers on Twitter when uranium is heating up. You can also like take a look at the the people who have the most followers in the uranium space such as John Quakes and others. You can see it very clearly. Sometimes you know the number of followers of theirs jumps very quickly. You know that that's a hot week for uranium. It correlates perfectly. The number of followers you know it goes back to sentiment number of gained followers uh versus you know what's happening to the equities and and the price as well. That's it's very very interesting how that happens. So yeah, I'm I'm all for you know people looking into uranium and it's kind of a second chance for people really because you can you can grab what I would consider to be some bargains. even in the US I know it's a hot space but there are some companies that if they if they can advance those projects and prove up the historical resources that are in the ground and you know advance those projects get you know proper peas out PFS's etc etc I think we're going to be seeing eventually great M&A action in the US for a lot of money that's that's what I'm expecting.

Okay. So, yeah. So, just thinking about the uh I mean when the equities had topped in 2021, um I remember, you know, vividly just, you know, uh engaging with Rick, you know, and Rick's like, "Hey, I'm selling like these are getting way ahead of themselves and such." and and many of like um you know folks in the comments audience were upset you know like oh you know um I lost a lot of money or whatever right? But Rick knew like these equities were getting ahead of themselves and so now since then and where we're at now it's it's changed fundamentally significantly um when now you have you know a president issuing executive orders, you have uh AI you know investment coming into the sector. Many of these big companies coming into the sector and investing and and such. And so it seems like structurally and uh I mean we've always had the the supply uh demand gap um but now you know we have the the uh policies and such on on the side to um to support this innovation and and getting back to you know being a u you know leaders in uranium and and things of that nature. So it seems like it it's the you know I'm hesitant to say the equities are getting ahead of themselves now you know um but there there is a component which I I do want to get your perspective on uh so obviously the nuclear uh companies Ollo nanuclear SMR many of these nuclear technology companies have just skyrocketed I mean I was buying Olo at $7 I didn't I didn't have the courage to hold through all of the volatility, but they were last I checked they were at $130, right? So so you know, just looking at that and it's like, okay, well, hang on. You all need the uranium to to even get this technology off the ground. You need the fuel and the and the enriched

Uranium and all of that. And so, um, you know, I'm like, okay, is there a disconnect there? Is this just, uh, retail coming in, front-running, or whatnot? And so I've been kind of curious about that.

Okay. So, I am smiling, but I'm also crying on the inside because I never took part in the tech side of the the nuclear cycle. Uh, so it pains me to see it, but it's also very refreshing because my belief is that what we see in the gold space where producers first run and and have that massive, you know, upswing, um, and then the smaller companies follow and actually overshoot and potential gains. I think that we're going to see that in uranium just by exactly what you said. I actually received a message from a very good friend of mine today on Twitter and he said, you know, what's happening to ALOU right now is going to happen to us. It's just going to take a lot to actually hold it while it happens because it's a wild, wild ride and it can be extremely volatile. And people who think that just hitting, you know, $100 per pound and just jumping out of that are probably going to be disappointed.

Fair point. Um, and I I think I think that the situation with uranium specifically, separately from silver, separately from gold, it is something so unique with a market so small that any true disruption to supply or the appearance of true supply, uh, disruption can make this thing go absolutely haywire. Uh, that plus the demand that is coming. And I want to remind everybody, I know that the WNA came out with their, you know, little cute graphs that say, hey, we're going to be good for another three, four, I mean, two, three years, but, you know, after these two, three years, we're going to need more uranium. Um, nobody is actually sure of the amount of uranium that we're going to need for SMRs because it's so early days and because we can't really quantify, we don't know how much there is. We just know that there's going to be a lot because, you know, these, uh, smaller reactors, the whole point of them being smaller is that you, you can have a lot of them. You don't, and they can be built faster and, uh, they take very high concentrations of uranium, I think is the best way to put it. And when you first load up a nuclear power plant of any sort, you need a lot more material than if you're just recharging it, right? Which means that there is likely a tsunami wave of worldwide demand. But I tried to not get too excited, but I can't help of there is a tsunami of worldwide demand for nuclear fuel, aka uranium, and nobody knows exactly when it's going to kickstart and how high this demand is going to be, how strong this demand is going to be. Therefore, all we know for certain is that all forecasts are wrong, and they're wrong to the downside.

Mhm. Which makes me very, very happy, uh, to hold uranium equities right now because I know how crazy it can get. But also, I mean, don't take my word for it. If people aren't really certain that the equities are going to hold because of the quality of the assets, management teams, and things could get really gnarly because people can dilute too much. I accept that as criticism. Uh, people can just choose to buy, you know, Sprott's uranium trust and just make a bet on the asset itself. I mean, I don't know what it would take for for the bare case here for uranium, but I think it's absolutely a no-brainer, um, to go long uranium at these levels, both in on the equity side, but, you know, on the actual commodity as well, 100%. Yeah.

Um, yeah, I actually wanted to perfect segue because I wanted to talk about, uh, the Sprott uranium trust. Uh, also, there's a Yellow Cake on the London Stock Exchange, I believe. Um, and so, um, you know, thinking about the physical trust of uranium, um, obviously the spot and term market are are two different things. Um, but, you know, just thinking about the spot market. I'm I'm looking at SPUT and, you know, I watched SPUT, you know, go up to over $30 something dollars Canadian, come down to, um, around $20, and now it's, last I checked, it was sitting at $25. It could be higher. Um, it doesn't, it doesn't seem like, um, I mean, SPUT hasn't reached its recent highs and stuff. And so I'm kind of wondering like, okay, how high could these these physical uranium trusts go? Are are these like new products? Historically, in in the uranium market as well, like, is did we have spot uranium, um, products, uh, or companies that were publicly traded back in the last bull market? Um, and so I just want to get your perspective there.

Yeah, as as far as I know, there was nothing quite like it. Um, I believe Yellow Cake was gobbled up by one of the bigger players. If if I could be crazy about this, but I I do believe that it is now part of a bigger vehicle. Could be SP, could be somebody else. Uh, my memory is a little bit murky on that front, but there was no direct way of especially retail participation to go into uranium. Um, and an argument could be said that, hey, you could make you can make the argument that maybe the equities last time ran up so much because you couldn't buy a vehicle like SPUT. This this is fairly recent. Um, it's a handful of years old and it's some somewhat of an innovation by Sprott. I commend them for it. I think it's great and it's kind of a flywheel effect when it, you know, when it's really bullish and when they can, you know, raise money, they go into the spot market to buy more trust units, uh, or more pounds to to print more trust units. And that in and of itself makes it more attractive because the price is going up. And then, you know, there's a whole cycle that gets kickstarted by that premium. And so maybe maybe at the end of the day, it's good for people to, you know, diversify a little bit and go into SPUT as well as equities because, you know, in the last cycle, the equities were really the game in town when it came to retail investors, and now retail investors have SPUT and they have crypto options, you know, backed by uranium, and they have equities. So maybe it's not going to run as high, but I guess my answer to that would be that at the end of the day, from what I have studied of the last bull market because I didn't participate in it, it was very localized US, um, and financial players getting into, you know, um, but like mo mostly US money going into that tiny little market. Right now, uranium has the eyes of the whole world, and we have real demand today. We have very strong demand in the next 10 years, and extremely strong demand in the next 15, 20 years, you name it. So could it go higher than, you know, uh, $140 as it did last time? I think it's absolutely no-brainer. Could it go to $200? I am betting on $200. I'm not going to lie. Um, could it go a lot higher? It's not, it's not, it's not impossible. It's truly not impossible. I mean, there there was some, uh, Twitter chatter the other day about a certain producer having real engineering issues and having output in issues. Something as small as that could kick us into, you know, $100, uh, territory. Um, and even when that is resolved, nothing can actually fix the underlying issue in the uranium market, which is there is not enough supply, and it's almost impossible to bring uranium into production. Until that can be resolved, we're going to have a situation where uranium can moon for any reason at any time, um, and, you know, go absolutely haywire and reach numbers that I don't even dare talk about in public. So because it's so supply constrained, expect anything, really. Yeah.

Yeah. That's that's, uh, very delightful to hear. Uh, so long. Yes. So earlier you mentioned, uh, you mentioned crypto-backed uranium. You said something I was going to catch it. Could you speak on that?

Yeah, there's there's a way now of buying a token that is fully backed by uranium. So you can do that. If you hold, if you hold crypto, if you hold stable coins, you can you can switch it to uranium-backed tokens as well.

Oh, yeah, that's interesting. I that for sure did not exist last time around.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I know that Tether, uh, they they linked one of their coins to gold. Um, and so it's supposed to be one one with gold. And so, uh, that's interesting to hear that with uranium as well.

Y, uh, so, uh, yeah, appreciate all the insight and everything, uh, that you that you provided today. Uh, where can people connect with you, ask you questions, tap into some of the Twitter chats or whatnot? Um, where where can people find you?

Sure. They can just, uh, search for The Next Big Rush. There's a, you know, free website with a ton of news every single day, but I'm also on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm everywhere. Uh, not Instagram. Sorry, I don't really use Instagram, which is weird for a millennial, but I just don't, I can't be bothered. S it sucks the my all of my time and so I just don't do it at all. So, anywhere but Instagram, you can search for me at The Next Big Rush.

All right, sounds good. Well, you all be sure to check that out and hit the subscribe button. Love to have your support for the channel. Thank you for watching and thank you Fabi for joining us today.

Thank you so much, Darl.