Rick Rule's Take on Gold, Silver, Copper, Uranium and Oil

We are in the midst of a sea change in terms of corporate behavior. The institutional investor and the high net worth sector investor, like myself, uh, has asked the mining industry to exhibit fiscal discipline for the last five or six years. We've asked for them to distribute surplus capital back to us by way of dividends or share buybacks. That's going to change now. People have made a lot of money on gold and silver stocks, but they're going to be given uh looser reins.

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Welcome to the Resource Update. My name is Dan, and today I have the great pleasure of speaking with a legendary contrarian investor, speculator, and a leading educator in the natural resource investing space, Mr. Rick Rule. Welcome, Rick.

>> Thank you, Dan. Pleasure to be with you.

>> Thanks so much for coming on. Um, I'm keen to get your thoughts on the macro environment, look at precious metals, uh, dive a bit into copper, and then look at the energy space as well. Uh, and then I'd like to take a look at some specific companies and get your thoughts and rankings on those. Uh, let's get started.

So, recently, um, in the macro side of things, the 30-year US Treasury has topped 5.18%, which is a level that it hasn't surpassed in about 19 years. Mainstream media is uh seeming to panic on this, while the equity markets seem to be on edge. Um, as a contrarian, how do you read that signal? Uh, what does 5% risk yield do to capital allocation?

>> Uh, it'll change capital allocation in the very near term. It'll be bad for gold and silver. Uh, higher US interest rates uh will attract some capital to the dollar, strengthen the dollar. Gold and silver are quoted in US dollars. So, all things being equal, uh, it should be marginally detrimental to gold and silver prices. Secondly, uh, it will increase uh the attractiveness, the relative attractiveness of debt instruments. If you get paid higher to take risk, maybe you take more risk longer term.

What's important to note is the reason for the higher interest rates. The reason for the higher interest rates is that the risk premium that people demand for their savings in anticipation of the deterioration in the purchasing power of the return of interest and principal is higher. Uh, and what that means is that the reason for the higher interest rates is perversely good for gold and silver in particular. When people tell me that high interest rates are bad for gold and silver, I agree with them in the very near term. But I cut my teeth in this business, Dan, in the decade of the 70s. Uh, the real interest rate increased by 350%, and the gold price increased 25-fold. If the reasons for the interest rate uh increase are, rather than competing demands for capital, fear of the efficacy of the currency, then what causes the interest rate to go up uh is sadly very good for gold and silver. And I think that's the circumstance that we're in today.

>> I think that's a good bridge over to uh your thoughts on on gold. It's it's actually been relatively resilient. Uh, I mean, kind of, you know, getting to 5,000 and then pulling back here and there. But as we look into the remainder of the year and and we push into 2027, how are you positioning? You know, what do you think of the market and gold generally?

>> It's important to segregate me from most of your viewers in that, for me, gold isn't an investment class or a speculative class. It's a savings class. Uh, I save in gold. Uh, I invest in high-quality gold companies, and I speculate in lower-quality gold companies. Many of your listeners might either invest or speculate in gold. So, it's important to segregate. With regards to me, given that my gold currently isn't for sale, I would rather see it cheaper. Uh, I will likely be saving. I'm 73 years old. I hopefully will be saving for another 20 or 30 years. Uh, and I would like the price of the instrument that I save in to go down as opposed to up. The people who invest in gold or speculate in gold have a very different time frame and a very different purpose. I believe in the very near term, it's likely that the consequence of higher interest rates will be moderate or lower gold prices, and I look forward to that. I realize that sets me apart from many.

>> Are you sitting on the sidelines for now as it comes to you equities or in producers or smaller companies, or are you actively looking on the gold side?

>> I'll be deploying again this week. Um, I had not anticipated the Gulf conflict, and the Gulf conflict and the fact that higher oil prices work as a tax. Taxes are always bad for the economy. Uh, and my anticipation, which turned out to be correct, that the fiscal impact of the Gulf crisis would be higher interest rates, meant that I spent the last 10 weeks adding liquidity to my accounts. Um, what I found is that circumstances like the one that we're in can lead to enough decrease in confidence that you have a liquidity crisis and a market break. Uh, I wasn't forecasting a market break. Uh, but I know that having cash during periods of time when others don't can be very pleasant. And so I built my liquidity. Uh, that process is done. Uh, and I'm going to be acquiring equities again. Uh, in terms of what I acquire, again, it's important that you segregate me from many of your listeners. I don't need to add my exposure to resource stocks because I've been buying resource stocks for 50 years. I have a very, very full portfolio, but I'm doing it because I'm good at it. Uh, if you and I had had this discussion 12 months ago, I would have said that your listeners should be buying Agnico, Franco, Wheaton, the best of the best, and that would have been good advice on a relative valuation basis. Now, uh, I think the game for somebody who's already fully deployed like me is in the merger and acquisition stories, the takeover candidates. Uh, I think that gold and silver companies are trading at reasonable valuations relative to their net present values and their free cash flows. With today's gold and silver prices, I believe gold and silver prices are going higher. Uh, that means that I believe that the valuations are going to go up.

I also believe that we are in a sea change, in the midst of a sea change, in terms of corporate behavior. The institutional investor and the high net worth sector investor, like myself, uh, has asked the mining industry to exhibit fiscal discipline for the last five or six years. Uh, we've asked for them to distribute surplus capital back to us by way of dividends or share buybacks because we didn't trust them to allocate the capital that they were acquiring. That's going to change now. Uh, people have made a lot of money on gold and silver stocks, and whether or not that's the fault of management is a different question. But they're going to be given uh looser reins, and the focus of investors is now going to be on adding or at least maintaining to production. That can't be done at this late date through exploration. It has to be done through acquisition. And I believe that that acquisition will take place really across the spectrum. You will see acquisitions like the recent one completed by Equinox, which isn't particularly a strategic acquisition, but rather a tactical acquisition, one that adds scale. Uh, adding scale is important. Larger companies have greater trading volumes, higher share prices, and a lower cost of capital. You get passive buyings from the ETF. So, that's important. Uh, but you will also get strategic acquisitions. Uh, you will get the acquisition like the recent Agnico acquisition of Rupert, where you do an acquisition to consolidate a district that allows you to leverage off existing uh capital assets in that district. You will also see, I think, single asset producers disappear because single asset producers, even high-quality ones, are priced at a discount to multiple asset producers because they're viewed, rightly, as being riskier. That discount goes away the second that a single asset producer gets acquired by a multi-asset producer. Uh, and that's the easiest arbitrage in the game because the industry is underinvested in exploration uh and development for years. You will see high-quality development assets being taken over by companies that don't have high-quality development assets so that they can shorten the time frame.

Many of your listeners who are new to the space, Daniel, wouldn't know that if you and I formed an exploration company and we went into fairly new terrain, it would likely be 10 years before we could reasonably expect to make a discovery. It would take two to three years before we could permit and finance that discovery. Another two years to build it. Which is to say, if we started today, we could impact our balance sheet and our income statement 15 years from now. Mining companies will be under pressure to impact their balance sheet and their income statement two years from now, not 15 years from now. And the only way to do that will be to overpay for high-quality development efforts or successful efforts in exploration. And the multiples that we'll get paid uh will surprise people to the upside. The premium that Agnico was able to pay for Rupert was a function, first of all, of the fact that the Rupert share price was depressed by bad equity markets. Uh, it also had to do with the fact that Agnico could leverage those assets against their existing operations. And so an acquisition that once generated a 70% premium for RER shareholders, but was simultaneously a creative, pardon me, a creative to Agnico shareholders, is the kind of transaction that gets done. And there are probably 20 or 25 of those uh out there in the world. By the way, I'm not going to identify them for you because I'm looking to buy them for myself and I have no interest in competing with all of your listeners in the market in the next two or three weeks when I intend to deploy this capital.

>> That's fair. Um, we you talked a little bit uh about uh silver. How do you play silver equities versus the physical metal right now? Silver being the more volatile uh, you know, cousin of of gold.

>> I still believe that the silver equities are underpriced relative to silver. I was fairly public in January selling 80% of my physical silver. By the way, wearing a lot of heat in the market, which was great. Um, I know I've done the right thing when 15 out of 20 people dislike me. Uh, I did it for personal and arithmetic reasons. The personal reason was because I don't save or invest in silver. I speculated in silver, and when I bought my physical silver, it was a hated asset. It was selling for $17 or $18 an ounce. People who bought it during the supposed silver squeeze hated it. And I love hate. Uh, and I believed as a speculator that if silver ceased to be hated, that hate discount would disappear, which is what happened. When that happened, my reason to own it as a speculation disappeared, and I had to revisit my speculation. And that's where the math comes in. Uh, in January, silver was in a parabolic up move, what the Canadians call a hockey stick graph. And I've learned in 50 years that the backside of a hockey stick is just as deep as the front side, but much less fun if you're long. So, I had to decide whether or not silver was still a good speculation because the reason I owned it went away. And here's what I discovered. Silver versus the silver stocks. The silver stocks were valued discounting $40 to $45 silver. But silver was trading at $75. If the silver price continued to go up, it would enure to the benefit of the silver stocks and silver both. If silver traded sideways, by definition, I wouldn't make any money on silver. But with the silver stocks uh trading at a $45, a $40 to $45 valuation, they could still go up if silver didn't go up. And perversely, if silver traded down, the stocks were selling at a discount to the value of their silver. And my suspicion was that the silver stocks would have less reason to fall dramatically than silver might. And so for those three reasons, the money that I uh took out of the silver trade, I deployed 50% of it back into the silver stocks. I took 25% of it and I deployed that to savings, uh, 20% in physical gold, uh, and 5% in very short-term US Treasury obligations, but I deployed it to liquidity. And I took 25% and I allocated it to the then only remaining hated sector in resources, which was oil and gas, not anticipating a war, but rather uh trying to buy hate, uh, which was what oil then wore.

>> One of the concerns on silver that I sometimes have is, is there a cap or or a ceiling on it because of its industrial uses, you know, versus something like gold? Is is, you know, somewhere like China, Samsung going to have so much influence over the market?

>> Yes, there is. Uh, but I would suggest to you, and I'm not a technology expert, uh, I would suggest to you that that cap is higher than you think. Uh, the utility that silver delivers to fabricators is very high. Uh, because of silver's reflective properties and its malleability, using current technology, the only way that you can build a solar panel is with silver. Now, if the silver price goes up a lot, uh, we will find fabrication technologies that utilize less silver to generate the same benefit. Uh, but the truth is that, uh, you require an ounce or an ounce and a half of silver to build a solar panel that you sell for $1,000. [laughter] If the price of silver goes up, uh, it doesn't influence the cost to produce or the price that you charge for that silver panel very much. Separately, uh, silver as a germicide is extraordinarily valuable. Uh, burn victims, as an example, uh, uniformly receive a silver tincture on their wound to protect that wound from infection. But silver is also efficacious in uh wastewater treatment, in a variety of medical applications and sterilization applications. And in that circumstance, the amount of silver that is required to develop a silver tincture relative to saving the patient's life is functionally incalculable. So, while yes, ultimately, uh, silver's utility as an industrial metal plays a role in supply and demand, but I would argue that silver's utility and the relatively low cost of the silver component in the articles which are sold, uh, means that the headline number is higher than you think, and our ability to develop substitute technologies uh is something that's measured in years as opposed to in months. If the silver price were to triple, we or the Chinese or somebody would find a way to make less silver go further in solar panels, but we wouldn't do that by your end. [laughter]

>> Right. Staying uh staying on the uh industrial side of things. Um, copper has been in the news quite a bit. Um, I think those in the space know of the structural deficits, maybe less so in the mainstream. How do you um think about copper from now, maybe on a longer-term horizon, say through 2030?

>> Well, I need to admit, in the near term, I was very wrong. Uh, I had anticipated that the Gulf conflict would express itself uh in something resembling a recession sooner rather than later, and that copper prices would fall, both because there's a lot of copper in speculative inventories, and speculators are notoriously fickle, and speculators are also uh cost of capital sensitive, and I would have expected the increased lending rates to decrease speculation in copper. I'm glad you didn't interview me nine weeks ago because I would have been exactly wrong with regards to that. The copper price has done extremely well. Looking longer term, there's no way around higher copper prices. Uh, we're going to have to ration by price. This just isn't just a data center story. There's a billion people on Earth, Daniel, that have no access to primary electricity. We're going to solve that problem next 20 or 25 years. Copper will be used in generation. Copper will be used in transmission, and copper will be used in application. I was at Metals Week in London end of 2025. And there were a couple of salient facts, not rhetoric, facts. That is, right now, there's a structural deficit in copper. We're using more than we're making. That's okay because we have some in inventory. But it's not okay three years out or four years out. In order to maintain current levels of production, the 10 largest copper mining companies in the world need to spend $250 billion constant $225 non-escalated dollars over 10 years, and they don't have the money. So that's one challenge. But spending that $250 billion, assuming they can get the money, maintains their current level of output. That doesn't take into account that demand for copper, pre-data center, is growing between 1.5 and 2% compounded. You cannot increase copper supply without investment, without exploration. But we haven't been exploring for copper uh on a concerted basis for 30 years. There is nothing that we can do, nothing that we can do, that will alleviate a production shortfall five years from now. If we have an ugly depression or synchronized recession, we can simultaneously reduce supply and reduce demand. But if we have that, your copper stocks will be the least of your worries. Uh, so for those reasons, I'm a long-term bull on copper. Uh, I was a short-term bear, and I was wrong.

>> That's great. Um, let's move over to uranium. Um, the term contract markets have tightened drastically over the last few years. Um, what do you think of things as as we're into '26 and moving or and looking out to '27?

>> Uh, probably too short a term for me to comment on, with the exception of the pace of Japanese restarts, which is increasing. Uh, looking out over 10 years, uh, you can only be a bull. The unsung beneficiary, if there is a beneficiary of the Gulf conflict, is the uranium business. Students of history will note that the French nuclear fleet and the Japanese nuclear fleet, the fourth and third largest nuclear fleets in the world respectively, were constructed as a consequence of the Arab oil embargo. And the realization in Japan and France that energy security for them required nuclear fuel. It was the only fuel dense enough that you could store enough to power Japan and France, respectively, for five years. Uh, we forgot about that message over the last 50 years. The conflict in the Gulf restored that message, and it restored it in dramatic fashion. The only substance in the world with sufficient energy density to fuel a national grid is uranium. You can store enough uranium to fuel Japan in one warehouse. You cannot store that much coal, that much natural gas, that much oil, or certainly that much rain. Uh, by the way, you can't store enough battery that sun matters either. It's only uranium. [laughter] Uh, again, we have a structural deficit in uranium. That's okay because we have inventories of uranium, but the inventories are opaque, and they're drawing down.

Now, the story gets more sophisticated. Um, and it has two parts. Uh, there is a refueling cycle going on around the world, which is different than the initial stocking cycle. Uh, and that refueling cycle itself has consequences, which are exacerbated because a lot of the supply that's come on the market in the last three years, particularly Japanese supply, hasn't been sold into the market, but rather leased. Which means that the people who bought and used that uranium have to replace it with uranium, not with money. That's important. The pace of Japanese restarts is important too, because a lot of the surplus inventory in the world is in Japan. Uh, without the pace of Japanese restarts, that inventory is inventory held for sale, available for sale in world markets. If it's inventory held for fuel, that means it comes off the market. The third part of the market that people don't understand, and nobody knows the level of above-ground inventories, nobody knows. But at World Nuclear Week in London, it was estimated that available for sale inventories worldwide were about 300 million pounds. That would be adequate with the supply deficit of 4 million pounds a year, although it would be problematic relative to the pace of new plant construction that's happening worldwide. What that number doesn't understand is that it includes 82 million pounds that are held by SPAT and not available for sale. If you take that 300 million pound number, if that's the right number, I'm not saying it is, I don't know. But if you take that 300 million pound number against 40 million a year, you feel pretty good until you subtract 80 million from it [laughter], and then you feel a lot less good.

The other important thing in uranium that the market doesn't take note of, which amuses me, you alluded to earlier in the interview, which is the term market. In every other commodity that I know of on the planet, prices are set at spot. Uh, they're set in the immediate interchange between buyers and sellers. Increasingly in the uranium market, transactions settle in the term or contract market. And that's important. Uh, the term market allows producers to know with some certainty how much they can sell and at what price for a long period of time. This helps them amortize debt, uh, and it helps lazy securities analysts like Rick Rule do free cash flow forecasts because price is not a variable anymore. Uh, it also helps the consumer. If you and I, not that we could, but if you and I were going to build a modern big nuclear power plant and we were going to spend $8 billion building that plant, we would likely borrow $5.5 or $6 billion of that $8 billion. And increasingly, the banks who lend us that $5.5 or $6 billion are requiring the borrowers to have enough contracted uranium to underwrite the loan. And it is the fact that an increasing amount of the transaction in the uranium business that occurs from here on forward will occur in the term market. That allows investors and lenders to view with more certainty the free cash flows and net present values attributable to uranium producers than they can in any other commodity on the planet. That's an enormous variable in favor of nuclear. Will it matter this year or next year? Probably not, because companies are viewing their contracts as trade secrets and they're opaque. But when it comes to the attention of these management teams that if they're clearer with regards to their contract, they lower their cost of capital. [laughter] The market will take care of that.

>> That's interesting. So, yeah, it changes the dynamic for the development of new facilities and, uh, for I guess medium-sized companies and bigger companies. So that's that's--

>> Dan, let's just say, and this would be a lovely circumstance, that you and I controlled NextGen, that we had the largest and highest quality undeveloped uranium deposit in the world, and mercifully, we had it in Canada, uh, a place that, while it may not be great, has the rule of law. And assume that we have, like the NextGen management has done, a good job uh in permitting and in matey and First Nations relationships, you know, all those kind of things. The challenge we had 10 years ago is that the upfront capital cost of building that mine was more than we could raise. We couldn't do it. We couldn't acquire with your balance sheet and my balance sheet, or even NextGen's balance sheet, the uh construction loan necessary to build that mine. So we had to sell it. Today is very different. You and I can go to Ontario Power, Southern Company, Tokyo Electric Power, China General Nuclear, Duke Power, and we can enter into long-term supply contracts, and then we can go to Westinghouse, and Westinghouse will build us our mine and our processing facility on a fixed-price, turnkey basis. So, we know what it'll cost us to build the mine, and we know what the free cash flow from the mine will look like. And we are able to take those offtake contracts and literally use them as security to raise the construction financing to build that mine. Now, you and I might decide that we don't actually want to build a mine. [laughter] A rational decision. But when we go to talk to people about buying that mine and they say, "You have to sell to us because we can't, but because you can't build it." We can say, "Oh, sir, now there you're very, very wrong. We can build it." Uh, we are willing to sell this at a fair price, at a fair price, but we are not willing to accept an exorbitant discount to the net present value that we could create for ourselves.

The second thing that happens now is that for a very high-quality mine like NextGen, it was widely supposed uh that in the market conditions that existed 10 years ago, that they could sell it to Cameco, Cameco, Cameco, or Cameco. For political reasons, the Chinese were going to be excluded from the Canadian market. But that's changed too. Uh, Rio Tinto has a large mine in Saskatchewan, the Jansen Potash mine. Uh, so you have to add Rio back into the equation. Uh, there is a Canadian company now, Anglo, when that merger takes place, that is a large enough company uh to buy and build that mine. And then, of course, there's Cameco. It's very difficult to have an auction with one bidder, but having an auction with three bidders, with the fallback that you could build the mine yourself, changes uh the relationship between net present value and transaction prices for the benefit of shareholders.

>> That's really interesting. Um, let's let's move over to oil. I guess, kind of the other big part of the energy equation. Uh, things have obviously been very volatile. How do you think about things as we go forward? I mean, there's there's a well-known structural lack of capital expenditure in the sector. So, um, I guess how do you look out at maybe five years?

>> Uh, if you give me five years rather than five weeks, I'm really constructive. Um, you know, oil was easily my favorite commodity in January because it was hated. By the way, I didn't foresee the Gulf. Oil is no longer hated. So, the hate deficit is gone. What happens in the near term is anybody's guess. Uh, I don't know how, if, or when the Gulf conflict will be settled. If the Gulf conflict is settled, uh, neither rationing by price nor rationing by anticipation will be in the market, and the oil price likely will fall, probably fall fairly precipitously.

Looking longer term, the structural deficit in the oil market got worse as a consequence of the war. Uh, in January, not foreseeing the war, I would have said that an oil price rise in '29, 2030 was inevitable. That it was inevitable because the oil industry on a global basis was underinvesting as to about a billion dollars a day in sustaining capital investment, and that would impact the outyears' production. That circumstance got much worse. Uh, obviously, the Iranians are not making sustaining capital investments. They have another use for funds. Uh, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and the UAE aren't making sustaining capital investments because they're afraid, as they get making, they'll get, they'll get blown up. But in addition to sustaining capital investments, we have to replace billions of dollars worth of production inventory that got destroyed during the war. So the supply challenges that we face in 2029, 2030 get worse. The certainty that supply deficits occur is inevitable, absent a recession or a depression. But in the very near term, uh, oil prices are solely a function of the resolution of the Gulf conflict. And I can't tell you, I just don't know how that's going to go. I can tell you this: if a resolution isn't found very quickly, you go from prices being set in anticipation of a shortage because we've existed on floating inventories and strategic reserves to a circumstance where the prices are set where you ration by price, where countries bid against each other for cargo so that they can fly planes and drive cars. And that will be a different pricing scenario if it occurs.

>> So, I'll I'll go a little bit further out of time frame, but maybe something a little bit easier to answer. You know, political elites are still kind of pushing this agenda of carbon neutral by 2035, 2045, 2050. You know, knowing what we know, do do you think that that's achievable, even on the outside date?

>> 2050 is too early. 2060, maybe. Uh, it's worthy to note. I mean, even, you know, the International Energy Agency, uh, which is really Greta in drag, uh, they said that peak oil demand would occur in 2030. They've now said 2060 or 2065. Um, and I can't tell you when. Here's what I can tell you. Um, depending on who you talk to, the world has spent somewhere between $7 and $12 trillion on alternative energies, and we've reduced the market share of fossil fuels from a high of 83% to a low of 81%. So, let's call it a $10 trillion investment has reduced the market share of fossil fuels by 2%. Meanwhile, the market grows. Uh, we talked earlier about the fact that a billion people on Earth have no access to primary electricity. The key determinant of material well-being is energy consumption. As poor people get more money, the things that add to their lifestyle, their material lifestyle, uh, are prominently among them, energy. The progression is barefoot to sneakers, to a bicycle, to a 50cc motorcycle, to a Toyota Hilux. Uh, if you go to Malawi, uh, try to find fuel for your Tesla. It isn't going to work.

>> Thanks. Thanks so much for going through the the different um metals uh and and energy. I wanted to flip over to a lightning round and and get your thoughts and rate rankings on uh on a few different companies. Um, I think topically, you've already talked about Agnico, which was one that I I was going to bring up. Um, what would be your rating on Agnico? Um, you know, considering these transactions or the uh the Rupert transaction, anyway?

>> Understand two things. First of all, the rankings are snapshots in time. News could change in a week, which changes the ranking. So, for the record, today's discussion is taking place May 20th. Uh, the half-life of this interview is till May 25th. Okay, so let's get that done. Rankings are 1 through 10, one being best, 10 being worst. Uh, and they take into account all types of different circumstances, but they reflect my own needs. Uh, I am willing to take more political risk than most people are. So when people criticize my rankings, they say that I'm unduly conservative in the United States and Canada and unduly generous in places like uh Congo, uh, or Brazil, or Bolivia. So let's get that all out of the way. I juxtapose risk-to-reward in a very naked fashion. So, having got all those disclaimers out of my way, uh, with regards to Agnico, I have it as a five, which is to say a hold. I'm on the verge of upgrading it to a four, uh, because I think the price weakness that has accompanied uh a couple of recent acquisitions and accompanied declining gold prices has meant that it, relative in particular to its ultra high-quality peers, is trading at the bottom end of its relative uh valuation to trading range. Um, note I've owned this company for a very, very long time. Uh, and perhaps I have incumbent bias.

>> Thanks. Um, the next one actually, you'd mentioned as well, um, with Equinox, uh, and their uh, their merger transaction. Um, what do you think about that one at the moment?

>> I have Equinox as a weak five. I'm expecting that I will likely upgrade it because I'm expecting that they're going to sell a whole ple of assets in the next 12 months, like they sold the Brazilian asset uh after acquiring Calibre. Uh, the style of this management team, but in particular the godfather, my good friend Ross Bey, has been after acquisition to sell off the lowest quality assets in the combined portfolio to lower the relative cost of the assets that they wanted. And I fully expect that the consequence of this merger will be that redundant assets, uh, I would identify them as Nicaragua, California, and Mexico, respectively, will be so sold, uh, and the money redeployed, rinse, wash, and repeat. This will not be the last acquisition that Equinox does. And my suspicion is that each acquisition will be met afterwards by the selling of the lowest quality assets in the resultant portfolio to lower the ultimate uh acquisition cost of the high-quality assets. Sorry for that long-winded answer, but I like to qualify my rankings.

>> No, no, absolutely. Um, Abra Silver, so they uh they're in Argentina and they just gained reg approval in May. Um, how do you view them in light of that as they look to construction later in the year?

>> I have Abra as a weak four. Uh, I say a weak four because Melee's polling numbers are not good. Uh, and the success in Abra's capital acquisition strategy will have a lot to do with international investors' belief that the Republic of Argentina will allow the debtor to pay them back. Uh, this is an extremely high-quality asset. Uh, I've been around this asset for a long time. I helped Bob Quartermain acquire this asset in Silver Standard 25 years ago. [laughter] [gasps] I I've watched this asset for a very long time. Uh, I know the geologist in place since he worked for Ross Bey 30 years ago. This is an extraordinary asset. This isn't a mine. This is a district. Uh, they have reached the point in time where their exploration has become predictive, meaning that they uh introduce uh a drilling campaign to the market. They give you the reason for the drilling campaign, uh, and it turns out that that um reason demonstrates an increasingly sophisticated nature of the ore body. In my experience, when drilling becomes predictive, you're at a fulcrum point, uh, and you begin to out, you begin to add ounces very, very efficiently. And I would suggest to you that with regards to Abra, we're there.

>> Moving uh moving up to Canada, um Banyan has recently expanded their resource uh to close to 9 million ounces. Um, what's your rating on Banyan and and what do you think of their uh their developments?

>> I've reduced Banyan to a five simply because it's it's exceeded every level of greed I had for it. Uh, Tara has done a spectacular job on the share price. Uh, I love a 9 million ounce deposit. I love a 9 million ounce deposit in a district that could be consolidated. The market doesn't like the fact that the company that likely uh is buying the Victoria asset isn't large enough to consolidate the district. Uh, and so there's there may there may be some near-term price weakness. The catalysts for Banyan that I see are higher gold prices, which I don't see in the near term, but I do see the recent high-grade hits that they've enjoyed as being evidence of the fact that there is high-grade material there. A and B that they've come to understand the deposit well enough that they can find that those high-grade hits are important because at 9 million ounces, particularly with 4.5 million of it contiguous enough that it's buildable, the net present value is really a function of grade and payback. And if they could put together a high-grade starter pit in a sea of lower-grade gold, that's the most immediate way that they can increase net present value. Uh, this woman is a very, very, very high-quality person, too. Uh, it's important to note that she comes from a family that's involved in gold mining in the Yukon, and her task at hand is gold mining in the Yukon. She has trained her whole life for this role. Uh, if you and I were trying to get social license in the Yukon, dealing with First Nations people, we would have to arrange an introduction. She played with these people when she was a kid, when she was a kid. You know, [laughter] it's one of those durable, sustainable advantages that you look for.

>> Right? Um, I'll move over to uh the US and uh and Norway. Um, Blue Moon Metals, they recently announced a construction decision for their Newir copper project in Norway. Uh, and they're also looking at resequencing their Springer Tungsten mine in Nevada. Do you have any thoughts on on this one?

>> Yeah, I have that as a six, and I don't own it. Uh, I like the people. Uh, I think the price to value is okay. Uh, I don't like small and midsize mines. They are very attractive to entrepreneurs, and they were attractive to me when I was a young entrepreneur. The idea that you can build a midsize mine and use the cash flow to grow is really seductive, and I haven't watched it work very often. If Ross Bey was trying this, if I knew it was in the hands of a practitioner who I knew could do it, I'd be more attracted to it. Uh, but for me, the jury's out.

>> Okay. Um, moving over uh to the DRC. Uh, Alphamin is an interesting one. They have a tin deposit that's ultra high grade, I would say.

>> Yeah. I have Alphamin as a four. Um, I own a lot of it, and I've owned it for a very long time. I have a huge tolerance for political risk. So when I say it's a four, I need to qualify that too. Uh, they are shipping uh concentrate out of there by truck several hundred miles, and each truck contains $5 or $600,000 worth of concentrate in an atmosphere where people kill each other for $100. Uh, the probability that they uh experience political and social risk is 100%. It's going to occur. Uh, in the exploration phase, uh, I sent uh a young geological student who I knew to work at that place as an intern. Uh, and the Hou gorillas overcame the camp, and this young man saved his life by running with some Congolese through the jungle for 10 hours. The personalization of political risk. I thought I was off his parents' Christmas card list forever. Um, they were more forgiving than that. But people who want to join me in owning the highest quality uh tin deposit in the world by a country mile, there's nobody close, need to do so in the anticipation, the certain anticipation, that they will be exposed to political and social risk. I'm in the wonderful position where, uh, without having to sell any stock, just by the receipt of dividends for four and a half years, that my purchase price has been repaid to me by way of dividends. So I'm a little more tolerant in share price variability than other people might be. Uh, this is a company too that's spending a fair bit of money on what some people might describe as exploration. But the truth is that the amount of data that they have on the other resistive structures that they're uh exploring is such that this isn't really exploration. This is pre-exploitation. Uh, you have extraordinary data there, and you have a management team that's been in place 15 years.

>> My my last one is Rio 2, uh, who's down in Chile. Um, they recently came out with their results and I think a few hiccups. Um, how do you look, how do you look at that one?

>> The results were shitty. It's a financial phrase, of course. Partially ameliorated by their acquisition. I've got a lot of time for John Black and his team. The results at Phoenix are results that one can expect with a small mine. Small mines can have big risks. They can have smart up risks, started risks, but they can't make you big money. The nice thing about that mine is that there's big reserves and resources, which means that this small startup mine can overcome its difficulty because the reserve and resources relative to the uh resource that they've exploited with the current capital contribution is very low. In other words, they can live to fight again. Uh, and I suspect that they will. Uh, if you have a criticism of it, it is that the senior management team has less experience in construction and operation and more experience in exploration and development. And what they have now is a development challenge. I've known these guys for a very long time. Uh, and I, they are personal friends in addition to everything else. So, I have Rio 2 as a four, and I'm crossing all my fingers.

>> That's great. Well, thanks, thanks for going over those. Um, one of the goals of the channel is to further our audience's collective knowledge. To that end, I was hoping maybe you could share some of your upcoming educational uh initiatives. I I know you have um your Natural Resource Investing Symposium coming up in less than a couple months, I think, here, right?

>> Yeah. Let me talk about three things I'm doing. Uh, the first is the Rule Classroom. You heard me do ratings today. Anybody who wants can get me to rate their entire natural resource portfolio for free. Go to ruleinvestmentmedia.com. List your natural resource stocks. Sidebar, no crypto, no tech stocks, just resource stocks. And I'll personally rank them 1 to 10, one being best, 10 being worst. And I'll give individual commentary if I think my commentary might have value. That's ruleinvestmentmedia.com. Natural resource stocks only.

The second thing we do is also free. The Rule Classroom, ruleclassroom.com, has well over 300 hours of instructional material uh on natural resource investing and natural resource securities analysis. Every Thursday that I'm in town, we do a free question and answer session like the one that we've done today. Ruleclassroom.com. Learn how to do this stuff for yourself if you're prepared to work hard.

In the third, we do some of the work for you. Uh, that's the Rule Symposium. Now, I'm told I don't remember this, but I'm told in its 30th year. First of all, the conference has stood the test of time. Uh, it's held July 6th through 10th, Boca Raton, Florida. Website is rulesymposium.com. The live part of the conference is sold out. You can't go to Boca Raton and attend, but you can attend in the comfort and convenience of your own home via live stream. A couple things I can tell you that set that conference apart from all the others. The first is that every exhibitor on the floor of the conference, every public company exhibitor, needs to be owned in the sponsor's accounts. That means that unlike every other conference in the world, we vet all of our exhibitors. It doesn't mean, sadly, Daniel, that because I own a stock it goes up. But it does guarantee that unlike any other investment conference on the planet, we have vetted every single exhibitor. The second thing that we do differently is we interview every exhibitor and every speaker before the conference. Uh, those uh interviews are found at the Rule Investment Media YouTube channel and also at the Rule Classroom. This allows you to show up at the conference with more knowledge than would otherwise be the case so that you can allocate your time at the conference more efficiently. We also record the entire proceedings. Those recordings are available for you after the conference, and you're going to need them because we give you 46 hours of programming in 4 days, more than you can absorb. [laughter] [gasps] The final thing is that unlike any other investment conference on the planet, we guarantee your satisfaction. If for any reason you attend our conference, either live or live stream, and you don't believe you got your money's worth, email me. I'll give you your money back. Nobody else has enough confidence in their content that they offer up a money-back guarantee. I'm delighted to say that since inception, we've offered a money-back guarantee, and we've had to refund less than one-tenth of 1% of the tuitions that we've charged over three decades. That notwithstanding, uh, your satisfaction, and you're the determinant of your satisfaction, or your money back. Simple as that. rulesymposium.com, July 6th through 10th. Buy now via live stream on your computer from the comfort and convenience of your own home.

>> Rick, I want to thank you so much for coming on with me today. Uh, really appreciate, you know, your your wisdom, your candor, and and just general insights uh into the companies and and the sector. Um, all the best uh with the Rule Investment Symposium in July, and uh, and let's speak again in the not too distant future.

>> I look forward to being invited back. Thank you.

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