Autogenerated Transcript (0:00 - 0:12) War in Ukraine and the Middle East continues to expand, drawing in other countries. Unemployment is on the rise. Home prices are dropping while foreclosures are climbing. (0:13 - 1:40) Food banks are seeing record numbers of visitors while charitable donations in Canada have been declining for years. Donald Trump, for all that he may be a net good for America and the world, is threatening crippling tariffs on Canadian imports. The writing is on the wall. We are headed for an economic crash. One that could make the 1929 crash and subsequent depression look like a minor correction. Meanwhile, globalist forces are pushing for central bank digital currencies, digital IDs and social credit scores, and our own government in Canada pushes through bill after bill designed to take away our rights and our freedoms. But as with any crisis, there is also opportunity. There are places to put your money that are not only proof against a crash, but where you can profit from it, while leaving yourself with currency you can use to buy goods if cash becomes unavailable. In this, our fourth quarter update with my team of financial experts, we review the past year, predictions they have made that have already happened, others that are in progress, and some that haven't happened. Yet. Bryce, Adrian, Warren, it's a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thanks for the opportunity. (1:40 - 1:55) Thank you. It's great to be here. Now, this is the fifth interview that we've done now since the end of last year, and you guys have made a bunch of predictions. We're going to do a little bit of a different format today. And Bryce, you're a big picture guy. So start us off, please. (1:56 - 8:44) Yeah. So just to give kind of a little bit of context for this. So each time that we come out here, we did a slightly different structure to get different amounts and different types of information across. So, but like Will said, I do big picture stuff, geopolitics, you know, what's the underlying reason for all this stuff happening? Adrian talks about the underlying financial technicalities and what's happening in the markets. And then Warren really covers what's happening in precious metals in relation to all these different takes. And so I'm going to be talking about some of the stuff that I talked about previously. How did those things progress? Why did it progress? And what's happening with the negative things that I've been predicting? But to start off, we're going to go with Warren first, so he can basically tell everybody about what's happening with Volt, because there's been a lot of movement this year. So Warren, why don't you start us off? Okay. Thank you, Bryce. Okay. So I made up, like Bryce said, a kind of police here that we predicted this kind of thing at the beginning of the year when we were on the show with Will. And so I highlighted those. First of all, the pricing. So the price of gold and silver both approximately just a 30% increase, right? And you see at the beginning of the year here, we had gold and silver both, you know, $20 to $50 for silver. Now we're at $31 to possibly, it's like $31.60 today. And same with gold, 2060. Now we're at $26.80, which is even a little pullback. We've been higher this year. But, you know, so both of them has retrained to then that these prices would keep increasing. And another behavior within that price increase is that gold does what it usually does in these times of bull markets when the prices are increasing. Gold leads the way, silver comes up behind, and then usually surpasses as far as price appreciation, like silver goes up a year higher, it's a smaller market, much smaller, it's more volatile. And we have that really huge industrial demand for silver that we don't have for gold. So that's on the prices. Now, the central banks, we talked about in January, the central banks buying record amounts. And so this is, so central banks buy record amounts of gold. So here's a January, here's a headline, you know, they're accumulating more gold. Now, am I showing the right screen? Are you guys seeing the central banks, if you really? Yes. Okay. Okay, good. So this continued through the year. There's variations. For example, we just heard that Trida, they slowed down, but they increased again in November. And Trida is doing something very interesting, too, that we haven't really seen before, is that they're going around the world and they're buying unrefined silver, so silver dory, which is really off the exchanges. So it's a little bit hidden. And they're buying it, South America is one of the places where they buy it from. They have a big port at Peru, for example. Peru is the third largest producer of silver, and they're bringing back their precious metals, but bringing back the unrefined silver and refining it. So Trida is going full bore on gold. And I have a, there's the other statistic. Yeah, okay. So central banks in November, 44 tons. So basically, the takeaway there is the central banks, the biggest entities, financial entities on the planet, they are continuing to buy record amounts of precious metals. And in particular, with Trida, so you don't realize, China has one of the biggest exposures to treasuries, US treasuries. And they own the most. So to offset that, that's another reason why they want gold. If the treasuries in the US dollar goes more sideways, keeps degrading, well, they want that backup of gold. And that's one reason. Okay, so we're back to the slide. So the other thing was the BRICS, the BRICS countries buying gold as the BRICS, the countries are doing China, Russia, India, for example, those three buy record amounts. But they also, also it was a continuation of talks, let's just say talks, of moving away from the US dollar to some different financial system. And in particular, was that the white paper that they talked about last time in the meeting, I believe it was the Kazakhstan that was hosted by Putin. And it was, it's not ironic, he was hosting the meeting, he's sort of made a global pariah, but he was hosting that meeting. Anyway, during that BRICS meeting, they talked about this unit white paper. And so I have to figure out very quick. Okay, so unit white paper, what is it, what is it about? This is the white paper of it. And it's a way for the BRICS countries to potentially trade with their own currencies. But the key part here is that it has a batching of gold. So I'll just point that out. And then maybe I'll hand it over, that's three good topics. Yeah, so the unit paper, reserve measured at gold, it's basically 40% I'm looking for here somewhere. There's a 40%. Oh, there it is. Okay. It's not a cryptocurrency, but again, less than if it's a silver currency, allowing the BRICS countries potentially, if they go ahead with this, trade in their own currencies, which they like. But it has a backing of gold, 40%, and other commodities. And so to get away from this printing out, I'll bring your money out of thin air. They got a tip of sort of a plan to do this. And it's very significant that it's gold, again, almost like going back to a new form of a Boltz-Vander, if you will. So I think that's where I'll stop. (8:45 - 8:53) All right. Now, just before we move on to Adrian, though, Warren, I've got a question for you. Because you mentioned, and Ken, if I can get you to stop sharing your screen there. (8:56 - 12:13) Now, you mentioned that China was doing something unusual. They're buying the door, the unrefined silver, and they've said that's not happened before. Do you have theories on why they're doing that? Yeah. Silver, we've learned with silver that the industrial demand that's increasing sort of well around the world, solar panels, electric cars, medicine, and so on. But it's also, it's really kind of getting strategic for countries. Unreported by the Silver Institute is the military usage of silver. So like, unfortunately, the military needs silver, the Tomahawk missile has, I don't know, your price, you might go, it's like five pounds of silver or something ridiculous. So strategically, countries are looking at silver. Another thing is the pricing. So the pricing of precious metals really controlled by New York and London through the LBMA and the Comex Exchange. And this is where they also have paper representations of gold and silver ETFs, which are controlled in London and New York. And they can use that paper market to manipulate the prices, or let's say, influence the prices. I believe they meant manipulate, but that's a whole other situation. Australia has an interest in having lower prices as well, right? Because they're producing all the electric cars in the world, they're military, and so on. And by keeping, by buying Dory unrefined, it's off the traditional channels of London and New York. So it's a way they can, and what I've been told, I haven't seen the exact numbers, but they're even willing to pay more than the growing rate of silver. So imagine I'm going to South America, Peru, which is the third largest producer, like I said, they have a port, that's the Dalton Road Initiative, that's what China has done too, is enabling infrastructure around the world to create a sort of a new Silk Road, if you will, and precious metals, yeah, with the silver, it's very interesting. So getting the Dory unrefined, taking it back, shipping it back to China, now it's off the books of the traditional channel of the LBMA and the commodities exchange. So two things would occur to me from that explanation, Warren. Number one, they're able to acquire a large amount of silver that really isn't tracked. I mean, we wouldn't know how much they have. And two, you've said that they're actually paying above market value for it, which says to me, they believe it's going to become even more valuable yet. Yes, I mean, if you, you know, silver of all things, so there's people that are not in the precious metals arena and, you know, the commodities traders who believe like silver is the most undervalued metal, period, base metal. For example, today the price we're talking about, $31 spot price US per ounce, we saw $49 in 1980, believe it or not, and again in 2011. (12:13 - 12:24) So we're nowhere near the all-time highs. So it really is undervalued compared to gold. Do you see, do I have, am I sharing a screen, the industrial demand? Yes, yeah. (12:25 - 13:55) Yeah, it would be so much, this is silver this time. And to just to open up that point a little bit more. So we've got this deficit four years in a row, and this is the world producing approximately 850 million ounces, but we're consuming over a billion ounces. This is four years in a row. And you would say, but why don't we just mine more silver? But the silver supply only went up about 1%. So it's problematic because the number of levels for silver is, first of all, only a quarter of the world's silver comes from silver mines. The rest is a byproduct of mining gold, lead, zinc, and copper. So the supply is somewhat inelastic for that reason. And also, there's a lot of red tape, a lot of red tape, especially in the west here, to just mine. You can't just go in and get environmental concerns and everything else. Plus, just the whole development of a mine, finding deposits, which is challenging enough because a lot of the easing of mining silver that have surfaced has been mined. It's challenging after then developing a max 15, 20 years. So we can't just snap our fingers and say, let's get more silver. And I'll go back to the military usage. That's there. And you have, that's there. It's not really reported by the Silver Institute. This is who this is, by the way. (13:55 - 15:26) This is the independent body that traps the silver around the world. And because of the military usage, China, the United States, too, they had maybe an interest in keeping the price down low. But eventually, and I know going on here, I'll stop in a minute. Eventually, the fundamentals of supply and demand went through. And we think we will see a big appreciation all at once, especially for solar, because the demand is not going away and the supply is not catching up. And there's no real easy solution. And they're looking for other, say, metals to use as solar panels. But I said, yeah, it's still the most conductive. And the thing that I like to talk about silver, it's more conductive than copper for electricity, but it's also very, oh, you can stretch it. I'm missing the word here. You know the word place I'm talking about? Where you just scratch a piece of metal. Yeah, the ductile. It's the most ductile. So we can stretch one ounce of silver out at 800 yards. So that is why, because that combined with its conductivity, why it's great in electronics. So these computers we're on today, here where I live in Alberta, we're going ahead with AI centers. They need lots of silver. So let the man is, and I guess I'm just emphasizing that the man is. (15:28 - 15:39) Bryce and Adrian, you've been very patient. I'm going to ask you to be patient for just one more minute, because there's another important question that occurs to me, Warren. We've already talked about the fact that silver has a lot of applications in the military. (15:40 - 16:56) And China has the fastest growing military in the world. Just as one example, they have 17 naval shipyards compared to the U.S.'s five. All this silver they're gathering, how much of that do you think is going into military applications? That's a really good question. I just really learned of this this year. And I think there's people in the industry, in the precious metals industry, like Andy Shetman of Miles Franklin. I just love that guy. His knowledge of the macro picture. He's talked to people that ask military people about how much silver there is. And I use the cruise missile, but it's also in the electronic components to fire vessels and everything else. I don't really, well, unfortunately, maybe that's a takeaway for me, and maybe I do that in the next session here. But how much they really use. We do know that way back in the 60s, when the United States, they de-silverized, if you will. They took silver out of the coinage. There was a military component to that. They've been using silver in the military for a long time. (16:58 - 18:25) And we have countries like Mexico is the largest producer of silver. And a couple of years ago, they started talking about nationalization. It didn't nationalize silver. What they did do, though, is they curtailed constraints on foreign companies going there. Their concession for their land, I think, was reduced for 50 to 30 years and more water rights. But again, recently, they're looking and saying, look, this is a strategic metal for the world. We have the loss of it. We want to tighten it up. And I think that's somewhat military related. But that's my I'll try to find out what is the Chinese military use for silver and the US and bring that to the table. Adrian, thank you. Bryce, you want to interject something here? Yeah, just really briefly, a big use for the silver in military is the electronics and control mechanism. So it's usually like high tech stuff. So stuff like ships and stuff won't have as much on that because that's just typical wire. You're not going to use that massive amounts of silver for stuff like that. It's more of the high of the super high tech stuff. So all of the advanced weaponry and stuff, they all use silver because it's more effective and more efficient. I only use the statistic about the naval shipyards because I happen to know that one off the top of my head. But in all areas, China's military is growing faster than anyone else's. So I can imagine they would have a huge demand for it in jets and missiles and all of that. All right. (18:25 - 18:28) Adrian, you've been extremely patient. Thank you. You're up. (18:29 - 19:50) All right. So I just want to share the I covered this in all the other meetings. But the first one I want to talk about is the banking crisis. It's not going away. This again, this chart shows how much unrealized losses that the US banks are holding. The numbers have improved a little bit, mainly because banks are actually selling their bad debt and realizing losses and offsetting those losses against their profits so that the public doesn't see really what's happening. And they're slowly trying to liquidate those those losses over time. So as long as they aren't forced to liquidate and to meet a bank run or excess cash being redeemed, they're just trying to manage away that risk slowly. So it's it's still bad. There's rumblings that banks are running out of cash. In Canada, we're hearing that the credit defaults, credit card defaults, mortgage defaults are increasing. So the situation is getting worse, but you're not seeing a lot of news about it. (19:51 - 24:56) So I'm just monitoring it. But in Canada, I don't see the banks collapsing primarily because our government has been in there buying up mortgages. I think last year, we spent almost $40 billion of taxpayers money given to CMHC that has been buying up the Canadian bank mortgages and then repackaging them as investments with the full guarantee that if any of the mortgages in those pools default, the taxpayer is basically on the hook for it through CMHC. So they're trying to, you know, keep everything under the hood, that everything is fine and projecting that but it's definitely continues on and will get worse as time goes on. The now we have Canadian real estate across all markets, real estate is going down in price. I think, for example, Toronto and Vancouver, I think house prices and condo prices now from their peak are almost 20% down. Those numbers are going to get worse. There's an absolute crisis brewing in Toronto on the condo market, where a lot of these developers have been building a lot of, you know, owner occupied condos that investors bought. I think the number was like closer to 80% of all new construction was bought by individual investors who are then trying to rent them out and they're underwater. And they're starting to panic as they have to take possession of those units. So expect a bloodbath in the condo market. That's not affecting the purpose built rental market. That's a different story. The reason it's a problem on the condo market for owner occupied is these people paid way above what they should have paid for what the rent justifies. So they're in trouble. The next story is the stock market. I think we're going to see a strong year because of the Trump effect. There are a lot of things that are happening right now that are sort cause the market to continue to rise. And it's not because the market is doing well. It's not because the economy is doing well. It's because there's a lot of money that's flowing into the markets. Big risk, though, is these seven tech stocks, which represents 50% of the value of the S&P. And if you look at the risk is all there. And this next slide here, you see that this index here is the S&P 500 with the Magnificent Seven in it. Well, that is the Magnificent Seven. And then you've got the S&P index, weighted index. If you take out the Magnificent Seven, the index itself is actually been flat since November, since 2022, when the market bottomed out. So all the risk in the S&P is on those seven stocks. So when those seven stocks do pullback or correct significantly, it's going to be mostly those stocks that that take the hit. Initially, the rest of the market will take some hit, but it won't be permanent because what's going to happen is there's going to be rotation out of the Magnificent Seven into the other stocks, supporting those stocks. And here's another graph that shows that most of the risk is in the US. This is, again, the S&P 500 US market. And these are all the other markets. And this is called the price to book ratio, which just shows that the S&P is considerably way overpriced compared to the rest of the world. So most of the risk is in the US. So if you have a portfolio that's diversified outside of the US and not into the Magnificent Seven, you're not going to see a significant correction in your portfolio. You will see a bit of a correction as an initial reaction, but the values are there in the rest of the markets. It's really the risk is in those seven stocks. And here's the main reason why the S&P is doing so well is the continued printing of money is basically mirroring the index itself. So as they print more money, that money just flows into the index, flows into the markets. And so it's really the US market that's really overpriced. And what I just want to cover here is that when the market does correct, most portfolio managers that I'm coming across, most mutual funds, they mirror the index, whether they say that they're independent and are picking stocks, they tend to mirror the index. (24:57 - 27:32) But what most managers do, or even ETFs, is when the market starts crashing, that money starts leaving the Magnificent Seven. And first of all, the indexes have to rebalance. Portfolio managers want to get out ahead of the market and start selling. And then they start buying up all those stocks that are underpriced, supporting the stocks that are underpriced, and then further pushing the Magnificent Seven down. So you're just going to get rebalancing into the market, and that's going to prop up the rest of the market while the tech's basically correct. I have an example back in 2000, because we're in a tech bubble 2.0. In 2000, during the dot-com bubble, I basically moved all my clients out of the tech stocks, out of the dot-com stocks, and put them into resource stocks, precious metals, for example, and financials. When the market collapsed in 2000, the market was down at one point over 50%. The financials and the resource stocks, or mutual funds at the time, were up 30%. My clients, that was an 80% spread between the market bottom in the market itself, and my clients were actually up 30%. So it's not that the whole market crashes, it's parts of the market that will take the hit. That said, we may not see a correction in the Magnificent Seven this year, because there's so much money being flowed into the market, and partly because of the Trump effect. All right. Now, just before we move on to Bryce, Adrian, I have two questions based on what you've just told us. Now we're on interview number five. After all the information that I've gotten from you gentlemen, I have absolutely no doubt we are headed for a major, major crash. However, you made reference to the Magnificent Seven, this tech bubble, but I'm quite certain, I believe I'm right in this, in that all of those seven companies are investing heavily at this point in time in AI. So here's the question. Now AI is just a tool. Think of it, a lot of people are very scared of AI right now, and we have good reasons to be, but it's like a gun. You can use a gun to commit murder, or you can use a gun to feed your family. I use AI tools in my own business to make things more efficient, to do things that I used to have to pay a person to do, and now a machine is doing them. So is that a bubble, or is that a genuine new market that could carry them for quite a while? I mean, the crash is coming, but the question I have, I guess, here is how long can the AI keep that propped up?