Are you prepared for 2025’s potential economic and market challenges? Host James Connor interviews Lobo Tiggre, CEO of Independent Speculator, to discuss his bold predictions for navigating recession risks, stagflation, and market volatility. Learn why Lobo views gold, silver, and copper as essential for protecting and growing your wealth, with copper positioned as his top trade for 2025. Plus, gain insights on Trump’s tariffs, Federal Reserve policies, labor market cracks, and uranium’s long-term potential.
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Lobo Tiggre 0:00
In the same way, uranium wasn’t 23 gold wasn’t 24 my highest conviction trade for 25 is copper. That is going to make the markets think about stagflation. And we all know what did very well in the last stagflation chaos is is generally not good for markets.
James Connor 0:18
Hi and welcome to wealthion. I’m James Connor. Well, 2024 is coming to an end. In 2025 is coming up pretty quick. And if you want to start the year off on a strong financial footing, consider having a no obligation discussion with a vetted financial advisor at wealthion.com/free once again, That’s wealthion.com/free to find out more information,
James Connor 0:46
Lobo, thank you very much for joining us today. How are things in Puerto
Lobo Tiggre 0:49
Rico, warm and sunny as usual. Here in tax haven, if you’re a surfer, it’s also maybe heaven.
James Connor 0:57
So many reasons to go there. I am located in Toronto, and right now it’s around freezing, so 32 degrees Fahrenheit, zero Celsius, and we have yet to get any snow. But I don’t know if you saw, if you watch football, but last night, the Buffalo Bills, that’s only an hour and a half away from Toronto, they were just inundated with lake effect snow. They got a massive dump. Well,
Lobo Tiggre 1:19
we’ve got plenty of room here in our floating island of garbage. So you’re welcome anytime you want to get away from the great white north. I
James Connor 1:26
might have to do that soon. So So much has happened since the last time we spoke. We last spoke in late August, and at that time you said the US economy was in recession, or approaching a recession. Have your views changed since his time.
Lobo Tiggre 1:41
It’s very much the put up or shut up moment for me here. You know, I could argue rolling recession, you know, we had manufacturing recession. Well, still, really, we had a transportation recession. We’ve had a commodities recession. But, you know, I don’t want to, I don’t want to weasel my way out of anything. I said, undeniable recession by the end of this year, and there’s not a lot of this here left, and there’s still plenty of deniability left. It’s looking like that. One’s not going to work out for me, though. That said as we spoke, there were cracks appearing in the labor market, and they have widened. You know, they didn’t just go away. In fact, the last labor report we had was disastrous, and everybody sort of shrugged it off, oh, because the hurricanes did it, or, you know, it was just the Boeing strike. There was a lot of telegraphing in advance of that jobs report coming out, so that when we got essentially zero, I mean, 12,000 jobs in an economy the size the United States is nothing new jobs. You know, it was amazing to see how the market shrugged that off and just, you know, bought the narrative. So we are now as we record this, you know, maybe it goes live and it’ll be happening that, you know, the brown stuff will be hitting the fan or not. The next job report is due out this Friday, and if it doesn’t come screaming back, then they can’t just blame it on the weather, right? So it we need, it’s not just it would be nice or Wall Street would cheer, but for the narrative to hold together, we need another blowout jobs report to say, Oh, it was all just the weather. If we get anything that disappoints, forecasts. Maybe, you know, the powers that be will still deny it, and I won’t get my undeniable recession. I’ll still be wrong, but the reality will be weakness, along the lines of what I called so, you know, consolation prize here is actually not, oh, well, I was kind of right. The point is that it was going to be good for the dollar. Sorry, it was going to be good for gold. It was going to be good for real money, not the funny greenbacks. I can’t believe I just said that. That’s not a Freudian slip. I don’t know what that was. It has been good for the dollar, but I think that’s been the Trump effect. We’ll see the weakness in the economy was going to be good for gold. Going into recession is typically good for gold. And we have seen that, and it’s striking to me, people are like, Well, why isn’t it higher? Gold bugs always want it to be higher. But, you know, here we are just under 2700 you know, that’s pretty darn good in the face of the higher dollar and the Fed supposedly cutting more rates. And, you know, gold doesn’t pay interest. You know, typical headwinds for gold, for gold to be still anywhere near all time nominal highs is actually terrific. So I’m not trying to weasel my way out of the answer. It looks like it will be deniable by the end of this year, but the weakness is having the effect that we see. And the other reasons for buying gold, the central banks and all that stuff, are still there. So my call was for higher. Gold was my highest confidence trade for 2024 and it’s worked out pretty good.
James Connor 4:56
And I want to have a deeper discussion on gold, but before we do that. Want to continue on with this theme about the economy. And as you mentioned, the non firms are coming out this Friday, and I guess that will, depending on those numbers that will validate or invalidate your thesis. But your concern, if I understand you correctly, is this growing trend we’re seeing in unemployment. It bottomed in q1 of 2023 at 3.5% the last number we saw was 4.2% so the trend is definitely up. Do you think it continues as we enter 2025
Lobo Tiggre 5:27
Well, I think it was for one it was flat over the month before, but that was only because of labor force participation rate dropping. So if you know other things having been equal it, we would have actually seen an increase in unemployment, and you know, the establishment survey versus the household survey. So if you ask establishments, Hey, are you full of workers? And they say, yeah, that captures the illegal workers, which I’m I’m not, I’m not hostile to illegals as so many are. I’m not a big fan of the big deportation plan. In my view, the problem is not people that want to come here to work. My view, the problem is giving people, you know, socialist benefits for coming here and not working. But anyway, I don’t want to get into the politics of that. My point is that the employment situation is actually worse than the headline numbers make it appear. And I think even on the mainstream you’ll see some admission of this. You know the number of new jobs that are government jobs, right? You know the number of new jobs that are part time jobs. I think the more you know the people that aren’t trying to make the current administration look good, the more objective observers out there, not just tinfoil hat Lobo, but mainstream types, everybody can see weakening in the labor market. And I think that’s one reason why, despite sticky inflation, which we also got, and when we just got PCE, supposedly the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, going up, and yet the market odds of a rate cut coming up this month also went up. Why would that be? If inflation is going the wrong way? Well, it’s because I’m right about the weakness in the labor market. And I think everybody can see it, everybody objective, and maybe even the non objective ones see it, but just don’t admit it. So I don’t want to say that everything hinges on this one number, but this one number will be very important for validating or invalidating my thesis. Fortunately, you know my, my thesis wasn’t, you know, sell everything, or, if I’m wrong about the undeniable recession, I’m not actually going to lose money because, you know my, therefore bet was gold higher, gold and silver higher, and that has happened this year. So I’m actually okay. Where this could hurt me is that, because I’m still in this hard landing camp, I’m not ready to buy into copper or oil or other industrial minerals or energy place except uranium, of course. And I may miss the bottom. I may, you know, I’m not trying to time the market. I’m just reluctant to buy when I see a sale price ahead, and that may cause me to end up having to pay more in the future. But you know what? That’s that’s better than losing money, and if I have to pay a little bit more, but I’m betting on a long term bullish trend that I’m very optimistic, and you haven’t asked me about 25 yet. But, you know, I’m not worried about missing the bottom. It’s I’d rather do that than bet big now and then have a fire sale price next month, right? You know, I’d be kicking myself either way, I think I come out ahead.
James Connor 8:43
So you mentioned the Fed. We have one more meeting coming up on December the 13th. We’re going to get a decision. What are your thoughts the 18th?
Lobo Tiggre 8:53
Maybe I’m wrong, but sorry, go ahead, either way.
James Connor 8:56
What are your thoughts? Do you think they cut well,
Lobo Tiggre 8:59
you know, I’m not a Fed whisperer. It seems like they’re telegraphing that they will. The market certainly believes they will. That creates a problem. If they don’t right, if the if the expectations are so lopsided, they upset the apple cart. If it’s true, and I’m not saying this is so, but if it’s true that this Fed is anti Trump, then maybe they do upset the apple cart. Just to you know, suck Trump on the chin. You know, the elections done make try to make Trump look bad by upsetting the apple cart here, but maybe not Biden still in office. You know, who knows how that goes? I suspect that, if it’s true what I’m saying about the US economy being weaker than it looks. You know, this one pillar of American exceptionalism being the strong laborer, consumer. And by the way, it’s not just the jobs market that’s shown weakening data the the consumer side of things, retail sales have also shown weakening data. So if this one pillar is in threat. And, you know, Powell isn’t a complete idiot, he’s just a liar. Then he knows that. And so, yeah, according to mainstream economics, they should be cutting they, you know, they’re behind the curve. They should have cut more, if you if you care about, you know, the economy going into reverse. Now, the problem, of course, is that inflation is proof stickier than anybody wanted. You know, our audiences probably expected that, but the mainstream didn’t, and cutting rates when inflation still isn’t at your target, you can, you can spin the story of, oh, it’s, it’s on the way. You know, we don’t have to actually hit it. It’s sustainably on the way there, there’ll be bumps along the road. We’re recalibrating our policy all these all this word soup we get out of the Fed. Doesn’t matter if they’re cutting rates while inflation is high and rising. You know that is going to make the markets think about stagflation. And we all know what did very well in the last stagflation. So it’s an interesting setup.
James Connor 11:03
So since Trump came to power, or since he was elected, the US dollar has been very strong. And you probably don’t look at the Canadian dollar like I do, but it’s at a buck 40. So that means anytime I go to the US I’m paying a 40% premium for a cup of coffee or whatever I buy, it’s like I can’t even afford to go to the US now. But are you surprised by this move that we’ve seen in the US dollar? I
Lobo Tiggre 11:28
would say I was surprised. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have been. It mean the that it’s not just a knee jerk reaction, it’s it’s assumptions out there, and the idea that Trump’s policies are going to strengthen the dollar. You know, the tariffs and things are seen as being pro dollar, and there is a certain logic to it. You know, if he’s successful in forcing international companies to relocate manufacturing to the US, they’ll need dollars to do that. But you know, his policies are also inflationary, and even if he and Elon are ultimately successful in creating enough growth to have growth reduce the deficits and despite tax cuts with no spending cuts, you know, there’s so many ifs involved in that, it’s, I think, highly unlikely. But let’s say, even if it does happen, it’s the sort of thing that takes years to come around. You know, we see this so often, the reformers, you know, they do the hard work of cutting and spending. And you know, you know, Trump isn’t planning on cutting with spending, besides what he says Elon will do. We’ll see. But they do the hard work of reforming the economy, the painful medicine takes a while to percolate through, and then they get voted out because of the painful medicine. And the next guy comes in, some socialist comes in, promising everybody everything, and and they get the credit for this improvement in the economy that was engineered by the previous team willing to administer the harsh medicine. We see this so many times. The point being that even if Trump’s agenda works and does improve the American economy, I think that takes longer than the dollar traders or the forex traders are anticipating now, and in the meantime, we see weakness. In the meantime we see, you know, blowing out deficits, and that really shouldn’t be good for the dollar on the forex market. So I was surprised to see what it seemed like a widespread error like this. But given that that’s what they think, a little less surprised now, I mean, it kind of makes sense, but I think they’re wrong. And you know, if anything, I kind of wish that previous market normalcy had prevailed. I kind of wish that this higher dollar had whack gold down harder. People were saying, Oh, that’s it. It’s topped. It’s going down to 2500 and it’ll consolidate down there or lower. If that had happened, I would have had so many bargain buying opportunities that just haven’t materialized. You know, I’m looking at my portfolio. I don’t have a lot of tax losses to harvest this year, we would have been great to take advantage of tax loss season to do some some shopping. But gold has held on so well, and the better gold stocks have held on quite well that there’s there’s not a lot of screaming fire cell bargains out there that I would do. I rather if there are fire to sell prices out there, there’s usually something wrong with the company. So, yeah, we will see. What I’m saying is, I don’t think the higher dollar lasts. I you know, Europe is in so much trouble. I get it, you know, but, but they already have stronger social safety nets, we’ll see. I I’m I’m not convinced that this rally we see in the dollar has legs, but I’m very glad that it hasn’t, you know, knocked my portfolio down on the way. Just a pity I didn’t get more shopping opportunities. A
James Connor 14:54
big component of Trump’s economic plan is to use tariffs as a negotiation tactic. And he recently announced that he’s going to impose a 10% tariff on China and a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico. What are your views on tariffs, and are they good or bad for the economy?
Lobo Tiggre 15:11
Well, I’m a free marketeer, so I’d like to see no taxes or tariffs. I understand that when other countries have industrial policy and are subsidizing their industries and dumping and doing all kinds of things, it may seem like, you know, going into a fight with one arm tied behind your back or something, but ultimately, those countries are hurting themselves, I think, you know, distorting their own economies and things come out in the end. But let’s put that aside in the world that we actually live in, not some free market utopia, you know, there are taxes. And I rather like the idea of reducing the income tax. I mean, it’s, it’s kind of jaw dropping that a mainstream candidate at the time even mentioned getting rid of the income tax, you know. And the world has been reminded that, you know before, 100 plus years ago, the US funded itself with tariffs and things like that, there was no income tax. So if I could trade no income Well, I’m a I’m in Puerto Rico, so I don’t pay the federal income tax anyway. But if I was a US taxpayer, and I could trade getting rid of the income tax for tariffs sure they’re much less punitive against success. Like part of the income tax problem is that it is unfair, though it’s deemed fair to charge people who make more and more. That is punishing success. And I think it’s it’s called progressive, but I think it’s actually regressive, and it’s bad, it’s negative, it’s a negative incentive. But further income, taxing income is, I think, inferior to taxing sales. And people, you know, politicians in our current system, they don’t want to tax sales or spending, because, you know, we have this consumer driven economy. It’s all about confidence. So you want consumers to spend, spend, spend, borrow, all you like, we’ll print more. But I don’t think that’s sound policy. I don’t think it’s how you you achieve real and lasting growth. You know, as my mentor, Doug Casey, always says, that you know, the prudent things to do is to make money, spend less than you make, save the difference, and that gives you the capital to invest and grow. It may take longer, it may be painful. If you make the transition from spending to saving, I get that, but that that is the path to sustainable growth and success going forward. So to the degree that tariffs cause importers to pay these prices and those things get passed on to consumer spenders, I actually think that’s superior to any kind of income tax. So the problem is that if you don’t really reduce the income tax. So we’ll see if Trump is successful in reducing taxes, as he was last time. We’ll see. But if we don’t reduce those taxes and we increase these, we increase inefficiency net network, we’re all worse off. And of course, there is the fact that the you know, the world is not a anarcho utopia, and the other countries will respond, and their responses don’t necessarily need to be limited to tit for tat. Tariffs, there can be much more difficult to compensate responses, like if China cuts off some of their errors, of which it supplies 90% Yeah, they could be replaced in time, but that would take, you know, a lot of time. That’s, you know, we’re talking mining here, right? It takes years, if not decades, to make discoveries, build the project, get permits, and things like that. So even if you put some sort of Operation warp speed to develop North American rare earth deposits, we’re still talking 345, 10 years. To replace China, if it could be done, if it’s not like the minerals aren’t, aren’t there? China’s Stranglehold. Sorry, I’m a rocks kind of guy, so allow this digression, please. You know China’s so called Stranglehold, or control or ownership of the rare earth market. It’s none of that. It’s, it’s not that rare earths are actually rare. It’s a misnomer. It’s just that China has an abundant and cheap supply, and it has had cheap labor, so it’s engineered this dominant position. But it’s not that we can’t get them anywhere else. It’s just that it would cost more to get them anywhere else. But what I’m saying is it would take a long time to recover if China just cut off the spigots. And okay, that would hurt them too, but it would probably hurt us more on a case like that. So what I’m saying is there’s potential here for these tariffs to be highly disruptive in ways beyond simply a balance of taxes and incentives within the US. It does concern me and. Uh, you know chaos is is generally not good for markets. So I it does worry me as especially, and if I was a mainstream investor with broad exposure to market darlings today, the potential for upset Apple carts, not just from the tariffs, but other things that Trump has proposed, would be a serious concern to me.
James Connor 20:23
So you raise an interesting point about income taxes, and it’s a relatively new concept, I think, was it the First World War when they were introduced
Lobo Tiggre 20:34
thereabouts? So the Federal Reserve Act came first, and then, I don’t remember what year the income taxes were officially put in? I mean, that was amazing. Remember, we had to have an amendment to allow this, and arguably, it’s still not even legal, right? But, you know, Peter Schiff has all the details for that. Ask my fellow Puerto Rican, and he’ll have the dates for you.
James Connor 20:56
It’s amazing, we as citizens will gladly give up 3040, or 50% of our income to the government, right? We just assume it. Now we don’t even think twice about it. But and then in Canada, the bad thing about being here is we got such a small population to pay for everything, and so we’re continuously being taxed on after tax dollars. So if your payroll taxes, let’s just say 50% I bet you’re giving up ultimately, 60% maybe 70% in the form of other taxes.
Lobo Tiggre 21:24
Yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s Tax Freedom Day. I think the Tax Foundation calculates that, and it always moves forward in the year. Every year that’s the day that you’re you stop working for the government, and you get to keep, you, know, the rest of your but then there’s also something called cost of government day. And I really haven’t looked at this for a while, and I’m sure that it would cause me to lose my breakfast if I looked at it for Canada, but in the US, last I saw, I think Tax Freedom Day was somewhere in late spring, and cost of government day was in the fall. If you really think about all the different ways that you’re paying not just federal income taxes, but sales taxes, local taxes, property taxes, all these taxes. You know, you work so hard during the year, and most of that, you’re actually handing over to one level of government or another. And our forefathers, you know, had a revolution over a 2% T tax. Now, of course, it was much more than that, that, you know, the it was quartering of soldiers and other kinds of things going on. But it is striking, and it tells you something about how prosperous society has become that we can tolerate, actually, that’s that’s maybe a way of framing this in terms of takeaways, like 2% was intolerable to people living on slender margins. Our margins have grown so fat. You know, the people living on welfare in the United States have a quality of life that kings and queens would have envied back then. I mean medicines that work, refrigeration dentists. Can imagine kissing a medieval Princess, What would her mouth taste like? You know, it was, never mind the movies and the Hollywood stuff. So think about that. I I’m not a historian, but I have read that the, you know, the typical situation in the medieval times was that you couldn’t tax more than a certain amount, you know, you would take your grain and so on. You’d have your tithe and so on. And if you tax more than that, the farmers wouldn’t have the seed to plant for the next year, and they’d starve. So even in that kind of fuel system where the kings were had, you know, a divine right to rule. You knew as king that you could not tax more than this percentage, or they would rise up because they had no choice. You were literally confronting them with the choice of paying the tax or starving to death. And at that point, it became rational to try to throw off the tax. So our society now has become so fat that we can tolerate these much higher fractions of our income going to the state. It doesn’t make it right. And just, you know, the cost of that? Sorry, I don’t want to get too political, but the cost of that is not just freedom and these vague philosophical things, but the world we don’t have, the things that we don’t have, the advancements that we don’t have because of this giant stopper of this ever hungry siphoning beast in Washington or Ottawa or wherever. The opportunity cost, the unseen cost, is so huge, there are whole science fiction novels written about how wonderful the future would be. We’d be there now. I think, if not for this cost,
James Connor 24:37
in addition to tariffs, Trump is also in favor of tax cuts and deregulation, all of which will be positive for the markets and for the economy in one way, shape or form. But this is also inflationary. Do you see a threat of inflation picking up later in 2025
Lobo Tiggre 24:56
Well, it’s inflationary in that it’s initially at least. Least it will blow out the deficits, I think. And that’s why I said, you know, eventually it’d be great if growth comes, you know, makes it all okay, but the number of governments that have tried to grow their way out of debt problems, you know, I mean that road is is littered with corpses as far as the eye can see. And my big concern here for 2025 specifically to your question, is that we could have a trust moment here in the US if Trump’s agenda is too much, cutting too quickly, without any reasonable semblance of, you know, revenue to offset this. You know, let’s take deregulation. You know, if you it’s great. I’m all for deregulation. I hate taxes, but if you cut the taxes right away, how long before the deregulation produces the growth to pay for that? In the meantime, you can have the bond vigilantes show up and say, Thanks, but no thanks. And remember, it’s, not like, you know, we talk about bond vigilantes. It’s not like this. There’s an organization, right? And they’ve gone to sleep. It’s just people in the market saying, I’m not buying this bond. Or if you’re gonna sell me this paper, I need a much bigger discount this. This is, I don’t believe in the value here, that could happen if, if things get too extreme. And I say this with regret, because I absolutely would love to see, you know, pedal to the metal, Max deregulation as fast as possible. I would love to see Elon and Vivek go to town in Washington with me, Lay’s chainsaw and just hack left and right, but I worry that, well, let’s put it this way. I’m surprised that millet in Argentina hasn’t been shot for all the pain that he has caused, and I’m delighted that he’s actually brought inflation down now that he might have a chance. I worry that that may not work so well in the United States or as quickly, and that even if they’re doing the right thing. So hear me, dear audience. I’m not saying Trump is bad for wanting to cut taxes or regulation. I’m saying that could cause disruption that is intolerable in the US and backfires. I hope not, but we’ll see meanwhile. So So what to do? You know, I don’t want him to say, Oh, more regulation is okay, or more taxes are okay. I think, you know, the most sensible thing to do is actually make sure that you have enough gold and silver real money, you know, real safe haven assets to weather whatever storms happen. Meanwhile, if I’m right that this is going to be inflationary in the near term. You know, other things that do well in inflationary environments are real assets, including real things like, you know, copper and iron and stuff you actually need, you know, aluminum oil. You know, those are things to be looking at in 2025 I think
James Connor 28:02
this year, we’ve heard a lot of commentary about the BRICS nations and how they want to come up with another currency to overtake the US dollar. And Trump really recently made a comment regarding the BRICS nations, and he is threatening 100% tariffs on any country who tries to undermine the US dollar. What are your thoughts on this?
Lobo Tiggre 28:23
It’s political grandstanding. I mean, how do you define undermine the US dollar? How do you, how do you show that somebody has undermined the US dollar and slapped that 100% tariff on them? Very vague, arbitrary. I also understand, though, that it wasn’t just, I mean, there are different headlines here, but this more specific, actionable thing is, if you implement a bricks currency as an alternative dollar, then I’ll put this 100% tariff on you. But that’s just an idea. And I know that gold bugs, you know, my dear fellow gold bugs, have been talking about this, bricks gold back currency for a long time. But every time it comes up, but, or there’s an opportunity for it to come up at a bricks, meaning it doesn’t. And, you know, the last time there was this big fuss about in South Africa, last year, they were going to introduce the gold back bricks and, and, you know, Russia ever wanted to stir the pot, was saying, oh yeah, this is, this is coming. And the South African hostage, it wasn’t even on the agenda. Never mind a gold backed bricks currency. There was no BRICS currency even on the agenda. Lo Behold, nothing happened. So at this point, all the evidence suggests that at most, BRICS currency, whatever it’s backed by or not, is just an idea. And if it does happen, it would take years to implement. This isn’t the sort of thing. You just flip a switch and it works. You’re talking multiple governments that don’t trust each other, don’t even speak the same language, right? Are not all on the same economic page. You know, very different economies. To get them to come together and put this together. It is even if it’s happening now in secret. It something that would take years to deploy, perhaps or probably, longer than Trump has to be in office. So it’s just bluster and grandstanding, as far as I’m concerned, that said he’s telling other countries what to do and what not to do, and making threats that could produce backlash. I’m sure that the Die Hard, you know, Maga hardcore Trump supporters loved it. Yeah, those anti dollar people sick it to him. But it’s, it’s a dangerous thing in a multi polar world to be, you know, throwing threats like that around. So we’ll see what happens. Ultimately, though, if this were to actually happen, it would, I think it would totally backfire. It would be all the more reason for other countries to say, you know, what the US is trying to control us. We need something besides. We need to get out of under the US is thumb, and the main way the US keeps other countries under its thumb is control of the dollar. We just saw that with kicking Russia out of, you know, the weaponization of the dollar, kicking Russia out of the SWIFT system and so on. I actually see this is very good for gold. Once again, not to harp on that one thing, but these are your questions. And you know, whatever happens with this? I see it as being pro gold, and I just hope that it doesn’t blow up in the US is face.
James Connor 31:26
So let’s spend some time now on gold. It is up 25% on the year, not a bad year overall. It’s not Bitcoin like but it’s pretty good. What are your thoughts? And where do you see it going? In 2025
Lobo Tiggre 31:38
I still see it going higher. But, you know, the higher you go, the harder it is to a keep going, but beat it, to hit, you know, to go, to stay vertical. We’ve had such an increase. It’s up 20 it was up more, but it’s up 25% now it’s up 72% as of two years ago. That is a huge rally. So to see gold go up another 72% from here over the next couple of years, that’s a really tall order. There’s also, you know how, whether a certain say technical analysis is true or not, if a lot of people believe it, and they act on it. It has a self fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. Like, here’s this head and shoulders pattern, and if it hits this, then sell. Well, then everybody who believes that will sell. And then, so if you didn’t sell, then you know, you could lose out on that. So there’s a lot of analysis out there from mainstream types that’s calling for $3,000 level gold, this could become one of those things where it’s a self fulfilling prophecy that you know right now. You know, gold feels so strong, it just wants to go up. But if it gets to that self fulfilling prophecy level where everybody says, Okay, our targets have been hit, it’s time to take some profits. You could see gold struggle for a while, but hear what I’m saying. There’s I’m not saying gold’s gonna tank. I’m not saying goes back, going back to $1,000 or anything like that. If it goes up just 3000 in struggles, if 3000 becomes the new 2000 that’s a fantastic world for gold miners. You’d have to be an exceptionally incompetent miner or even explorer, to fail to deliver for shareholders in a $3,000 gold environment. But, you know, $3,000 from 2700 it’s, it’s not that huge again. So I see more upside in silver, actually, than gold. I see silver is more dangerous, at least in the near term, because silver is more volatile, and even silver bowls will tell you that silver typically underperforms gold at first and then catches up at the end. So I like both in the year ahead, but I am concerned both about near term potential for correction. You know, if the dollar continues right rallying on Trump’s headline making power that that could put gold under pressure. So So I like I think it’s going higher, but it’s it’s not my highest confidence trade for 2025 and being this high already, it’s higher. It’s harder for me to see it delivering that much alpha going ahead.
James Connor 34:25
So let’s talk about equities now. And you raise a very good point, because you made mention of the fact that I think you said something about incompetent management teams, and we know there’s a lot of them in the mining sector, and I’m going to look at Newmont. Okay, it’s the largest gold producer in the world. And even though gold is up 25% on the year, Newmont is flat on the year. And how do you explain that? How do you explain this under performance that we’re seeing in a lot of names. Some names are doing very well, and igniko comes to mind, Ken Ross comes to mind, but names like Newmont and Barrick. Are both flattered down on the year. How do you explain that? Is it just because of incompetent management? Well, no,
Lobo Tiggre 35:09
it’s largest gold mine in the world. And generally, I don’t, I don’t evaluate individual companies and stocks for free. That’s what my clients pay me for. But as a, as an example in this space of you know, why are the gold stocks underperforming? By the way, there’s a there’s a free report on my website called our gold stocks, or a broken asset, or something like that. You can search for it. It’s there. But I, but I’ve addressed this question, and the longer term answer, the bigger picture here is this is something that you probably talked to Rick Rule about, or some others, is that the gold producers have actually underperformed in over the years, and in the last cycle, they made ridiculous purchases. They pursued a sort of growth at any price, kind of agenda, and not profitability. I’ve actually charted this. This is a Rick Rule thing, but I’ve charted it over the last big bull run. You know, from 2500 to 1911 gold, the top gold producers managed to increase their negative free cash flow, like turn a seven fold increase in gold, in the gold dollar exchange rate, into more negative cash flow. It’s spectacular. So there is, I think maybe a stigma the kind of big mainstream investors out there remember the underperformance of the producers. I think they are doing better now. And despite this last quarter having some weak numbers, we have seen improving numbers over the year. And you know, at some point, you know if, if gold does go to 3000 and new month just manages not to fall on its face, its margins will improve. But here’s the thing, it is dangerous to look at something like the GDX, which is this basket, and say, Oh, gold stocks are underperforming. I mean, this is a basket. And you think about it, we think about, well, the average is this bell curve, right with this nice bump in the middle. That’s the average of what everybody’s doing. But if your basket includes a bunch of underperformers and a bunch of over performers, then that average number doesn’t actually you have sort of a bimodal distribution. You got one bump over here on the underperformers and one bump over here on the over performers. You average that together, and it looks like the average is an underperformer. But that’s not the reality in the marketplace. The reality is a bunch of underperformers and a bunch of people that are delivering the kind of leverage that we you know, is our reason for even bothering with gold stocks, like, why do we bother with these crappy Choo Choo Train industry stocks like Doug Casey likes to say, well, because they give us leverage to the underlying commodity. And the fact is that if you’re a stock picker and you don’t just go with the index and you you know what you’re doing, you are beating the index, or you and you are out getting some leverage to the gold price. And I don’t want to name names or give out free stock picks, but I think almost anybody can look at the, you know, the the names that are known for operational excellence and are delivering higher margins versus simple size.
James Connor 38:16
So let’s move on now and discuss nuclear energy and uranium. You’ve been very bullish on uranium in the past, and it’s down on the year, which I find quite surprising, because I don’t think there’s another sector that has a more bullish or more positive backdrop than nuclear energy and by extension, uranium. But what are your thoughts on uranium here? It’s down. What is it down 10 or 15% on the year. Well,
Lobo Tiggre 38:42
first, I don’t want to dislocate my shoulder, patting myself on the back, but it’s not surprising to me at all. This last time we talked, it was in August, but if we talked before that, around this time in 2023 I was saying a my highest conviction trade for 23 was uranium, and that doubled in that year. So that worked out well. But my highest conviction trade for 2024 despite all that you say being you know true about the fundamentals for uranium was not uranium. It was gold. That’s worked out well for me this year too. But the reason for that was the answer to your question, uranium shot way up way over the incentive price needed for high prices to start to cure high prices. And it’s normal when a market goes vertical like that. I mean, gold’s up 25% this year, but uranium doubled last year more than and up over 100 bucks an ounce, when the incentive price was maybe 7080, bucks, and the long term contract price was still way, but it was like maybe 50 or 60 at the time. It took time for the long term contract price to to catch up. It was, I think, perfectly reasonable to expect some kind of pullback. And I got a lot of hate for saying that, but I was. Right? I’m sure glad I shifted my focus from uranium to gold in 24 and it’s playing out now. I mean, I remember in 22 people were wailing and pulling out their hair because uranium hadn’t done anything all year. I kind of feel the same way now that people are maybe not quite so anguished because it, you know, plus or minus 80 bucks a pound. It’s hard to be too, too despairing about uranium, but it hasn’t done anything all year. Well, you know what? Mr. Market, doesn’t care what you want or, you know, it will move when it moves. To my mind, the correction was completely to be expected. It’s very telling to me that uranium corrected basically down to where the long term contract price had risen to. Then that has provided a floor under spot that’s perfectly normal. Spot often runs away ahead, but then they converge over time, and I think that’s encouraging it. I don’t actually see a lot of downside from here. High prices are incenting mothball mines to be brought online, new low cost projects to be brought online. So all that’s working, and it’s natural for the market to be concerned. Oh, well, you know, high prices cure high prices. Let’s see what happens. But on the ground, the reality is that these restarts and these mine builds, they’re almost all of them are behind schedule, or they’re slower, or they’re not as much even, because Adam prom, which, again, I’m not recommending one company or anything. I’m just this is important because it is both the world’s largest and lowest cost uranium producer that makes it the supplier of marginal pounds to the market, and it is just petitioned to its own government to cut its permits so that doesn’t keep missing its permitted usage like it keeps failing to to deliver as much uranium as it’s supposed to. I think that’s really telling for the, you know, the largest and lowest cost producer, to cut its guidance in that way. So I’m extremely bullish, but I understand why the market says, Oh, well, we have do production coming online, there could be a surplus. I think they’re wrong. I think it’s taking longer. And even if all those mines do come online our own, in house math, we have another free report on the uranium market, if anyone’s interested, says that this new supply won’t be enough. So I’m very bullish. That said, you know, is uranium going to double in 2025 you know, that seems unlikely. We’re already above the incentive price, or at or, you know, the incentive price at least. So I think it goes higher. I think it, you know, it keeps going higher. I think long term contract prices will continue going higher, and it will drag spot higher in time. But I’m, you know, I’m not looking for a hockey stick upside here. So I like uranium. I’m actively seeking to add more uranium in my portfolio, but I see more upside elsewhere in 2025 specifically.
James Connor 42:55
And so let’s just continue the conversation with kazatoprom as a reminder to our viewers, they are responsible for 24 to 25% of the world’s production. So whatever happens there is very important to the overall market. They recently came out with their sales numbers, and they said their sales to China increased 58% year over year. So 47% of the total sales now are going to China, while sales to the US are down 19% and now represent only 8.7% of total sales. And this is one of the things that really confounds me about the uranium price and what’s happening with us utilities. They’re the world’s largest consumer. They need 50 million pounds a year to keep those reactors going, but it doesn’t seem like they’re too concerned about what’s happening in the world. What are your thoughts on that? Well,
Lobo Tiggre 43:48
okay, so my thoughts are that the utilities are run by spreadsheet guys, and they will buy at whatever price they have to when their spreadsheet says, you know, we need this much inventory and we don’t have that much or whatever, as long as that’s not the case, they’ll play games like anybody try to get the lowest price. So I can’t blame them for holding off on buying if they can, and waiting and trying to get better prices. But if, if they’re in that group that I was just talking about that thinks that high prices are currently in the process of curing high prices, I think they’re making a mistake. So, you know, it’s an understandable mistake. You see all kinds of new mines coming online there. There are new mines in the US, by the way, you know. So if kazatomprom cuts back or sells it all to China, there’s more supply coming online in the US. And up there in Canada, you know that Cameco is also ramping up two major mines to, you know, the max if they can pedal to the metal, we’ll see how that goes. So I don’t think the utilities are worried that they’re not going to be able to get uranium from because I don’t prompt I think that writing’s been on the wall for a while, and if all their uranium goes to China. But. Well, then the utilities just get more uranium from down under or the great white north, or, you know, whatever, wherever they need to. It’s a globally fungible market. Uranium is valuable enough a commodity that, unlike coal or unliquidified natural gas, you know, you can send it anywhere, wherever the customer is. So, you know, this division of east west on the supply lines, it can cause short term disruptions that are inconvenient, but long term, I don’t really see it as a price driver, unless we get, you know, a real hard iron curtain between East and West, and we completely lose access to all of those pounds and the West under supplies, then that becomes relevant. But I don’t think that’s likely, and it’s certainly not where we’re at now. So I’m really keeping my eye on the fundamentals of supply and demand, and therefore, you know, the lateness of these restarts, and we have a number of the US plays saying, Well, you know what that guidance? You know, we’re moving it forward in time, or we’re cutting it for this year. You know, mind building is hard, and just because you’ve mined it before and you’re restarting it now doesn’t guarantee that it’ll be easy to meet even, because Adam problem has problems with that, let alone these juniors trying to do it. You know, even highly beloved past successes in Africa are having trouble ramping up. And I’m not naming names, just saying, you know, this ain’t easy. So to my mind, I’m just, I’m not worried about all this noise, about, you know, the bands and all this stuff, and the enriched uranium is a whole nother product. I’m looking at the mine supply, and I’m thinking the market is too optimistic right now about that supply, and that makes me bullish now. That doesn’t mean that it has to pull a hockey stick again. This isn’t this isn’t going to double next year, unlikely, in my view, but I see it as having very limited downside and significant upside, and I want it in my portfolio. Aloha. That
James Connor 47:08
was a great discussion, and I want to thank you very much for spending time with us today. I look forward to our next discussion in a few months, and we’ll see how you did on your forecasting. But you made mention of a couple of free reports, and then you can find them on your website. Maybe tell us about your website. And also, if somebody wants to follow you online, where can they go? Okay,
Lobo Tiggre 47:28
well, quickly, before people go away, when you say that you didn’t ask me what my highest conviction trade for 2025 was. And this does relate to your question, and that is actually copper. I see higher potential for alpha in the copper space. And, you know, if, for the reasons we talked about, if Trump’s agenda is inflationary, I think this is good for copper. But as much as I like gold and silver, you know, are they likely to go up 50% or 100% from here? Or uranium, you know, that’s a tougher order, whereas for copper to go up 50% from here would be easy in a supply crunch. And unlike oil, there’s no voluntary supply restraint. And by the way, unlike uranium, there’s no voluntary supply restraint in the copper space. So for what it’s worth, your audience, if you hung on to this last point of the interview, copper is my in the same way uranium was in 23 gold wasn’t 24 my highest conviction trade for 25 is copper. And to your question, Jim, I have a free report on copper on the website. There is a free report section, if you go to the member area or any of our content pages, as a free report section, and you can find our latest copper report, an updated uranium report meets updating again, but it’s still relevant, other things like that. Finally, just if you subscribe for our free weekly newsletter, you can see more about how I think decide whether or not I could be your due diligence guy. But the one thing I do promise is that we won’t spam you with a flood of daily advertisements. I hate that you get one email per week and see if you like the way I think, well,
James Connor 49:04
that was very good. And thank you for throwing out your highest conviction trade for 2025 the next time we speak, we’re going to have a deeper conversation on copper and get your thoughts on it once again. Thank you.
Lobo Tiggre 49:15
Thank you. Well, I
James Connor 49:17
hope you enjoyed that discussion with Lobo Tigray on commodities and the economy. As Lobo mentioned, he’s very bullish on the gold price. And if you would like to learn more about gold and how it can benefit your portfolio during these uncertain times, visit our sister company, hard assets alliance.com. Hard assets Alliance is a trusted platform that’s being used by over 100,000 institutional and retail investors to buy and sell gold bullion and gold coins. Once again, that’s hard assets. Alliance.com there’s a link below in the show notes. Thank you for being with us today. And if you want to see more content on wealthion, check out this video next.
