Peak Prosperity - Volatility Returns With a Vengeance; Silver Shorts Play With Fire

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Paul Kiker and I tackled a range of topics from market volatility, the CPI, and the dynamics of gold and silver, to the intricacies of oil prices and the rising interest rate situation in Japan.Resources Mentioned:Peak Financial InvestingLast Week's Interview with PaulWhy I Think Silver is the Opportunity of a Lifetime

Nothing in this program should be considered investment advice. It is for educational purposes only Please hit pause and read this disclaimer in full a Lot of investors are stuck into confirmation bias Where instead of reading the data and look at the information that's coming out there is as neutral as they can they're looking for? Information to tell them their preconceived ideas, that hey, Trump won't let the markets go down. The following is the audio version of a video released at peakprosperity.com. Visit peakprosperity.com to watch the video and to find other insightful content, such as articles, discussion forums, and exclusive subscriber only content. Hello everyone, welcome to this edition of Finance U. I'm your host Chris Martinson

here of Peak Financial Investing back with Paul Kiker of Kiker Wealth Management. Hi Paul. Hi Chris, good to see you again. We got a lot of stuff to talk about, We got to jump in because so much has been going on. We've had so many inquiries from people who want to hear from you. Volatility, the CPI, which is the inflation reading, which just came out this morning. Gold and silver, of course. Oil too, something to talk about.

And Japan, if we can have time to get to it. So let's start there with the volatility. Paul, what is going on? You know, you said last week you were on what you called market watch, meaning you were going to sell bounces. Have you found any bounces to sell? There have been no, no bounces. The only thing that I can, the song that comes to mind is welcome to the jungle, right? So this is a completely different environment from what we've been in before. And as seasoned as I am, it's not that often that I start to get a little nervous and I

had to even put my own emotions in check. You know, we reached some levels where we should have bounced in the markets. We didn't, and we've continued to follow through to the downside. And it looks like for the past couple of days, we're starting to consolidate. So this is the challenging part. So far, this has kind of not exactly, but met my thesis that this would be very similar to the 2000 top. The difference is, you know, in 2000, we did get a sellable bounce that you could sell into.

The question is, and this is the big question for a lot of investors, are we going to get that bounce? We're not going to know for the benefit of hindsight, but what I can say that concerns me more than anything is everywhere, anybody that I talk to that's a technician on the market or understands support and resistance levels are like, okay, now it's time to sell the bounces.

And what's gonna be the greatest pain is if we consolidate from here and continue lower. So I'm not saying anybody take immediate action right now. I'm just sharing observation in the market that we're already prepared and ready to deal with depending upon what happens. Well, everybody's glad you are, of course. Let's talk about some of those. This is the S&P. This is a daily chart. So each one of those lines is little green or red as a day.

And this goes all the way back through 2024 into about half of 2023. So we're looking at about almost two years of data here. So this over here, let me get my laser thing. This is the little sell off we've had of late. I mean, you know, on a longer sweep, it's nothing. But you'll note here, I put a dotted line at today's price where it was at, and you can see, well, that was, it went below it. It looks almost like, Paul, it's testing.

We would call that support now has become resistance, maybe. We'll see. It's kind of important what it does here, isn't it? It's very important. So there are a couple of things. We could be building what's called a bear flag, which is a consolidation And then you break down to the lower side We could be you know struggling and back testing that prior resistance so

To explain to the listeners out there support and resistance. What does that mean? so let's imagine that you're taking a Tennis ball and you're bouncing off the floor and it's hitting the ceiling. And every time it hits the ceiling, that develops a resistance area, okay? So let's say that that floor, that ceiling's a little soft, that tennis ball bounces through the hole and hits the next level. So that prior resistance becomes support.

Now, let's imagine the other scenario, that ball's bouncing and you're on the second floor and it breaks through and bounces off the floor and hits the ceiling. That would be breaking through support and failing at resistance. Those are very important depending upon what the market does. So it's a psychological impact, but if we cannot recapture that prior support, which is now resistance just for the past couple of days, then that's a very, very bearish signal for the market. And my concern is everybody's expecting a bounce. I am too.

Statistically, this is the point, you know, especially since the 2008 decline, that you get a nice rally. You get a rip your face off short squeeze where it moves really strongly. I'm hoping that that's going to unfold because we shifted full defense on a sell into that strength. But at the same time, we're prepared that if we consolidate here and then break down further, we're not going to hesitate to raise that cash because we might be off to the races to the downside. Now, Paul, so just to understand your tennis ball floor ceiling analogy, is we're trying to bounce

through that ceiling, right? It's bouncing off because there's people selling at that level. Correct, correct. People are selling and then you kind of run out of sellers at that level, but also people have been buying at that level, and then enough of them have bought at that level and then you run out of sellers

so now the ball bounces through, right? So next time when it's trying to come back through, it has all these people here who bought at that level. They're now the support for that, right? That's right. But if it goes down through, now they're the resistance because they're the same people like, oh, let me get my money back, right? Let me sell where I used to be.

So when we say support and resistance, it's because there's a whole lot of people who bought or sold at that level. And that's why this is kind of critical because this was a pretty hefty zone here. See, we poked the head up, fell down, bonked off of it, cleared it. So this zone here at about, I don't know, I'm going to call that 5650 or so. It's got a lot of people who bought or sold at that level. I mean, it's all stacked up, but then it went right through it. That caught me off guard when it went right through that. And you see here too, the volume, see how high those bars are there?

That was fairly, it was accumulating volume into that sell off. Like it's coming down. That's a lot of volume in there. So we'll see, but if it breaks down, you're saying below this level here, you would expect it to continue on to the next area, which we might say is here somewhere. Correct. The next area of support. And that would, you know, the market tends to cause the greatest pain to the majority

of investors. And the greatest pain to the majority of investors right now would be a continued decline without a rally. Now, like I'm saying, this is just an exercise in mental preparedness because you've got to work your strategies, not emotion. And if we don't talk about these things, people can let their emotions take over and panic sell. But we talked about this last week, Chris, and what's really interesting to me is, I think we talked about a week or two ago, I want to pull up this PowerPoint to share, what we saw at the end of February was retail investors piling all in.

I got that for you. Yes. So you've got one there too. Okay. Yes. That's a perfect chart right there. So all of a sudden you've got small speculators that just pile in just this panic purchase because they're fully convinced that Trump's not going to let the markets go down while they're not listening to what

him or Besant are saying. And then on the other side of this, the sellers have overwhelmed because all of the buyers have exhausted their capital, because they fear missing out or whatever it is. And that's when I really started feeling like this was the backdrop that we have. Now, one of the things we've talked about for quite some time is the concerns we have about the market to warn investors. But the path of least resistance, for the most part, has been higher with potential watches in the past.

But we have everything in place that's here now to have signaled a top and it's changed specifically our strategy and others. I mean, we are on, we are on defense now instead of offense. That doesn't mean you immediately sell everything in the portfolio. You want to try to sell into these rallies if you get them. But if you don't get the rallies and you break down, you've got to exit because if those support starts crumbling, imagine how it gains momentum. Terrible analogy, but I shouldn't use this analogy, but you know, when the towers,

you're going to arch him. I know I am when the towers fell on September 11th, you know, when that first top cracks, it gains momentum all the way down and there's, you know, it collapses all of the support below it until it finds solidifying support Yep, terrible analogy. Yes. So but small speculators meaning retail in large measure, but They tend to Well Paul that that thing I'm reading over your head invest your plan not your emotions This crowd is famous

I'm reading over your head invest your plan not your emotions. This crowd is famous for investing its emotions being emotional Panicking out at the wrong moments piling in at the wrong moments fomo. This is them fomo in But but then they panic out right so so that's a thing. It's pretty well known now It was a month ago on this program. We said Garam Tavares had pointed out that Mag seven reached its lowest volume in years. So the mag seven was holding the whole market up and it reached its lowest volume. Like nobody's really buying or selling.

That's a bad sign. You see it tops a lot because it means, you know, this, this thing that everybody was all excited about buying and selling vigorously, kind of losing interest, you know? Or you know, nobody really wants to sell at that level, nobody really wants to buy at that level. That's where you get at the apogee of these things. So I think that was a good signal to be paying attention to there at the beginning of 2025. Very good signal to pay attention to.

And you know, when the generals, the mag seven, the general are leading the charge, it was holding this market up while the soldiers were basically leaving the battlefield. And that's the market breadth, market breadth, which is how many stocks are going up versus how many are going down has been terrible. And that's a warning to investors, but it doesn't matter until it does. But we're also seeing Microsoft broken some major levels, NVIDIA is not behaving the way that the speculators would like it to. All of the mags at Tesla's, you know, that's its own special case is how far that's broken down.

But we're starting to see those leaders get major breakdowns. And the question is, you know, investors have been trained, right? I mean, even I'm a little nervous. It's like, is Trump going to change his tune? He's going to start supporting the market? Are they going to intervene? Is the Fed going to intervene? Are they going to try to kick this can down the road?

Are we going to get QE coming around the corner again? I can't speculate on what that is, but what I can pay attention to, Basant and Trump have not been out there trying to tell everybody, you better buy the market, this is going to be great. They're saying, hey, there's going to be some pain, there's going to be some transition, there's going to be in the end. So investors have really been warned. It's just that I think a lot of your retail investors and a lot of investors are stuck into confirmation bias, where instead of reading the data and look at the information that's coming out there as neutral as they can, they're looking for information to tell them their

preconceived ideas that hey, Trump won't let the markets go down. So this is going to be an interesting time. I'm going to add something to that as well, because you're absolutely right. Everybody who's an investor needs to listen to what Trump is saying and what Scott Bessenta saying. They're saying, you know what, things might go down. You know what, there might be a recession. Like that's as clear as they can be. Right? Do you remember, so I tracked positive and negative space in reporting. I remember under Biden, it was like it became a joke to me. It was like, oh my god, we have to hear from three Fed officials today, you know? We got to hear from the Minneapolis Fed the Dallas like they were just out there just all day long

Does the Fed even exist like is Jerome still alive like we haven't heard from any of them in a month or two So they're quiet and here's why I think it's important ball. I found out that When somebody added it up and said who gives to who which party The Fed is like more than 90% gives to Democrats Now you asked well the Fed bail the markets up, I don't know but if ever there was a president who they might feel Disinclined to support with a market bailout This would be the one. That's a hypothesis. Right, right.

And look, if I'm Trump, and look, I'm not Trump, okay, but if I'm Trump, what makes sense to me is you gotta let this excess work out of the system so that we can get a sustainable foundation, and it needs to happen sooner rather than later. You know, and going back, and while I was going back studying the 2000 to 2003, 2000 top, I've been watching that really closely just to try to pick up a little bit of

wisdom as we can. I realized, guess what? George Bush was elected in, you know, from 2000 to 2004 and the market went down 47% in the 2003. However, you had a rebalancing in the commodities, you had a weaker dollar, you had emerging markets do good. the commodities, you had a weaker dollar, you had emerging markets do good. Now, housing was in a different place then, but the lower interest rates kept housing and the average person kind of kept their job. So it's not outside the realm of possibility that Trump understands, hey, if I can get the illegals out of here, I can get rid of the regulation, I can get the inflation out

of the system. So what if the market goes down 47 or 50% as long as we can keep jobs reasonable across the board? You know, I've got a chance to be, he won't be reelected, but for his, what the administration is doing to carry on whether it's Vance or whoever else runs in the next election. And we're in a similar environment right now as what we were back then. Like the US equities, and I'll show this chart again. I know I've shown it so many times, but I believe it's so important to talk about the

opportunity that's out there for investors that are adaptable. US equities, or S&P 500, as by the the S&P 500 has been the only game in town since 2014. And it is so outperform every other category from commodities and emerging markets and developed international markets that, that, you know, there is a chance for a great rebalancing. So for you listeners out there, black lines the S&P 500, January 1st, 2008 till here. Well, I'm going to slip down. Only game in town.

Yeah, only game in town. So I'm going to slip down to the 2000, 2007 timeframe. S&P over here, of course, we had a 47% decline into 2003. Commodities bottomed late 2001 and took off. Emerging markets bottomed about the same level that US equities did, but they were up 155% over a seven-year period of time while US equities were sideways. Now, if we have that type of rebalancing, that's going to soften the pain for a lot of the investors out there that are adaptive and have strategies that can direct them to shift the focus in their portfolio class. So what a different era, totally, totally different era.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's completely different era. But you know, when you have these distortions and everybody's on the same side of the boat, retail investors piling in, we can see what's happening in the aftermath with the market. We might, you know, and one thing I've noticed over the past couple of days, value struggled last year, but a lot of the value stocks were up over the past three or four days, which was nice to see some rebalancing.

And that happens when big investors are moving defensive. They want to get into something that can shield them a little bit better. Because if you're a mutual fund and you have a mandate to be 97% invested at all times, if you have the flexibility, you want to shift into asset classes you think will hold up better if the market goes down. If the market goes down 50%, you can shift into something that goes down 30. If your mandate is to stay fully invested, then you've done a good job in that period.

So I'm seeing some shifting under the surface of the market as well. Well, the whole AI bubble thing that we've been cataloging for a while, I think that's you've done a good job in that period. So I'm seeing some shifting under the surface of the market as well. Well, the whole AI bubble thing that, you know, we've been cataloging for a while, I think that's just, that's just dead, right? There was, it never made sense. Come on. It just didn't make sense for one company like Nvidia

to have 13.4% of the entirety of the US GDP as value. Right. Like there's just, it just makes no sense, right? Obviously, so I think we're gonna see some normalization around that. Also, the AI tools aren't quite what we thought and China's released more efficient ones, the whole deep-seek story that we covered.

So it's a fast-evolving story, but we got ahead of ourselves, got a little over the tips of our skis, right? Same old story with the internet. I'm old enough to remember. I remember, oh, we're laying fiber everywhere and you could just, the companies were just throwing fiber into the ground every, every possible place they could. Then we had too much fiber in the ground and it laid dark for a while. Um, went for pennies on the dollar. It just, it's

a story, right? You get a little ahead of yourself. You're going to build all this giant infrastructure and then you don't end up using it quite like you thought. Yes, it happens. That's right. And the infrastructure is still there. Lucent Technologies, not the stock everybody thought it would be. You know, Amazon popped in the year 2000 when the NASDAQ went down. What was it around 80% and then, you know, took it 13 years to get back to even. I don't have any doubt that Nvidia is going to continue to offer good products from a long-term standpoint but it's not outside the realm

possibility that over the next 10 years it's the same right because technology is deflationary and the better they get the lower the cost you know the more efficient they become and the lower cost becomes so at some point that expected revenue is not going to continue because if it does there's going to be competition come in somebody's gonna of because if it does, there's gonna be competition coming in. Somebody's gonna recognize how much money there is. That's a free market. That's what we need.

There's no such thing as an impenetrable moat in technology. They all turn out to be muddy puddles. Hello everyone, I'm Chris Martinson of Peak Prosperity. I wanna tell you about something. So you've probably heard about the great reset. You know things are highly uncertain right now. There are things happening in the markets that just don't make a lot of sense. And there's an unfortunate conclusion lurking under all of that, which is that there's some people out there, I call them the raccoons of Wall Street, who have found ways legally, air quotes legally, to take

your money, your wealth, your stocks, your bonds, maybe even your house from you. This falls under the idea of something called the great taking and it's a fairly complicated topic but this is what I do and I do exceedingly well. I will find ways to understand this and communicate it to you and I'll find the other experts out there who are just the best at figuring out what you can do and how you can understand this thing. Now I hope that nothing comes with this great taking idea. I hope that the trigger is never pulled but it might. So to help you get there we have the great taking webinar, a variety of experts and we have seven strategies that we will outline

and also are contained in this workbook that comes along with the Great Taking. It's there anytime you want. Once you have secured your access to the Great Taking webinar, you'll be able to download it, look at it, and view it anytime you want. And you should actually do this with people you love,

other people you care about, and anybody else you think who might need to know this information. So with that, please consider taking advantage of this amazing offer to get educated and then take action to protect your wealth because the great taking is a very real thing. Obviously, they wouldn't have spent so much time finagling the law and putting in this trigger if they didn't mean to pull it One day, let's hope that they don't but if they do I want you to be on the right side of the line So that you're not on the great taking side of the line now back to our program Hey CPI though, you said you didn't tune into it yet. It beat to the downside

So I hate this Paul worth like oh we were expecting point three, but we got point two and Then you have to dig way down under there, and you find out the number was like point two four nine nine and And so they got to round down to point two instead of rounding up if it had been like 3,000 more and then you find all the shenanigans whatever so that it's I don't think there's enough it's it's kind of a gross figure because there's a point two and a point three and a point four is a very big thing anyway came in less than expected year-over-year came in at three point one instead of three point two core was where's the core that was core at three

one and then actual CPI came into two eight instead of two nine and uh, yeah point two for the month of February and then the actual index came into 319.08 compared to 319.22 was expected. So there you can see it's actually not all that big of a change. But anyway, cooled down. Daniel Lacalle said February inflation printed to a below expectations of 2.9 as we just said. Prices are down in essential items like energy and core goods.

Core CPI inflation falls to 3.1. First decline in both headline and core since July of 24. So inflation is cooling down. He said, however, however, this means prices keep rising. Supply side measures are needed to lower prices and return purchasing power to citizens. And then underneath the covers though, auto insurance was up 11.1% year over year,

better than the 19% of last November year over year. But you see prescription drugs at 4.6 and we go down, you know, rent is still above 4%, housing, earnings, earnings growth was kind of cool, above 4%, so that's okay. But all the way out at the bottom, rental cars, electronics, appliances, gasoline, stuff like that. So this is, so if you were needing more prescription drugs, rent and auto insurance, you didn't experience it all that happy. If you were doing a lot of renting cars and buying TVs and things, you're happier. So local mileage varies in this story, right? Yeah. Most people don't buy a TV one time a year, but they pay their insurance for their cars one

time a year. They buy their eggs on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. It seems that we talked about this before, if Trump's focused on labor and he's really focused on the 10-year, we've got to have some deflation here in the short run to soften this because you're right. They're celebrating over the fact that it wasn't as hot as it thought, but it's still going up at 2.8% a year over a 10-year period of time. That's a loss of 28% of your purchasing power if you're on a fixed income with a pension that doesn't have an inflation adjustment.

And that's devastating on the people who need that income and the purchasing power the most within our society, especially retirees if they're not prepared for it or invested, I'm estranged you to fight it off. Yeah, I'm not sure if inflation is dead or not. Now, I interviewed Ed Dowd a while ago and he said he was expecting these lower prints because we're not importing all of these illegal migrants who are then getting Stimmy checks, EBT cards, cell phones, you know, rent vouchers and things like that, that when you're bringing in a million or two million people a month and you give all those people the ability to rent houses and buy food and stuff, that's actually very inflationary.

Makes sense intuitively, I hope. He said he thought it was going to be disinflationary when they started to leave and also those programs were terminated. You would expect inflation to begin to moderate pretty quickly off of that. So kind of fits with the pattern. It does. And that's going to hit corporate profits. It's going to tighten the purses across the board. You know, and earnings are expected to continue to grow based on the policies of the prior administration and even really the way Trump kind of handled the market in 2017. But this is completely different from what he talked about in 2017 and the focus that seems to be out there.

So it's early in the game for sure. Well, can we just talk real quick? This is the market on a five minute basis. So and we're looking at futures, so we're able to look overnight. About two o'clock in the morning for reasons, you know, this US S&P futures started to climb. And then right here at 8.30, we had this release of the CPI data,

which came in again, inflation was less than expected, at least officially as reported. You had this huge spike, look at this. Well, these are units of 20. So we had basically 20, 40, like the S&P futures, which were already hot, spiked by 40. And then, oh no, they sold off, but oh no, they're back up again, again with this V bottom

that we see, very typical in these chaotic markets. It's going down, no, it's going the other way, right? And this was taken before we started recordings. I don't know how it finished out on the day, but the point here is this market doesn't really seem to know where it wants to go right now. No, and what's interesting to me, we've reached several levels where the market

should have found a bottom and rallied, and has started to rally and then get sold off into the end of the day. And what's fascinating to me is I have some relationships around, they're usually my market signals, right? They're, they're FOMO right at the worst time and they're fear missing out at the worst time and they're panic wanting to sell at the worst time. Have I heard from them? So, you know, I don't, you know, there doesn't seem to be a lot of

fear in this, in this sell-off yet. Maybe it's the perception. And look, we've had 30, I think, since 2008, 5% declines that have occurred. So this isn't outside what a normal market would do. But in context of the technical damage that's done, the support levels that have been broken's taking place under the surface the market the lack of fear by the average retail investor? It fits the classic signs of a market top and bulls don't die easy But this one sure seems to be throwing off some pretty negative blood work where the doctor and say hey You might need to go to the emergency room and be looked at a little bit closer

Well, you know what's interesting I I emergency room and be looked at a little bit closer. Well, you know what's interesting? I don't think we're there yet. I don't think this bull is mortally wounded yet. And there's a couple reasons. I forgot to bring this chart up, but I could dig it up. Junk debt just isn't selling off. No, credit markets are holding up well. Credit markets are fine.

So that's normally a thing I look at. And like my model is from the outside in, weak stuff starts selling off first. As small caps take it harder because they're weaker companies, a lot of zombie companies in their credit markets, particularly junk debt as the weakest member of that relative group. That usually sells up. It's not selling off. No, no credit has held up well.

And I've been reading some very good debates back and forth. Okay, at what point does credit start to get worried? Is it X percent below here? Nobody knows right now. But it is one thing that's a good sign right now, which also leads me to believe that we should get a balance as the credit markets are like, okay. I mean, they're not reacting in any major way right now, which also leads me to believe that we should get a balance as the credit markets are like, ah, okay. I mean, they're, they're not reacting in any, any major way right now. Yep. Well, and you know what my favorite indicator that,

that the bubble's not over and the German Dax is not going anywhere. Hey, it's showing a little volatility there though. Look at that. A little more. It's, it's sort of, yeah, it's struggling a little there, but I mean, this, this whole part, oops, let me find my laser pointer this whole part here This is this doesn't look the same as the US which was um Here, I mean look at this look at this whole sell-off here that that's very different. The German DAX is doing nothing really It's still up on the year. See this is 2025 right

Here so it is still green on the year by a good hefty margin Let's say that it would started the year 20,000 is still 22,600 So it's um, you know, let's call that 10 11 12 percent higher. Whereas Oops, wrong direction again. This one is, if this was 2025 here, we'll call that 6000. It's now 400 points below that, so it's down. I mean, these are, this is a tale of two markets, isn't it? It is. It's really a tale.

Now, one thing I will say, Europe and international has held up real well, and even commodities in general have held up real well, but there has been some rebalancing out of the u.s. into europe Uh one of the positions Well, I don't I don't need to get into positions But but europe has held up really well and has some rebalancing and some emerging markets In the turmoil we've had here in the u.s And that's probably helping the dax a little bit even even though it doesn't make a whole lot of

I struggle to understand what's going helping the DAX a little bit, even, even though it doesn't make a whole lot of, I struggle to understand what's going on in the DAX. Yeah. You, you need both. I don't know. Um, but I was trying to blind the man and say, Hey, obviously there's more buyers than there are sellers. So they're under the surface. Uh, anyway, I was trying to find it, but we had that chart that showed that 75% of the world's total equity valuation right now is the US markets. So if you just want to rebalance and say, maybe we ought to dial that back to 50-50,

that means you're going to be selling the US market and buying the other markets. And that's sellers over here, buyers over there. So maybe that makes sense. And think about it just from a big picture point of view. If you're an emerging markets company and all the money's flooding into the US, well, you're not flush with capital. You're having to go to investors. You're having to raise capital the hard way.

You're having to compete against all of the money flow that's coming into the US. So you're lean, you're mean, and you're seasoned. Of course it makes sense. and especially if there's a rotation of value, there's a lot of value, attractive value companies from a global standpoint that are commodity producers, that are good inflation hedges, that can be good staples for the patient from a long-term standpoint in the portfolio. I'm not recommending buying them right now, I'm not saying that, but from a long-term

standpoint, if I'm looking at what's more attractive than the other, those are far more attractive right now, especially with the overweight in the US markets. Investors have the same problem throughout time. They get overweight one category, they convince themselves it's supposed to be that way, it blows up, and then what they should have been doing is chasing some of those underperforming assets, looking at it from a long-term standpoint, sitting on the shelf and having the discipline to be patient. Well, one of the things I've been doing quite a bit here, Paul, let me see if I can pull

this up real quick, is tracking gold and silver, obviously. Maybe we should talk about that a little bit more. Let me see if there's anything special to report nope nope I mean gold's a 21 29 41 at this particular stage but doesn't matter let me pull this up and so I got gold here going back to March of last year. So this is a one year long chart. And I was just trying to note a couple of patterns here, Paul. So these wedgie things here, right, that I've got in. So here you can see like this line's coming down and this one's, well, this one's flat, but sometimes they're rising like this,

where you get that rising wedge. And then when you get a breakout of the wedge, you have these big green arrows that follow and there was also a wedge over here. So that's pretty typical behavior for gold. Three four months of just sort of like, you know, wedging along and then it breaks out and climbs off to a new level. So we did break out here in early 2025 from this wedge and off we go. And it's been very resistant.

This right here, Paul, watching this little downturn right here, it doesn't look like much on this chart, but that was, there was some heavy firepower brought in, in the US markets to try and drive that price down. So I'm talking in the paper markets, somebody, air quotes, throws a bunch of paper contracts in there and just sees if they can get this whole thing running to the downside and it just didn't work out. No and what's amazing is you don't have retail jumping on it still. Like a lot of the conversations I'm having people are just scared to death of the price of gold as high as it is right now because it's at an all-time high and they just don't understand what's taking place underneath the surface.

So this is, wherever this mine is coming from has to be big players, big institutions. We've seen that with the numbers of what was it 20 million ounces of gold. I can't remember the numbers, so I don't even want to try to try to guesstimate because I'll be so wrong. But large numbers that have been pulled from Europe and physical possession and retail hasn't jumped on yet. That's when the bull is really going to start getting some sting. Big money doesn't want retail in the game. I'm happy. You're right.

Big money is driving this. Like you or I, Paul, we can make all the noise we want, but we're not going to get the LBMA to cough up hundreds of tons of gold. Right. tons of gold, right? The United States in silver just in January imported just the United States 2,600 tons of silver came in, which is more than 10% of world output just for the United States, just for one month. But one of my favorite people out there, Rick rule, the inestimable Rick rule. I may maybe made that a stronger statement than he did. I said, he said that he said gold's a four bagger.

He didn't. What he said is, my belief is that in the next 10 years, the U.S. dollar will lose 75% of its purchasing power. I'm not trying to say gold will go up 30 fold, but if the U.S. dollar loses 75%, makes absolute sense that gold will go up four fold. So he was just making a sensible argument there. But I do think that, you know, that's the scale we're talking about here, Paul, is that this is going to go up whole multiples from here. Like, because this isn't a story about how expensive gold is. This

is a story about the fact that the United States dollar had a 4550 year run as the only game in town. And now it's not the only game in town. And that's what's being renegotiated right now, as we've talked about with the unit, China's prominence, it's a multipolar world, not a unipolar world. The dollar is no longer king dollar. It's been abused badly. It's been treated poorly. I think that's what gold's telling us that there's something happening in the monetary front you and I don't know about yet

It sure appears that way because with big players maneuvering the way that they're maneuvering, you know and We've all been so concerned about What will happen to the dollar because of the actions that the US has undertaken? Right from a long-term standpoint So we we have been able to see. So we have been able to see, many of us have been able to see what the inevitable result is, but nobody has any clue where the timing is.

But we continue to get little bits of information that tell us that we're still on that journey, and we seem to be getting closer to those events. And when you get these unprecedented moves and what's taking place with gold and institutions that are moving in that direction and governments that are shifting and the BRICs that are talking about linking 40% of the unit to gold, that's a game changer from what we've seen from central banks offloading gold in the 1990s because they thought fiat currencies were

going to be the answer from this point forward. Now we're starting to suffer the consequences of the foolishness of the fiat currency experiment that has failed every other time it's been tried throughout history. But gold has continued to stand the test of time, right? What happens if you found some currency from 300 years ago? It's good in the collector's museum or in your office frame, some currency. But if you found some gold coins from 300 years ago, they've got a whole lot more purchasing power plus the collectible ability today. So gold is that timeless asset to protect your wealth

during periods of transition like this. Yeah, absolutely. And I did mention silver. So silver is busy just popping its little head above a little wedge here of late. Oh man, Paul, they, the they in this story is US markets work so hard to keep the price down. Oh, they work hard, you know. Very hard. And I've been watching silver really closely because silver can have some explosive moves. If it starts following the gold pattern and starts playing catch up on those

historical ratios and breaking out of those wedges is a, is a bullish sign. And the more, more wedges we get with more breakouts to the top side, the more bullish the scenario becomes fundamentally it's ridiculously bullish, but now we're starting to get some signs that technically it's starting to follow along as well. I just saw this the other day. This is from Turd Ferguson, TF Metals. This really shocked me here.

So PSLV is the physical trust that Sprott runs, and he runs a clean ship. I don't know what I'm looking at here, Paul, but this is a chart showing the short interest in PSLV. This is back here is the great silver squeeze of 2011 where we saw, I mean, 2021 where we saw, you know, silver really spike. What what what even what is happening here? So somebody has that big of a short position on PSLV. Oh my goodness. This is zero.

This is 2 million shares. I mean, the all time world record was about 7 million shares at one point. Now it's up to 24 million plus shares, almost 25 million shares short interest volume. I mean, it's just what? Plus shares, almost 25 million shares, short interest volume. I mean, it's just, what? That doesn't make sense. I mean, that's based on what I'm seeing in the price action of silver.

That is a dangerous, dangerous move. You're either, that's the end of your trading career if that's one person that's shorting that much in silver without some ability to paper it over if they're on the wrong side of that trade. Wow. That's astonishing. And we know that there's similar levels of short interest on SLV and at ComEx. I mean, they're just shorting like crazy trying to keep the price down because that's what

they do. But if they lose the handle on that ball, that's going to be a fumble or a turnover depending on which sport we're playing. You know, in that case, I always use the analogy with clients, imagine you're standing in a pool that's filling up, you've got a basketball and you're holding around your waist. If the fundamentals are there, and the long term story is there, you just got to be patient because at some point, you know, if the water gets above your head, you're going to drown or you're going to let go of the basketball.

That looks like somebody took a basketball with scuba gear down to the, you know, a thousand feet down the ocean and they're going to let, you know, let that thing go if silver continues to start to break out and move to the other side to catch you up with gold. Yep. Hey, Paul, I just have have to this was important enough that I put out a piece for my subscribers back It at peak prosperity Just on silver because there's something happening there. That's really big. I go through the history of it So I just wanted to let people know that that is there because I think you need the historical grounding and what's been going on in silver as well as

Why Paul I mean a, I'm a fundamental investor at heart. I cannot believe that there are people still somehow playing paper games with silver. When you look at the fundamental story for it, supply and demand, that's the fundamentals, right? This couldn't be any more clear. We're going to six years in a row where the world isn't mining as much as it likes to consume.

You know, and somehow somebody looks at all that and goes, you know what we need right now? The most shorts we've ever had on silver. I know it doesn't make sense and it's a dangerous game to play. But, you know, I wonder if it's somebody that's trying to hold it down for military purposes or government purposes so they can do a lot of accumulation, maybe. It's still not right for the fair. It's still not right for, that's not a free market.

Okay. And that's going to hurt the individual investors that are paying attention to the fundamentals. Or if it's just the fact that the Fed's actions have turned us into a bunch of speculators and a bunch of gamblers and somebody enjoys picking up pennies in front of a steamroller thinking that if we get some sell-off in the market that gold and silver is going to play the same price action that they did in 2008 and crack. But if they don't, okay, if they don't, then that creates the exact opposite impact where the price skyrockets and does a lot of damage to whoever's, whatever institution is allowing their trader to do that, or the individuals that are taking that risk. Yeah, could be. If it is an institution, I hope this administration doesn't bail them out at the taxpayer expense.

Me too. Yeah. Um, Speaking of commodities, I know you've said before you think commodities are Maybe make me maybe getting ready to take a turn To the upside. So from a long-term perspective, I'm seeing a couple of things. We use a relative strength analysis of the major asset classes. And that's the view from 30,000 feet, because every investment that we have will fit into domestic equities, whether it's real estate or stocks, international equities, real estate

or stocks, commodities, fixed income, currency or money markets. So those are the six asset classes. So domestic equities have been in the lead since 2014, just charging down. Nobody could keep up with them. International flop back and forth, commodities as well. But we've seen some major changes in that relative strength across the board. So what we're seeing now, US equities have had this pretty big correction. Commodities are holding up really well.

They're showing a lot of strength in that category. So we're seeing a potential shift to where, you know, at a minimum, let's say the markets actually crack and go down 30%, but commodities go down 5% or 10%. Just a scenario, not a projection. That shows relative strength, a lot of strength, a lot of demand in that category. Well, once the liquidation is over and they start tracking higher, you would expect, and I'm expecting commodities to outperform the equity indexes over the next three to four years. Just an educated guess. We don't have enough information for a prediction,

but that's what the information seems to be telling us is a highly probable outcome at this moment in time. Information can change with change of stance, but I'm seeing a lot of strength in the commodity space right now. We're not seeing a lot in energy yet, but I want to talk about that in a second. Metals, yeah, copper is up strong on the year. So that's a pretty bullish sign there. Grains, mixed bag. Cattle, cattle are up, but that makes sense

because we have the lowest herds ever. Yeah, it's interesting. So it'd be interesting to see where that really turns. So that's the question then for me is this, which is, so we have a new energy secretary, Chris Wright, and he just came out recently and he said this, and I think he's just saying what Trump wanted him to say, which is he's like, yeah, we're going to drill, you know, and we're going to boost production even if prices hit $50 a barrel. I disagree as an oil investor very directly at the well level.

I'm very familiar with this space. I don't know what he's talking about. And unless he's saying something that, you know, is sort of the talking point of the day, and that's a different game. That's not an economic game. But at any rate, he's from this space, you know, is sort of the talking point of the day and that's a different game. That's not an economic game. But at any rate, he's from this space. He ought to know. I mean, this is like the Dallas Fed survey noted that across all these other shale space

as out there, right, you know, Permian, Oklahoma, non-shale, there's a range of prices there you need to drill at. And so the average sample firms needed 64 a barrel on average to profitably drill. That was now as last year which was higher than the 62 barrel the year before that and on and on and on so really 70 is kind of where you have to be to be sure that you're gonna get a lot of drilling done. So I'm not sure what he meant by 50 a barrel because that's way at the bottom of this range. That really is. And oil has been at close, you know, it's been between 70 and 80 for the whole year, just recently dipped below 70. And so even with that, March 10th, Baker Hughes, you know,

big oil service company came out and said, yeah, we're not seeing it. Oil and gas producers, unlikely to increase spending this year. Output increases are primarily going to come from improved efficiencies rather than new drilling. That's not, that's, that's tricky to ring out. That's different game. So at any rate, we're not going to see a lot more oil and gas coming out of the ground just from prices. Cause here's my number this is very simple Paul people say Chris how do you analyze oil and gas like price if

the price goes up more comes out of the ground if the price goes down less comes out of the ground it's really that simple on any on a year-over-year basis well I mean what I don't understand is what are the incentives for the companies to drill if it's gonna to be at $50 a barrel? Because a lot of these companies have investors, you know, that are going to demand good use of that capital and maximum profitability. And to bring it down to an individual level, be like an employer looking at somebody and go, hey, we're going to cut your pay by 20% over the next year.

Wait a minute, that would be so 70 to, let's just say 30% over the next year, and you're going to have to work 50, 60 hours a week. Pat you on the back because we need to do this. That's just not an incentive. So are they going to give tax incentives? Are they going to give tax deductions? What are they going to do to be able to provide the capital for that funding if they're at $50 a barrel? I mean, I know they want to get it down, but it just doesn't make sense. It's a great narrative for people who don't think deeply about it, but you do such a good job

pointing out the reality behind it. Just then it doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't. And they're gonna have to get real about this sooner than later. And like you said, Drill Baby Drill is a nice slogan, but what are the incentives?

Right? We'll have to be like Jerry McGuire in that movie, right? Show me the money, right? They're gonna have to come up with something and show something because the companies aren't gonna drill, here, let me tell you as an oil and gas investor, if I suddenly read that my company that I've invested in

is putting more money into creating more oil at 50 a barrel, I'm going to take that money out and go put it somewhere else very quickly. Yes. I consider that to be a bad use, and I believe that discipline exists within many more investors than myself out in that space. We've all got religion about this now, right? We don't care about production.

We care about returns. Like that's, that's now we're back to to that well, I mean if I knew that it was going to be $90 a barrel and 24 months and That that it was going to get there. No matter what I would put on as much capacity as I possibly could right now but more more Potential oil being tapped and print it, you know pulled out of the ground, excuse me, get tongue twisted there, pulled out of the ground is more supply, which helps cap that price. So, you know, and that's one thing that we saw what, when we had the big spike where

it got $140 a barrel, they were putting as much in the ground as they possibly could. And then when the price collapses, they stopped drilling as strong as they were. Correct, Chris? You know that much better than I do I'm just going off of memory. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's it's that but we're also coming up on and you know I did that whole long interview with Adam Rosen schwag and we actually look at the story of the United States oil is actually a story Of its shale plays all of its non shale plays have been declining since plays. All of its non-shale plays have been declining since 1970 pretty steadily. So if you want to talk oil and oil growth you're really we're not talking US oil anymore we're talking about the shale space plays the shale space right

and so this is from the short-term energy outlook from the same agency that that Chris Wright oversees the Energy Information Agency the EIA. So I got two periods here noted, Paul. And these are the same length of red lines, so they denote the same passage of time. This is starting from today, casting forward, the EIA thinks we go up and then it wobbles down, so over the next year and a half,

it's expecting this much, that red arrow represents the total gain in US output. That's not a lot. They could be wrong in this, it could be lower, right? this much, that red arrow represents the total gain in US output. That's not a lot. They could be wrong in this. It could be lower, right? Compared to say from 2023 coming into 2025, that same length of time, the height of this red arrow, that's I think the kind of output gain that Trump is looking for.

But even the EIA is like, dude, we can't do this anymore. Like like it's out. It's 50 a a barrel I guarantee you I'll take the under on that bet Guaranteed they have that wrong. That's way too optimistic But when you dig down further into this data, what's really surprising to me Paul's they actually show They think shale is dead flat over that whole period. What gains we do have come from non shale plays and again I have a bone to pick with them about that because

I'm not seeing it. So, if we don't get all that, so this is a really important point, I like to stress this a lot. Too many people, I think, in our country have gotten complacent, Paul, about the idea that we're Saudi America, we can always drill more.

At 50, there's plenty coming out of the ground. We tell these stories, but when you peel that curtain back a few layers, you go, oh, that's not, it's a totally different story. There's a life cycle of different basins and we're kind of at the end of the life cycle for a lot of these shell plays, Permian being the last one standing. So if we have that story wrong and we're not ready for that, then well, then what? You know, then we're going to find out. Well, we would rather have friends all across the Middle East and Africa and South America,

not enemies. Yeah. And I guess a lot of those sanctions would go away really quickly. Yep. Yeah. Hey, as we come into the last bit, Paul, have you been looking at what's going on in Japan? I have been. I've been watching that. Not like a hawk, but I've been paying attention to it. So a highest 10-year yield since 2008. But I mean, this is January of this year. They went from 1.15-ish percent to 1.55 percent. I mean on a percentage basis in Japan terms, this is a big deal.

The magnitude of that move is large. Well, and we had a warning back in August when you had that blip on the yen carry trade start to unwind. I think this is the echo of that. I think that's the same story. Take a look at this. I'll take myself out of here. This is their 20 year bond.

But I think it's pretty easy to see like something is really going on on the right hand side of that curve. But it basically their 20 year bond 2019 went from zero, 0% to 2.27. I've heard, Paul, that around 2% if they had an average weighted bond portfolio of 2% for government bonds, that they would consume 100% of their taxes in interest payments. Oh my goodness. 2%.

That's game over at that point. It is. It continues to rise Yeah, or you sacrifice your entire population to inflation and make them all equally miserable Just but this This is a big deal Something's changing in this story Well, there's you know, and that's just another sign of a lot of things that are changing under the surface of the market

I mean how many things have we talked about today that we've not seen, several things that we've not seen in decades or more? Japanese yields going up, the gold market's doing what it's doing, the shorts that are on silver, all-time record in February, retail investors piling into the market, overweighting in the mag-7. We're to the point where, where things, we heard creaking and popping and we talked about that, you know, this time last year, now you're starting to see things snap.

And of course the markets have not snapped yet. This is, this is a nasty little correction right here, but there are things snapping around the edges and it's not, it's not getting less volatile, it's getting more volatile in different asset classes. And the governments are doing, the Trump administration is doing completely different things than what the prior administration was doing. And if you're just pulling all of this excess funding out,

if they're actually successful and they actually keep going and they get rid of these ridiculous regulations that are out there that are benefiting the larger corporations and helping them monopolize at the expense of the small business, then we're walking into a new era that's going to have a lot of volatility, is going to hurt a lot of people that aren't prepared for it and aren't adaptive. But it's also going to create some of the greatest opportunity that we've seen in decades for the for the investors who are who are open-minded and and critically thinking I for one like buying things at lower prices but I'm weird that way I don't know if

there's got to be a pullback in some things you know I've it's been pretty astonishing watching the pullback in some of the cryptos Yes, I had Ethereum in particular took down pretty hard overall Bitcoin taking the headlines but Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of weird what's going on there Liquidity right Right liquidity. Yeah.

Liquidity is going away and so the prices go down. And I was actually surprised about Bitcoin and Ethereum breaking down like they have because the Trump administration really created a lot of momentum around the Bitcoin reserve, the strategic reserves, supply and demand. You would expect that that would continue to follow through, but those prices have cracked as well. But one thing that we're noticing, it's going to take me a minute to find the chart, but the chart you overlay, NASDAQ and Bitcoin, they pretty much follow each other. So I mean, the correlation is very, very close. And let me see if I can, I hope I have it here. I may

have it in the cryptos, but it's kind of in my crypto charts. It's pretty fascinating how close they're following each other. Is this it? Bitcoin and NASDAQ. Yeah, I'll share this chart here just just just so you can see a picture of what I'm talking about. There we go. So this this green line, the candlestick charts here, the red and green, that's going to be your GBTC. So I'm just tracking the grayscale Bitcoin trust. I know it's not perfect, but it's a representation of Bitcoin. And the green line is the NASDAQ there, NASDAQ index.

So what you can see is as the NASDAQ has gone or as Bitcoin has gone, so has gone the other. So there's a tight correlation on this sell-off that's taking place right here. So just, you know, this is not a perfect correlation. It's just something that easy to look at and see, but they they're sure acting very similar. So I'm not so sure Bitcoin is gonna be... look, I'm not saying it's not, but I'm not so sure Bitcoin is going to be, look, I'm not saying it's not, but I'm not so sure that it's going to be this this digital gold version that people are expecting it to be right now because it's acting more like a

speculative asset than it is that store of value. Makes sense that it's kind of a liquidity gauge. It has been for a while. So I don't know, My best guess is that, you know, the Trump administration is comfortable letting things fall and soften. That's different from Trump 1, who would have been jawboning the market up immediately and telling everybody how great everything is. Now he's kind of like, yeah, you know, if it falls, it falls. And they've said, we know that, you know, they're willing to take some pain now for to set the stage for longer term growth, fine.

We know that the trade wars are, I think everything's still sort of on the table. The US has a lot of leverage, but we'll see where that goes. And then there's the prospect of actual war in Europe. They're doing a lot of war drum beating over there right now. I think it's stupid and ill-advised, but what do I know?

But if they go that path, obviously that creates a lot of disruption. And then as well, the good chance that, you know, we haven't heard the last from China yet on Taiwan, on, you know, hemispherical sort of concerns and things. And so, yeah, I think the stage is set. We had, like you said, we had all those conditions that you reeled off Most expensive stocks ever stretched everybody had this narrative AI is gonna save the world and then reality is gonna set in and Then when we get that reality, we'll get some we'll get some lower prices

Interestingly gold and silver are not singing that same tune. There's There they are saying very clearly to me that somebody with a lot of money would rather have these shiny rocks in their hot little hands than the ones and zeros representing dollars on a hard disk in some bank somewhere. And preference. And Chris, I'll tell you quite frankly, I've got some clients where in the process of averaging into metals and I've been especially gold, I'm like, okay, market's selling off, we're going to get a little cracking and gold here. And it started to give us a little blip and then it surged right back up.

The strength that it is showing right now is ridiculously impressive compared to the liquidation that's taken place in other asset classes. And that's a signal right there. And I remember, I always get concerned, 2008, gold went from a thousand an ounce to 600, a little over 600 at the worst part of the liquidation. So the assumption is, and you can get in trouble by making assumptions, is that if we get a good liquidation, that gold is going to go down as well. But I'm paying attention to the price action more so than I am my perception of what's going to happen.

And gold is showing ridiculous strength right now. And silver actually starting to try to break out of those wedges, it as well. That tells us something. We haven't heard the whole story yet. We will over the next couple of months, but it is talking to us and telling us something right now that we need to be paying attention to agreed So with that hey Paul, thanks for your time today. That's my on any last words for anybody They'll hang in there work your strategy If you don't have a strategy and it's just buy and hold then make your mind up The worst thing that you can do is sell if this market's down 30 or 50 percent by the fall. Not a prediction, but you got to control your emotions. So if you're going to be that passive person, you need to make your mind up now as to whether you're willing to

do that. If not, it's not a bad idea to sweep off some of the top, build up your emergency funds, kind of batten down the hatches. Missed opportunity is a lot easier to make up for than lost capital. And this is the type of environment where things are starting to behave a lot different than what they have in the past. We've got an administration that's not willing to throw us into bankruptcy, essentially, just to try to keep the markets going up for political purposes right now. So this is a time to be careful, you know, be prepared, game theory, what's out. If you don't have somebody and you don't know what to do, feel free to give us a call or somebody else that, that, that runs a risk managed strategy

and can kind of explain the strengths and weaknesses of what can be done. Because the worst thing you can do is hold on until it hits the bottom and then puke out with everybody else. You want to make the decisions before the herd does and this is a time to separate yourself right now. Well said. So if anybody wants to talk to Paul and his amazing team go to peakfinancialinvesting.com Very simple form to fill out within 48 business hours. Somebody from Paul or his team will get ahold of you, schedule an appointment. We can start to review your particular situation. If you want to do that, do it early, do it often,

because Paul and his team are busy. And there's a lot of interest in what they have to offer, particularly as markets get more and more volatile. So with that, peakfinancialinvesting.com. Paul, thanks for your time. Hey, have a great weekend. You too, Chris. Look forward to seeing you next week.

Me too. Thanks for watching. I'm Paul. I'm Chris. I'm the CEO of Peek Financial Investing. I'm the CEO of Peek Financial Investing. I'm the CEO of Peek Financial Investing. I'm the CEO of Peek Financial Investing.

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