Shaun Newman Podcast - #984 - Nick Morianos

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Nick Morianos is Managing Partner at Silver Gold Bull—one of Canada's largest precious metals dealers, with a massive global reach and billions in bullion sold. We dive deep into the current state of the precious metals market, including the evolving gold/silver ratio (which has tightened significantly in recent months amid strong industrial demand for silver and gold's safe-haven status), practical advice for first-time buyers looking to navigate premiums, storage, and timing, the benefits of starting small with fractional gold options for accessibility and diversification, and how Canadians can strategically use their RRSPs (or other registered accounts like TFSAs) to hold physical gold and silver bullion on a tax-advantaged basis. Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Tickets to the Mashspiel:https://www.showpass.com/mashspiel/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Prophet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] the code “SNP” on all ordersGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCulloch. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Pradnik. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Paredi.

This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday. How's everybody doing today? I'm sitting at the SGB headquarters.

You're going to get all of it here today with Nick from SGB. Before we get to there, how about we start out with a little silver gold bull. Did you know that you can hold physical gold and silver in your registered accounts? Silver gold bull can help unlock the potential of your RRSP, TFSA, RRIF, or Kids, RESP by adding physical gold and silver to your account. Nick's going to talk about that a bit. A whole lot of different things coming from the precious metals today. But silver gold bull, they got all the in-house solutions, whether buying, selling, or storing precious metals, you can text or email Graham. I was talking to Graham about all of you, and he was just talking, he had one of the listeners in,

and he said, it's just cool, and I got to give a shout out to all you listeners, because one of you gave him a hug, you know, walking out the door, and he was telling me about it. And it sounds like, you know, really speaks highly of all of you. So if you're curious about anything to do with Silver Gold Bowl, the RRS deadline for making contributions is March 2nd. You can reach out to him about that. but once you've made a contribution as you're going to hear from nick you can invest in physical precious metals at any time and uh you can ask about feature silver deals exclusively offered to the smp listener as well his contact details down on the show notes of course you can go to silver gold bull dot ca or uh com uh the the price rate now so you can hear i'm chuckling right now because me

and nick pull up the current price of silver in the podcast and since we recorded it it's gone up again It's at 129. 41 cents Canadian. So there you go. There's the price. Guardian plumbing and heating. These guys have been keeping homes, farms, and businesses running smoothly since 2010. And when it comes to things that set Guardian apart, it's how they make that life easier for their customers.

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specializing in automotive parts and a wide range of additional products, including safety equipment, welding supplies, fasteners, and janitorial items operating as a Napa auto parts. So if you're looking to get hooked up with Ignite, give them a call, 7808423433. that's Shane Stafford. He's one of the best. And they have their filter sale coming up here very soon. I sit with Shane this coming week. And we're going to get that all the info for you. So pay attention for that.

Next Thursday we'll be talking about it. And looking forward to hopefully saving a bunch of you some money here in 2026. The Mashbill just days away. We're going to be in Kalmar, which is just west of Laduke. It's right near the International Airport in Emmington. It's sold out, so it showed out to all of you folks who bought tickets to that and looking forward to doing that. If you're wanting to sign the petition, we're going to have a couple people there is my understanding to administer that or do that. So I would say show up noon and later would be my guess.

I wouldn't show up first thing in the morning as we're getting the tournament rolling. I would say come to the Kalmar Curling Rink in the afternoon, sometime after noon, and you can sign there. It's going to be something cool that's happening there. The Cornerstone Forum, which we touch on in today's interview, March 28th. Obviously, Silver Gold Bowl and Bow Valley Credit Union, two of the title sponsors of it, bringing it back to Calgary. I was in meetings at the Weston yesterday, and today, as we're just making sure we got everything buttoned up here for March 28th. Obviously, the big news of the week, Neil, Oliver coming along the line to join the guests,

I guess I'm trying to spit out. Premier Daniel Smith is going to be making an appearance. Larry C. Johnson, Tom Luongo, Alex Kraner, Vince Lanshee, Matt Erritt, Chad Prather, Karen Kutowski, Sam Cooper, Tom Bodrovics, 222 minutes. I mean, it is going to be an exciting day. Looking forward to seeing you all there. If you haven't bought tickets, there are still tickets available,

and make sure you don't wait. And if you're staying a night, make sure you book a room on the room block. It's on the website. And look forward once again to seeing you all. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, X, Facebook, or Substack. Make sure to subscribe. Make sure to leave a review

and consider becoming a paid member on Substack. That's one way to support what I do on this end. Appreciate you all. All right. Let's get on to that. Tale of the tape.

Today's guest is a partner at Silver Gold Bull. I'm talking about Nick Morianos. So buckle up. Here we go. All right, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Nick Moriano here in Silver Gold Bull headquarters.

The whole thought, Well, first, thanks for having me in, Nick. Yeah, yeah, it's obviously always my pleasure. Yeah, well, normally we have it. I wanted this to be in the new studio, but here I am. I had Luke Gromond on last week, and he brought up some things with storage, and my brain immediately came here. But I think before we get into any of that, how would we just start with?

What is it going on in metals? Like, every day I have a phone call with one of the book club members. We sit there. We go, did you see the price of silver? Yeah, you saw the price of silver. Obviously, you have, you have, boots on the ground feel for dealing with it. Let's start there. Like just metals in general, what on earth is happening from your lens? It's pretty fair to say that it's been crazy.

I mean, properly crazy. I think this is really, there's a small moment at the beginning of COVID. I'm going to say, well, early COVID. Say late spring, early summer, where people started to chase price. First time that had really meaningfully happened since I want to say, I want to say, say 2010, 2011. Other than that, it's always been people buying on dips, people buying on dips. This, though, has been crazy. Now, frankly, you know, I can't speak to technicals. I can't, I'm not an analyst. I don't have the first clue about any of that. As for physical, it's been, it's a mess. Like, that market has been crazy. And frankly, like, when I think about it, The best initial quick quip that I can give anybody is that we are presently buying inventory

from sister companies, so mints that we are related to through our parent company for April delivery. So we're forward buying. There's constantly metal coming. But at this point, we are forecasting it's going to be busy out into we can't say when. So we are taking that we're taking that plunge, as we often do, buying forward. It is, I think, really what I've been trying to share with people, because my phone's been blowing up, I'm not even in sales, really. I'm the CEO of the company. A lot of used to do sales, but a lot of it is, it's really just making sure everything works

behind the scenes from legal, compliance, everything like that. And I've been explaining to people that really the bottleneck that we've run into, has been this market wasn't ready for or built for these kinds of prices. There was a fixed amount of liquidity that was built into our niche market of bullion to help it, basically grease, to help it move smoothly. And at prices like what we're seeing, you know, $90 silver, but even really it started at $50 silver. And then moving on up into like gold into the 4,000s,

You just, everybody's pinched. The amount of money that they had, no matter how much it is, and a company like ours is quite well capitalized, you're just finding all the way from the mints right through into the financing of the inventory that sits in vaults ready to use. It's all a mess. I know you said 90 and you use American terms on the podcast. I always speaking as I sit here, right?

Like I do this every day. I always should have it sitting right beside me. But I go, as we sit here talking, the current price is. silver is $128.55 Canadian. And I always harken back to that original time. I gave Daniel Smith the silver coin and I don't know. Nobody else probably remembers it.

I remember it because I was like, I didn't, I don't even know if I can give this to you. She's like, I don't know. What's it worth? And I was like $38, $42 somewhere in there. That wasn't that long ago. Now if I were to give Daniel Smith the same ounce of silver, 128.56. Well, you know, and that's a spot price. That's a paper price.

The fact of the matter is, when you, you factor all these soft costs into everything, the prices are much higher. Like there is not an abundance. I mean, there is enough physical above ground, but really we went through a period where there wasn't even full on minting happening. There was lots of demand and nobody knew how to satisfy minting because of that sort of two to three week period by the time the metal comes in the door at the refinery and goes out as bullion. Those entities, those mints and refineries were having to finance that inventory and financing levels are going crazy. So you factor all the additional costs in and it's this market is, I keep saying this. I never thought I'd see a market like we saw in COVID.

And after COVID, I thought, I've seen everything. That was three years of insanity. And here we are with another one that just threw a curveball at somebody who's frankly, you know, been in this industry now for 16, 17 years. And we've probably done somewhere in the neighborhood of just under 10 billion dollars in sales and I all of us like my partners and I just sit stunned sometimes looking at each other like we knew this was going to happen but boy did we not see it quite happening the way that it did when you talk about bottlenecks could you just explain that to me again I've heard I think at Lanchie talked about it um I've heard a couple different podcasts talk about the bottlenecks but you know like when you look at the hundred twenty eight dollars like Armstrongs come on lots I mean you know all the

have been on the podcast, tons of people know about it. They see that price and they associate a ton of different things to it. Is it just strictly, I'm probably oversimplifying, but the bottleneck part of this is that part of the reason of the, you know, it's just going to crazy levels and I don't know, and maybe you could just explain the bottleneck of silver. Yeah, I mean, I just, I want to be cautious not to get over my skis and say anything that's not necessarily correct.

but one of the big problems that exists in silver. So we talked about financing. It's a huge, huge problem because silver is a much more difficult metal to deal with. It's compared to gold, it's much more voluminous, although that's starting to change too, and I know we're going to touch on that later on based on the ratio. It's always been something that's been more speculative in nature when you talk about the way that its positions are taken in markets on paper.

and then when you have to settle, the logistics of it are, yeah, they're just really challenging. So 100% on the logistics side, like the stuff that we were, you know, starting to hear about earlier in 25 with this, like this London to New York stuff. When it's gold, it's doable. When it's silver, things can get blown out of proportion really, really quickly because, frankly, there's never enough silver to satisfy the paper markets. that's obviously something that a lot of people know about and it's a critical factor that there are way more contracts, way more ounces of contracts that are created than there ever are physical ounces to back them up. When I talk bottlenecks in our industry, sure, we always, we have these issues of moving stuff. It's a huge problem. Gold you can chuck on a plane. It's relatively cheap. Flight

across the country, it's no problem. Silver, you put a pallet of silver on a plane or two pallets of silver and you're tapped because you're talking about tonnage at that point. So it's a little bit more challenging. In our case, and this has always been the case, is there can be lots of silver in these big 1,000 ounce bars sitting on pallets at refineries or mince. But getting that turned into usable product is just, it's something that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort. And frankly, there's only a few that really do it, meaningfully. We're blessed that we're related to the two big ones in the United States that are non-government. And at the end of the day, it just, it always backs up quick. And it's just a matter, they're humming now at 100%. But this is going to take something where

if we don't get a bit of a lull in the market, at least on the physical side, we're not going to see reprieve for months. The talking about plane for, so when you're talking about transporting gold versus silver and you're done like, you know, you get a couple of pallets, my brain goes, okay, in Canada specifically. But I mean, the United States be no different. It's a, it's a giant country. So instead of having a whole bunch of gold in five hours, you go, if you order a bunch of silver, we're talking about a semi load coming down the highway. That is what that's exactly that's exactly what happens. So now you're talking about days. Yes. And then it can't catch up. And so that's the logistical part of the bottleneck. Correct. Yeah. And then you factor in that gold is,

is, um, the financing on gold is much more stable. It does fluctuate a lot. But financing on silver can go, it can change by a factor of, you know, 10% overnight. And that can just create tremendous amounts of risk. And then everybody just, you know, like, it just causes a ripple through the market and, and like a shimmer through the market on the production side. But meanwhile, the demand side can be ripping, like super hot. Yeah, it's, you know, there's just, it's such a fascinating metal. I mean, for so long it's, you know, it, you know, we were talking earlier and I was saying, you almost looked at me and said, why am I the one that saw this coming, but you didn't? And it wasn't the fact that I didn't see this coming. It's that

this just felt in some ways to me almost like the 08 financial crisis where you knew it was coming. People were telling you that it was coming, but you didn't really realize it was happening until you were in the middle of it. And this market just developed in such a way and with such ferocity that I, you know, I sometimes sit just stunned. Like obviously it's a blessing to have been a participant in it for as long as we have to have been a believer in it and have acquired a position in it. But I just really thought the other side of it was going to look really different. I thought that we were going to see a lot of other economic fields, maybe struggling where I think they are struggling, but they haven't broken yet. And meanwhile, we have these unbelievable prices in

in silver. I mean, let's not discount gold, too. You'd want to talk Canadian dollars. So $62, $63, $6,400, and now it's a gold. So it's just, it's been really something that's just been a bit of a like a stunner. And I think it's, it probably is telling us that, you know, not in a speculative way, but really there's a long way to go because the other side of this hasn't happened, which is a lot of the, you know, now I think kind of talked about, almost joked about issues with the economy haven't really taken hold and actually broken yet.

64, 40, 35, and 35 cents Canadian. Sorry, I like to. That's fine. But every, every day almost now, I'm checking it and just reading it out loud on the ad reads because I'm just like, you know, I wasn't, when I first started, I wasn't checking it, right? Like, you know, but it's funny. We were joking about it because I'm like, you know, either all these people are insane or this is coming faster than we think. And then now that it's like ripping away, like the silver mar, it's just like wild. And, you know, I don't know why I just put together all these pieces with all these different interviews.

You know, like, this feels like it's coming real fast. Like it's going to be hitting here soon. And then you start to watch it. I was joking with a couple of the listeners, you know, the Cozes showed up to them. Their family dynamics of their kids buy a bit of silver. And then like by the next morning we're sitting around the breakfast table, it's got up four bucks an ounce. and he's just fist-pumped. I'm like, so I've been talking about this

with just everyday people, I guess, almost, no, for sure, on the daily. On the daily, this is the number one conversation I had. I was telling you, I'm going on with Ben Perrin, Bitcoin guy, he goes, what do you want to talk about? And there's a group of us going on. And I'm like, full stop, that the conversation I'm having everywhere right now is the price of silver.

Like, I mean, it's just going crazy. You're in review. Terry was in here, and she brought up RRSPs, and we'll certainly get to that. But on it, we were joking. are we going to see $100 Canadian, and now it's silver by the end of the year? And we did, and then it dropped,

and now it's gone. Just absolutely, what are we, day 14, day 15, wherever we sit, folks. Yeah. 128. Like, it's just interesting to watch this carry on, which brings me back to Luke Groman. Luke Groman said, you know,

if you don't know the vault you're in, if it's certain types of vaults, you've got to be very careful, because essentially it's, you think it's your gold, it's not your gold. And I thought of vaults, and I'm like, well, immediately, I just went, I should have Nick on, you know, and come here and talk to you about what you guys do here

so that if people are, well, I don't know, I assume they're like me. They heard that and they're like, oh, well, where can I store it if I wanted to store it somewhere that isn't digging a hole on the farm? Which is good too. Where would I store it? I thought, I thought a SGB, to be honest. Yeah, so that's a really important piece of the puzzle. I mean, you own something. It's very valuable. I think it's important to note. You can't really put it on homeowners insurance. Bullion is a little different than jewelry, and I think even jewelry is capped. So, you know, and people have always had, I think, a tacit interest, like they've had an interest in storage, but now with the values kind of going where they are, you know, it's amazing. 500 ounces of silver use, let's just talk silver

for right now. 500 ounces of silver forever in a day was a hefty amount of money. It was, you know, you're talking about 20,000 bucks. Now it's like $60,000. Like you're talking about, like these numbers have just gone completely and totally squarely. So with regards to storage, it is a real going concern here. I mean, full disclosure, this building is, you know, it's something where we're starting to look at, like, oh, I think we're going to need a second building. And we're talking about it as partners. the benefits of it, you know, really are down to, let's just talk plain and simple, just the best kind of storage you can get, and then we'll get into the specifics of the partner that you're with.

The best kind of storage you can get really is allocated, segregated storage. So when it's allocated, it's in your name and your name only. And when it's segregated, it's held completely separately from the next person. There's a physical barrier between the two. So there's no chance that your gold and their gold or your silver and their silver. are touching each other and could potentially get mixed up. An added benefit that we have in this location, our HQ, that you can't get in, let's say, a Brinks, which is also a great alternative, but what you can't get in a Brinks is you can't

get put directly on insurance. Here you can get put directly on title. So in the, you know, the small probability or possibility of a catastrophic loss, the payment from insurance goes insurance directly to the individual. and with nobody in between. But then, you know, you want to find a good compromise. Like, there's a lot of people who want to store their metal outside of Canada. Let's say, let's just talk about Canadians. We operate on both sides of the border. We're in Las Vegas too. But, you know, they'll say, where can I store it? I want to store it in, and there's great solutions. We have partners down

in Cayman Islands with SWP and a number of others and the Brinks Network around the world. But people often say like Singapore and stuff like that. And that's fine. And I certainly wouldn't poop. it, but I mean, we're just in a weird world, right? Like, you talk a lot about geopolitics. Things are so off the rails. Obviously, we see the level of encroachment that's happening in Europe, which is only getting worse on privacy, with censorship, with property rights, with everything. And God forbid, we go another level into CBDCs or whatever it might be. And now it's like, we're really under the government's thumb. So you kind of want to be close to it. I empathize with people that want to have it in a different jurisdiction, but you do at certain levels have to report not what

exactly you own, but the value of it. And at least in your, you know, if it's somewhat local to you, whether it's storing in Brinks because you're on the other side of the country in Toronto or Montreal or if you're in Vancouver or if you're in Alberta, for sure, having it here or for the Americans, like having it in a local vault makes a lot of sense because you can probably get quicker access. Like in this vault, you know, you're talking business. days, not Saturdays and Sundays, but you're 24 hours and we can get you in here to either pick up, drop off. And if you want liquidity, it's instant. You call to sell. We issue funds right away. It might be in your account next day, but it's free and clear of holds or encumbrances.

Like that's the kind of thing that you need. Like this is, you know, for a lot of people, this is a bank account for them, an unofficial bank account. This is where they put their savings. This is where they're putting their trust. So it's top tier. Can government come in and confiscate it? That's what Gromond and me were talking about, right? Because you go back to, forgive me, you probably know the year, 19, and the 30s, I think. 30 something. They walk in, say, we want everybody's gold, right? And he goes, now how many people actually, it's kind of like the gun confiscation going

out in Cape Britain. Yeah. It's like they wanted 200 guns, they got 25. You know, if that were to happen, how many people are actually going to get about their goal? Now, in fairness, if they don't, this is where it comes back to the Gromman conversation. It's like, you want to have control of it. So if they store it here, can government walk in and be like, give us all your gold?

Oh, that's a big question. I mean, the government has a lot of power. The government can, depending on how it is that they go about setting that edict, they might be able to. I think the big thing with us is, you know, like a company like us is like our whole ethos has been built on doing everything by the letter of the law, doing it. right, making sure that, you know, we follow every rule so that we're not, you know, subject to any sort of undue pressure from outside forces. But we also believe in this, like full disclosure, my partners and I started this company because we believed in this industry. We were in mining equities and we were in physical metal that we just found an inefficiency. So for us, it would be

something where, I mean, I can assure you if we felt like something was coming, we would probably be telling people like get it out. You know, whether you can stop the government. I mean, no, you can't. And in particular, when it's money, it's CRA, it's a holding level. But I mean, if there's any warning signs there, that's the beauty of it. You just make a phone call and you take it home. Don't we know everything wonderful about the government is? There's always warning signs, right? They're not exactly the fastest moving entity under the sun. So, you know, I think that's, you know, important for people to understand, right? And don't forget. I mean, they made it illegal to own. They didn't go around door to door to confiscate it. Now,

that's an interesting thing. I mean, there's a million ways you can go about speculating what might happen. I've personally, you know, I feel like Martin has talked about this, but I personally to me, I don't think they'll ever go around door to door collecting it. There's certainly, there's a lot of it and there's a lot of value there. But when you think about the numbers you're talking about from a debt perspective, governmental, it's kind of, you know, a pinprick, really. you know, ultimately, you're talking about more taking it from banks and places like that, then they can make a, you know, a substantial dent in it. But to go around logistically door to door to try and aggregate it, like, no.

And what they probably would do is it probably be something like the luxury tax. And the same 25 people, like you said, out east that gave up their guns, it would be like the same proportion that would do it. And everybody else would have, you know, unfortunately have suffered a tragic boating accident where it would be at the bottom of a lake somewhere is my guess. Yes, I would also advise that as well. Let's talk ratio gold to silver.

Lots of people, as the price of silver keeps coming up, the ratio, well, no, I'm going to let you do it because I'm going to butcher this. Racial gold, silver, walk me through this and the importance of it as it gets less ounces of silver to buy an ounce of gold, I hope I said that correct. Yes, it is. So what can be said about this?

I mean, I think that there's, this is something like if you go to wherever it is that you go to find your favorite pricing, like your favorite website for gold and silver prices, if it's one that carries a lot of stuff like price of indices and different big things, oil, et cetera, there's always a spot there for gold silver ratio. It's been there forever. You know, one of your favorite guests, Tom Luongo, actually, I know in his market reports, every so often he goes through a detailed analysis of it. And this move right here has been nothing short of breathtaking. It's not the first one that I've seen in this industry at this level, but this is probably the second biggest. And it will probably be the biggest by the time it's all said and done. So the importance of it is, number one, there's a lot of people who talk, I think, they talk

very definitively about where it's going to go or where it has to go. I don't know that that's necessarily the case. Like there's numbers that get thrown around like 16 to 1 and what have you. And they could come true. You never know. But, you know, frankly, I can speak from my now. It's getting, you know, my, my tenure in this industry is, like I said, it's like 15, 16, 17 years. The lowest I've seen is 30 to 1. And we're presently today, I believe you and I looked at it. It's 50 to 1. During COVID, it blew out to the largest spread I've ever seen, which was 120-ish to 1. So the importance of it is

a lot of people, now the market analysts will tell you that, that from a trading perspective, there's definitely, there's triggers that will make, you know, portfolio managers switch their allocations. So when silver gets too expensive and the ratios like it is, they might start selling their silver and they might go back into gold and vice versa. When gold gets to, that spread blows out too much, they might start to allocate more of their portfolio of the silver. Because the historical trend sits where normally, roughly in ratio. I'm going to, you know, that's a really good question. I'm going to steal, gosh, I wish I had it in front of me. Like you sandbag me here a little bit. It's actually, you know, Tom Luongo had, he had plotted it. And I, and I want to say, oh, God, I want to say in the last sort of 30 years-ish, it's got to be between 70 and 90 to one. Okay. Now, you know, don't hold me to that. No, no, no, no, but it gives a general ballpark where it is. park and so yeah 120 was extreme and yeah so if you're sitting there watching this you go it's

120 it's going to come back to at least i don't know 90 at the at the at the low end or high end whatever you want to call that and you know if you're looking at the possibilities you know i could always go to 15 which would be an unreal run on silver's part it would be incredible like unbelievable and now um we're a unique company and so much as um we've like ultimately we've seen sold near 50-50 silver to gold historically on a dollar average, not ounces, obviously. And that's abnormal for a company quite like ours. And I think it's something to do with, we as partners, we've interacted with a lot of customers over the years, a lot of big customers. And we were very strong advocates for buying silver when a lot of people were just like gold,

gold, gold. And I think I know our logic was there was definitely going to be a period where silver was going to do a lot of the heavy lifting for people that ultimately want it to own gold. So, and it really has. So that coming back to the importance of the ratio, sitting at 50 to 1, it's really interesting. Like, what's the buy right now? If you want to own silver, of course, it's silver. If you want to own gold, it's probably gold. But there will still be some people that are thinking, you know what, I think this is going to, this is going to go even lower that ratio. Yeah, that ratio. And it's going to get you more gold for your money, you know, by turning your silver into gold down the road. So it is honestly, it's been astonishing. And I think it probably

still has more room to go. But at this point, definitely, like if your goal is to own gold, you have to at least give it some pause and think, hmm, should I just go into gold right now? You know, if I'm holding it for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, whatever the case might be, depending on your outlook and what your purpose is for owning precious metals, it's something that you might think about. It has been a, a like simply a remarkable move like but then again like you know well you're a hockey guy we're both hockey guys right now i think you got to say silver's a wagon like it is just it is a wagon like that's you know what i mean not the calgary flames more like you know that would that would that would that would be a sad wagon and i'm a flames fan so it's it's it's been a wagon to watch

like i mean you know every day i flip on did you know to read the ads and uh Oh, yeah, I got to check out the silver price. So I'm like, I'm flipping to it. I'm like, I can't believe it, right? I don't know how many calls I take or text I get now saying, have you seen the Silver Price Day? And I always wait until I'm running through the ads. I mean, this is a special case because I'm pulling it up because normally I read the ad.

And I'd be like, holy crap, it's at 128. And I'll be curious if it's gone up or down since then. But, I mean, that's even a move from yesterday when we were talking about it, folks. Like, it just keeps going up. So a wagon is a perfect T-shirt to have where silver's falling out the back and there's a wagon. There's an idea for somebody. But I mean, like, it's been, I agree. I'm like, I don't think it's done yet. It's not. But, you know, again, like, in the interest of kind of that, like, PSA moment here where it's like, you know, okay, everybody needs to just like kind of take a deep breath.

Of course, there are going to be massive gyrations in this market. This is going to be kind of the type of market where, depending on what your participation level in it has already been, it changes the game for you, right? Like, if you've been buying the whole way, it doesn't really, it doesn't impact you as much. I mean, yeah, you're buying more ounces at a higher level. Whether it's gold or silver is kind of irrelevant at this point. But your cost average doesn't move to too much unless you're doing outsized purchases at these levels because you found, you know, newfound liquidity. When you're, you know, and for the people that are making their first purchases, it's kind of one of those things where you have to take a deep breath.

Think about why it is that you're doing this, because I think it's really important. Whether you're buying stocks, whether you're buying precious metals, you're buying anything, you want to have like that really calm moment where you've reflected on and you think, okay, my goal in this is, you know, what is it? We've always been really big advocates for wealth preservation. And like I'm only bringing it up now because I think a lot of people are obviously at the point where they're just like they're speculating. And that's, you know, this is the kind of market that you speculate in. And, you know, if you listen to a lot of analysts, you don't know what's going to

happen between here and the end. So it could be, it is probably going to almost certainly be a wild ride with big fluctuations up and down. But, you know, at least you know, you think you know where you're going at the end. But you obviously want to have that moment where you say, you know, is this going to be the type of purchase and this size of purchase that's going to do. keep me up at night or is this the kind that is manageable and whatever happens I don't care because the goal here is to just get that money tucked away in something safe and secure that isn't subject to the debasement of currency that is let's say outside of the system which isn't being put into like I don't know what are we at now nine year 10 year 11 12 year bull market inequities

like that's kind of why people were buying when it was boring and you know, had no interest in it. And it kind of still, you know, stands true right now. Yeah, I was never a big anything playing hockey. I didn't worry about any of this stuff. Everybody knows on this show, at least knows most of my journey, right, from hockey player to talking to hockey players to, you know, COVID and then going down, you know, I just had a listener comment. What was it? I had Tom and Alex on. And he commented, I still remember when this host was still green behind the ears or something like that back on the first one. He's really grown since then and I'd chuckled because I mean there's been 22 episodes

with Alex and Tom now, not to mention all the other people that I've brought in. And I remember listening about silver four or five years ago and I can't remember if it was Martin who talked about it first or one of those. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And I remember the ratio and hearing that, I'm like, that's really interesting. No, I mean, the ratio is really important. And this was bound to happen. Like, you know, without getting into like boring details,

silver has been a suppressed commodity for a very long time. I think it took our market a long time to come to terms with the fact that it is an industrial metal along with being a precious metal. It's technically it is a precious metal. It's categorized. such, but it has maybe in most markets more industrial properties than precious. And a lot of people, when you tell that to them, they get really upset because it's like, you know, it's like you kick their dog or something. But in reality, I think in a lot of ways, it actually lends itself to the story of the fundamentals of the commodity itself, right? Like, it is needed. Technically,

gold isn't needed. Gold is cherished. Gold is becoming money again. I mean, it's an important conversation. I believe it was just in the last week, 10 days, that gold is now basically has become the number one reserve asset when you're talking about sovereigns. It is, I believe now, by dollar value, it's surpassed U.S. Treasuries. But again, like, there's no real need for it. I mean, jewelry. That's about it. Silver is in everything. So it's important. That puts pressure on it. That makes people not want it to go up in price. But when it did go up in boy, you knew it was going to really go. And Lord knows now, you know, banks and everything have, there's still lots of them that are shorting it. But a lot of them have gone long. And a lot of them

were long the whole way too. So it's just created such a fascinating dynamic. And yeah, even for for dudes like us that have been in this for a long time, like we sometimes, I don't know if this is a good or bad thing to tell people, but sometimes we sit around looking at each other like, what on earth is going on? You know, like truly, truly just stumped. And we don't speculate at all in the business. It's not about that. It's actually entirely hedged.

We just have to figure out what kind of inventories we're going to need. But again, the markets, we take care of all those hedging and exposure positions through markets. But yeah, just in our quiet moments of reflection, it is just like, wow. And there's a little bit of like, I told you so, you know, for the asshole. that were like, you're idiots. So that kind of feels good too, but we try and keep those to ourselves. I want to talk about trade, fractional trade,

but also, you know, I was talking with, we were talking with Bill and Graham upstairs, right? So listeners know Graham lots because they've probably reached out to them, I hope, right, and had maybe some different conversations. And they brought up a really interesting point on the first purchase being the scariest person. purchase, right? Like this idea, you know, like, oh, am I going to really do this? And, you know, just walking people through that. And I don't know, your thoughts on not only fractional trade,

but the scariest purchase being your first. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think in a lot of cases, when you have anything that is something that you think you covet and it's like, it's something that's gripped your fascination, but especially, you know, if it's in a market where it's being talked about, it's, let's say, you know, a commodity, it's really, moving, the first time that you might want to go and make a purchase, you might think, well, if I'm going to make a purchase, it has to be meaningful. It has to be a lot of money. What's the point in me putting in this little sum of money? Like, it's not going to change my life. But in a lot of ways, the most important part of the first purchase is that you get pot committed.

It's that it gets you into the game. And not in a sense of anything other than you'll never really understand something until, in my case anyways, I shouldn't generalize. But I can't possibly understand something until I actually have participated in it. So you can tell me, hey, go be interested in curling. I've never curled because you've got the, we've got the match going up on the weekend. And full disclosure, folks, I'm not a curler either. I'm about to, I think the last time I put on the curling shoes was an oilman's back in my oil field days. And I, I like, had nerves about it because I just like, I'm a competitive guy. I want to win.

And I know walking into curling, I'm not going to win. It is the most deflating thing. Tews is probably running around somewhere right now, fist pumping. Because if we meet in a match, it is going to be entirely my team has nothing to do with me. I'm going to throw two rocks. They're going to suck. And yeah, anyways, carry on curling. Well, no, I mean, but it's still actually, it's a relevant analogy.

Like, nobody wants to buy something that fluctuates in price and see it go down in price. and everybody's kind of like, you know, but you got to remember, number one, just getting a little bit in your hand will change things. You may not like it, but what likely will happen is you'll say, holy cow, like I remember we used to do trade shows years and years ago. And we would put, back then it wasn't as risky. We put an ounce of gold in somebody's hand or we'd put an ounce of silver in their hand. And it was astonishing. Like this like visceral like, oh my goodness response as their hand would, you know, dip. And they'd be like, it weighs more than I thought.

that kind of moment really syncs up nicely with making your first purchase. So again, it doesn't have to be, you're not betting the farm. I mean, in general, going back to my previous point, if you're spending enough that you're uncomfortable and you're staying up at night and you're worrying, you probably spent too much, right? And maybe it's something that you have to stage over time. But that first time that you buy, you just have to kind of think to yourself, like, why are you doing it?

And if everything jives, you take that plunge. anecdotally, I never did it with Bitcoin. And it makes no sense, right? I'm that person who for years and years on the phones when I used to do sales, I used to tell people, like, you don't have to put all of it in. In fact, you probably shouldn't. You should have what you feel is a percentage of your portfolio in hard assets. It doesn't have to be gold or silver. It could be a mix of them. It could be Bitcoin. It could be a bunch of different things that you're pulling together as an alternative, something that is, that runs counter to, you know, your regular portfolio or the other things that you own like real estate or whatever it might be. And I used to advocate for just like make a purchase,

you know, and then see where it goes and just cost average buy over time. And that has been quite successful for people. So yeah, that first purchase is, um, it's a big one. I remember roughly seven years ago, folks, and we want to get your thoughts on this. When I was first, while we were broke Mel and I were relatively recently married. We'd had our first kid, then we had our second kid, we'd just bought a house,

and we just didn't have a pot to pissing. I mean, it was just full stop. We were just broke, right? Like, I mean, you're working your bag off, and you're just trying, you know, and then you go, oh, you just put a little money in.

And I'm like, oh, that's nice. I remember hearing this back, I mean, just put a little money, and I got no money. And I read a book. I read a whole bunch of books, you know, it was back when we started the book club out.

And one of the books that I read, I think just on my own, because I got into this realm. Like, how the hell do I dig myself out of a hole that, you know, you want to get out of? And, like, and so, you know, Mel and I put our collective heads together, and we were just trying to figure things out. I read a book, very simple book, Richest Man in Babylon. It was so simple to me, right? It was talking about goats and sheep and, you know, you just, you sell a little bit of wool, and you put those coins away, a portion of them,

and eventually your coins reach it off and you can go buy another goat or sheep, and I'm way oversimplifying a very simple book. I remember thinking, man, that actually makes a ton of sense. So that's what I started doing. I just started putting a little bit of money away. And for people that are listening to this, the money going away was so that I could start a podcast and take an actual leap into it and try and do this. And so I was just putting a little bit of money away every couple months, actually every month. And every year, that just became a little bit more to where I'm like, I think I could do this.

And I'm sure my lovely wife, if you ever listen to any of these, she'll be like that was a stressful time as my husband was off doing what he's doing now in saying that fractional trade right of hers i've heard bvc u on the show uh you know talk about this absolutely and i've and to me i'm like oh man that's brilliant because now you know like you got five dollars you have fifty dollars got five hundred dollars i don't know what your level is i just know times today are tough people are um struggling to make ends meet or they're going to just the grocery store. They're not struggling to buy the same load of groceries now costs 2x, 3x, whatever it is.

They're making tough decisions. They're making tough decisions. And so when I see fractional trade, I don't know, your thoughts on just putting a little bit away to help grow that pot so that you can get out of any situation you may currently find yourself. Maybe even for young people listening this, starting out the way I was several years ago, young family, not a pot to piss in, man. It was, you know, there was lots of nights where I was like, we were fine.

It just didn't have any excess income, or at least I didn't think at the time I had any. I really had to go look at it. Mel, Mel was amazing. Like, we're just, well, actually, we got an extra 20 bucks over here and we got an extra 60 bucks over there, right? Like, that's what it was. Well, I mean, when you think about, you know, before we get into trade, when you think about the difference about when we were growing up compared to now, like, it's, truly death by a thousand cuts. So how many things in your life are 1995? And you think in and of themselves, any one of them, you know, obviously oversimplifying it, Netflix, Disney, you know, an extra service

on your mobile plan, whatever it might be, right? You know, you're looking at your Instagram, it's New Year's. You're like, oh, I got a little bit of an intertube on me. Maybe I'll sign up for those military exercises or whatever. I'm sounding like I've done this before, but, kind of maybe have. And you know, and it's like, oh, it's just, it's no big deal. It's just a one-time purchase. But those things really, really kill you. And I'm certainly not here to tell anybody that, you know, how to spend your money because Lord knows we're all guilty of it. But when you come to trade, this is something that I think that, you know, our industry is kind of, you know, this isn't like an infomercial, it's not supposed to be. But like the bullying industry is,

traditionally has been full of a certain cohort of people that have a certain way of thinking of the world. Namely, they're like, you know, they're very much like, I'm going to buy it. I want it delivered in two days, like a day or two days, and I want it in my hand and nobody's ever going to see it again. And there's a lot to be said about that. But, you know, we're younger generations who we're all trying to court into, you know, this industry. And I think we've really been benefited by crypto. Like there's no two ways about it. I think it's a shame that our industries don't work more closely together because I think that crypto and Bitcoin have done a lot of heavy lifting for the precious metals industry. And part of that is digital. And, you know,

for instance, in our case, it's trade. So what we've built, and we're not the first to have done it. And we partner with Bow Valley Credit Union and Brett and his team over there. And they've seen great success with this is we've built a fractional gold and silver system. where, you know, normally a lot of the things that you hear about buying paper is, you know, buying ETFs, exchange traded funds. And those, to really, really simplify it, they're full of a lot of stuff. But that stuff isn't necessarily gold. It's representations of gold. You know, contracts, paper contracts, this, that, some physical, et cetera, depending on the prospectus. and that doesn't jive with thinking of your average, you know, bullion buyer.

Like the bullion buyer wants physical. So what we've got and a few others in the industry is we've built a physically backed fractional gold and silver offering. So let's say you've got five, 10, 50, 100, $1,000 left over at the end of the month. Not the whole amount of it that you got left over, but maybe you allocate a portion. And the reason I said five is you can go as low as like five bucks if you want. to and just buy, honestly, like fractions of an ounce of silver and gold. And he's like, well, what the hell is that going to do for me?

Well, actually, what it does is a couple of things. Again, you know, once you've looked into everything and you've decided this is what you want to do, is number one, you're putting your money away in something that isn't likely to face quite the same debasement. I mean, gold and silver are going to fluctuate. They're going to go up. They're going to go down. They're going to go all over the place.

But it puts it somewhere that isn't necessarily, you know, at the whim of your debit card where you go and buy, you know, an extra thing, you're like just for a quick hit of dopamine. And you can actually get into some really good habits of just constantly putting a little bit of money away. Now, if you've got a lot of means and you, you know, you say, I'm not really comfortable paying these premiums over spot price like these, because they've, they've grown, right? As inventory is stretched and everything is expensive, you could allocate your money there. Or like I said, you can buy over time in the increments that you're comfortable with. And then all of a sudden, a few months, a year, two years down the road, you look in your account,

you're like, holy cow, notwithstanding any appreciation, you're like, I put away a good chunk of money here. And if you want to take physical possession of it, there's a one touch, like a one button where basically you, because you can't take possession of these big bars or a piece of those big bars, but there's mechanisms where you can get physical delivery of product for what you've saved up in there. So it just takes a little bit of the whole like, oh my goodness, $100. $120 for an ounce of silver. Or you're looking at an ounce of gold and you're like, I don't have that type of money sitting around, right? It's essentially, you know, for again, back to the the crowd that's into Bitcoin, crypto, etc. It's kind of like, you know, everybody says, I'm into Bitcoin, but how many people go out and buy a whole Bitcoin? Like,

no, they buy like the Satoshes. They just buy Satz. So fractions of it. It's the same sort of thing. But it's physically backed. It's settled end of day. There are. is always more gold and silver in that pool than there is pledged. So there's always an excess in there. It might not be a huge excess. Sometimes it might be more or less, but there's always more in there than is pledged. And what's also important is that pile is just for the people that are participants in it. Now, it's grown quite a bit, like this trade program, you know, it's been, it's been really good. In NiagaraGit, it's probably a few hundred million dollars, but this is just Canadians, predominantly, but also Americans, who are just chipping away. And that's what they're doing. They're saying, you know what,

I'm going to prioritize the things that matter in my life. And I'm probably going to go without a couple of things that I didn't really, really need. They're kind of just, you know, maybe they're frivolous wants. And I'm just going to sock away a little bit of money, you know, because obviously we've all got to be looking out for the future. I know I'm going to give a show to Terry again because she walked in and reminded me of this. Nick's always worried that it sounds like an infomercial. I'm like, I don't know.

I want information. Who better to come to than the people I know in the precious metals and discuss these things with because I get asked these questions. I'm like, I have no idea. And they're like, well, you should just have somebody from SGB on because they can walk us through

some of the questions we have. And Terry reminded me, I got a question on, year in review, about RRSPs, right? The deadline March 2nd. Oh, yeah, yeah. And how that works and, you know,

whether or not they can work with SGB to do that. And maybe we could just talk quickly about, not quickly, but we got a few minutes left, but RRSPs. It's funny, before I showed it to Bill for writing out that, that,

that ad read. There is like 17 acronyms in like a two sentence pair. I'm like, man, a lot. R. ESP, TFSA. Correct. Anyways, showed it to Bill. People have been asking about it. And I remember hearing about it like three years ago and being like, you can do that.

Silver Gold Bolt, can you do it through SGB? And then if you were so inclined to do it, how would that work? Walk me through this. Walk get the average person through it. For sure. Before I do that, I'd be remiss if I didn't say just for those that are interested with that trade program, really thin margins relative to bullion and you don't have any storage fees. So it's effectively just like a really cheap way of acquiring and aggregating grams and then ultimately ounces of your favorite precious metal or both.

Now, RSPs, yeah, absolutely. You can. It's a really interesting program. It was built on the heels of what Americans enjoy, which is they're being able to make purchases with their IRA accounts. Again, their own version of a registered savings account in the United States. You actually buy physical metal. Of course, you can in your direct investing account, you can go and buy ETFs. You can buy mining stocks. You can do whatever.

But if you're that person that's like, I need and I want physical, I want to own a bar, a coin, whatever the case might be. You can do it. Now, the one critical thing, you cannot take physical possession of it while it's registered because the government has a lien on it because obviously, you know, the way it works with taxes. So what happens is you need an account with the one financial institution that does this in Canada. It's with Quest Trade. When you call our services team, they walk you through all of this. But you need to, so there's 16 eligible accounts registered education, savings plan, RSP's, Lira's, lifts, riffs, all of them. You say, like, it's a tongue twister. It's a tongue twister. Yeah. You just need that particular account, that same one in that institution. You can keep your existing one open, and then you would transfer funds, new funds in if they're eligible, or you can transfer in kind from your existing account over, and then it's just one form from us, and then you can start to purchase physical precious metals. They're stored at Brinks, again, allocated, segregated, they're never commingled. And ultimately, if you want to take possession,

of them, you absolutely can. There's withholding taxes that you would normally pay anyways if you deregister your account, and then you can take the balance of them into your possession. But you had another question that you started it with. Was it just whether you can do it or not? And whether you guys do it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We do. Yeah, 100%. We do it. Again, really successful program. I think it's created an opportunity for people to have more control. over their registered savings. You know, obviously you have to think about it, make sure you got the allocations that you want right,

but people really have enjoyed the fact that you can take physical possession of it at the end. I was going to say March 2nd. Oh, the deadline. Everybody always reminds me about this. March 2nd is the deadline for the year, right? Once your contribution. Whenever it is, but yeah, it's just to make your contribution.

You can make your purchase. If you're sitting with whatever in RRSPs, you can move that across it. any point in time. Exactly. Yeah. You can move your existing money at any time that you like. Your deadline for contributions to your previous tax year is when they add.

It's like end of February, whenever it is, early March. But ultimately, yeah, for the purchase of it, you just talk to like the services team here and they'll walk you through it. No problems. You know, I'm chuckling because I'm normally folks, I would get Nick into like a ton of different conversations, right? Like, I mean, all the stuff going on in the world, all that. But it's funny, we're sitting here normally when I come in, it's like, okay, yeah, you need this room at this time. We had to schedule in like an hour to get in here, to get out of here.

So I'm like, if I feel like I'm pushing Nick to get to all the questions I had, it's because of time today. It has been interesting to be in this office. I've been out of it, you know, over the course. Lots of times. Lots of times over the course of a couple years. And this is the first time where it's like, nope, you have to be in here, you have to be out here. So before I get out of here, the Cornerstone Forum is coming up March 28th.

Yes. SGB, along with BVCU, has, you know, I tell the story lots, but, you know, you guys were instrumental in bringing it to Calgary because I did not want to do this. I was like, no, I'm not coming to Calgary. At least not for another year. You need to come. And so then we did last year at the Winsport. I think it was a massive success. And then this year it's coming to the Westin.

We have the Premier speaking. We just confirmed Neil Oliver. That's been the big news of this week. Been lots of texts of people excited to see Neil, along with a ton of different speakers that I think are excellent. Martin Armstrong making return to Canada. It's awesome. Along with Tom and Alex,

Larry C. Johnson coming for the first time, Karen Katowski, Chad Prather, Vince Lanci who was supposed to be last year. Now he's making it this year. You know, like, yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. But from SGB's standpoint, or anything you want to say about it. You know, you guys are one of the title sponsors,

along with BVCU. Your thoughts on the Cornerstone Forum coming here March 28th. Yeah, the genesis of our involvement with the Cornerstone Forum is really, I was at the first Cornerstone Forum, and I was at the predecessor to it. The Tom and Alex, yeah, Luongo Craneer.

S&P Presents Loongle Craneer. Exactly. At the casino up in Lloyd Minster. And, I mean, I think my big takeaways from that, were, and I've seen you host events lots, right? So, you know, without pumping your tires and inflating your already ginormous head, you run a tight show. But the takeaway for me was I connected with a lot of people in the crowd, and nothing to do with business. Absolutely nothing to do with business. It was more community. One of the big blessings in life for myself personally was the fact

that I get to come to work every day and I get to work with two of my business partners who are family, they're my cousins, they're brothers. And literally it's like working with your brothers all the time. We have our own little like quarrels and stuff. But ultimately we have a sense of community in this office. And I think that that's lacking for a lot of people who see the world through a different lens. I think probably a lot of the listeners of S&P have a take on the world and a view of the world that doesn't necessarily comport with the average person that they bump into at Safeway or Sobies. Nothing wrong with those people, but, you know, I think we just think things differently. We see things differently.

What Cornerstone gives an opportunity to do is, number one, you get to come and listen to some, like, absolutely world-class speakers. Give perspective on things that you probably have a working knowledge of, but maybe you don't, you just have that, like, just that you're scratching the surface. And there's only so much you can do in these, you know, 40-minute, one-hour roundtable forum. But they take you a little bit deeper. And they open your world to different possibilities. And when you put the whole program together, just the program, it really is something that you almost have to step away from for a couple days and just digest.

And you often do that by talking to people. Well, that's the other big thing is community. So I like no matter how I feel in life, an event like that, I come away from and I kind of like that, you know, that saying like your cups full or overflowing, that's kind of the sense like the sense of it. Because I'm around people who I'm on to see the world exactly the same way as all of them. We may have differences of opinion on different things. But the whole ethos of that event and the participation in it from the community is you're going there to listen to different opinions. discuss them in a civil way and hopefully change your mind or maybe change somebody else's mind because you're really collaborating. So there's like an action-packed day. Sean's really,

really good with doing the breaks in it so that you're not just like, holy cow, overwhelmed. But then at the end of it, like don't sleep on the fact. And the days before, especially if you're coming and you're staying from out of town, the community aspect is huge. You get to meet a lot of really interesting people from different walks of life who, um, you know, you walk away from it. And, and darn if you're not going to have like a slightly different perspective on the world. That's the, the impetus on Friday night social. Yeah. No, I was to bring, to give that community.

Because I was saying this, uh, it was like a light bulb moment. I went home after, uh, last year's event and, uh, sorry, not home back to the hotel. Mel and I were sitting there. And I was decompressing because it's, it's, it's, uh, yeah, for me, it's a lot. And she was at, I was trying to explain her. I couldn't understand why people were shaking my hand and like trying to rip it off in the best possible way.

They were just so excited. I was like, I just don't get it. And she couldn't explain it to me. And the next day I showed up for breakfast. And then Tom had his group meet up. But breakfast to me was so, I had no pressure. I just wanted to go down for a cup of coffee. And I was watching all these people hop from table to table and like interact with

everybody. And there was so excited. It's so excited. And I'm like, oh my goodness. I'm starting to get. get it. And so for having the Friday night social, it's a way to extend the community aspect of it, of like, I don't know how many people text me. They're coming back for another year and they're excited to meet, or to meet back up with people they met the year prior or the year prior to that.

I'm like, that's like super cool. I'm like, I would have never like, that wasn't in my addition of how I put together an event, but seeing it unfold, I'm like, oh, we need the Friday night social. We need to have people have an opportunity, no pressure, there's no speaker, it's um i was at the hotel yesterday so this is new people won't know this this is brand new breaking news on the s mp about my own event i was talking to the hotel and they wanted in the lobby we were going to have it off in its own like segregated spot and they're like no no we got this beautiful bar how many people are coming i'm like i don't know right now 200 i mean it's probably going to be closer to 300 like great pack this place and i'm like are you sure they're like yeah

buzz it up we want all these people around so uh it's going to be when you walk in the hotel that night it is going to be a lively lively place oh my god i mean there's going to be people that are talking about you name it i mean there's going to be lots of um albertans with conversations buzzing around you know everything from uh the political landscape to maybe thoughts on separate you know separation and session petition going on right now absolutely you're going to have conversations about hard assets, oil, geopolitics, gold, silver. And just generally, you know, I think a lot of it, like you always play that game at the end where you're like, okay, everybody stand up and who's coming from this far away and that far away. And I'm,

well, now I'm going to be sitting down really quick because I'm coming from like 10K away. But, you know, I can't, I really, for those that are sitting on the fence, like I can't emphasize enough how, you know, like you think about it, right? we usually go everywhere. We talk about all kinds of different items and probably usually a little bit more animated. But like you think about how polarizing and challenging the times are right now. Because there's all the normal pressures in life that have cropped up with inflation and all these things. But then obviously, you know, from government edicts and dictates to just the media and everything,

they've whipped us all into a frenzy. And so sometimes, you know, it just feels so overwhelming to pick up your phone and look at X. And it just feels like a cesspool of, you know, whatever, doom scrolling. And then you get an opportunity to talk and to, number one, to hear about a lot of these big issue items and have people with maybe different perspectives share their lens on the world. And then you get to like to bounce your ideas off other people.

Like you really come away from it feeling more hopeful than you do, you know, as as doom in gloom as it's easy to feel. And I just think that's so important because ultimately we're social creatures, as much as some of us like myself sometimes aren't. You know, it's good for us to interact with other people. It's good for us to know that there are other people that see things the way that we do. And I mean, let's be honest, this is a good moment. You know, in some respects, and in others, it's really challenging. But there are really hopeful signs like things seem to, in some respects, be changing. Maybe Canada's drank against feet a little bit on this. But there's room for optimism and there's room for problem solving and I know that you know you would say that

that's always one of the big components of your shows is at least leaving a spot for problem solving not just to talk heavy geopolitics and heavy finance and what have you well I always I call it the positive roundtable though this year's theme is charting a path forward in a troubled world would be the overall theme and that's why a guy like Neil Oliver who talks about you know the DNA of us Chad Prather and his four principles and Karen Katooski talking about the importance of discussion when charting a better future. I'm like, that's like so important. I, you know, like, and I'm excited for that.

I'm like really excited for it to the point where I'm like, I don't want anybody else to host it. I'm going to host that because I have this idea in my head whether or not the band plays the tune that I want them to. Certainly that's the idea is to not to be just a doom scroll. I think there's plenty of that, even on this. show we go into some dark realms and uh the community part uh yeah well i appreciate you you doing this and and having me back in and look forward to you know what the 2026 uh brings i keep hinting at it twenty 26 i'm going to be announcing at the cornerstone forum what's happening later in the year

right so uh there's some big things coming for the sean newman podcast and uh look forward to announcing that and then sharing some of the ideas there but to everybody coming excited to see one. And if you haven't bought a ticket, you know, go buy a ticket. Um, you know, Nick always worries about it. Anytime I have them on to talk silver gold bullet sounds like an infomercial. I'm like, well, self-promotion on the SMP on the SMP for the cornerstone. I'm like, yeah, what am I going to do? It's the event coming up here March 28th. And I think there's lots to be excited for it, you know, like, I didn't think we'd ever get the premiere. Now we got the premiere. I'm like, holy crap. I didn't think I'd ever get Neil Oliver. I got Neil Oliver.

Once upon a time, you know the inner workings, the only one who knows a better maybe than you as my wife on Martin Armstrong because she got to hear some of the phone calls. Nobody thought I could get Martin Armstrong to Canada. Including me. Including Nick. Especially me, actually. I thought you were nuts. I remember the day I was picking up my kids and I was like, you're going to call who?

About what? Like, okay. And then you were like, you did what? He's coming? And I've carried that lesson forward in life. Well, looking forward to seeing everybody. Nick, thanks for having me in your office. Yeah, my pleasure.

And appreciate you breaking down some things. things. I'm sure there's going to be some questions on the text line. If you have questions that we didn't answer, fire them to me. I can always shoot them off to Graham or Nick or one of the team here at SGB and get answers back if you're concerned about things. Either way, thanks for doing this. My absolute pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you.