Clem Chambers: 'Gold Is For War' And $6000 Is The Real Target

Jeremy Szafron, Anchor of Kitco News, sits down with Clem Chambers, founder of anewfn.com, to navigate the latest market volatility and geopolitical risks. Chambers breaks down why the current oil spikes are tactical rather than a long-term strategic shift. He argues that the artificial intelligence boom is a foundational technological leap, akin to the steam engine, which will drive a massive global energy boom requiring all sources of power.

The conversation explores the reality of European deindustrialization as surging energy costs hobble manufacturing in Germany and the UK. In the precious metals market, Chambers explains his thesis that gold is for war and serves as a vital strategic reserve for central banks, projecting a long-term target of $6,000 per ounce. He contrasts this with silver, which he dubs FOMO gold.

Chambers also addresses the growing stress in credit markets, warning that shadow banking and private credit funds are facing defaults as the Federal Reserve drains liquidity from the system. Furthermore, he dismisses the death of the dollar narrative, noting the currency's continued strength against global peers. Finally, Chambers outlines why Bitcoin is behaving as a liquidity asset poised to drop to $40,000 , and why platinum and palladium offer glaring investment opportunities.

Recorded March 9 2026.

Follow Jeremy Szafron on X: @JeremySzafron (https://twitter.com/JeremySzafron)
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Follow Clem Chambers on X: @ClemChambers (https://twitter.com/ClemChambers)

Timestamps:
00:00 Market volatility and oil price spikes 
01:30 Is the commodities trade short-term noise or structural 
04:45 AI build-out and the coming global energy boom 
08:45 European deindustrialization and energy insecurity 
14:00 Gold is for war and the $6,000 price target 
16:30 The death of the dollar myth and US currency strength 
18:00 Shadow banking risks and rising private credit defaults 
22:30 Why Bitcoin is dropping to $40,000 amid liquidity drains 
30:30 Platinum and palladium as ultimate contrarian trades 
34:00 Investment strategy and navigating market noise

#KitcoNews #Gold #Bitcoin #MacroEconomics #Investing #ClemChambers #Silver #EnergyMarkets #ShadowBanking
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The videos are not intended to provide trading advice, and the views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. Kitco News, its anchors, producers, and reporters are not responsible in any way for the performance or actions of any sponsor, advertiser or affiliate of Kitco News. In no event will Kitco and its employees be held liable for any indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the use of the content in this video.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Kitco News in Focus with Jeremy Saffron.

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome back. I'm Jeremy Saffron. If you want to know if a market is truly functional, you look at the ability to move physical assets, and right now that ability is hitting a wall. We're seeing a massive repricing of global risk as Brent Crude moves in a volatile range between about$95 and$115 a barrel. Now this follows the near standstill in traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which has trapped exports from the Persian Gulf producers and pushed major players, including Saudi Arabia, to cut output as storage and export bottlenecks continue to build. And while energy takes the headlines, as it usually does, the mechanisms that govern the credit markets are showing real strain right now. Major asset managers, including BlackRock and Blackstone, have begun enforcing redemption limits on their multi-billion dollar credit funds. All right. It's a wild market. We have lots of volatility and a lot to get into. Joining us now is the founder of a new fn.com, one of our uh friends from over the pond, Clem Chambers. Clem, good to see you. A brain from over the pond, eh? Okay, here we go. It's interesting over the pond uh right now. I I hear there's just a few things going on over there, Clem. Um I want to chat to you first. I was reviewing our tape back in December. You and I were chatting and you kind of identified that rise in silver and gold as a byproduct of what and I like this. You termed it natural stupidity in geopolitics. And I mean, you know, now we got air defenses from NATO intercepting Iranian missiles heading towards Turkish airspace, raising a risk of uh even broader alliance involvement. I mean, looking at the scale of the chaos that we've recently witnessed, I mean, oil spikes, shipping seized up. Where are we at now? Is this commodities trade short term? Is it is it higher structural risk premium?

SPEAKER_03 1:55

You know, it's interesting because last time around, um, I bought oil um in the last Iran situation, and I bought a company called Equinor, which is Norwegian oil, it's based in a Norwegian oil company, and they have no exposure to the Middle East. None. It's the North Sea, and that's about it. So you would have thought that they would have gone up even more than a Shell or a BP or an Exxon. But they haven't. They're exactly unchanged. So that tells you something about what's driving the market. Because it's not really the the long-term strategic things that are driving the market, because oil companies that would be exposed to the Middle East would have underperformed any oil company that's not exposed to the Middle East, and that's not what's happening. So what you're seeing is basically adjusting to short-term risk and adjusting to the news flow. So you could, if you were, you know, really um a jaundice, say that it's noise. It's it's a lot of noise for sure. But when you look at what happened in the morning with Brent, 115, and then whatever it is now, I haven't looked for a few hours. You know, one would go mad if you keep following these things. I'm not a trader anymore, I'm purely an investor. So all this stuff, which I used to love, which is where you know you make big money. Today is is showtime for traders. But it's what, 95 or something like that? So that sort of volatility is a sign that this is tactical, short term, not strategic and long term. It's not chronic yet. Now, if you saw the price of Exxon separate from the price of Equinor, for example, Equinor running up and Exxon not running up so much, you can say that, oh dear, this is starting to look long term. This is starting to look strategic. This is starting to look chronic. But right now, it's acute, it's tactical. So, you know, we we'll see what transpires.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

Yeah, yeah. And of course, we we heard reports today uh that the G7 officials are considering tapping strategic reserves. You know, we've seen oil pull back to your point from that overnight high at near$120. But I mean, with the midterms coming up, all this talk about stagflation, uh, probably not some of those headlines a lot of people want to see right now.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Well, I mean, yes, but I I think that the key thing is is you look at direction. You look at the direction of the market and then you look at the volatility. They're not the same. Yeah, I mean, all right, vast volatility can hurt direction because it can hurt valuations in the medium to long term. But in the short term, it's a matter of do you think the direction has changed in the long term or do you think it's the same? And if it's the same, this is just a lot of shaking, and you just don't let yourself get shaken out. If you think the reason you're in your stocks or assets are still valid, well, why would you sell them? And you know, that is the question. And I I think right now we're going through a noisy period, and there's gonna be a lot of shaking. And for traders, it you know, it's showtime, and and they'll be making a lot of money if they're any good at that game. And for investors, it's just a matter of you know, going, oh because I mean when it all kicked off, I lost that Monday more in one day than I've ever lost before. Four days later, it was all back to where it was, and again, big loss this morning, big, big, big loss. Well, it's almost that loss has almost evaporated in a day. So, you know, that underlines that this volatility is what it is, volatility. Don't let it shake you out of your long-term positions.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

Yeah, yeah, it almost feels like the market is now doing this wait-and-see approach to some of these headlines. And and I mean, we've had headlines all year that have panicked the markets, but it's been somewhat stable. I mean, I want to talk to you a little bit because you and I were chatting about the AI and the Mag 7 last time you were on the show, looking kind of specifically at that energy demand that you were tracking. I mean, you argued that AI is the next great boom, obviously. I mean, if if but if energy stays expensive here and credit stress kind of keeps rising, does that delay the AI build-out before the promised productivity uh shows up?

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Sure, it delays it. Yeah, I mean it will delay it, but it it won't stop it. So it's just a matter of saying, well, I've you know, have to buy it a bit more time. I mean, what are we looking at? Three months? I mean, even if this turned into an Iraq situation or war that went on for, you know, the best part of a decade or maybe more. I haven't counted how many years that thing went on for. I mean, did that really interrupt things much? If all of a sudden Iran was a new Iraq? I mean, it would be a great tragedy, human tragedy, but economic tragedy? Probably not.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

So, you know, looking at that long-term thesis, I mean, we're not looking at it at a real AI productivity boom, or or is it that high-tech version of the 1970s where the inputs get expensive and then growth disappears?

SPEAKER_03 6:51

Well, I mean, if you look at the 70s, where was the technological innovation there? It wasn't really till later on when you got Intel inviting the market inventing the microprocessor and Microsoft taking off in the late 70s. I mean, if you look at the say '69 to say '76, '77, I mean, it's not the situation we have now, which is this explosive um innovation that changes everything. I mean, AI is just like inventing the steam engine. It's not it's not incremental, it's foundational. So it is, you know, it can't be underestimated what this means. It is just a huge thing. And I I know I keep people uh keep hearing this, but it is absolutely foundational. And it does completely change the dynamic on everything. Because in the end, the the country that has the best AI, if they can put distance between the number two and retain that distance, that makes them the superpower. Well, that's gonna be down to how much energy you've got and how much energy you can generate. It's not all about um oil. You know, if countries go on a run for nuclear power, for example, or even coal for that matter, it's mass energy that that this AI boom is gonna be about. And at the moment, actually, you know, China's got a lead on that. China's the one that's been building coal power stations every 10 minutes, and you know, the Western's been the guys that have been knocking down nuclear power stations. So, you know, there's a big change coming because America knows it can't be second place to China in AI, and therefore it knows it has to have the energy, therefore it has to have the output. And that's not about oil, it's about you know solar, it's about windmills, it's about nuclear, it's about you name it, you name it, they are gonna boil the oceans. It's gonna be all possible energy supplies. And of course, America's got great energy supplies in in hydrocarbons. So I you know, I think you can detach, if necessary, the Middle East from this. I mean, obviously, you know, energy tends to be fungible. So if it was all all the Middle East oil was going to say China, then you know, other energy supplies would be going elsewhere. So, you know, it it's a these things move, and that's what capitalism is good at, is moving all the pieces around because the economics needs it that way.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I was actually just reading a story uh about Germany. I I think Bloomberg posted it. They were they're pointing to places like Luena in eastern Germany where one chemical insolvency can threaten an entire industrial chain because these parks are so tightly integrated and so dependent on imported energy. I mean, you know, with gas gas costs, I think they surged about 30% again this morning in Europe. I mean, is Europe now facing something bigger than an oil shock? A real kind of de-industrialization risk where energy insecurity starts breaking its chemical and manufacturing backbone?

SPEAKER_03 9:45

It's not a risk, it's happened. It's happened. I mean, it's happened. I mean, it's happened in the UK, it's happened in Europe, and you know, the the Germans knocked down so much of their energy supply that it's now you know bent, hobbled their industrial base. But it's not permanent. They can turn it around, they will turn it around. I mean, that that they're the the trend behind that is now gonna change because the penny has dropped, mistake was made, that mistake's gonna be reversed. How long it will take? Two, three, four years? They they will, I mean, unless I'm wrong here, they will turn that around and they will be building out nuclear power. The Germans will be building nuclear power again, for sure. But you know, it'll take a bit of time, it'll take a lot of politics, it would take a lot of messing around. They're behind the pace, they're very much behind the pace because you know they went all in for this socialist vision, and you know, that's turned out to be a bad thing. And at the end of the day, the people in power and the public sector, they will not get their pensions unless they sort this out, and they know that, and that's what they care about. They care about their pensions, so you'll be seeing that super tanker change course, and you're probably seeing it change course already. And how long it will take to change course is another matter. But you know, the de-industrialization that that's that's not a threat, that's that's a fact, that's a reality, and you can see that all over Europe, but particularly in Britain, and you know, you you've seen that begin really only recently in Germany. First of all, they you know cut off their oxygen by cutting off their energy, and then you know everything followed from that. So they will turn that around, they will turn that around, and you know, if if the people in power now don't turn that around, although the guys in Germany uh seem to be on that uh on the program of turning it around, and if they don't turn it around, someone will come along to turn it around.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

I mean, if energy becomes a national security issue rather than just an industrial input, I mean, let's talk about some of the commodities. Do copper and and and silver stop kind of trading like commodities and start trading like strategic assets?

SPEAKER_03 12:02

Well, one of the things that I I've said over time is you know there's plenty of headroom for commodity prices. Yeah, commodities, I mean, a commodity is synonymous uh as being a big bulk cheap thing. Yeah, and when you take uh commodity input into finished goods, it can be a pretty small percentage. I mean, look at uh an Apple iPhone, how much is the raw materials in one of them? Five percent, yeah. So so much, so many layers of margin and taxation in these things. Uh I mean, you all you have to do is is is look at what China will sell you this stuff at to see how much markup there is. So there's plenty of room for commodities to increase in price without increasing the actual finish price properly, if uh governments and systems want to look at these things differently. If you go and you look at the amount of taxation there is in energy in, say, Britain, it's a massive slug of taxation there. And of course, you look at the taxation they slap on top of, I mean, I can't remember what it was, but when petrol was something like eight um dollars gasoline, sorry, eight dollars a gallon in in Britain, only one dollar fifty of it was the gasoline, the rest of it was tax. So there's still some incredible proportion of European energy that's just straight slapped on tax. And then if you peel it back and look at all the other taxes that go into the inputs to that, the employment taxes, the value-added taxes, the taxes on the people that ship the stuff to the petrol station, for example, all those layers of taxation on top, you'll see that you know the price of things is there's a lot of tax in there. There's a large proportion of the cost of a thing is taxed, not just your sales tax, but all those employment taxes, all those other taxes that are slipped in, all those stealth taxes. So there's plenty of room for maneuver in the cost of goods for commodities to rise.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Interesting. Uh was it surprising? I mean, you and I talked earlier in December, just before that big run-up on the silver side. I mean, uh, I wanted to get your thoughts on that. I mean, what did you think?

SPEAKER_03 14:18

Well, I mean, my hypothesis, or going all the way back on your shoulder, calling that whole rise up. Yeah, gold is for war. I keep saying it, gold is for war. Now, silver is what I'm now calling it FOMO gold. Yeah, because gold is the one that drives everything, and gold is for war. That's why governments keep it in their central banks. It's not so that they can remonetize it, not so they can back their currency with it. It's so that if they get in a war, they can buy stuff they need. Because people won't take their paper in a war. And that's why they will be that's why Poland's uh finance ministers holding up gold bars, being next door to Russia gives you a good reason to buy gold. That's why China's buying gold, even though they actually mine lots of it because there's the Taiwan issue. Gold is for war, and countries have to lay gold in as geopolitical stress increases, and we've been seeing it increase, increase, increase, increase. Now it's taken a bit of a rest because the major war threat, which is out next year, is the Taiwan situation. But China's had a little bit of a let's just say internal issue, and the president has sacked his top generals. Well, you're not gonna create a a storm with Taiwan if you've just fallen out with your generals. So that's put that back a bit, and that's what I see as what's put a damper on the price of gold and therefore silver. However, what I think I might have even said on your last show, that they would reconnect and that the trend of gold before it went vertical would re-establish itself, and that's exactly what's happened. So now gold is on a slow grind upwards because funny enough, geopolitical stress is grinding upwards. So that is the story for gold, and gold is going to keep grinding on up, and silver, well, which is the you know, the FOMO gold, will be all over the place until further notice, and then may just go on another big run when gold goes above 6,000, as I feel it's likely to do.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

And do you think that'll happen this year? I mean, and and more specifically, I mean, is gold in these scenarios, war times, being treated as a source of just liquidity?

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Well, it's gold is great collateral, of course. Um, but you know, literally, gold is for war. Why why else do and all this death of the dollar stuff? I mean, I get fed up with it. I mean, when is the dollar gonna die? It keeps going up. I mean, you saw this the Iranian situation, the dollar goes up. So, where's this death of the dollar? Where's this this weak currency everybody's talking about as if it's gonna fold? It's it's it's not real, is it? And they've been singing that same song ever since I was a child. Ever since and and you know, that's 15 years ago. Sorry. Joking apart, it's a long time they've been singing this song, and it's still not come about, and the dollar is still very strong. Just look at the the chart of the euro, just look at the chart of the pound, just look at the chart of the yen. The dollar's very, very strong. It's too strong, actually. Yes, it's gonna come down, yes, it is on its way down, but it's still too strong, and it's still way strong. So why do why does why is there Fort Knox? Why is that all that gold kept there? It's a strategic reserve for what more silicon chips or more dentistry or or more jewelry, don't think so. It's a strategic reserve because it's the currency of war. And as the big military power, of course it has to have a strategic reserve of gold. And why does Britain hold it? Why does every country hold a strategic reserve of gold? Because no country can defend itself or fight a war unless it has gold reserves.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

Yeah, well said. And when you're speaking about that US dollar, I mean we have to address the liquidity constraints that are starting to form in the private markets. Uh, I think you heard me. BlackRock, they capped withdrawals from its$26 billion HPS corporate lending fund at 5%. And then Blackstone had uh to tap an internal employee capital to meet record redemption requests in their flagship BC Red Fund. I mean, defaults in U.S. private credit reached 5.8% recently, Clem. You and I have talked about this before. When the funds, you know, marketed as semi-liquid start limiting exits. Is that is that prudent liquidity management or is it a proof, you know, the promise was always softer than the the marketing?

SPEAKER_03 18:41

Well, both. I mean, i if you trace it all back, you can trace it back to COVID. And during COVID, they printed a vast ocean of money, and it was pushed into the economy to keep to paper over that chasm of nobody doing any work. Okay, so all this money goes out, and then everybody's got fists full of monies in the financial world, and they want to find a place that can take that money and earn a yield on it. So you get situations like this where you know private credit, well, what's that then? Well, it's companies lending money to companies. Oh, well, where did they get the cash from? Well, I mean, the Fed pushed so much money into the system that it was sloshing around everywhere. Anybody that was creditable, anybody that can say, Oh, I'm an investment bank, give me that cash, I'm gonna, you know, send it to the moon in a rocket, they would have got that cash. So they get that cash, and then the the problem becomes who can I give it to that's gonna A give my money back and B, give me a good yield. Well, funny enough, you run out of good people to give it to, and then you start giving it to less good people, and you start giving it to less good people, and then finally you give it to almost anybody, anybody with a credible story, and that is one of the big risks. That's what happened to Green Cell in the UK. They couldn't find anybody to lend this money at a yield which was attractive that was you know a decent business. Oh, you'll lend me that money at nine percent. Well, uh that's too much. I I don't want it. Yeah, so you end up giving it to people that say, Oh, yeah, lend me money at nine percent. Yeah, I have that. Have you got any more? Oh, I'll have that too. Oh, we've got any more, I have that too. Oh, by the way, we've gone bust. Yeah, so that's the the problem when you've got too much liquidity. Now, what's happened was the Fed has pulled that liquidity in over a long period. If you go look at the balance sheet of the Fed and you look at the reverse repo, you can see that money being drained out. Well, as that tide of money goes out, all the sketchy people living off free money or easy to borrow money suddenly can't get it and they go bust. And then you get a chain of defaults. And then those people that had this great business model when everybody was handing out cash to them to find a nice home for start getting big defaults, just like happened in the credit crunch with the housing and the mortgages. Yeah, all those liars loans started to go sour. Well, that's what's happening here, but it's a much smaller market, and it's a market that if it did horribly go wrong and it did start to create contagion, could easily be, you know, basically bailed in and bailed out and belled around and belled about. So it's not of the scale of the housing crisis, so it's just gonna cause a lot of headlines and a lot of well, a lot of headlines will do.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's already starting. I mean, you know, when investors want cash, funds start gating, buyers disappear. Is that the moment price stops being a quote and starts becoming, you know, the force clearing event?

SPEAKER_03 21:34

Well, I mean, you gate it, don't you? And then you say, well, you know, we're going to collect all the money we can, and then we're going to hand it back to you. So you get into a sort of voluntary liquidation situation. And that's what a lot of these funds are going to go into. And will people get all their money back? They'll probably get most of it back. So, you know, it's just a an end of an era for that kind of idea. You know, shadow banking, I mean, it's not got a great reputation, and this is what it is it's shadow. Banking, all those banks doing it. You know, it it it's a it's an interesting model, and people keep trying it, but it always comes back to the fact that if you've got huge amounts of money um to place, if you lower your standards, and that is basically what happens. Everybody starts lowering their standards. They lower the standards until the people with the lowest standards start to go bust, and then the whole merry-go-round stops, and then even the good people can't do it anymore. And that's what will happen with this particular merry-go-round. It will come off it off its pivot, and it will be a X business, and um, you know, it will have to restart at some other point in the future.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Now, is is that Clem what happened to the crypto space? I mean, not terrible pivot, but I mean Bitcoin's currently trading in that range of$68,000,$70,000, down 30% from the$100,000 level where you exited last year. I mean, in December, you kind of predicted that crypto winter instead Bitcoin would likely fall to that base between 40,000, 60,000. Um, I mean, if Bitcoin were really a clean geopolitical hedge, this war should be its moment. Instead, it's trading like a liquidity asset again. Does that confirm your winter thesis?

SPEAKER_03 23:15

Okay, there's there's a confusing thing about, and and crypto people will hate what I'm about to say, but Iran is one of the big manufacturers of Bitcoin. Yeah, if you are a sanctioned state and you've got lots of energy and your friend is China, well, you know, you buy um Bitcoin miners and you use your energy to make Bitcoin, and then oh, wonderful currency to use if you're sanctioned. So Iran has a lot of Bitcoin. And the question is, do people run away with it? Do people load up on it, or do people have to sell it? You know, if the Iranian state has to sell Bitcoin to you know get more um raw materials for whatever they're up to, then you know, Bitcoin's gonna go down. If people in in Iran need to head off, who are you know individuals need to head off to Paris to get out of the way of this, they might buy Bitcoin. So that there's a really two that it's not clean like with say um Venezuela or perhaps even more clean Afghanistan. I mean Afghanistan was a clean example of people there who were in government that stolen vast amounts of money that decided they had to buy Bitcoin and head for the airport. Yeah, so what I think is gonna happen is that you know we're gonna have Bitcoin down to around$40,000 within due course.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

$40,000. And so would you be picking up at$40,000 or are you just leaving it there? You've done that trade.

SPEAKER_03 24:39

Well, you know, when it when it uh I I never buy a V-shaped bottom, you don't catch the fall, you know, which way is it going down? When it's down at$40,000, I'll be looking at that and going, well, the the trend is still down, and it could easily do 30,000. And then at the bottom it will bounce, and generally you'd expect to make a W. Yeah. So on the reverse, on the on the last leg of the W, when it's heading on back up again, I might be tempted. I might be tempted.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Interesting. I I mean, on the Iran, it's interesting when we talk about it because they've really become one of those powers in terms of Bitcoin. I mean, if if if this war kind of disrupts the energy grid more than it has and and their industrial capacity, does that tighten Bitcoin's supply, you know, at margin or orange?

SPEAKER_03 25:27

Well, I mean, the most important thing, the most important thing, Jeremy, is liquidity. As you have noticed, we've we've got this war going on, and the military contractors' share prices go down, and gold goes down, and silver goes down, and Bitcoin goes down or doesn't go up much, you know, just thrashes around. Well, why is that? Well, it's because people are pulling money out of the system and parking it in cash or treasuries. And if you pull money out of the system, everything's tied together. So it pulls the prices of everything down because basically money flows out of the system and causes prices to be soft, as they would say. Now, when this is over and the coast is clear, all that money flows back in again, they'll all go up. And people say, Oh, why is gold going up? You know, the the war finish or whatever it is that that has gone right. Yeah. Well, why is gold going up? Well, because money's flying back in. So if money flows out of the market, it doesn't matter whether you're, you know, a military company, it doesn't matter whether you're gold, doesn't matter whether you're Bitcoin. People are putting cash out of risk assets and stashing it, waiting for the for the storm to clear. And that will pull prices down. Now, what then happens is the good old Fed and the treasury in the US goes, oh, we can't have contagion here and pulls the print um button, lever, pulls the print lever button, whatever, prints money, flushes the system with cash like they keep doing, and uh all the assets go. So, really, it's it's not the news, it's the liquidity. If the treasury andor the Fed thinks the system hasn't got enough money in it because of the way that people are parking it, it will flush money into the system and up all the assets will go. And then when people come off the sidelines, it'll pull the money out of the system again and it will stop going up. And that is the game of liquidity that is being played these days, and that is really the controlling factor. So, really, if you want to trade it, which I don't, uh I'm just sat there waiting for the you know, in my positions, if you want to trade it, you just have to think about when people are gonna be pulling money out of the system and when they're gonna be pushing it in, because that's what is going to be driving prices for at least a few weeks from here.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, if if this is a kind of a physical supply shock and not just a sentiment sentiment kind of scare, but maybe it is. I mean, is is energy still the first and cleanest trade here, or are oil names already too crowded after this move past 100?

SPEAKER_03 27:59

Well, if you want to trade a market that can open at 120 and end up at 90 within four hours, then be my guest.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

I like that one, Clem. You're always to it. And on the gold front, because you and I never talked about it. We brought up Venezuela just for a minute, but there's also that reporting that Washington's moving to secure that additional physical bullion flu flow, I think a thousand kilograms of gold to reach the U.S. refineries. Does that reinforce the idea that the the physical market matters more than the paper quote right now?

SPEAKER_03 28:31

Well, I mean, you know, I I I I I want to uh hang my head in sort of despair. There's 3,200 tons of gold mined every year. So that's 0.3% of the world supply in the next 12 months. It's is it's$100 million. I mean, that's like four rockets being fired, isn't it? So, you know, it's not a material amount, and all it means is that rather than the gold going to Iran and Dubai and China for for you know processing, because what they do is they they dig out the gold from a mine, they concentrate it down, and they make these, you know, not very pure gold bars, which they then sell to the refiners who say, Oh, I'll give you, you know, um$98 out of a hundred for the pure gold in that. And and they say, sure. So then the refiners make a few dollars refining it, yeah, a few percents refining it. So rather than having to go sneak out into dodgy places to do the refining, now it's going to the west, like it should do, like South Africa sends its gold, and like anybody else that makes its gold, they get they dig it out of the mine, send it to uh a refiner who then makes it into pure uh gold. And all that's happening is this gold is going out of Venezuela, it's not going to China or Iran or Dubai to be laundered, it's going to uh transfigure, isn't it? Um, and they're gonna you know um spruce it up and make it you know delivery bar quality. So it I mean all it means is is something went right a little bit for every all the parties involved.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Venezuela, what an interesting time. I mean, is is silver now the better upside trade?

SPEAKER_03 30:15

I think, and and this is a bit off the beaten path, but I still think it's platinum and palladium. Okay, and I love palladium, but the market doesn't totally agree with me on that. It thinks that platinum is the one, and you know, 3,200 tons of gold, 200 tons of platinum, and platinum is what they use to break down uh diesel fumes and make them palatable, or maybe not palatable, but less unpalatable. And you know, there's the the internal combustion engine is not going away anymore, so platinum is going to still be needed for cat converters, and unlike gold that gets mined and put in a shed or in a vault somewhere, the platinum that's mined every year is blown out the back of cat converters onto the freeway, it's destroyed by usage. So there's no more palladium next year than there was this year, and it's still only coming out of the ground at 200 tons a year, so that really is you know a glaring um you know opportunity. And it's only what$1,800 an ounce. It was$900 when I started talking to you about it, but it's only doubled since then, so there's plenty of room to maneuver there.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

I will give you that one, Clem. It should be one break.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

It should be one gold.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

Yeah. Um quickly on the US equity side, because I know you watch them. I mean, JP Morgan says that traders are unprepared for a 10% correction in the SP 500. Do you buy the dip here or do you wait for forced liquidation to give you a better entry?

SPEAKER_03 31:44

Well, I I haven't exited. So normally what I do is is I um if I thought this was going to crash, um, and I, you know, I all my signals were saying, Oh, you need to get out, I'd just get out, I'd let it crash, or go, oh, I made the mistake there, which is uh only like a couple of times in the last 25 years, yeah, it hasn't crashed. And then once it's crashed, let it settle a bit and then re-enter. So normally I would take a profit and then I just you know redeploy it amongst things, and and that's what I'll be doing now. So if I end up taking any of my profits in my US stocks, I'll just redeploy it and I pretend that none of this is going on. Because if it's noise, and I believe basically what's going on right now, unless something unexpected occurs, this is just noise. So there's no proper time to buy, there's no proper time to sell, then sometimes you get it, it will be in your favor, sometimes it won't be in your favour, it's just a random set of manoeuvres. So you should just carry on, or if you're feeling you know uncomfortable, just do nothing. And then unless you get somebody whispering in your ear, you know, um from high up that you need to get out and go to cash, you just let it blow over and and let it wash out. And if you think about the the the tariff tantrum back at the beginning of last year, I mean it washed out real fast. I mean it washed out so fast I was but spam my head and you know we'll wash out. And and do you want to go to all the cost of getting out now and having to re-enter at some random place? I mean, the the opportunity cost is real, the the actual execution cost is real. You know, you should only get out if you look at it and go, Yes, I understand the volatility increase, but uh forget that. I'm gonna forget the volatility and I'm gonna look at the direction, and I think the direction is down. Well, if that's what you think, you should get out. But I I don't feel that. I see the same direction as before this kicked off. So therefore the direction is up. So I just have to grin and bury it and clench and and um let it you know work its way through the system.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Yeah, keep calm and claring on. Um, okay, December. You did like defensive stocks and copper, and you did say that oil would eventually go on a very interesting road, which you know it did here, my friend. So, I mean, what is your highest conviction position right now? Is it defense, copper, bullion, cash, something else?

SPEAKER_03 34:18

Well, I mean, I think I love copper and it's getting a real kicking, which tells you the market thinks there's a there's an issue with the cost of of uh diesel going forward. Because you know, diesel and mining is is uh highly connected. I discount that because I I think this will wash out. So, you know, copper is a very if I was if I was dip buying, which I'm not, I would uh dip buy copper. And you know, this morning I was thinking, I should I should buy something now. And I thought, no, no, no, just just this is the not the good old days, young guy trading every tick. Just forget about it, get on a cruise, you know, go around the world a couple of times, come back. And he when he you'll look at that chart and go, What's that there?

SPEAKER_02 35:03

You ready for the miners? You're you're kind of out of the miners, you don't like those, you like to touch the futures more.

SPEAKER_03 35:08

I I I love I love the miners when I can't get anything else. So I would prefer to have the physical. Well, for example, you can't do that in copper, not unless you want a shed full of bars. No, thank you. Um, you can't do it in ETF because there's no physical copper ETF for the same reason you don't want to buy it, it's too bulky. So then you fall back into the miners. So, you know, from my point of view, from the don't be silly, um, you buy the big, big miners. And, you know, there's four or five of them out there to choose from. And so you'd buy, you know, if you want to expose yourself to a hundred units of copper, you buy 20 units of each of them. Or if you want to be a little bit more discerning, you buy two or three of them, which is what I've done, and you just sit there and you just wait.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Yeah. Before I let you go, Clem, I mean, what what what are you deliberately not buying right now, even though it sounds obvious on television, you know?

SPEAKER_03 36:02

Yeah, I'm I'm deliberately not buying now. I would I yeah, I'd I'd love to be getting in there and buying stuff. And no, because don't buy a falling market, wait for it to settle. Yeah, and you know, it's yeah, you can look when I um looked at Bitcoin the Wednesday before it all kicked off and it went through the roof, which means Bitcoin is for flight. I wonder who's gonna be running. Oh, I can guess. Oh, that must mean that something's about to happen. So I bought a load of oil and I planned to sell it on the Monday, and Monday came and I had whatever it was, um six, seven, eight, nine percent profit. Thank you very much. Sold it, and now it's tripled. That profit would have been really four times as large. Um, you have a plan and you stick to it. And my plan is not to not to trade this, not to get overexcited, just just take it as one of these passing things, which it will probably be, and stick to what I'm absolutely sure of, which is that AI is going to be a massive wave for several years. I I don't want to time this particular lump. I could, I timed the last one and you know, did all right from it, but basically it wasn't worth my stomach lining. So I should have just forgotten about it. It took like nine months for the new portfolio that I got back into after I got out of at the top before the and Trump tariff um correction. It took nine months for the new portfolio to take over from the old portfolio, and the old portfolio ran away with it as well. So it was like, why bother? You know, you get your direction sorted in your mind, you buy quality um uh stocks and assets within that portfolio idea, and then you hang tough.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

Well said. All right, Clem, thank you for joining us making sense of uh these volatile markets. Of course, you can follow uh Clem's latest analysis over at anewfn.com. Uh thanks for this, my friend. Great to see you as always.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

Great to see you on. And see you soon, Jeremy, and hopefully, um, you know, I'll be proven right.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Yeah, absolutely. We'll hold it to you. All right, thanks, Clem. Appreciate your time. And for more detailed interviews that focus on the data behind the headlines, make sure to subscribe to Kitco News on YouTube and follow our continuous coverage at Kitco.com. Now I'm Jeremy Safrin. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

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SPEAKER_00 38:44

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