Blow Off Top For Silver? Be Careful What You Wish For | Lobo Tiggre

Silver bulls are saying this is it. Silver is finally going to have its day in the sun. It's going to have more. It's going to beat gold. Be careful what you wish for, because if if that's what happens, it means the end of this bull market is nigh. This is Kaiser Johnson with Liberty and Finance, and these are the Miles Franklin Weekly Specials for December 1st through December 8th, 2025, while supplies last. First this week, 2025, 1 ounce silver Canadian maples are just $4.50 over spot. 1 tenth ounce gold Canadian maples are only $60 over melt per coin. Next, 100 ounce silver Asahi bars are just $3.45 over spot per ounce. Finally, 1 ounce platinum maples are only $195 over spot per ounce. To order our specials or any of the many other options we have available, call us at 1-888-81-LIBERTY. That's 1-888-815-4237. We're available after hours and on weekends, and we look forward to speaking with you. Hey, everyone, this is Elijah K. Johnson with Liberty and Finance. And back with us today is our good friend Lobo Tigre from the Independent Speculator. Lobo, thank you so much for joining us today. Always happy to do it, Elijah. Well, it's great to have you today. We've had quite exciting times in the metals markets with silver making new all time highs racing towards $60. We're looking at about $58, $59 silver at the moment. I guess, did we want to start off with that? What do you think has transpired over the last couple of months as we've seen this huge pullback in silver and now just kind of a race to the upside again? Yeah, it's, it's kind of fun when, you know, gold was breaking out and breaking out and breaking out. We had lots of gold headlines and we talked about how that might bring more generalist investors in. It's sort of fun, but also a little bit scary to see silver headlines on CNBC or Bloomberg. There was a video that went around a couple of days ago about, you know, will silver head higher? And it wasn't silver or gold bugs. It was one of these mainstream media outlets. I forget which one, but the funny thing was, is it didn't tell us anything new, anything we hadn't heard already about the shortage in London of physical and people flying silver around all that sort of stuff that we've talked about for weeks now. Um, so, but, but people got all excited and people want to know, what do I think about this video? And so I'm like, well, I think they're telling us what we already know. But to answer the question, I think I'm, I have two minds on this. On the one hand, I'm long and despite people calling me Darth silver and all these things, I own plenty of silver and these silver stocks. I'm very happy to see along. I've never been a bear. Um, but I have to say, I'm, I'm, I'm not sure I really want to see silver catching up with gold. Cause you know, even your most diehard silver bulls will tell you that silver lags gold at first in a bull market and then more than catches up at the end. It's not the catching up part. I have a problem with it's the end part. I have a problem with, uh, you know, my analysis is not technical. It's fundamental. And I don't see any reason for this bull market to end anytime soon. That's like saying the money printing is going to end soon. It just never happens. Um, that said, you know, the, the bull markets do end despite the money printing. So what I'm saying is if a silver bulls are saying, this is it. Silver is finally going to have its day in the sun. It's going to have more, it's going to beat gold. Be careful what you wish for, because if, if that's what happens, it means the end of this bull market is nigh. It is interesting what we've seen over the last, I guess, year and a half or so. I mean, it seems like there are signs here and there that this would be the final blow off top, right? The third stage of the bull market. I mean, one that I look at is the gold silver ratio and it's, it's, you know, below, it was around 80 to one for quite a while. And then it has broken down to about 70 to one. Now it doesn't seem like close to where we've seen in the past, but it definitely is falling, which is typically what we see during that blow off top. Um, what do you anticipate if this isn't the end of the bull market within the next few months, maybe a year, uh, what do you anticipate for the metals going forward here? Well, I'm bullish on, well, I'm bullish on anything real that governments can't print. I'm particularly bullish on monetary metal safe Haven assets. Um, if you do your audience think that the, uh, AI evaluations in the market are a bubble that bubble pops, I think that would create a lot of demand for safe Haven assets. As we all know, if, if, if the market actually crashes, you know, I'm not just talking, you know, rolling over and, and politely, you know, slumping down to more reasonable valuations. If there's an actual crash, everything gets whacked. Absolutely everything, including gold at first during that initial liquidity crunch. And then it goes soaring. If that happened for, for, um, anybody who gets it, that could actually be an absolute gift on the part of the market that, that sphincters, you know, opening moment, like in 2020 or 2008, I wasn't in the market in 1987, but I understand it was a similar thing, right? You know, the wrong things go on sale. And that is an absolute, you know, the best times you could have bought gold and in my career, or during the crash of 2008 and the flash crash of 2020, both of those saw screaming rebounds afterwards. So we might see something like that. If the AI bubble bursts, um, broad, you know, and if not broadly speaking, I think the writing is on the wall of, uh, the inflationary agenda in the United States. Even if you agree with, with Trump, you know, the notes did not save us true dip $2 trillion and the tariffs are being walked back and negotiated down. So, uh, I think the agenda is highly inflationary. Europe's rearmament is highly inflationary. Russia's war is highly inflationary. Even China at long last has finally got some consumer price inflation going again. So, you know, that's bullish for monetary metals. And then to sort of the, the, um, not just the geopolitical risk, but the awareness of how rickety the financial house of cards has gotten. I think I can't prove this, but I think it has a lot of mainstream investors, deep pocketed, not just institutions, but individuals, family offices, that sort of thing saying, you know, maybe I should head with a hedge with a bit of gold and maybe some silver too. Uh, so all of this is, is very bullish, you know, whatever happens long-term. And it's, it's, uh, I feel a bit odd saying this when we're at or near record prices in gold and silver, but there's actually not a very strong case for, for gold going down. The strongest case we could have made recently was, Oh, well, gold was screaming up to 4,400. That was too fast. And it has to be a correction. And then the question was, you know, would that be a peak or would it be a plateau to another high later? Uh, and I wanted it to be a plateau, but Mr. Market doesn't care what I want. Right. You know, so we had to see, and I think it's pretty evident right now. It certainly wasn't this kind of peak. It wasn't a 1980 intraday type peak. It looks like 4,000 is the new 3,000 and we're consolidating before moving higher. Um, so overall bullish, bullish, bullish all around. It's crazy thing for me to say at these levels, but that's, that's the way I see it. And sorry, let me come back to the point of your question. You know, if I'm bullish on gold and I'm bullish on anything real, how can I not be bullish on silver? Right. Um, that having been said, I, if I'm, if I'm right in my fundamental analysis and that we still have a long way to go with this market, then that argues for actually silver cooling off a bit here. You know, maybe it kisses 60 that sparks some profit taking and it cascades a bit, but you know, if silver crashes all the way down to 50, the silver miners will still be printing money, like literally pulling money out of the ground, real money. Um, so I don't think that would be a disaster at all. I think to the degree that something like that put the silver stocks on sale again, that would be an opportunity and what might make that happen. If it's true that, you know, demand out of India is and, and front running of tariffs and critical minerals rebalancing, this sort of thing has put a squeeze on the physical markets. Um, I think that rebalances and, and again, I'm not a bear here. I'm not in, I'm not arguing against silver, but I think that would be a good thing that would set the stage again for consolidation before moving higher. And if that's not what happens, if we're really at that blow off top, you know, the good news is, okay, everything will go higher. Um, the bad news is that after whenever it peaks that we're likely then to go into bear mode for some time. So again, Mr. Market doesn't care what I want. I would prefer it wasn't the blow off top just yet. Um, but if it is, you know, if we start seeing things going parabolic again and gold confirmed silvers move, then actually I, I would deploy more cash as crazy as it sounds to say, yeah, I'm going to jump on all time highs. You know, if we're looking at that blow off top, then yes, I would put more money to work trying to, trying to profit on that. And, and sorry. And I mean, in the stocks, uh, bullion, I always buy on the dips. That's my savings. I'm always willing to accumulate bullion. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, you know, speculating for hockey stick gains on the stocks. How much of what's happening right now, maybe in the last couple of weeks, do you attribute to, you know, it seems like a fed rate cut is now a more likely it was questionable for a couple of weeks there, but now the betting markets are really saying that, you know, we're going to get our fed rate cut most likely in December. And also it seemed like this leak about, uh, it's Kevin, Kevin Hassett, um, who is likely to be the next fed chairman, betting markets have him over 80% chance of, um, being the next fed chairman. How much of that with respect to the fed and, and Trump and everything is what's fueling the push, especially for silver higher. Uh, I got a yes or no on that. You know, clearly when those things happen, the headline about Hassett came across, we saw an instant response in the markets, the broader markets, as well as gold. Um, I don't remember silver wiggle that day, but I do remember that it was good for gold that day. Uh, and I think silver was sympathetic. Uh, but then things go back to the way they were. And at this point that fed rate height, as you say, that the markets in near certainty that that's priced in, uh, you know, there may be a small move on the day of, but as we've seen when this happens, when, when the fed does exactly what's expected, the FOMC release comes out and nothing happens. It's when Powell exercises his jawbone that things can happen. That's harder to price in. And, you know, more question marks about, you know, well, is Powell, I mean, he's on his way out. Is he gonna, is he gonna, you know, capitulate and just go more dovish because he's on his way out anyway, or is he on his way out? So he's going to just like, you know, tell Trump to stick it where the sun don't shine and just like double down on his obstinacy. I don't know. I don't know how you, how you handicap that maybe, uh, Kelsey or, or, um, you know, predicted or one of these places will have some sense of that, but that's just people's accumulated guesses. We don't, I don't know. Answer the question is, I think these things are marginal, the debasement trade. And I think it's hilarious that wall street has suddenly discovered the debasement trade. We've been talking about this since 1971, but that is gold bugs. Um, but that is a real thing. And it's durable and it's irreversible. You know, if, if people ask me, well, how I can gold go, I always answer, well, how long can governments keep printing money? You know, what, where is the end of that process? So if you're, if you're not worried about the shorter term fluctuations, and by the way, you know, if you bought the very peak, like if you just had the bad luck to jump on the bandwagon or listen to some evil scum of the earth newsletter writer, who says he's going buy the all time high. Right. Um, if you did that in 2011 and you bought gold at the very top in 2011, you would have more than double your money now. Okay. It took 14 years, but it happened. Right. You know, you, so like, if you pull back and look at the big picture, if that's your basis for action, I really don't think you have all that much to worry about. And of course, almost nobody top ticks a market. Most people have done better. And if people had courage of their convictions and they bought the slumps, they bought down in 2015, uh, near the bottom, then they would have made much, much more than just double their money. So, you know, the good news here, I think is that for hard money advocates, you know, liberty and finance audience types, you know, you know, what's going on in the real world out there. And if you just, you're patient, you stay the trades, you, you buy low, sell high, you can do that repeatedly and make a bunch of money. If you're not in the money making phase of your life, you're in the wealth preservation space of your life, then, you know, don't lose the faith brothers and sisters, your real money is what it is. And we all know, uh, you know, whatever the fed may or may not do those 25 basis points or not, you know, that that's, that's not even icing on the cake. That's just, um, superfluous, almost small time noise. And I know at the beginning of the year, you were talking about, uh, being very bullish on copper. We've seen that increase 30% this year. And now again, you're calling for copper to be really your favorite play in 2026. Can you expand on this? Yes. When I say, when I make that call, people ask, you know, you know, what do you like best? What's your favorite bet for the coming year? And it's become sort of a tradition and I've made it copper again. When I say that, I that's not to say, I think that's the one that's going to go up the most. I'm looking at the answer is risk adjusted. It's the one that I have the greatest confidence in the most solid bet. And it's more specifically, the real question is, you know, Lobo, where are you going to deploy your money? I was already long gold and silver, so I didn't miss out on this year, but I was looking to deploy more into copper and I did some, but I've been waiting for a buying opportunity. I do think there's still some Trump shop to go here and still a chance of a buying opportunity. But if not my, my outlook on copper remains so bullish for so long, I'll just add more copper to my portfolio. So the answer to your question is like, if we get the blow off top soon and gold and silver go into reverse, they're not going to have a great 2026. If, if we are building that plateau, if this is the next shoulder before the next head of in the chart, then gold and silver will both outperform copper. I have no doubt about that, that if, but that's an if statement, not a when statement, right? A Rick rule is I'm never confused, you know, if, and when. So, whereas copper, I see that more as a win and the pushback here I get is, oh, well, you know, nobody wants electric cars anymore. So that's going to make copper demand going. No, it's not. It's Dr. Copper. It's a fundamental industrial metal and you sure extra demand from EVs is it helps copper, but that's not the basis of the speculation here or the market really. And people say the same thing about AI. Oh, the AI bubble is going to blow up. That's going to be bad for copper. Well, probably short-term it would. And that could be the very thing that gives me the buying opportunity that I've been hoping for. If that AI bubble bursts, because it's certainly, and I'll see this, you didn't ask, but this also applies to uranium, both uranium and copper. And maybe even to some degree, silver have become AI place and that could blow up. That doesn't change the overall fundamentals for any of those metals. But if the AI bubble does blow up, it could, you know, not it could, it would almost certainly be bad news for anything that's gotten an extra tailwind from that AI play right now. So, you know, all of these things could happen or not, but at the end of the day, you still have copper. You still going to wire houses with it. You're still going to need it to wind motors. You still need it for all the gazillion other things that you need copper for. And that's not going away while the supply remains constrained. So I'm looking at it from like as a miner, right. You know, the supply and demand of the market. And so I just have a really high level of confidence in copper going forward, whatever the short-term volatility of the markets does. Whereas, you know, as much as I, you know, I love gold and silver. If we get that blow off top, you know, things could reverse sharply. Certainly. And one thing that has been troubling for a lot of people in, I guess you could say the alternative currency space, a lot of people in our space also like cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has been crashing recently going from 120, 125,000 to just about 80, 90,000. Your take on the crash we've seen and what are you looking at with respect to the crypto? Do you think there's any sort of good risk reward potential in that area? You know, one of the guys on my team recently asked me if there was a price at which I would buy Bitcoin and, you know, if it drops to 70 or 50 or 10, you know, would I buy then? And my answer was no, actually, because I just, I can't wrap my head around what is the, what is the valuation? What do I know what the value is of Bitcoin? I know what the price is at the moment. And sure, prices are determined at the margin, whatever people are willing to trade at. But if the valuation is hard to figure, you know, that price could be highly volatile. Michael Berry just did an interview and he said that Bitcoin was absolutely worthless and it was ridiculous that people would pay anywhere near $100,000 for it. And one of my followers on Twitter pointed out, this is an ignorant thing to say. If people pay that, that is the price. Well, that's true. But if the reason why people pay for something goes away or changes, then the floor can be cut out of under that. So I don't want to go too far down here because I'm not a crypto analyst. I'm not an expert in these things. I just, but for that very reason, I have never owned Bitcoin and I have never felt FOMO. If, if I did buy Bitcoin cheap at a thousand bucks or whatever, and I had a hundred bagger on it, then getting lucky on that gamble, getting lucky buying something that I didn't understand and could not defend would actually encourage me to be reckless and gamble again, and maybe lose even more than I made on that, on that Bitcoin bet or something that just runs contrary to the disciplined speculation based on understanding and my knowledge of mining stocks or mining companies or the specific individual issuers that I was taught by my teachers. So I'm not one of these people who hates Bitcoin. Actually, I think the crypto crowd did us gold bugs an enormous favor by teaching entire younger generations about the dangers of fiat, which old boomers were never going to convince them of. By the way, shout out to Lynn Alden in her book, Broken Money. Okay. You know, she's more pro crypto as you probably know, but that book does a fantastic job explaining so many things that you and I, and I'm sure most of the people in our audience have believed for decades and have not been able to explain to younger people. Lynn Alden just did it. Classic case of what I'm talking about. So I don't know what Bitcoin should be. I don't know if it's going to go lower or not. But since I don't know, I'm out and I'm perfectly fine to be out. I think it's a really interesting perspective and that a lot of people don't even understand what cryptocurrency is. So this idea that it could replace the financial system or something like that seems a bit far-fetched if people don't even understand it. Right. I mean, people have been using precious metals for thousands and thousands of years and, and fundamentally do have this innate understanding of it, but cryptocurrency is new and it doesn't seem like it has a lot of track record really. It seems like a kind of a gamble at the moment. You're being polite. It has no track record. Like the flash crash of 2020, you could say exogenous shock pandemic and so on. That doesn't really count. And in 2008, which was the bath last real stress test, the whole system had Bitcoin wasn't even there. The cryptos didn't exist. So, and then this is not a hostile thing to say, this is just a fact like cryptos and Bitcoin are untested in, in those, you know, if they're really going to work as advertised, we just don't know. And you can say, Oh, you know, gold is a pet rock or whatever. But it has been, or as you say, around for thousands of years, we do know we, we, we dig up treasure troves that you hear about, you know, every few weeks or so they find another one in England or Czechoslovakia or whatever. And it's a fortune because it has real value, right? The, the use case and the basis for valuation that results in price hasn't gone away for gold for thousands of years and silver too. And I think that's important. That's relevant. That doesn't mean that, you know, cryptos in the future couldn't become the future of finance and so on. In fact, I, I rather like the idea of goldback cryptos because that solves the problem of needing to make change with gold. Like who wants to carry pennies or even gold coins and silver coins and a medieval purse hanging and jangling at your belt. I don't want to do that. Being able to transfer it securely, electronically, instantaneously worldwide. I think that's actually a good thing for the use case for gold and silver. So I, I just, let me put it this way. Look, the real enemy here is fiat. The real enemy is government profligacy. The real enemy is the stealth tax of inflation, stealing, honestly, stealing is the right word from the, we, the people on the part of not just this government, but all governments around the world. They're run by cowards who can't raise taxes. So they tax you indirectly surreptitiously through inflation. And if, if cryptos can help fight back against that, fine. If gold is the better answer, fine. Let the market decide, but don't, let's not infight between each other. The enemy is, is fiat, right? Certainly. And you've talked about like a K shaped economy, a K shaped recovery. And it seems like if people don't really position themselves well, get themselves kind of more out of the exposure to us dollars. I mean, that's, that's what we're going to see is we're going to see the wealthy and it'll get on the, into the commodities, into the undervalued assets. And, and the middle-class is not going to be there unless they take action. Yeah. The whole K shape thing kind of scares me, you know, so you've got the beginning point and then you've got a line going up, going line down K shape. Well, there's another famous metaphor in the markets, and that is an alligator jaw shark. What if those halves of the K going forward are actually sharp tooth jaws of an alligator and it snaps shut on the market? Now I'm not just being metaphorical here. The high bar of the K is, you know, people exposed to assets, people who have been, you know, standing in line of the money fire hoses coming out of Washington, you know, particularly Wall Street have, have done well up there. And the people suffering on, you know, on the bottom part of the K are, you know, the average working Joe who doesn't have that much exposure. And, and this is what cost Biden his job, you know, besides the disastrous debate where even, you know, the lapdog liberal media, pardon my unbiased observation there, but even they couldn't deny that he was senile after that debate. Right. But, but what really lost him the election is, you know, it's the economy stupid. And all these Biden defenders kept coming out and saying, Oh, why, why didn't Biden get credit? The economy is so good. Because the problem is the K shape. And if you average those jaws of the alligator on the K and you get that middle line, well, it's not so bad, you know, the economy's fine. And that's what the economists and the theoreticians were defending. Oh, look, these national average statistics, things are fine. But all those people on the bottom part of the K, and there are more of them than on the top, and they vote, they're thinking, I'm not fine. You know, my life is not better than it was four years ago. And, you know, so I think that cost Biden his job. I think it's why Trump is, is rejiggering and adjusting his plans. Now that's affordability issue. He calls it a hoax. It's not a hoax. If inflation, if prices go up, and inflation goes to zero, the prices are still up. That's the affordability issue. That is a real issue. And people are unhappy about it, especially people on the bottom part of the K. I think it's dangerous for Trump allies to deny the experience of the people on the bottom of the K, because those are the people that voted Biden out. And I don't want to get too political here. I think the point was, like, you can't look at the national averages in a K-type situation, because those jaws of the alligator will eventually close to that average. Now, suppose that, you know, the ideal scenario is everything Trump is doing works, stimulates new manufacturing and all the working guys, they rise up to the top level of the K. The jaws close with the bottom jaw coming up. That would be the best case scenario, even if disruptive. But what if it's the other way around? What if, for example, the AI bubble burst and the top part of the K collapses down to the lower part? Well, then everybody gets hurt. And those national averages that didn't look so bad, suddenly they're in the toilet. It's not a prediction. I'm just saying, you know, this is maybe tap dancing on a landmine isn't the right metaphor, but the equivalent inside the alligator jaws is dangerous. You know, playing around in there is dangerous. And what is the right way to play this? What is a super strategy that's going to make us all millionaires? I wouldn't believe anybody who told me they knew what was going to happen. And this is exactly, you'll do this, you will make a ton of money. I just don't believe that. What I do believe, and I feel quite comfortable saying, is that in an environment like that, insurance is not a bad thing to have. And financially, the best insurance in the world you can have is bullion that you can hold in your hand. You can be long and it represents congealed physical value, represents energy much better than an abstraction of numbers on a key chain. And there's no short, right? There's no counterparty risk. I just think that makes a lot of sense. And I'm sure your audience doesn't need me to convince them of this, but maybe just, you know, in the current environment, you know, hold fast, brothers and sisters, you're not wrong. And the rest of the world might find out just how right you are in the year ahead. Well, Lobo Tigray, we really appreciate your time today. As always, people can go to independentspeculator.com if they're interested in learning more. Tell us a bit about that. Just real quick, if you sign up for my free weekly letter, we do not spam you. You get one notification per week for that. If you like the way I think you can consider hiring me as your due diligence guy. I have a team, we cover more than a thousand companies, I think, at this point. And you may or may not agree with me on everything, but it's unbiased. You know, I work for my clients, not for any of the companies. There's no paid advertisement or promotion on our website. Fantastic. Lobo, thank you so much for your time today. Any last thoughts before we leave you? Well, you know, I've been talking about those alligator jaws shutting. I'm not sure that will happen. Just remember, you know, hard money advocates have thought another recession was around the corner. I think every year in my career, I've people write to me and say, what do I do when the market crashes next month? And those people were right two out of the last 25 years. So as scary as things look, and as much as I'm advocating insurance in the face of those alligator jaws, I would not bet the farm on disaster around the corner. I definitely would have that insurance, but be careful. And the fundamental behind this is the money helicopters, or as Lynn Alden says, fiscal dominance, or Michael Howell, global liquidity, right? All that money sloshing around there, as insane as market evaluations are now, it could keep pushing them higher. That's part of the inflation that we all, you know, know is happening, even if it's underreported. So just what I'm saying is be wary of thinking, you know, for sure what the future holds. Insurance is one thing, betting everything you have or your accumulated fortune on even the most solid sounding argument is actually taking a big risk. All right. Well, Lobo Tigre, once again, thank you so much for your time today and God bless. Thank you, Elijah. This is Kaiser Johnson with Liberty and Finance, and these are the Miles Franklin Weekly Specials for December 1st through December 8th, 2025, while supplies last. First this week, 2025, one ounce silver Canadian maples are just $4.50 over spot. One tenth ounce gold Canadian maples are only $60 over melt per coin. Next, 100 ounce silver Asahi bars are just $3.45 over spot per ounce. Finally, one ounce platinum maples are only $195 over spot per ounce. To order our specials have available, call us at 1-888-81-LIBERTY. That's 1-888-815-4237. We're available after hours and on weekends, and we look forward to speaking with you.