Gold Market Warning Why I'm 80 Cash Right Now Lobo Tiggre

Welcome back, I'm Jeremy Safran at the Rules Symposium, coming again from the beautiful Boca Raton Resort here in Florida. Temperature sure is hot today, but you know, at a conference like this, almost everyone is selling you something, a stock, a story, a forecast. My next guest has built his reputation on being independent and being blunt. Now he publishes his own research, he tells you exactly what he owns, and right now he's doing something almost no one else in this building is. He's sold into the strength and he's sitting on cash, waiting, waiting, waiting. We're going to find out if he still is. So no stock pitch today, just an honest read as to what a disciplined speculator actually does in a moment like this. Let's welcome back, of course, Lobo Tigre, one of our friends. Good to be with you, Jeremy. What a kind intro. Yeah. Well, I'm trying, you know, and we will get into it because I want to get onto that trust that we talked about before and why people refer to you as the independent speculator. And I guess we could jump into that, Lobo. I mean, you disclose your trade. So let's start there. I mean, you sold that bulk of your gold and silver stocks in January. That run up was obviously beautiful. Great time to sell it. But you're sitting on the biggest cash pile ever. So I mean, everyone's here is obviously bullish. Maybe they weren't that day. But let's get into why you step back. Quick correction. I didn't top ticket. I didn't sell in January. I have a system called the Upside Maximizer. I think we've discussed it before. If I get triggered on one company, that's something to that company. If I get triggered across the board, that's something about the market. So that's what happened. Free download, by the way, on the website, Upside Maximizer. So I got triggered across the board. I said, this is a big market move. And I made that call. So I didn't sell the top. It crashed. I got triggered. And I sold the dead cat bounce. OK. Which was good enough. That's good enough. It was like $1,300 higher than where we are now. So since it was across the board, it wasn't like a plan. I'm certainly not saying that this is the right number. Do this. But the fact is, I'm about 80% in cash. I've never had this much cash. I'm still in the wealth generation phase of my life, not maintenance. And I want my cash working for me. But at that time, it was clear there was a big rollover going in the market. I had large unrealized gains. And we gold bugs, we like to criticize the paper market not being real. Well, if you haven't realized those gains, they're not real either, brother. So I decided to go ahead and execute. And at the time, I got a lot of heat. You traitor. It's going higher. It's going to the moon. Now, you know, kind of crickets. But to the point of where we are now, I've literally never been in this position before. And it's interesting how easy it is to watch the stocks going down when you're in cash. And I don't mean to rub the salt in the wounds or whatever. But this is actually an important takeaway, I think. I didn't know where the top was. I didn't call the top. I just followed my discipline. My system said sell. I did. Got a bunch of cash, more than I expected to or wanted to. And now it's just so much easier to sit back and watch this unfold and say, OK, I'm locked and loaded and ready to buy when it's the next cyclical low. Hey, man. Speaking of which, I mean, I'm looking at the price of gold, price of silver today bouncing back a little bit. It's actually catching a bid. Some of these miners catching a bid. So I mean, when you see that, does a bounce like this kind of tempt you to get back in or do you still not see a buy? No, I do not. The idea is buy low, sell high. I bought low years ago. I sold high earlier this year. And less high is not low. Lower is not low. I mean, think about it. We're plus or minus $4,000. When we hit $4,000 on the way up, people are popping champagne bottles, whoo-hoo, $4,000. Now we hit $4,000 on the way down. People are crying into their beers, whoa, it's me. But that's not really low. You know, these gold mines, the producers today, those mines were designed and built sub-$2,000. They are printing cash in the real sense in this market. So yeah, yes, they're relatively on sale, but relatively on sale is not the deep discount right. Right. OK, well, let's get into that a little bit because, again, I mean, you said that gold around $4,000 isn't low, historically at least. So even adjusted for inflation, right? So make that case for the room that's sure it's going higher here. Well, I agree. I think it's going higher. It doesn't mean it can't go lower first. So my base case, you know, people want to call me names, Darth this, Darth that. But I'm not actually a bear. My base case right now is actually a period of correction and consolidation, and the next big move will be higher. That is my expectation, not my prediction. I don't know the future, but that's what I think is the most likely thing. But if that's true, correction and consolidation, you know, last time in 2020 when we first hit 2000, it lasted three years. Where's my sense of urgency to buy the dip today? If we're in a period of correction, consolidation, there is no, you know, I want to wait for what looks like an objective opportunity to buy low. What really upsets people is that I point out that there are some similarities to the peak this year to the one in 2011, like I mean, chart peaks, similarities, and also even 1980. Again, I'm not predicting. I'm not calling the market top. I'm not saying January of 2026 was like January of 1980. But the data suggests it would be imprudent to ignore the possibility. And if that's a possibility on the table, where's my sense of urgency to buy in front of that? Right. So, you know, I don't want it to happen. But if it does, I think about this, here's the other side. If I go back in now and gold doubles again, okay, I'll make some money. I'll make more money. But if we pull a 2011 or a 1980 and gold halves before going back up again, and I've got the cash to buy that dip, I'll make 10x. Like the difference between buying high and selling higher and buying low and selling high is the sort of thing that can add a zero to your net worth. So I don't know how it's going to play out. But you want. Right. If that chance is there to add that zero to my net worth, I'm going to want to have the cash to take advantage of it. And sorry, just one more real quick thing. In 2008, when everything was falling off a cliff and gold dropped to almost 700 bucks an ounce. We could all see it. We all knew it was wrong headed. It was the wrong reason. Gold had to come back. Or we thought, you know, we thought we knew, right. And it did. But I was illiquid. I didn't buy any stocks during that crash. And by the way, we are talking stocks. I haven't sold any bullion at all. Yeah. Okay. Unlike our host here. Yeah. Rick. Rick did sell a little bit of silver, as you know. But let's first get into copper. And I guess we should do this. Let's let's introduce this first on copper, you know, because there's a lot of audience who watches us that we've had you over the years, obviously, and we get those critics in the comments. And one of them is saying, what the hell are you wearing that turtleneck for? So just to just talk about that. It gives me of trying to look like Mr. T with my chain here. It's either that or Steve Jobs with the turtleneck. I'm thinking, well, you know, if you combine Mr. T and Steve Jobs, that could be pretty badass. You know, can I say that on TV? Yeah, you could say. So anyway, I like the turtleneck because I don't have to iron it. Right. The chain is there because I made a promise, I kid you not, 48 years ago, not to take it off. And so it's still there. And to me, this says something about the kind of person I am. I had a reception for readers last night. I didn't realize Rick Roll was speaking at the same time, but too late to change things. And I still had over 50 people show up. And at the end, one of them, on behalf of the audience, presented me with this gift. It's a heavy chunk of copper. Feel that. Yeah, that's that. Oh, wow. It is pure. That is native copper. So to all my critics out there on YouTube about my turtlenecks and my chains, here you go, brothers. I love it. Well, this is what I want to talk to you about, Lobo, because right around your neck there is a beautiful piece of copper. And that is your highest, obviously, confidence trade. And you've got the cash kind of cocked for it. So if the AI trade is kind of cracking, we saw that $2 trillion come out of NVIDIA not coming into the mining equities. But into SpaceX. Is the buy low, is this what you've been waiting for? What are you looking at in the copper space? You know, sorry, brother. From six and change down to six, that's not buy low. You know, $6 copper was your all-time high not so long ago. So no. But your framing of the question is excellent. Because copper, the whole set for copper, we probably don't need to rehash all the fundamentals. The audience is probably aware. Like structural deficits, as far as the eye can see, filo is a great discovery. But the last one before that was 10 years before that. We need a couple of those every year. I mean, everybody knows all this stuff. But recently copper has become one of these picks and shovels place for AI. And it is true that the data centers need a lot of copper up. But you know, the reason to go long copper is not because of the data centers or even the EVs before. But to the degree that the current bullishness for copper or the pricing in the copper market on the futures market is driven by the AI narrative, there's good potential for that to go into reverse. I mean, as we speak, we have already some retrenching. There's some questioning like, well, you know, where's the ROI going to be? You know, do we really need all this build out? You know, Meta is starting saying, well, maybe we're going to rent out some of our compute. We're not sure we need all this. Well, if Meta is renting out excess compute, why do we need to build a trillion dollars worth of data centers or DeepSeek, right? Suddenly, maybe we don't need. So the point is, if the AI story goes into reverse or blows up, the bubble blows up, we could see a sale in copper. And I would love to take advantage of that. I'm very, very bullish, but I don't want to buy high and sell higher. I want to buy low. And I mean, you're not buying the metal. You do buy, but on the future side. But are you, are you, what about the miners? No, no, no. I'm talking miners. I'm, I'm, I'm willing to stick gold and maybe some silver under my mattress. It's actually the third palm tree on the left, not the mattress. Don't rob my house, please. It's not there. Takes a lot of copper though. Yeah, but yeah, I'm not going to do that with copper. Certainly not uranium. Yeah, no kidding. So no, actually, I don't, I don't worry about the metals. If, I suppose if I was very cautious, very bullish on copper, but didn't want to risk a mining company, you know, get nationalized or something, then I might buy a copper ETF for the metal, but I've never done that. You know, I'm seeking alpha. So I'm looking at, at the mining stocks. But anyway, so I think there's a good chance that the AI bubble gives me that buy low opportunity. If not, then, you know, right now, as we speak, we've got the war sort of reheating in the Middle East. And if that continues, that's going to be bad for Dr. Copper, industrial medicine. If, you know, if it really blows up again, if, if, you know, Trump's latest is, I'm done, I've had enough, you know, these are scum. There's no point in negotiations. They're a waste of time, right? If, you know, if he means that, I don't know if he ever means anything he says, but if he means that and the war really reignites, that's another vector for potentially sale prices in copper. I don't know if either of these will happen, but I do know that I want to buy low. And if the market comes to me on this, great, I'll buy. And if not, segue into something else. Let's say no AI bubble burst, no war, reinflating copper gets away from me and I'm left on the shore watching the ship sail the light. Fine. In that scenario, oil goes down and that's what's on my shopping list right now. Really? Yeah. So I want to buy low. I did actually dip my toe in the water last week. I bought, you know, I, first time I bought a stock in months and it was an oil, yeah. And, you know, right now, you know, I actually had old shopping list. Half a dozen stocks. I only got one because I didn't think we were, you know, quite there. It was lower, but not really low, low. That one company seemed oversold to me. The other ones were just relatively right. I don't want relative. I want low. Uh, and so this week the market's going against me. You know, people are saying, hey, great, great timing on that buy right before the market went up. And I'm thinking, dang, you know, I only got one out of the six, right. But my, for whatever it's worth, like the futures market right now is telling us that the war is over. And even with flare ups along the way, investors writ large clearly expect. And, and perhaps with good reason, you know, the United States, at least, you know, we understand that until the midterms, there's a high incentive to see oil prices go lower. We also had that big rush of ships out of the straight. Once it semi reopened, that oil is going to be starting to hit the refineries like next week. And even now the, the, the Hormuz tracker says that the straight is closed, but there are 57 ships in transit and those are the ones with their transponders on. So how closed is that? Long story short, I do have a very bullish thesis on oil sort of medium to long-term, but I think in the near term, the odds favor a shopping opportunity. And the pair trade here, what I really like about the situation, this is actionable for now to your audience. The war either continues or it doesn't. It cools off or it doesn't. It's kind of binary. You can waffle in the middle only so long before it goes one way or the other. And that's beneficial to either one of my energy picks or actually I like uranium too, but right now we're talking copper and oil. Canadian, US? I know you won't give me the stock ticker, you can give me the country. If things go the way they're going now, I think we get a sale price in copper. Sorry, in oil. If they continue roughly the way they are. Not today, oil blipped up. Well, yesterday. Actually, it's off again today. But if they go the way they've been trending recently, I think I get a chance to execute my current shopping list in the oil patch. If I'm wrong, then I think that puts my copper shopping list, plan B, in play. I got to ask natural gas. Do you touch that? It's more regional. Regionally, I do like it. I like LNG better because it's more globally fungible. But it's kind of one of those so obvious plays that the obvious beneficiaries are not that much on sale. Yeah, yeah. Uranium. You brought it up there briefly. I mean, this is your runner-up. So in plain terms, why? What do people get wrong about it? Well, unfortunately, I don't think people are that wrong about it. Well, okay. To the degree that there are some Johnny-come-latelys in the story because it's also perceived as an AI picks and shovels play. And we saw this in spades last year, just over a year ago, when the deep-seek moment came out. And there were uranium stocks. Oh, suddenly AI is going to be more efficient. Won't need any energy. Like none. And we literally had blue chips in that space go from 52-week highs to 52-week lows on that news. Completely wrong. And all-time highs not long afterwards. So I would love to see the market make that mistake again. I'm not sure they will. But if they did, it would be an absolute gift wrap with a giant bow on it. I would love that. But actually, I think the writing is so clearly on the wall. The AI hype is maybe overdone. But it is true that you need this power. And with the pushback against the data centers. Data centers providing jobs and stuff? Great. Taking all our power and jacking up our power bills? Not so much. And so you got to build your own power. Trump is taking a victory lap on having invented the idea of providing your own power. But he's actually kind of walking the talk. They were targeting three new advanced reactor designs to be tested by July 4th. 250th anniversary. Great photo op. They brought four online. So I'm an anarcho-libertarian. I don't want handouts from the government. I'm always aware of those scary words in the English language. I'm from the government. I'm here to help. But it sure beats having a hostile government to have a friendly government to the industry. And that really is night and day. Do you hit the uranium mines? Are you hitting something like picks and shovels, SMRs, things like that? No SMRs for me. That's another one that I might have. Some of those companies had a thumbs up or a claws up in my MyTake service. But I didn't personally buy them. I got the story. And now all the ones in that space have gotten so much love. Again, I don't want to buy high and hope to sell higher. So, boy, we've gotten off this track. To your question, the markets, I think, are somewhat mistaking the opportunity here. But I think most people get it so much for these other reasons we've been talking about. The support and the spot price. At 85 bucks, I can't call that low. It's certainly enough that it's continued to incent new production. But here's the interesting thing. And this is a takeaway for the audience right now. Spot has been below the long-term contract price pretty much all year. There was this wacky surge early in the year for a day. And then it came back. And it's been dragging along underneath the long-term contract price, which is the real price. That's what the actual consumers pay the miners for the stuff. That never lasts. The spot, well, you know, it's more volatile. It'll shoot higher and lower. But it always comes back to the long-term price in time. And right now it's been below long-term contract for months. So I think there's potential for a snap move up in spot. Which does tend to move the stocks. So on the one hand, I can't say they're super cheap. It's not like buy low, buy low. But there is actually a near-term catalyst that could push them all higher. If I was a trader, I'd probably go long now on that basis. As a long-term bull, right now, having sold my gold and silver stocks, my portfolio is almost entirely uranium. So I'm not feeling any sense of urgency here. I'm already locked and loaded for this. But if I didn't have any uranium at all, because of this near-term catalyst, I would probably remedy that like this week. I would find a dip to buy right away if I didn't have any uranium. Do you look at like a uranium trust? Do you look at a spot, something like that? Well, several answers. For me, I'm seeking alpha. So I'm not really looking at that. But if I'm on a fixed income, you know, and I can't afford to lose my nest egg, but I like uranium, absolutely. That's where I would go. So that's one size doesn't fit all. Now, this is good. This brings us to a little bit of a transition, because, I mean, you draw that hard line between speculation worth taking and obviously a lottery ticket. So just talk to the audience where that line exactly is for you. Well, our host here at the Rule Symposium, I think he puts it really well. The strategy of disciplined speculation is not got a hunch, bet a bunch, right? And I mean, there are successful gamblers out there. There are short-term traders who are really good at reading the tape, as you were. Jesse Livermore's Ghost. There's a guy on Twitter who has that handle. I don't know who he is. I don't know how successful he is or she is. But there's people who can do that. That's not me. I'm a due diligence guy. I want to find something that looks like a compelling value proposition to me. That's why, you know, I'm not smart enough to figure these things out. So if I just wait for the market to give me a chance to buy low, that makes it simple. You said that gold could fall $1,000 here and it would be a fantastic kind of a gift for the miners, right? I mean, just unpack that for the audience back home that here's a contrarian take. So, you know, here we are at a conference. We're in a room full of these booths where people are trying to sell their stock and I'm not buying anything. So I'm feeling a little bit out of place here. Hopefully you don't get any rotten tomatoes on my way out. But you got the copper. Yeah, yeah, I got the copper. So the first answer from my base case is just if we're in that period of correction consolidation, I feel no urgency to buy. So, but in terms of what you're asking, if the worst case scenario is, this isn't my case, but if the worst case scenario is like plan for the best, sorry, plan for the worst, hope for the best. If the worst case scenario is a 2011 type consequence, well, you got a 50% drawdown or even after 1980, 50 plus percent drawdown. So 50% 50 to 60% drawdown for gold from its 5600 peak would be sub 3000. I'm not predicting that. I'm not saying that's where I want it to go. I'm saying that if it drops under 3000, you know, 2700, something like that, or high, high 2000s, I'm just buying because that's historically in the entire time that gold has been free to trade against the dollar since 1971. That's as big a drawdown as we get. It's been, you know, up, down, up, down. It's been going up ever since tricky Dick closed the gold window in 1971. And the biggest drawdowns are plus or minus 50%. So if we get a 50% drawdown, I'm buying. So I always think when I get out of an airport or I get into a taxi out of the airport and sometimes I'll get recognized, I think, oh, wow, maybe it's gotten a little frothy. And I ask you that because there is discipline in mania. And I have to ask you, I mean, we just watched one IPO mint the world's first trillionaire on paper. And, you know, AI mania seems to be everywhere despite that little capitulation on NVIDIA. But from a disciplined kind of speculators seat, what does the top of a hype cycle actually feel like? Is it what we went through? More experienced persons than I are saying yes. But let me actually turn the question upside down. It is the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solid is a Wall Street truism. It is really, really hard to call market tops. And as crazy as something looks, it goes vertical. It can get even crazier. Like I absolutely did not know when I said it in Vancouver that, you know, it's pull the hockey stick. It's time to start thinking of taking profits. I didn't know that it'd be two days later. Right. I did not time that. It's just I was just looking at the hockey stick. Right. That's really, really hard. What's easier is to look at like stupid cheap oversold markets and, you know, calling an exact bottom. I'm not claiming I can do that or that that's easy. But it is easy to look at something like copper below the cost of production and say that stupid cheap. Like we're not going to stop mining copper. Some, you know, it's got to go higher from this. It might go lower for us, but it's got to go higher. That's much easier. So hence my focus on focus on on looking for opportunities to buy low. And if I can add one more thing here, just be just general issues of discipline and investment beyond resource speculation. If you listen to, you know, famous investors, even Warren Buffett or, you know, Mr. Lynch, you know, some of these guys who really define an era of investing, one of the things you'll hear them say is it's really hard to beat the market. But the one sure way to do better than the average bear in the herd is to lop off the bottom. If you can identify the worst, you know, of, you know, the track out there, by definition, not falling prey to those worst stories will make your average your result higher than average lopping off the bottom. So that fits with what I'm saying here. Lopping off the bottom is far easier to do. And so take this wisdom back into our world and mining stocks. There's a lot of dog breakfast companies out there that it's pretty easy to see, you know, if they don't have the money or they don't have the permits or, you know, a lot of promo, not so much gold in the drill core. But it's much easier to lop off the bottom than to try to, you know, figure out who's got the next hundred back there. Yeah. You know, everyone claims discipline at the top, as we know. I think I've even done it before. But what's that actual rule that stops you from chasing when it's ripping? Well, just we've articulated already. I do not buy higher and hope to sell higher. I know some people make money doing that. And I, you know, my opportunity cost has been high. But you know what? Just buying low, executing on my discipline. I don't, I don't claim to time the top, but I lock in my gains as either as I go or when the market turns. And I have accumulated wealth doing that. And I have done that for my client. If you look at my public track record, I don't, I don't want to twist my arm, my own arm, dislocate my shoulder, patting myself on the back. But it's, it's out there. It's on the website, the public track record. I haven't just made money. I have made money on more of my stocks than I've lost money. And that might not sound like a big deal, but it's conventional wisdom in our space that you have to understand that if you're going to swing for the bleachers, you're going to lose money on most of your stock picks. And the 10 baggers and 20 baggers will make up for the losses. I hate losing money. So, again, I don't want to beat that to death. But, but in terms of, if you want to know what discipline does, look at my track record. There's only one 10 bagger on there. But I've won something like two thirds to three quarters of my speculations. Yeah, yeah. It's been wild to watch. So Cash King right now? Right now, yes. I am not buying anything today. Even oil, I was almost ready to trigger on that shopping list, but this week it's gone back up again. So I'm, I'm sticking with my discipline. I'm waiting for the market to come to me. And do you like those oil? I got to ask you as somebody that knows a lot of these oil names, Whitecap, what have you with the dividends. I mean, you know, I've watched them at three dollars. I've watched them at 20. Still not cheap enough. Yeah, no. Well, let's put it this way. If I was a private investor and I didn't have my 50,000 very best friends looking over my shoulder saying, what have you done for me lately? I might say, you know what? It's cheap enough. It, you know, you know, if I'm patient and I, you know, I'm not talking about some tiny junior that that's got a Hail Mary hole that, you know, could blow up the company either way, right? Sure. You know, those kinds of companies are not going to dry up and blow away at some point. If I bought today, I'd probably come out ahead. Yeah. But if I, if I, as a public figure say that and then oil goes down to 60 next week and those stocks go way on the deep discount bin, there is no end of the hate mail I will get. Me or me. Even without a turtleneck. I love it, man. Love what you're doing. Appreciate your time as always. It's a year for copper. I keep hearing it from this chair. But of course, Kitco news is going to be on location all week long. We've got a couple of guests coming up. Stay with us. Kitco news on-site coverage of the rules symposium. Natural resource investing is presented by Paris mining.