Gold & Silver Take a Beating as Markets Drop - What Comes Next?

The following interview is sponsored by OneGold. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment decision. Hello, everybody. Welcome into Commodity Culture. My name is Jesse Day. Today is October 22nd, 2026. And my guest today is the OneGold growth manager at Apmex, one of the premier precious metals dealers in the United States. A lot happening with the metals today. We're going to unpack it. We're going to dive into OneGold's new exciting product. There's so much to talk about. Levi Gunter, it's great to have you on the show. Great to be back. Thanks for having me on. So first things first, I mean, markets today are in turmoil. I mean, of course, social media sensationalizes everything. And now if the broad market falls by 2%, 3%, it's seen as here it comes, it's going to crash. However, we are seeing precious metals in particular take quite a hit, both the metal and the miners. But if we look at silver, for example, down over 4%. Gold, as we sit here right now, has fallen, let me bring this up, 2.3%. We're getting close to that 4,000 level on gold. I wonder what your thoughts are here. Do you see this as just a sell everything moment today? Do you think it's related in any way to the macro picture when it comes to the metals? Would love to get your thoughts. Yeah, well, there's a lot to unpack there, right? So as far as today's move, I do think that it's kind of a part of the larger picture, like you had mentioned. So much of what's going on with precious metals right now has hinged on the Fed narrative. And today what we saw was a slightly better than expected jobs number out of the U.S., which in turn theoretically should bolster the likelihood of Fed hiking rates later on this year. And that's really no change from the broader picture, right? And getting back to the broader picture, just, you know, I think you almost have to go back to last year's rally to make all this make a little more sense. So just for a little bit of context, last year was a massive year for gold in general. It was its best year since, I think, 1979. It was up by over 64% on the year. And again, last year's rally was predicated on the narrative that the Fed was going to begin cutting rates. And obviously, that changed earlier this year when we had the conflict in Iran, subsequent higher oil prices, higher energy, higher inflation. And by the time May rolled around, markets started, they flipped. They stopped pricing in rate cuts and started pricing in rate hikes. Right on cue, you saw massive ETF outflows. So by the month of May, globally listed gold ETFs shed the equivalent of what would be about 15 tons of gold. And then you fast forward to now, or rather September, where we had our first rate hike, the 25 basis point rate hike, along with the Fed's own projections that, you know, the core rate of inflation wouldn't get down to their target of 2% until closer to 2030. More recently, September CPI came in hotter than expected at about 3.7%. As I mentioned earlier, just a lot of headwinds there for gold in general. So I think right now as we speak, we're about 25% off of those highs in general. And naturally, treasuries are higher right now as well. I think as we speak, 10-year is hovering just above 5%. The 30-year came off of a high we haven't seen since 2002. But again, as far as what turns this around, I think we could talk about that a little bit as well. But hopefully that kind of helps frame things a little bit to where the moves don't seem so dramatic if you think about the underlying narrative there. Yeah, we'll get to thing is turning around in just a second, but what you brought up is very interesting. We've seen about a 25% drop since gold's all-time high at the beginning of the year. If we go back to the 1971 to 80 bull market, there was about a 45% to 50% drop there along the way as gold screamed to, I think it was from the $35 that it was set at by Bretton Woods to $800, I believe somewhere around there over the course of that decade. Do you think, you know, obviously history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes as the saying goes. Do you think we could see that further correction in gold before we see another leg up in this bull market? I think we could see a further one. I don't know that it'd be as dramatic as the 70s, right? There are some similarities there, though, because there was a time there back in the 70s where the Fed thought they had inflation under control. Turns out they did not. And so the narrative shift, as you mentioned, it was pretty dramatic. Gold fell, I think by about 50% from 1974 to 1976. So that would have been closer to the 195 to about a hundred dollar mark. And then it ran all the way up to 850 by 1980. So more than eight times off that low. So I don't know if we're at the bottom yet. I don't know if we're going to see much more of this until things start to turn around because I do think the broader fundamentals are certainly still intact. But there are some parallels there. Yeah, definitely. We also had conflict in the Middle East, the Yom Kippur War. We had the Arab oil embargo, issues with energy prices as well. So very interesting parallels to be drawn. Now, one player that has been taking advantage of low prices is China, who continues to accumulate gold, adding 21 tons last month. I believe this is their 23rd month in a row of accumulation and the largest purchase in three years. Do you think China is seeing what's happening and taking advantage of these low prices? And just your thoughts on Chinese gold accumulation and how that could impact the market? I'm kind of fascinated with the topic of central banks and how they interact with gold. For good reason, I think. Just to give you an idea of the scale, since central banks really started buying gold in earnest, a record amount since 2022, about one out of every four to five ounces of gold was purchased by a central bank, right? And the reasons they buy often mirror the same reasons that us as retail consumers buy. This last year, of the central banks who bought gold, 90% of them said they do so because of its performance during times of crisis, or as an inflation hedge. And you mentioned China, they're no different in that regard. they are also bargain hunters like we are. I think it made headlines a lot back in 24 when they paused their purchases for a few months while gold was making that run. And that's kind of how I view this accumulation in September. It was massive, but it wasn't a surprise. I think that people should take note though, anytime one of the largest and most patient buyers of gold like that treats this pullback as a buying opportunity, I think generally the retail public should probably take note of that. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. Now, if gold stackers are lamenting right now, silver stackers are in another world of pain. Now, interestingly, if you were to tell most silver stackers around the middle of last year when silver was in that $30 range that we're going to be going to even where we are today around $55, $56 and change. Now, it is a dramatic drop, obviously, from the all-time highs we achieved earlier this year. But silver above $50, I mean, I can't tell you how many comments I got in my comments section when a guest said $50 silver, saying you're insane, that will never happen, not in my lifetime. And yet, here we are. Obviously, it feels different having fallen so far and the big hit that silver took today. I wonder specifically what your thoughts are on the silver market and if you see further downside ahead or you think we could perhaps be carving out a bottom here? You know, I'm not sure if we're technically at a bottom yet. We may be close. Um, and we do tend to have kind of a short term memory, especially as it pertains to silver, right? As you mentioned, and the move does seem dramatic, like you mentioned. But in reality, if you look back historically at what silver tends to do and how it trends, it actually makes quite a bit of sense. I think, what did it peak at around 121 in January. So we're roughly 50 to 55% off of those highs as of today. um and if you look back silver typically is about two to two and a half more times as volatile as gold and it tends to trend in the same direction obviously just just harder so if you look back at the big picture and you know gold is is uh roughly 25% off of those highs silver's a little over 50% off of those highs moving in tandem like that if you kind of frame it that way i think should put people at ease a little bit. Obviously, silver is more volatile long term. I think it has a lot of the same drivers as gold. And I think those big drivers could kind of turn things around like debt and deficits, central bank buying. But we also have to remember that silver wears two hats. It is a monetary metal. But in recent years, about 60% of its demand comes from industry, And we just had our fifth consecutive year of physical supply deficits. We're probably going to have our sixth year pretty soon in 2026. And the deficit is somewhere between 40 and 50 million ounces, what I recall. So not a nominal amount. And at the same time, demand on the retail side is forecasted to increase. Production is relatively flat overall. So from the supply and demand industrial side of silver, I'm still pretty bullish on it. And again, I think if a lot of those tailwinds I mentioned earlier in terms of debt and deficits come true for gold, the same could only be true of silver. They'll probably trend in the same direction once more. Silver will probably just do so more dramatically or with more vigor. And you mentioned retail demand there. I've had several guests on this show point out that just around 1% to 3% of people on Earth, if they woke up and started stacking physical silver and gold prices, would go parabolic. Now, it sounds like a small number, but as far as I see it, I don't expect a mass awakening of the retail public in the West. In the East, obviously, the story is different. In places like India, China, Cambodia, many areas in Southeast Asia, the populace views gold and often silver as money. We're a far cry from that in the West where it's seen more as a speculative asset. We saw something circulating on X today where someone was talking about, you know, they're going to be able to use fusion and they're going to be able to alchemically recreate gold. And it's just like this is like decades and decades and millions and billions of dollars away from ever being humanly possible. But it's interesting to see that being put out there into the ecosystem. What are your thoughts on that retail participation? Do you expect it to pick up as those issues you were mentioning, debt and deficits, currency debasement? I mean, cost of living crisis is only getting worse. Do you think that's eventually going to push more everyday people into starting to accumulate physical metals to offset that persistent inflation? Eventually, yes. And whether it's sustained, we'll see. Time will tell. I think it's going to be, it's going to be difficult because I think the gap you mentioned a moment ago is worth exploring a little bit, right? So, um, we don't have great data here in the U S as far as who all owns gold, right? Which is kind of the point. Uh, but by the best, um, surveys and data, we do have fewer than 10% of Americans own physical gold. Uh, and there are a lot of reasons for that, you know, um, a lot of it's speculation on my part, but I think, Hey, we're a relatively young society. We've experienced relative economic stability for a long time. And it was even illegal to own gold bullion in this country from 1933 to like 1974, I believe. So there's just like 40 years of the habit that's just not there. When you contrast it to some other parts of the world, I think you mentioned maybe India and China in there. Yes, they kind of treat gold as more like generational wealth, Germany even. I've always been interested in those markets. Again, by the best numbers, we do have over 50% of those households own physical gold. So yeah, we're a far cry from that. The only thing I can say as a certainty from the business perspective is what I see on our end in terms of the numbers, in terms of sustained demand from new customers, it's likely going to take some level of sustained stress, unfortunately, because when I look back at our numbers at any of these catalyzing events going back six or seven years, I'll even go back all the way to COVID times. If I look at the month preceding the event and then the initial month of the event and look at new customer counts, they're always up significantly in that initial month. So I believe COVID, we saw about 150% increase in new customers on OneGold. When we had the conflict with Russia and Ukraine began, or the SVB crisis, similar trend, about a 60% increase in new customers. And even more recently, in January, with all of the price volatility and just ahead of the conflict, we saw about 180% increase on our monthly average of new customers. January was our strongest month in that regard since, I believe, January, February of 2021, which, if you recall, was the silver squeeze time. So all that to say, it's kind of a long winded answer there. The gaps between why folks don't buy here and why folks buy in other societies is always interesting to me. The only thing I can I can tell almost as a near certainty is to see sustained demand here in the West or specifically in the U.S. it's going to take kind of a longer term event like that, unfortunately. So the only thing that we could do as a business is just make it as easy as possible for folks to access the investment and give them plenty of optionality and liquidity if they choose to exit. Yeah. Well, speaking of that, you've launched the OneGold card recently. We're going to talk about that in just a moment. Very interesting, allowing people to spend their physical gold. However, before we do that, let's dive into Atmex and OneGold because you work with both companies, Atmex being the parent company. Talk to us about the general products and services you offer and kind of your overall business philosophy. Just for a little background on both companies, as you mentioned, OneGold is a wholly owned subsidiary of Atmex. Atmex is one of, if not the largest, precious physical metals retailers here in the U.S. they've been around for over 25 years. They've done over $20 billion in sales. They have over, I think, 30,000 products listed on their website. As far as the service they offer, you can think of them as kind of like the Amazon of gold and silver. So you call them or you order online and they send you the product in the mail. Very reputable, trustworthy name there. In 2018, Atmex partnered with another company called Sprott, which I'm sure a lot of your audience would be familiar with. Basically, the intent behind OneGold was to create a more modern, user-friendly interface that allows customers to buy precious metals and enjoy the best of both worlds. So the best between owning physical metal and interacting with an ETF. And that's essentially what OneGold is in a nutshell. It's a digital precious metals platform that allows customers to buy gold and silver in vaults here in the US and Canada and so on and interact with it like you would any other modern investment app with tools like auto invest, limit orders and a card portfolio. Well, let's focus in on OneGold before we get to the card. The concept of digital precious metals, a very interesting one and one that kind of brings us one step closer to bringing gold and silver into our actual monetary system. So walk us through how exactly it works, where the metal is vaulted and how customers can be sure that the metal that's allocated to them is there. And also, are they able to redeem the digital gold and silver for physical? And is there any limits on that? Is there a minimum amount? Yeah, really, really good question. So as far as what the product is, so we have vaulting agreements here in the U.S., in Canada with the Royal Canadian Mint, in Switzerland or Loomis in the United Kingdom. so customers can go in and they can buy as little as five dollars worth of gold and what they're buying typically is just a larger part of a wholesale position so like a 400 ounce or a kilo gold bar all the positions there in all of our locations are insured through the Lloyd's of London they undergo regular audits the metal is allocated to our customers so they have title to it they maintain full ownership and so yeah a lot of our customers like that because they can access the investment at a much lower premium. And it's very liquid. They can sell it pretty quickly. They have a lot of optionality on the way out the door. A lot of our customers use OneGold to supplement their current holdings because they maybe already own metal in their house and maybe it's not insured there or their safe deposit box. So they want an option that's liquid, insured, and secure. And that's essentially what it is in terms of, I think you'd mentioned physical redemption so a lot of our customers are in it for the long term they hold metal seemingly like indefinitely if they exit a lot of times it's easy just to sell your metal and withdraw the cash but they can convert it to physical product as well so i mentioned the underlying product there is often a larger format format bar so in other words if i own 10 ounces of gold in switzerland i can't break a piece of a 400 ounce bar and offer it to you so instead we We actually have a pretty neat process through our parent company, Atmex, where you just convert that vaulted metal to any of their 30,000 products they have offered on their website. They'll ship it to you within typically one or two business days. It's fully insured. So think of it as like the convenience of owning digital metal with the option of turning it into physical. Let's talk about the OneGold card, which allows users to spend their gold anywhere MasterCard is accepted. There's no annual fee, no minimum balance. What made you decide to release the OneGold card and why should stackers consider using it? Yeah, so we're really excited about the OneGold card. It's the newest addition to our card portfolio. What it is, it's a prepaid MasterCard that allows users to spend their metals holdings. In terms of why people should use it, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to convince anybody of that. In fact, it was the opposite. Our customers were talking to us about this concept for a long time now. And so that's one reason we're very excited to bring it to market. And one reason a lot of our customers were excited about it is over the years, many of them have started to view gold as more of a secure savings account than your traditional savings account. So this allows you to kind of bridge the gap. And historically, you know, gold has been money for thousands of years, right? Only recently has it become more cumbersome to actually use as money. So that was the idea behind it. even if you're not there and you're like, Hey, I like my traditional savings account. I like my gold and the two to be separate. Uh, we have noticed a lot of people just signing up for the card just to have it as an option, uh, because it is free to free to sign up in terms of how it works. Uh, fairly simple. You, if you have a one gold account or you don't, you sign up there in the app or the website, uh, the approval process typically takes less than a minute or so. And and you're instantly issued a digital card or digital cards that you can use on Google or Apple Pay. There is no credit check, so I can immediately go down and spend it. And what it does on the back end, when you swipe or tap, it immediately sells the exact amount of metal you have designated to sell for your purchase. And for U.S. gold and U.S. silver, there are no fees on the way out. So So in other words, if I own $1,000 of U.S. gold and I want to spend $1,000, you can spend the exact amount of gold that you have. And so how does that work for smaller transactions? If I want to buy a cup of coffee or something like that on the back end, how does such a small amount of metals end up getting sold? Yeah, so I do like getting in the weeds on this. But for smaller transactions, it's the same mechanics. It just goes out further in terms of the decimal places. So you can sell out to like eight decimal places. So if you have like a $3 cup of coffee, for example, and I want to sell my US gold for that, I swipe my card, it's going to sell exactly 0.0007 ounces or whatever that may be in terms of gold. And the rest of your gold stays in the vault, allocated, insured until you want to spend it or what have you. So that's kind of how that works on the back end. And ultimately, over the long run, are you looking at the one gold card as kind of like I mentioned that one step closer to bringing sound money back into the monetary system. Obviously, this is not a grand sweeping governmental decree where gold is now being issued as money again, which, of course, we all hope one day comes to pass given how the currency debasement and inflation is taking its toll. But do you see that the one gold card is kind of a step in the right direction? Yeah, I kind of view this launch as a starting point. So I do think we will kind of evolve from here into more of like a gold banking concept, ideally. And we're really excited about it because there is a sponsor bank to the card called Cross River Bank. They are supportive of that concept. So theoretically, you know, I could draft ACHs out of my account. You can already do ATM withdrawals with the card, but ACHs in and out of my one gold account, you could use the card, you could automatically add funds into your account and essentially use it as, you know, as a gold transactional account, if you will. Yeah. Great. Well, I'll end by opening the floor to you. Is there anything we haven't yet discussed? Anything you think it's important to emphasize about OneGold and the OneGold card? And then if you could also just let us know where people can sign up. Sure. Yeah, I think we hit on all the big points. Again, really appreciate you having me on. If I would say one thing, we do pride ourselves here on being very much customer first and we think the platform and the products are very well thought through. We're also end users. So if you haven't tried it out, we'd be interested to know what you think. So give it a try. It's onegold.com. You can go to the App Store or the Google Play Store and download the app free. Even the card is free. So give it a try and just let us know what you think. We're really receptive to feedback. And that feedback is, as I mentioned, in part why we're here today. Great. Well, link is going to be in the description below for anyone out there who wants to try out the One Gold card. I'll put a link to Amex down there as well. Levi, great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the show. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.