Why Don Durrett Raised His Gold Target to $10,000

Called it the last year of American greatness, and we've held. America's still number one, influence-wise. Next year, 27, I think that's when it all breaks. We don't even have a crisis yet. This is one thing Maloney said that I really like. He goes, look at all these problems, and we don't even have a crisis yet. What happens when the crisis comes? Special coverage from the New Orleans Investment Conference is brought to you by First Majestic Silver. There's no substitute for silver. Hello and welcome back to Soar Financially, here from the floor of the New Orleans Investment Conference. My name is Kai Hoffman. I'm the edgy mining guy over on X. And of course, I'm your host of this channel. And I'm really looking forward to trying to think. I was going to say introduce you to Don Durette, but you've been on the channel before. But I'm excited to have you back, Don, because I need a bit of positivity in my life today. It's Friday, October 30th, having a bit of a rough day in the markets here. And I'm really excited to have you on. You're a keynote here at the conference, and we have lots to talk about. We need to talk about gold, silver, of course, but also the mining stocks. They're getting absolutely pummeled today. But you've been quite positive, actually. You like what we're seeing. You're positive, hopeful that we're still in the bull market. Is that still the case? Let's start high level here. Yeah, I'm actually extremely confident and bullish in the gold space and the miners. And the reason why, I've been doing this for 20 years, and my thesis when I started this has always been the reason why you own gold and silver miners is because the debt bubble and the U.S. economy and the U.S. government and the policies that we're using. ...are basically counter to fundamental economics. We've been trying to live off of debt, and you can't do that. And so we've seen this. I was watching yesterday, last night, I was watching a presentation by Mike Maloney, and he did a fabulous job of showing chart after chart of how things have gotten out of balance. And they've just progressively, I've been doing it, you know, 20 years basically buying these miners. And the macro data has progressively gotten worse for the U.S. economy because now we're $2 trillion deficit, which cannot be fixed. It can't even be attempted to be fixed. So we've heard this idea of fiscal dominance. And what fiscal dominance basically means is that the fiscal, the government's budget, has to continue spending, which is living on debt, basically. Now we're up to $2 trillion a year, almost $200 billion a month. They have to basically print this money. So the revenue is about $4 trillion, and then $5 trillion, and then they spend $7 trillion. And they can't stop spending money. And so... What happens when you do that is that the bond market becomes fragile over time. So you have to have customers. You have to have somebody that buys the debt. This is the story. What I'm explaining right now is the story, the only story that matters if you're a gold and silver investor, is that can that bond market remain strong? Can it remain stable? And if you look at it, you're seeing the cracks in the armor. And the cracks in the armor is that... Fewer and fewer investors want to own long-term treasuries. That's kind of the beginning of the end. You lose your customers. If you don't have anybody buying the debt, that's a doom loop. Because what happens is, is that... Eventually, the Fed will have to step in and be the buyer of last resort, and they'll have to basically, they call it monetizing that debt. They'll have to basically buy those bonds. And once they start doing that, inflation will go up. And inflation is really the problem with modern monetary theory, which is this idea that debt doesn't matter. Right, well, debt doesn't matter as long as you don't have inflation. And so we have inflation today. We have a problem. We have an inflation problem now. The reason why I've become more and more bullish is because lately interest rates have been going up. You know, we had 5% on the 30-year, a little under 5% on the 10-year. Good luck getting that under control. And as interest rates go up, your bond values go down. So now people are like, I don't want to own these bonds. So now they're not only not want to buy them, but they don't want to, they're selling them on top of it. And we don't even have a crisis yet. This is the one thing Maloney said that I really like. He goes, look at all these problems, and we don't even have a crisis yet. What happens when the crisis comes, right? And so this is the reason why I fundamentally just become more and more bullish because we're getting closer and closer to that end game. If you don't see it, you're not really paying attention. And so for me, today, yeah, we're down another 5%. Silver's at $49. Gold went down. I've had a target. I've been bearish gold. Now, my targets for gold, I've moved them up. When the interest rates started going up in the summertime, I raised my target for gold to $10,000. It was 7 to 8. And now I'm like, now we're going to 10 by the end of the decade. And my targets... For the gold miners, it's 7 to 8, and I think 7 to 8 is kind of a no-brainer target, so we're under 4, but I've been bearish. I've been bearish since early summer, because we went into this correction in January, and basically the correction just kept going on and on, and so I got to the point where the markets aren't—gold isn't going to bounce here. So if it's not going to bounce here, then it's just going to keep going lower. So I turned bearish, and I've remained bearish. And even when we had that bump in August, July, August, I said, that's a dead cat bounce. And it's not a breakout, people. Be patient. We're going lower. So I've remained bearish. I still bearish. My target is 37.50 to 39.50. Today, we're in my target range. I think $3,750 will hold. As a matter of fact, today's on a Friday. It's a month in. It's a very good chance that Monday we bounce out of this, maybe. Next week we hold, and we're in November. I think by the end of November we'll be above $4,000. I'm hoping we're above $4,200, but by the end of the year, I think we'll be above $4,500 by the end of the year is my expectation. That's the positivity I needed in my life today. Don, I admit it. I was a little down, actually, coming down this morning. And we were only at 39.60 when I got out of bed. So we're now at 38.80. So, you know, you can imagine my mood today. It's like going all the way down. A couple of things I want to talk about, because I keep looking for cracks in the system, red flags, and maybe signals or pointers towards a bigger crisis. Scott Bessent stepping in. Into the bond market you were talking about it like he still had to step in on the long end and buy it like yes It's a miniscule amount, but he had to step in and send the signal. Yes. We're here to buy back some of the longer-dated bonds What are some of those indicators that you're seeing and how do you interpret like Scott Bessent actually actively interfering with the market when? When he intervened that's what I moved my target to 10,000. I mean that was the ultimate signal That he's nervous now We're not even in a crisis yet, and he's nervous. That tells you all you really need to know. The problem is that the last two times that gold was at a peak, when that bull market ended for gold, that was 1980 and 2011. Both of those periods of time is when the economy began going up. That was at the end of an economic down cycle, which is the exact opposite that we're in today. The absolute exact opposite. Gold does, the gold bull market does well when you're in an economic down cycle. The 1970s and the 2000s, we haven't been in an economic down cycle for 17 years, 2009. So we are absolutely overdue for an economic down cycle. Gold absolutely relishes an economic down cycle. I've been saying the only chart that matters. So for me, I'm a speculator in gold and silver mining stocks. And I don't want a one-bagger, two-bagger, three-bagger. I'm a tiger. I'm after five-plus-baggers, and I look for ten-plus-baggers. Big, big alpha. And the reason why I do that is because if you get an economic down cycle like we did, and I think we will, and I think it's going to be severe, gold, that's when gold thrives. Gold is entering a new era, a new dynamic, where... Since 1945, since the end of the World War II, gold's been like an afterthought. Like Warren Buffett, who's one of the best investors of all time, he's like, you don't need gold. Ignore that stuff, right? And his mindset is very similar to Wall Street's mindset. It's that, all right, you don't really need it, but maybe you can have 3%, you know, but you definitely don't own any of this mining stuff. But, you know, you can have a little bit of physical gold, maybe a little bit of insurance, but you don't really need it. You can ignore it. They interviewed, well, they asked a poll. I'm sorry, I couldn't get the word. They had a poll of your family offices, your family office. So family offices, these are like local RIAs. These are people that are basically investment advisors for basically the local population. You know, you don't go to Wall Street, right? Local cities, they call them family offices. These are the investors in America. And they did a poll, 70% owned zero gold, 70% zero. And the other 30% had an average of 1%. So gold has been an afterthought. That has been the case since like 1945. Gold's an afterthought, right? That's changing as we speak, changing. And when we go into a crisis, this is around the world, basically around the world, where investors now are looking at gold as a go-to asset, which has never happened before. Right. So a lot of times historically, we've always said, you know, we, you want to own gold to protect your assets because gold will keep up in inflation. That narrative goes out the window. That's no, that's no longer the reason why you own gold. You own gold now because gold is now a dynamic asset that can outperform everything, including the dollar, including inflation, including Wall Street. It's a new dynamic go-to asset that it's becoming a must own asset. So gold has the potential, like my target's 10,000, it has the potential to go much higher than that. So gold is going to replace, if you will, Kind of treasuries as like collateral. Like central banks are buying gold now. Gold is actually at a higher level now than treasuries for central bank assets. Or probably after the drop today that might have changed again. But against the U.S. dollar, I think it was. But they are buying. And China and India and Russia and Asia, they are basically way ahead of the game. They're actually anticipating this dynamic shift. And the West is like, no, we don't need any. And he went on eating. England doesn't own any gold, Canada doesn't own any gold, U.S. hasn't bought any gold in forever. However, that's... That dynamic, this is the reason why I'm so excited, because when the economy does go down, gold is going to go up. Now, I want to say this one more time, final thought here. The only chart that matters for a gold and silver investor is the S&P 500 and gold. It's basically gold divided by the S&P 500. Who's the winner? So right now, the S&P 500 has been the winner. Right now, if you divide them, it's below 0.5. And so it's going to go to two. So when it shifts, so the S&P 500 right now is about 77 and gold's about, if it was at 36, it would be 0.5. So it's a little over 0.5. It's going to go the other way. And so what's going to happen is the S&P 500 is going to go down and gold is going to go up and they're going to cross. That's going to be the golden cross. Thank you very much. And so that's what we're looking for, we're waiting for. That's the only chart that matters. You don't want gold to outperform the S&P 500. That is exactly what happens whenever you have an economic term. Just go back and look at the last two bull markets for gold. And look what the S&P did during that period. And every single time, gold outperforms and the miners outperform. One final thought. The HUI went from 50 in 2000, 2001 to 630. 50 to 2000. That was the miners just absolutely ripping. In that same period, the S&P was flat. So that's what we're waiting for. It's the only thing that matters. Fantastic. Yeah, you make some excellent points, but I do want to try to poke some holes into the thesis here with the AI boom that we're seeing right now. Of course, we're seeing a lot of capital spending. We can talk about the efficiency of that, but with it, it comes a certain degree of growth as well and maybe productivity increases as well. How do you rate the AI boom that we're seeing right now? Maybe prolong the... The economic crisis, meaning not only the crisis, but until we get to the crisis, meaning we do have an upturn right now. We do see 3.4% GDP growth right now, for example. Like, how do you sort of rate AI in that? Right. And maybe other factors. I'm focusing on AI. Yeah, I think that history is rhyming. I mean, if you go back to the dot-com bubble. So the dot-com bubble basically bursted that 20-year bull market, which is very similar length to the one we have now. So in 2000, the dot-com bubble burst. And the reason why it burst is because of over-investment versus ROI, which is exactly what's happening with AI. We have over-investment versus ROI. It's like, we don't even know if the model's going to work. I mean, if you look at Anthropic and OpenAI... Thank you. We don't even know, you know, when they're going to generate revenue, when they're going to generate profit, right? All right. And so those are both private companies right now, but they're the two biggest. And their model is, it's a model that really we don't understand yet because it costs money for these companies to operate, right? Which is unusual. That's usually like Microsoft and Amazon. These companies, they don't need money to operate. All they do is generate cash, right? The OpenAI model doesn't work that way because they have to have compute. They have to own these computers. They have to pay for the compute. The reason why Amazon, the cloud, the reason why they're investing in Oracle and Meta, the reason why they're investing all this money is to get OpenAI to pay them. It's a strange model. We don't know if it's going to work. But I actually think that OpenAI in the near term is a net negative. And the reason why, number one, it's really squeezing out private equity, private credit. Squeezing it out. The other thing it's doing is it's squeezing out jobs. Open AI right now is eliminating about 10,000 jobs a month. And so it's sucking jobs away right now. And the technology companies, Microsoft just came out and said that they're going to lay off a bunch of people, over 10,000. Why? Because of AI. AI is eliminating jobs. And so, I mean, even Elon Musk said that we're basically not going to have to work anymore. So I think it's a net negative in the near term. Those are the two main negatives. I also think that history is rhyming, where basically you don't have the ROI, things are going to blow up, private equity. These are some of the data points. I mean, if you put all the, you know, the positives and the negatives on the board for the U.S. economy, my God, there is just a long list. You know, I do this in my newsletter. I just give all these lists, like 25 things that are basically trending the wrong way. If you look at housing right now, it's kind of stuck, right? The cost of living. People are having trouble paying their bills, and it's not improving. There's no trend. If you try to find a sector right now that's strong, that's growing, the only one really is the people that are basically building out the data centers. You know? But that's about it. Go ahead. No, no, you make some excellent points. So I'm really curious, just, you know, when do we hit rock bottom here? Or when does the crisis hit? Because, for example, the recent bond auction apparently was way overbought, and there was a lot of interest because the yields were so attractive, right? I can answer that question. I think it's 27. So in 26, I called in my newsletter in January, it came out early January 26. I said that 2026 would be the last year of American greatness. And I believe that's the case. So in 2026, you know, America is still flying high. But simultaneous to flying high during this year, we saw a lot of chinks in the armor. The Iran war. The Iran war is like, what is going on here? That was a very strange war. I mean, we really don't even know why we're in it, which is really, really bizarre, right? So, simultaneous to that, the AI boom, the so-called AI thing, is basically starting to think about, you know, where does this go, right? And so, I called it the last year of American greatness, and we've held. America's still number one, right? We're the number one economy, you know, number one military. We're still, you know, kind of the number one country in the world. Influence-wise, next year, 27, I think that's when it all breaks. Thanks. It's my. Basically, that's why I said 26 is the last year of American greatness. I think by the end of 27, we'll basically go, oh, my God. It'll be an OMG year. I really feel that way. So... And I think so. I'm really bullish for gold in 27. I'm very bearish for the economy. I think that the key level here, remember I said the only chart that matters is S&P going down, gold going up. The key number for the S&P 500 is 7,300. Today we have a 75 handle. So 75 handle, 74 handle, 73 handle. Once you get that 73 handle, so we're really close to 100 day moving average. If you go You go back and you look at the chart. Three times that the S&P went below the 100-day moving average, it also went below the 200. So that 100-day moving average is very important. We're above it today, but not by very much. Once you slip below that 100, then that 200 comes into play. My thesis is that if we go below the 200-day moving average, it's right around 7,300. You stay below that for two weeks and look out. And so if it doesn't bounce back, because if it doesn't bounce back, You're going to potentially get a whoosh down. And if you get a whoosh down, it's kind of the Katie bar the door moment. And I think the midterms could very well get this thing down to 7,300 by mid-November. I've been saying this. I firmly believe that this could be the end of the bull market on Wall Street. And we're really close now. Now, if it doesn't happen in November, Call it Q1 of next year. Thank you. We haven't had a correction on Wall Street since March. It's the last time we had a 5% correction, which is kind of a nothing burger, right? We have not had a 5% correction since March. It's been a while. And so I think that we're going to get one here before the end of the year is my expectations. And it's going to be interesting when we do because... The previous corrections, the AI trade basically has created those V-shapes because we're early in the AI trade. That's what happened in February, March. We went down and the AI trade said, I'm still here, and up we went. So the AI trade has kept everything alive. But since about June. The S&P 500, the breadth, has slowly just been going whoops, whoops, whoops, whoops. If you look at the S&P 500, 60% of the stock, we're at almost an all-time high, 7,700. 60% are down, are in correction right now. 60% are in correction. That's a lot. Right. So it's kind of danger land, right? It's like orange. We've got a flashing orange light right now. Not the red light, but the orange one's going. You know, Danger Will Robinson right here with the stock market because of the breadth. It's like, wait a minute, why are all these stocks in correction? Why, why, why, why? And the reason why is because of what happened in July, August with private equity and the interest rates going up. And why are interest rates going up? Inflation, we haven't lost inflation. Inflation, you know, isn't terrible right now. Why are interest rates going higher? Why are interest rates anticipating this? And the answer is very simple. It's that private credit needs too much money. It needs too much money. And it's like there's too many borrowers, and they're like, okay, we'll keep raising our rates, right? Right? The Mag 7, when they borrow money, they have it. And so they're like, oh, here you go. We'll give it, you know. And they're issuing equity on top of it now as well. Yeah, yeah. And well, their balance sheets are getting weaker, right? They're putting debt on their balance sheet. Well, Meta is issuing $95 billion now. Exactly. So they're like, oh, you're going to have a weak balance sheet? Well, guess what? You're going to pay more. And they're like, we don't care. Whatever rate you got, buddy, we'll take the money. Yeah. So, these are the reasons why I remain extremely bullish for gold and bearish for the economy. Well, let's quickly, in the last couple of minutes here, talk about the mining stocks as well. You're obviously very bullish. You just put out a report, 20x baggers, so you obviously believe in the mining stocks here. How would you rank them, or not rank them, is the right term? What's the health of the mining sector right now? If you look at it, some of the stocks and producers are down 70% right now. Right. The gold miners are fine at $4,000 gold. So the average ASIC right now is about $2,300, $2,200. The average, maybe $2,100. And so you need to pad that ASIC by about $1,000. Let's call it $3,200. So in the gold mining space, the break-even is around $3,200, $3,300. So they're still making $500 plus an ounce, which is healthy. $500 or above is healthy. So the gold mining sector is healthy. And they will remain healthy because I don't think we're going down below $3,500. So the gold miners, this is the thing that's kind of amazing to me, is that the gold miners are healthy and nobody wants to own them. Nobody has wanted to own them. We're not in a bull market for the miners. We're in a bull market for gold, but not for the miners. And the way that you know you're in a bull market for the miners is that free cash flow multiples go up. And they haven't went up yet. As a matter of fact, last year, we had that first day, we had that leg up. When we took off last year from August to January, the miners didn't outperform the metal. They just followed it. So the multiples never went up. I mean, the multiples are low for these miners. Nobody's interested in the miners. Now, that's the gold sector. The gold sector is still healthy. The multiples are low. The valuations are low. They're generating cash. You saw, if you've been paying attention, Agnico Eagle, Ken Ross, Alamos, they all just reported last quarter, and they all generated a boatload of cash. Gold's healthy. Silver, not so much, because the silver miners, their ASIC has really been trending up, up, up, up. So on an average, gold miners are absolutely healthy. The silver miners, they're okay. But not super healthy at $49. At $49 silver, there's going to be a few silver miners that are going to lose money this quarter. They're absolutely going to lose money. And they're going to burn through some cash, and they're probably going to have to dilute some shares. So some of the silver miners are going to basically, if you own silver miners, you're probably going to get a little bit of slap in the face kind of thing. But I always say you can't expect to pick all winners. You're going to have to expect some damage. But most of your silver miners have an AISC around $30, you pad it to $10, they're making money at $40. So the vast majority of the silver miners are making money at $40, and I don't think we're going to $40. So we're not in a situation here like 2008. Where you get the prices get so low that companies are losing money and they have to dilute and you got bankruptcy potential or 2011 to 2015. We're not in that scenario here. So as far as I'm concerned, this is actually green light. This is actually. Because I think the floor is very, very close. I actually think $4,000 gold is the water line. And if you go below $4,000 gold, it's like pushing a beach ball under the water. It's not going to stay there very long. We're going to be back above that water line. I think we could be back above the water line next week. And silver, I think the waterline, I think, I thought $45 is probably as low as you're going to get it. We're at $49. Nine. I'm hoping we don't see $45, but $45, $47, somewhere in there, I think that's as far as you go. But I do think $50 is the waterline. We're below the waterline. I think it'll bounce up. But I'm actually, right now, I think we're at go mode. I told people, you want to buy to the bottom. I believe this. Because I don't think that these miners... are going to get into trouble. There's a few of the silver miners that could get a little bit into trouble from 45 to 50. But most of your silver miners, like the Pan-Americans, the First Majestics, they're absolutely fine. They're not going to get into trouble here. The share prices will go down, but that's just a buying opportunity. But I'm very confident we're going to get above these water lines. But I told people that you want to buy below the... Once we get below the 200-day moving average, which was about $4,100, you want to buy. And then once you get above $4,000, you buy again. And then once you get above $3,800, you buy again. And then $3,500 is about your last opportunity. But you want to buy to the bottom. This is how I do it. Like, I can't wait. I have like three stocks that I want to buy. I don't even have enough cash to buy all three of them. But right now I have, I own 165 plays. But I'm looking for 10 backers. And I have three that I found because of this correction that I don't own. And I'm hoping to get all three before the end of the year. But I think right now it's just a... just a beautiful tax loss selling is upon us. Yeah, I think it's a beautiful time between now and tax loss selling. November's tax loss selling to buy this dip. I think it's manna from heaven kind of thing, a gift, to be able to buy these stocks at these levels. These stocks are absolutely... Absolutely bouncing on the bottom. I can name a few. I think Aveeno. My target for Aveeno is $150. It's trading under $5, right around $5. I mean, it's just unbelievably cheap. And it's all organic growth. It's like that one is just absolutely silly cheap. 1911 Gold, they're getting ready to turn on their mine. That one's been absolutely beat up. I mean, these are stocks that are just, I mean, as long as these companies don't get taken out, they're just absolutely just giving, just. The risk-reward is just off the charts. You mentioned my 20-20 baggers. The reason why I put out a 20-20 bagger video on YouTube, it's free, and then I put out a 15-15 bagger. Now, I use $7,000 gold, and I project out. Those baggers are not for one year. I don't invest for one year. I would say ignore the next 12 months, consider it noise. I invest for two to four years out, and the sweet spot is three years. And so I'm expecting these stocks, if we get to $7,000 gold, to be these levels. Now, I like to use 2% for silver. So if you get to $7,000 gold, at 2%, it's 140 silver. So I think that's the floor for silver. If you use 3%, it's 210. So somewhere around 175 to 200 is your expectations. Now, when we get to $7,000 gold, the key is to stay there. And you need to stay there for at least two quarters, because the miners will not revalue. But if you go half a year at $7,000 gold, those multiples will start to go up. But you also need multiple expansion. Multiple expansion only occurs when you get positive sentiment, which we have not seen since 2011. But I believe that positive sentiment is coming. And positive sentiment will only occur one way. And that is with the stock market being down to flat and people rotating out of the stock market into the miners. So when you get that rotation, that's when sentiment starts trending higher. And that's what we need. Fantastic. Don, we're out of time. It was a fantastic conversation. We'll have to get you back on. I can't wait to host you in Frankfurt one of these days as well. Really looking forward to it. Thank you so much for stopping by. Absolutely, Kai. Fantastic. I always enjoy being on your show. Absolutely. Goldstockdata.com to follow more. And of course, your YouTube channel as well. Thank you so much. And everybody else, thank you so much for tuning in here to Soar Financially. Hit that like and subscribe button. It helps us out tremendously. We just appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend. Take care out there.