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Today we have an incredibly timely and insightful episode featuring David Morgan, a renowned expert in precious metals and monetary history. With a career spanning decades, David Morgan brings unique depth to our understanding of wealth preservation and strategic investing—especially in turbulent economic times. Joining our host Dave Wolcott, David Morgan shares his remarkable journey that began with a childhood fascination for coins, leading him to become one of the go-to authorities on gold and silver’s pivotal role in modern portfolios.
As we kick off 2026 amidst ongoing currency debasement, global instability, and record money printing, this conversation couldn’t be more relevant. David Morgan breaks down the warning signals flashing from the precious metals markets, offering perspective on how gold and silver continue to shine as anchors of legacy wealth, even as the global financial system moves rapidly toward digital currencies and modern monetary theories.
Listeners will discover invaluable strategies on how to safeguard their purchasing power, create balanced portfolios, and navigate the coming changes with clarity. David Morgan not only explores the history and utility of precious metals, but also shares practical advice on asset allocation, storage options, and the real-world impact of resource wars and technological demand.
In This Episode
- David Morgan’s origin story and fascination with money and investing
- Strategies for portfolio positioning as the world faces a global reset
- The real utility and investment case for gold and silver
- Practical guidance for choosing and securing precious metals in your wealth strategy
You know, what’s the purpose of life? And everybody wants to know that. The answer, very simply, is the purpose of life is the purpose you give it. What’s the meaning of life? It’s the meaning you give it. So in that context, I would say silver especially is the most technological. It’s the best tech stock you can own. Welcome to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy podcast, where we help entrepreneurs like you exponentially build wealth through passive income to live a life of freedom and prosperity. Are you tired of paying too much in taxes, gambling your future on the stock market, and want to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you? And now your host, Dave Wolcott, serial entrepreneur and author of the best-selling book, The Holistic Wealth Strategy.
Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome back to Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. I’m your host, Dave Wolcott. As we begin 2026, massive money printing, currency debasement, and global instability are raising serious questions about the future of fiat money. Investors everywhere are asking the same thing. How do we protect our wealth in times like these? That’s why today’s conversation is so timely. My guest is David Morgan, a leading expert in precious metals and monetary history. In this episode, we explore the warning signals coming from gold and silver, where precious metals fit in a modern portfolio, and how to think strategically about wealth preservation as the global financial system continues to evolve. If you care about protecting purchasing power and building lasting legacy wealth, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Let’s dive in. David, welcome to the show.
Oh, Dave, it’s great to be with you. Thank you.
Yeah, pleasure having you with us today. And frankly, it could not be more timely. We’re at the beginning of 2026, so happy New Year to the listeners. Happy New Year to you. And literally just last week, there was another massive print by the Fed that went out, and we’re continuing to see debasement of the currency across fiat currencies across the globe. So we thought this would be a special opportunity to really help educate listeners on precious metals, where they sit in the portfolio, what is the outlook of fiat currencies, and really how should we be thinking about metals in our portfolio. Right. What are some of the advantages? What are some of the cons that we need to be thinking about as judicious investors? So with that being said as kind of a backdrop, David, I’d love to know really how you got to where you are today and tell us a little bit about your origin story.
Oh, well, thank you for that. I’m going to say I got a bit tired of saying that—I really don’t. But, you know, I’ve had many interviews, and the story is the same. But at 11 years of age, the coinage changed. So as a 10-year-old, I was getting 25 cents a week allowance. They were silver quarters, 90 silver. Lived in the country, didn’t, you know, have much to spend them on, so I stacked them up, probably had a couple rolls’ worth. And then one day my dad drops a 25-cent piece in my hand, but it’s a cupro-nickel. I can tell it’s not silver.
And that startled me because I had this collection of real silver quarters, and I thought this can’t be the same value if it’s copper. I know a copper penny is only a penny. But nothing seemed to take place around the adults around me. You know, no one mentioned it, no one talked about it. And so it kind of maybe hit my subconscious. I don’t want to make a big deal, but I did notice it, and I got fascinated about money at a very early age. I asked my dad if I could start trading stocks. He said no, you’re not old enough.
And then he looked into it, and he got me to sign a document in California called the Uniform Gift to Minors Act, where if your parents sign, they could start trading stocks at age 16. So I started doing that. So just, you know, that was kind of the career I wanted. Talked about it. My dad said no way are you going into finance—choose something else. I decided to look into the flying career. Started flying at age 16 but always interested in finance.
That was kind of my heartbeat. And I’ve been in the markets really from the time I was a 16-year-old, but not full-time until the last 30-some years. But that was the origin story. And in that self-taught process, I learned about monetary history and how unbacked currencies always fail. And I thought, oh my goodness, that’s where we’re at. Nixon closed the gold window August 15, 1971, and I’m in my 20s thinking this is it. Not that the world’s going to collapse the next day, but that we’re on a path of destruction.
And of course, here we are today, where the metals last year signaled beyond any doubt. Anyone that has eyes to see clearly knows something’s drastically wrong. When you get a platinum and silver move of 140% in one year and gold over 50% in one year, those metals are signaling, look out, we have a storm ahead.
Yeah, that’s great. So that’s a good place to start. Right. I’d like to really kind of begin from a 30,000-foot view. Right. And why don’t we really talk about the global reset? Right. What is your perspective on that? I know Dalio’s got a lot of information on that, which is really quite fascinating, seeing the rise and fall of different empires over different centuries.
Right. And how we just actually keep repeating the cycle. But what is your belief, what is your perspective on this global reset? And then secondly, how do we need to position ourselves as investors to get ahead of this?
Well, my perspective is, and I’ve listened to Dalio, probably not enough, but brilliant man and straight up. But Mark Carney, when he was at the Bank of England, basically gave three speeches that are all basically the same speech—one at Davos, one at the Fed in Jackson, and one at the UN. And basically he said that the new system will be an unbacked modern money theory, digitally based, banker-controlled system. So that basically spells out CBDC, their central bank digital currency, or maybe private hands like a major money center bank like JPM does a digital currency. And that’s private; it’s not run by the government. So that’s, I think, the direction they want to go. But I want to be clear, just because that’s what they’re trying to implement doesn’t necessarily mean that’s going to take place. I’ll just further that a little bit, Dave, by the fact I spoke at the 50th anniversary of the New York–New Orleans Gold Show, one of the most famous and longest gold conventions in the world.
And my speech was not about silver or gold; it was all about the new monetary system. And I went slide by slide through basically what the Bank of International Settlements has on their website, talking about the new monetary system and how it will take place. And it’s basically what I’ve already said: central bank digital currency controlled through one clearing mechanism, ISO 222. And everybody reports to them, and everybody is tracked, taxed, and traced 100% of the time. No way out. You’re either in the system or you’re not.
Interesting. So where does that leave us as investors? Right. How should we be thinking about that in terms of positioning our portfolios today?
Well, I think you know, of your show as you know, needs to be revivified and you know, legacy wealth comes from really three places. And if you study, and it’s not a deep study, but the way to keep Legacy wealth is three places. Number one, land. So either land, raw land, improved land, it could be commercial land, it could be residential, combination thereof. But land number two is gold. And I would add silver to it, but gold land and fine art. And when you’re very wealthy, ultra wealthy, you can have a Rembrandt in a modest house and Rembrandt’s worth, you know, 25 times what the house is worth and have that preservation of wealth in a, let’s call it a low key manor if you so choose. So those are the three.
The thing about gold and silver is that it’s not only legacy wealth, but it’s pretty easy to pass on to your heirs or whatever. So those are the three keys I would think of. But tell me the question again. I’m sorry, I kind of went off on that.
Yeah, just I think as investors, right. You know, with this global reset happening, right, if we were to move to, you know, central digital currency and everything, right. How do we position ourselves today with, with our assets? So you named a couple of assets. Right. But, but how do we get ahead of this? Right. What’s the intelligent way to get ahead of this?
Uncertainty doesn’t destroy wealth – lack of preparation does.
Yeah, I think the intelligent way is obviously have something outside the system. So that would be gold and silver, pretty hard to own land or any improved property with a low deal title where you own it and are free of any encumbrances by the jurisdiction that you’re in. So that would be number one in my view. Of course Art kind of fits in that as well. But I think that’s one think outside the box, have something outside the system that’s known to be trusted and of course precious metal been trusted for thousands of years. But as far as like the system itself, you know, I’m an advocate, really an activist in a way to, you know, propose that we don’t need to follow the root of the banking elite and we should have, you know, perhaps the original intent of what was in the US Founding and that’s basically we make our own money through the Treasury. And you probably know this day, but some of our reviewers may not. But you know, Andrew Jackson was the only president in the United States to pay off the national debt and go back to state banks.
But that failed after a while. But John F. Kennedy actually took away the power of the printing press from the Federal Reserve and gave it back to the United States Treasury. And you can find them. I have one in my desk, I can’t pull it out easily. Called a US Note. So at the top of the bill, instead of saying Federal Reserve note, it says U period S period note. And that was printed by the Treasury.
So he’d actually circumvented the power of a private corporation. The Federal Reserve that prints the money at the treasury, buys it at cost, like 20 cents per bill, loans it out at face value plus interest. So they pay 10 cents for a $5 bill or 10 cents for $100 bill, loan it out, just borrowed by the US government, again at face value and interest. So that I think is key to understand what’s really going on and to be outside of that system. There aren’t many ways to do it, but the best way, of course is to take back the power and put it back as basically what I would call a utility. If we had banks set up where they serve the people, the interest that’s earned by the banks goes back into the community. Now we have a win win situation where the banks are serving the people and helping the people in their community. And I’ll digress just a bit further because obviously you run a very thought provoking program here.
There is a couple of documentaries on Netflix and maybe other places called the bank of Dave. And the first one is about this guy that started a bank in the United Kingdom and he got a bank charter and they hadn’t issued a bank charter for 150 years and he was able to pull it off, got the bank charter and all the money that they basically make on the bank and they pay salaries and have health insurance, anything any employee would have. But what goes above and beyond that goes back in the community. So they like built up their food bank, built up a community center for everybody’s benefit and that kind of thing. So, you know, if we get out of the greed mode where we go from billionaires and people that can’t that work two jobs and can’t make ends meet and we get more of what I consider a high integrity platform for everybody’s benefit. Not that there won’t be discrepancies, there’s always going to be differentials, but at least we have a game that’s more fair. I certainly would see that as a much, much better world than we currently have.
Now many are describing bitcoin and cryptocurrency as digital gold. What’s your perspective on bitcoin?
Well, it’s not the very popular one. I started taking a look at the other side of the coin when no else would. And it’s been about two and a half years, maybe three years ago that I started a 30 podcast called the Crypto Conspiracy. It’s on my website for free. If you go to the blog tab there. I’ve done thousands of interviews over the last decade or two decades and a half. But if you go in the search engine, type in Crypto Conspiracy, hit the enterprise and I’ll bring up those 30 podcasts. I recommend you start at, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, at least get a basis of it.
But what I said back in a open document, a missive I wrote in 2016, I believe many people said, I trust you, David. What are your thoughts on bitcoin? And that publication is probably as valid now as it was then. And what I said was that the money powers are not going to allow something as like a bitcoin if it really gains traction without their intervention, if it really is a peer to peer payment system trusted by the public outside of their system, watch out, they’ll take it over. And that’s exactly what’s happened. So basically from the white paper, which is kind of a libertarian’s dream or free market thinker, turns basically upside down and has become everything it was reportedly not going to be when the original white paper, so I’m not a real fan of it. And also from the financial aspect, you’ve got to look at is this a viable quote unquote business or is it not? And right now it is not. And here’s why. If I’m in the gold mining business, which is my specialty, and I look at a mine and I see that they’re mining gold and it cost them 5000 ounce, but the current spot price on gold is 4400 the ounce, I’m not going to be in business very long.
And that’s a great metaphor for bitcoin miners. Not every one of them, but the big ones are losing, losing cash flow on every bitcoin that they they obtain. And that’s a volume business that will not succeed. And I can be that, that could be proved very easily just by looking at their financials. But on top of that, look at the dilution that they do their shareholders. They keep adding more shares, which means each share is worth less, just like a fiat printing press. And on top of that, they’re rewarding themselves for doing an inefficient business. And it’s really kind of a mess and very few people are willing to speak up and speak out about it.
But I don’t want anything to do with it at this point. As far as the blockchain is concerned, I’m not against the Blockchain, I think it’s here to stay. I think it’ll be used more and more. I think that. And it already has been, but as far as the crypto realm, I think there’s a lot of coins that are not worth having. They’re just mean coins or what have you. And that the, the end product, I think, will be some type of blockchain system in the future. But I’m not so sure that bitcoin will be here 10 years from now with the status that it has now.
It may be looked upon in the next decade as something of like, wow, how could we have done that? It’s inefficient, it costs a lot to move. It’s nothing worth transactions. It’s really not a substitute for a monetary. It’s really not that liquid. And the miners were losing money for the last five years. What were we thinking?
Very interesting. Now, we had quite a big event just last week, which was the takeover in Venezuela. And it’s really interesting as we look at all the dynamics of what’s really happening there. But what I find fascinating is some of the monetary repercussions and perspective around this, such as, number one, the amount of oil that was actually seized, which now, from my perspective, that whole peg of the dollar to oil kind of strengthens the dollar a bit. Some people are kind of saying that, based upon that, it’s putting the BRICS nations at bay a bit. Right.
We kind of got ahead from that perspective. And then also, I believe it was 600,000 Bitcoin that was actually seized. So that’s kind of an interesting dynamic as well. Any thoughts from your side on that?
Well, the older I get, the more I like to keep things really as simple or elegant as possible and just get it to the easiest way to understand it. There’s a gentleman named Michael Vieira that did a documentary you can get for free called All Wars Are Bankers Wars. If I was running a high school class, I would make it mandatory watching for every junior or senior in high school. So All Wars Are Bankers Wars kind of sums up the big picture of all wars. And of course, this is another war.
I break it down from there. And there’s a couple books back here with the same title called Resource Wars. Both of the gentlemen that wrote those books, one I know personally, the other I know referentially, talk about how in the final days, let’s say, that we won’t be fighting over who prints the most money; we’ll be fighting over what it can buy, and that’s resources. And when you boil it down, the world does not run on money.
I mean, a lot of people are taught money makes the world go round, and to some extent that’s true. But really, without energy, nothing happens. And that means oil, for the most part. So you have to secure an energy supply in order to have power in the global sphere. And because of that fact, if you don’t have enough, you’re going to go get it one way or the other.
People say, “Well, wait a minute, David, we’re fracking, we’re an exporter, we’ve got plenty of oil, it’s a new paradigm.” Well, yes and no. The fracking system did definitely help and put the United States in a position that was superior to where it had been for decades up to that point.
However, the fracking system is not as robust as most are led to believe. First of all, it’s very cumbersome. It does destroy the environment in many cases, and it’s costly. And that’s the problem. If oil is at the price it’s at now, fracking is actually losing money on every well. I should say every well—there are probably exceptions—but on the aggregate, on the average, you’re losing money on a lot of it.
And I think fracking has peaked. The depletion rate in fracking, most people don’t know, but it’s like 70% the first year. After about three years, you better be finding another well. That’s why it’s like what we call the Red Queen effect. The Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland is running as fast as she can just to stay in place.
That’s a good metaphor for fracking. You’ve got to keep drilling and drilling and drilling to get the same amount of oil and gas out of the ground that you are now. So I look at it, I don’t look at everything financially or economically, but it’s a good place to start. One of the best ways to find the truth is the old adage: follow the money.
So if you follow the money in Bitcoin, it’s a loser right now. If you follow the money in fracking, it’s a loser right now. So this is why we’re seeing these resource wars starting to take effect in a more visible way, because they were sub rosa for a while, where China was coming into Africa, South America, and other places knowing full well that you can’t print wealth; you’ve got to have it.
And all wealth either comes from the ground or on top of the ground. It’s either under the land or on the land. That’s that simple. And the Chinese have a long-term perspective several generations out, whereas unfortunately, from my view, most Americans look at next quarter’s earnings and what their stock price is going to do.
Interesting. So with that as kind of an overall context and everything, let’s jump into gold and silver. I mean, wow, what a ride it’s been. I mean, so much really going on. And again, I think it’s probably one of these asset classes that is really often misunderstood, and people don’t really fully understand the utility of it, how to put it into their portfolio, and all of those things. So if you could kind of help us break that down from a one-on-one perspective in terms of precious metals, and then we can kind of jump into both gold and silver, that’d be helpful.
Sure, it’d be great. First of all, my famous—I don’t know if it’s famous—but my three-word sentence to basically set the scene, and that is: all fiat fails. So through all of monetary history, we’ve never seen any time anywhere in recorded history where a fiat, non-backed monetary system didn’t fail. And there are several examples. The ones that are most noted by almost every person are the Weimar Republic after World War I in Germany, Argentina’s currency failing about every decade, the Italian lira—there have been many that have failed.
So that’s kind of proven. The problem this time is that the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency of the world.
So if the dollar fails, you can actually project that that means basically the whole system goes down, the whole world goes down. Now, if that were to occur—and it’s actually occurring—it doesn’t mean the end of the world, and it does not mean all the wealth goes away. In fact, you could have the dollar go to zero, you could have a banking crisis over the weekend, all banks close for a week, and the money is a new one or repriced or whatever.
In other words, you have a collapse, in quotation marks, but all the wealth stays in place. All the oil fields, all the wheat fields, all the churches, all the schools, all the commercial buildings, all the real estate—residential—it’s all there.
Everything that’s intact stays there because the financial system is almost a fiction, in a way. So what happens in the collapse is things get repriced. So things that are way out of bounds—certain stocks, as an example, or maybe real estate in certain areas, or perhaps commodities that are actually undervalued—the system gets repriced.
And the ownership changes in a lot of cases because if you have a collapse, what usually happens is someone wins and someone loses on a debt-based system. If you can’t be paid back and you loaned the money, you just lost it.
And when that takes place, you will see where most things that are leveraged or over-leveraged come down in value. And most things that are day-to-day needs, like fuel, food, the basics, basically maintain or maybe increase in value because the system resets to a more realistic look across the board on what really has value and need versus what I’ll call puff or exaggeration in value.
I mean, when I started looking at the stock market as a 16-year-old, I looked at the value of things. And value investing is almost passé now; you’re almost considered an old man or a kook if you look at value investing. But there’ll be a day when everybody goes back to looking at the value of what they’re buying.
Awareness changes everything – even if nothing around you changes.
Interesting. So when it comes to gold, right, how do you—first of all—I’d like to understand how people should think about putting this in their portfolio, right, from a percentage allocation. And then I’d also like to talk about some specifics, right. Are we actually having physical gold? There are many ways to buy gold, right? You could actually have coins. Do we have physical storage, right?
Or are we buying gold as an ETF? What are your thoughts and recommendations from that perspective?
Great question, and I’m glad you asked it the way you did. So one of the best studies on portfolio analysis is from Ibbotson and Associates. You can look it up, and there is an executive brief that you can read for free. They did a study independently on what mix of precious metals is needed, if any. They came to the conclusion that under all conditions, a 15% weighting in gold gave the best performance in a portfolio—in inflation, deflation, stagflation, or normal activity. So in other words, under all economic conditions, you should hold 15% in gold.
Now, CPM Group out of New York did a similar study, but it wasn’t as lengthy in duration as what Ibbotson did, and Jeff’s group did it from 1968 to the current day. And that was, I don’t know, about four years ago.
In that analysis, the weight in gold was 25%. So obviously, during these more volatile times, it was a higher weighting in gold to have the optimum portfolio performance. So you can take your pick. When I wrote The 10 Rules of Silver Investing, I suggested a 10% weighting in precious metals, and I think that’s sufficient for most people. But without it, you will not have the hedge that you need in a currency debasement situation.
I mean, I’ve been talking about debasement from the first interview I ever did, and now the word is being used as the debasement trade. It’s like, well, I’ve been talking about it for about 25 years.
Sorry, I digress. But it is important to have some. Like anything, you can have too much because there are inventive things. I mean, look at where we are in the software industry. Look at storage. I remember probably in my 30s where storage and computers cost a fortune. If you wanted to add storage to your computer, you had to put a lot of money down. Now the cloud is almost free. So things change, especially in a high-tech society.
But gold is still a foundational investment, a legacy investment, and it’s required for anyone that knows anything about monetary history or investing for the long term. The best way, I think, to start is physical gold. Why? It’s quiet, it’s purposeful, and it’s easy to pass on.
But once that’s established—and that could be part of that 10%—then you could go into ETFs, you could go into mining shares, you could go into double-leverage things, you could go into the business. There are lots of ways to get involved in the gold and silver industry if you so choose. But I do think having a small amount of actual physical gold is not a bad idea. Not that anyone’s going to have to grab it and go, but I’m going to digress a minute here.
I just had dinner with my sister’s stockbroker and one of her friends. Her friend was from Vietnam and actually left Vietnam after the last hurrah. Her mother sewed gold into her clothing so that when she landed in America, she could take out that gold and start over. So gold is important in certain cases, and that’s an example I just learned recently. I have others, but that one’s sufficient.
It’s not the answer to everything, but it has been. As the late, great Jim Dines used to say, gold is the monetary hitching post of the universe. Maybe an exaggeration, but you get the point.
Exactly. So let’s go a little bit further into that. There are different ways to buy physical gold. Again, we can have coins, bullion, right? And also let’s talk about it from an international perspective. You can buy physical gold that’s actually housed in, say, Switzerland, or we can buy physical gold that’s in the U.S., or you can have physical gold that’s in your own vault in your own home.
So any thoughts or recommendations there?
It’s a personal choice, but it depends on who you are. And I don’t give status to people based on their net worth, but let’s face it, the rich are different. So for high-net-worth people, I suggest that they are in three locations and perhaps one or two jurisdictions.
So it would look like this: you’d have something you could touch, maybe a home safe. It wouldn’t be a lot, but something that’s handy. Then you would have something vaulted, preferably in a non-bank entity. So it wouldn’t be housed at COMEX warehouses or vaults; it might be in a private vault. And then something outside of your jurisdiction, like Switzerland, for example. That way, you’re covered under almost all conditions.
One, you’ve got something you can grab and go, not that you ever would, but you have that availability. Secondly, you have something stored that you could borrow against or have your legacy wealth preserved. And lastly, you’d have something outside of your jurisdiction just in case you needed to get it.
For example, I’ve always thought of having something overseas as something I’m not going to bring back. I don’t want to have to pay the tax on it. But it’s there if, for example, I’m speaking in the UK and all of a sudden there’s a quarantine or some event and I can’t get back. Well, I’ve got six months’ worth of real money sitting there in that jurisdiction, and I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to get a bank transfer if they close the banks. I’ve got real money sitting there waiting for me that I’m free to use.
Great. Let’s jump into silver now. Silver, again, I think has its own attributes that a lot of people don’t truly understand. There’s also the utility of silver, especially nowadays, with all the electronics going into EVs and all the things being driven by AI demand and such. So talk to us about silver and how we’re supposed to think about that as investors.
Well, I like to use the analogy of the Dow Jones versus the Nasdaq. Gold is similar to the Dow, and silver is similar to the Nasdaq. It moves faster, up and down, but it’s also got more leverage. And silver has really come into its own this last year. As you know, it’s outperformed gold and almost every asset class this past year, and I think that will continue.
Silver is unique from the industrial side because if you go back 25 years, about 35% of the use of silver was industrial. Today it’s almost 70%. So in that 25-year time frame, it’s doubled in terms of industrial demand. What’s interesting about those numbers is this: 25 years ago, the amount of silver mined was about 500 million ounces per year, and 35% of that was industrial. Today, we mine about 850 million ounces, and 70% of that is industrial.
So if you do the math, you realize we’re consuming a lot of silver just for technological needs—electronics, AI, solar, brazing, soldering. The semiconductor industry alone uses about 44 million ounces of silver per year.
So there’s a lot of silver used in the world at large. If you add industrial use of almost 70%—depending on the study—jewelry at maybe 20%, you’re already around 90%. Silverware is about 4%. That leaves very little for investment demand. And investment demand has been roughly 200 million ounces per year, year over year, whether times are good, bad, or in between.
When you add that together, we’ve been in a deficit for about four or five years now. And I think the run to gold has already begun. The run to silver has begun as well. And I think you’re going to see more people, even at these so-called high prices, realize that if the stock market starts to deteriorate and commercial real estate runs into the problems I see coming—especially after this first quarter, where there are going to be a lot of banking issues around commercial real estate—people are going to look for where to put their money.
They’ll say, “I really don’t want to be here. I wish I would have bought gold at 3,000, but I need it at 5,000,” not so much because they think it’s going higher, but because they think land is going lower and they need to preserve their wealth.
One thing very few people discuss is that he who loses the least wins. This is something the late, great Richard Russell used to talk about. If we get into a reset situation—I don’t think he used that word—just holding your own could be better than holding the wrong assets.
For example, if you own gold at 5,000 and it stays at 5,000 for a year, but within that year your commercial property goes down by 50% and you were smart enough to get rid of it, then you’d actually gain in real terms by almost 100%, because that 5,000 gold would buy twice as much real estate due to the pricing change. Those are just numbers to illustrate the idea.
Will it be that drastic? In some cases, it’s already been worse. That’s outside the box and not the general rule, but nonetheless, sometimes preserving what you have is superior to being fully invested. And I think we’re coming into something like that.
I’m not saying that’s the best approach, but some of the people you mentioned at the beginning of the interview basically said, “Don’t buy anything. Just sit on your hands for a while.” But saving gold and silver is saving money.
If you put your money in a CD or something like a T-bill, I think they’re safe. But are they really going to have the purchasing power you want at the end of a year, ten years, or a thirty-year holding timeframe? The answer is no.
So I think you will see more and more large money coming into the precious metals sector. I think retail is pretty much burned out at this point. There will still be people coming in from the retail side, no doubt. But we had such an acceleration this last year that many people listening to programs like yours said, “That’s good. Maybe later I’ll think about it.”
“My stock portfolio is doing great. My 401(k) is up this much.” And then they saw the year we just had and realized silver can move, gold can move, platinum can move. So I think a lot remains to be determined. I do have a very positive outlook in the long run, but I think we’re going to have to go through what, in psychology, you’d say is hitting bottom.
I think we have to hit bottom economically before we can really set the record straight and come back with a more value-oriented, realistic, higher-integrity system.
Interesting. One of the things that I like to really think about in terms of portfolio mix and allocation is creating a purpose-driven portfolio, right, and really understanding what asset classes go to where you need them. And we’re all in different stages along the journey, whether you’re younger, older, you’ve got life events coming up and things like that. So how would you, in that sense, articulate precious metals? Is it strictly from a defensive hedging purpose that you would use those in your portfolio, or is there any other utility or anything else to consider?
Well, I think you could look at it any way you want. I mean, the old adage of what’s the purpose of life—everybody wants to know that. The answer, very simply, is the purpose of life is the purpose you give it. What’s the meaning of life? It’s the meaning you give it.
So in that context, I would say silver especially is the most technological. It’s the best tech stock you can own. Every technological device you can name or think of requires silver. Every cell phone, every flat-screen screen, every membrane switch, every keyless entry—all those need silver. So really, from the aspect of a better, higher-tech, more sanitized life, there are steering wheels in some bigger, more expensive cars that have silver in them just because of its biological properties.
So I think silver is a fascinating metal as far as its properties and what it means to a high-tech society. I can look at that very positively from the defensive side. I don’t mind that word that much, but I think it’s really just balance.
Nature preaches balance. If we eat too much, we get overweight. If we eat too little, we’re undernourished. So there’s that fine point in our health, in our relationships. Balance is usually the key. So a balanced portfolio, as I said earlier, exhibits about a 5% weighting to precious metals—perhaps higher in today’s world—but that doesn’t mean everything.
You can have real estate, you can have stocks, you can have bonds, and you can have precious metals. You can have a balanced portfolio that provides a very sound sleep at night under all conditions—inflation, deflation, stagflation, what have you. And I think that’s really the best approach.
It’s not, “Oh my goodness, I understand how the monetary system works. I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s fair. Therefore, I’m selling everything and buying gold.” I think that’s irrational. That’s not the way the world really works. Fair or unfair, we’re working within a system. When I go to Starbucks with a $10 bill, I’m going to get a super-custom latte and three bucks and change. That’s today’s world, and I don’t think that’s going to change very rapidly.
David, if you could give just one piece of advice to the audience about how they could accelerate their own wealth trajectory, what would that be?
Live within your means and save 10%.
Great sage advice from The Richest Man in Babylon, right? That simple book, yet so powerful and so challenging for many of us.
It is. Sorry to interrupt, Dave, but my heart goes out to people—I see these things, I don’t obsess over them—but I see single mothers, single women and men across the board working two jobs and still not able to make ends meet. It just wasn’t that way when I was a kid.
My dad worked, my mom never did, and we had one car, eventually two cars. It was a different time. It’s sad to me that people working at Walmart can still qualify for subsidies in some states, where they can get food stamps even though they’re working. That’s like—what’s wrong? Something is fundamentally broken.
That’s basically a monetary problem. If you solve the monetary issue, you solve a lot of other problems. I’ll leave it there, Dave.
David, I really appreciate your time and insights today. There’s so much wisdom in this conversation. If people would like to connect with you or learn more, how can they get in touch?
I’ll take the “learn more” part. I spent two and a half years making a documentary, basically on my own dime. I did get some donations, and it’s available for free. Just go to the URL: SilverSunriseTV—one word.
The premise of the film, which is about an hour and a half long, is the control, stress, and fear that money controllers have over us, and how we can overcome that. What’s the value of a human being? I’d argue it’s priceless. You can’t put a monetary value on a human being. We’re all creations that are, in that sense, priceless.
So it goes into the spiritual side of money that many people in my genre haven’t examined. I took that on. It’s for educational purposes, and it’s free—my gift to everybody.
As far as getting deeper into the how-tos, go to the landing page, themorganreport.com. You can check out the Consultation tab and the different services we offer on a paid basis.
We also provide a free weekly update—a weekly perspective with videos like this—that are public domain and sent directly to your email, so you don’t have to hunt them down.
Awesome. Thanks so much, David. We’ll make sure we capture all that in the show notes. Thanks again to the listeners for tuning in today. If you found value in this, please share it with someone you care about. David, really appreciate you.
Thank you. It’s nice to hear that.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like to get a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, please visit pantheoninvest.com.