Europe Worries Trump Could Monkey w/ Their Gold Reserves -

Welcome to this week’s market wrap podcast, I’m Mike Gleason
Coming up in a moment, we have an exclusive interview with Brien Lundin, editor of Gold Newsletter and the CEO of the renowned New Orleans Investment Conference. Money Metals’ Mike Maharrey and Brien dissect how the market often has a tendency to latch onto the latest narrative, whether it’s a trade war or the recent Federal Reserve rhetoric, while ignoring the more important macroeconomic factors that have a far greater importance on the longer-term trajectory of financial markets, the economy and our money.
Brien and Mike also weigh in on Citigroup’s latest forecast of sub-$3,000 gold next year and the likelihood of that bearish call materializing, and also discuss the outlook for silver and whether or not $50 is the next stop after the white metal’s recent move up to this $35+ level.
So be sure to stick around for a fascinating conversation with metals and financial industry insider Brien Lundin, coming up after this week’s market update.
Calls to bring Germany’s gold home are growing, and now voices in Italy are urging that country’s government to do the same.
Germany owns the second-largest gold reserves in the world at 3,352 tonnes. Italy ranks number three with 2,452 tonnes. Both countries utilize the New York Federal Reserve Bank, storing more than a third of their gold reserves in the bank’s Manhattan vaults.
According to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e39390cc-ea02-4197-843a-1e4c242422cc?tblci=GiBEbL3W2S26GUNZPzyVH21tx-QJnjtZvxVu_bM6Zno4iyD28GQoooixiK_yuOE-MJ_bXg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a recent article in the Financial Times</a>, policymakers in both countries are considering bringing their gold back to Europe due to President Donald Trump’s “erratic policymaking” and growing geopolitical unrest.
New York was once considered a safe place to store European gold, especially during the Cold War era when the threat of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe loomed large. But with the U.S. aggressively using economic pressure as a foreign policy tool, the wisdom of storing Italian and German gold in New York no longer seems quite so obvious.
Whether they are right or wrong, some nations are starting to worry the U.S. might hold gold reserves hostage to further its own aims.
The world has taken notice of the way the U.S. (and other Western powers) <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2025/03/13/the-weaponization-of-the-dollar-and-its-global-implications-003905">weaponized the dollar</a> after Russia invaded Ukraine. Some countries were already trying to limit exposure to the dollar to minimize the impact of U.S. economic pressure before Russia invaded Ukraine, and <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2025/06/23/dollars-decline-meets-rising-dedollarization-the-threat-comes-from-within-004145">de-dollarization</a> has accelerated since.
This situation certainly bears watching, and Money Metals will certainly keep you posted on this and related matters.
Speaking of safeguarding physical assets like gold and silver, should the cost of storage itself be a major factor in considering precious metals as an investment option?
Liberal Idaho Governor Brad Little certainly thought so.
Last year, he <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/04/08/idaho-governor-opposes-gold-silver-vetoes-bill-to-enable-protective-holdings-003105">vetoed a bill</a> that would have given the Gem State the mere option to invest up to 7.5 percent of the state’s “idle moneys” in physical gold or silver. In effect, it would create a process for the state to hold reserves of gold and silver along with its other investment assets.
The governor’s stated objection to the legislation was “the many additional costs that will be borne by taxpayers for the storage, safeguard, and purchase of commodities such as gold or silver.”
Under current Idaho law, like many other states, the state treasurer is actually only authorized to hold cash, U.S. bonds, treasury bills, interest-bearing notes, corporate bonds, and money market funds. In other words, paper. And those paper assets not only have counterparty risk, but also their yields tend to be well below the rate of inflation. That's called a "negative real return."
Last week, an investigative journalist in Idaho <a href="https://gemstatechronicle.com/2025/06/the-cost-of-a-veto/?tblci=GiBEbL3W2S26GUNZPzyVH21tx-QJnjtZvxVu_bM6Zno4iyD28GQoooixiK_yuOE-MJ_bXg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published a report</a> showing that Idaho lost out on more than $200 million in the past year alone — simply because of the state's failure to own any gold. The yellow metal has risen almost 50 percent since Governor Little's veto… truly uncanny timing! As in truly bad timing.
Are the governor's supposed concerns about the cost of precious metals storage justified? And how much does it actually cost to store gold and silver?
Of course, storage costs do exist. But they are not high, and for large holdings, they are really really small. And it’s important to remember there are costs associated with investing in any assets.
When individuals or entities invest in bonds or equities, they incur broker fees, commissions, account maintenance fees, etc. These costs can vary significantly depending on the broker, the size of the portfolio, and other factors. In general, investors can expect to pay on average between 0.25 to 2 percent of the total assets under management in fees. At the high end, an investor could lose as much as $2,000 annually to fees and other charges on a $100,000 portfolio.
The annual average cost of vault storage can vary significantly depending on the provider, the location, and the specific services offered. However, the annual costs generally range between 0.3 percent and 0.75 percent of the total value of the gold being stored.
The storage fees at <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/silver-gold-storage">Money Metals' state-of-the-art bullion depository</a> typically run less than 0.49 percent. That means the cost of storing $100,000 in gold would average around $490 per year. This fee includes lots of security and “all-risks” insurance coverage for the full value of the metal stored in the vault.
Money Metals’ storage fees for gold or silver held in an IRA are even less at 0.29 percent.
While the cost of storing gold and silver isn’t zero, it certainly isn’t a bank-breaker. This is especially true when you consider how much is lost due to inflation by holding cash.
The <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2025/06/12/may-cpi-ratchets-up-pressure-on-fed-to-return-to-inflation-004121">current annual CPI</a> is 2.4 percent. If you accept this data (<a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/01/15/the-cpi-lie-price-inflation-is-even-worse-than-advertised-002930">and you shouldn’t</a>), it means the purchasing power of money sitting in bank accounts is losing 2.4 percent of its purchasing power every single year. When rates are low, the interest paid by banks to account holders often doesn’t even cover this monetary devaluation. When the CPI was in the 9 percent range, <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/06/21/real-interest-rates-and-why-they-matter-003271">real interest rates</a> were deeply negative. Under these conditions, a depositor is effectively paying the bank to hold its money.
This is why it is wise to have gold and silver on the table as an investment option to serve as <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/06/18/golds-role-as-an-inflation-hedge-in-the-21st-century-003263">an inflation hedge</a>. Price inflation is always stealing the value of the dollar.
In 2024, <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2025/01/05/just-how-good-was-gold-in-2024-003735">gold gained over 26 percent</a>. The yellow metal edged out U.S. stocks to rank first among traditional asset classes last year. And gold has increased <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/gold-price">another 24 percent so far in 2025</a>.
Investors always need to factor in various costs associated with a given investment option, including storage fees for precious metals. There may even be times when it doesn't make sense to hold a lot of gold and silver. But there are certainly times (such as the last 18 months) when you absolutely want gold and silver — and a lot of it!
Finally, before we get to this week’s interview let’s take a look at the weekly market action.
Gold is off now for the second week in a row, down 3.0% to come in at $3,280 an ounce. Silver is essentially unchanged at $36.22, meaning the gold:silver ratio continues to come down. It now sits at 90.5 to 1, the lowest figure we’ve seen in a little more than 3 months.
As for the PGMs, platinum was having a tremendous week until it finally ran into resistance here over the last 24 hours or so. The industrial metal reached over $1,400 an ounce in Thursday trading, reaching an 11-year high, but is now coming in at $1,356 an ounce, which is still good for a 5.7% weekly gain. Finally, palladium is having a nice week here as well, advancing 6.7% to trade at $1,144 as of this Friday morning recording.
Well now, without further delay let’s get right to our exclusive interview with the man behind the famous New Orleans Investment Conference, Brien Lundin.
<div class="pl-3"><img class="mx-auto md:float-right p-3" src="https://www.moneymetals.com/uploads/content/mike-maharrey-and-dr-vieira-podcast-img.jpg" alt="Mike Maharrey and Michael Pento" width="450" height="180" loading="lazy" />
Mike Maharrey: Greetings. I'm Mike Maharrey, an analyst and reporter here at Money Metals, and I'm joined today by Brian Lundin. Brian is the editor of the Gold Newsletter and the CEO of the New Orleans Investment Conference and an all-around great guy. How are you doing, Brian?
Brien Lundin: Thanks, Mike. I'm doing great. Hope you are as well.
Mike Maharrey: I am and it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Looking forward to tapping your brain a little bit and getting some insights on what's going on with the precious metals markets right now. And I kind of like to start with gold. I think, and for the first time in a while I've actually seen a little bit of bearishness creeping in on the mainstream side of things. Not a lot, but I guess most notably Citigroup has lowered their forecast and they're actually talking about sub $3,000 an ounce gold next year. And I feel like a lot of this really hinges on the fact that I think people are becoming more optimistic about the outcome of the whole trade war tariff thing. And so therefore they're seeing, okay, we're not going to get the inflation from the tariffs and we're not going to have a recession, so everything's going to be great. Do you think these bearish calls are justified just based on this tariff thing or maybe they're missing something?
Brien Lundin: Well, I think they're not surprising first off to me, but I think the general tendency, their default mode as it is to be bearish, they had to be dragged to the table to be bullish over the past year with that amazing performance by gold. And even their price projections would typically be exceeded. The bullish price projections would be exceeded by gold within a week or two on occasion. And so eventually, they got on board and they got on board pretty dramatically talking about $3,500, and then we hit $3,500 briefly. And so yeah, if left without a raging bull market in gold, then they will fall back in default to their bearish default level outlook on it. So, that's one thing. The other thing is, I think it's notable because they're kind of lone wolves as I look around at what are perhaps the biggest cynics in gold.
Brien Lundin: It is the gold bugs. They've been just whiplash and blindsided often so many times that they're just waiting for the next hit. But that's kind of gone away. I don't know if you've gotten the same feeling. I think people are resigned to the fact or are comfortable with the fact that gold's over $3,000 and it's going to stay over $3,000. And for the mining sector at least that's a great number. That's okay. We don't need $3,500 gold for these miners to make just a pot load of money. And that's what's happening right now. So everybody's kind of okay with that In a similar fashion, I think people are just starting to get comfortable with silver over $35. It seems like we've achieved these new levels and take a deep breath, let's get ready for the next rally, but there's some confidence that it's coming. So yeah, I'm not surprised by those calls.
Brien Lundin: I don't think there's a lot to them. I think all the fundamental factors that you and I have been talking about for so long were just firmly in place. The debt traps there, the absolute necessity of depreciating currencies, the uncertainty on the political scene that really doesn't contribute to gold directly, but it contributes to central banks buying gold on a regular and very consistent basis. So, those drivers are there and they're firmly implanted and in place and don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. So, I don't pay much heat to those guys, those bears right now
Mike Maharrey: I'm the same. So, it's kind of a loaded question, but you made rhetorical. Yes, rhetorical. You made some of the very same points that I've been making over the last couple of weeks. Here's something that I've kind of observed, and you've been in this business for a long time, so you've watched the markets, you understand market psychology, I'm sure, and I feel like that we're in an era now where it seems like there's the thing that they pick that drives the markets and then everything else gets ignored. So right now, it's tariffs, everything is kind of hinging. Do you get that same sense that people are kind of losing the forest for the tariff trees or whatever the headline may be on X?
Brien Lundin: Yeah, absolutely. They pick a theme and they pick a narrative and they stick with it. But before tariffs, it was the Fed since basically 2008 that drove everything and everybody was trying to figure out what the Fed was going to do and read the tea leaves of what the mood was from whoever the Fed chair was at the time. And tariffs really dominated everything and stole the show. And now I think we're kind of getting back to the Fed narrative and everybody watching the Fed and what are their predictions and are they going to be able to get the two cuts in this year that they think they will and when are they going to happen? So yeah, I think that's going to happen. I think the Fed really has to get rates, they feel some sense of desperation, but god darn it, they don't want to give Trump what he wants. So that's the interesting dynamic. But with the debt load where it, and with DOGE being largely ineffectual, I think they're more desperate to lower rates, and that is a realization that's going to come into the market, and I think it's going to be bulls for gold.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I agree. Do you think that, I've been saying this, I'll be curious to see if you agree with this that in a sense, if you kind of look at things and step back objectively, the Fed is kind of between a rock and a hard place, isn't it? I mean, I find it difficult to buy and maybe I'm in a minority here, but I don't buy that inflation is dead. And so I think that just from an objective standpoint, I personally don't really have a problem with rates higher just in terms of the inflation. But as you mentioned, we've got all of this debt. I think despite all of the optimism out there, I still think that there's quite a few warning signs that we see in the economy in general. So, you can definitely make the cut case too. You can't cut and raise at the same time. So, I mean, do you have any sense of how maybe they're trying to negotiate in the room? I mean, I'm asking you to speculate here, but it is kind of fun to cut it. What are you saying in private if you're a central banker right now?
Brien Lundin: Well, first off, I think they are in a trap. I think that there are inflationary pressures. Tariffs certainly aren't helping that, that would argue for higher rates. And I think that the debt load argues for the necessity of lower rates. And so, they are in quite a conundrum. And meanwhile, being somewhat libertarian in my nature, I'm sitting on the sidelines gleefully watching this show, popping the popcorn. People ask me what Powell should do, and I say, well, you ought to pack up his briefcase and leave and run. Just give it up because there's nothing that they can do. And that bodes for some trouble down the road. And again, I think gold's the one thing that's going to benefit from that. Somebody I was watching on X the other day, people were arguing about whether monetary policy was too loose or too strict or just right.
And I replied, and I said, well, who's with me in arguing that there shouldn't be any monetary policy at all? That should be one of those options and the correct option. In my view. It's crazy throughout human history to get an idea of where we've come. Powell himself commented in, I don't know if it was his testimony or his press conference, that rates are high right now. And I'm like, are they really? We're we're not even at normalized interest rates throughout human history, the natural rate of interest has been around 6%, and yet now we're conditioned that current rates are high because of these debt loads and because of 45 years of ever easier money and ever lower interest rates, none of this stuff is normal that we are living in. And this shouldn't be normal that a bunch of PhDs are deciding the price of money. So they really are in a trick bag right now, and I couldn't be happier for 'em. Yeah,
Mike Maharrey: That's funny that you said that. I interviewed Jim Grant, it's been probably six weeks or so ago, and I kind of posed a question to him, excuse me about the Fed. And I said, what's the central banker to do? And his answer was, quit. So, he had the same sentiment, but you're actually right. A lot of people don't know that the Chicago Fed has this little thing called the financial conditions index, and you can actually go there every week. They update and it kind of tells you how are the financial conditions right now compared to a historical average? It's been loose. It was loose back when interest rates were still at 5%. I don't think a lot of people realize that. I keep saying this over and over again, and a lot of people look at me across side. I don't feel like the Fed ever really did enough.
I mean, look how much they had to do to get the inflation level to what it was, trillions and trillions of dollars in quantitative easing decades of zero interest rates. And you're right, none of this is normal. But I think I feel like that there's a little bit of a lack of understanding of history, and those of us who are a little bit older, we remember the eighties and we remember mortgage rates being eight, 10, 12%. And I think for a lot of young people, this is all they've ever known. So this is normal to them. Do you get that sense as well?
Brien Lundin: Absolutely. Yeah, I really do. And I was remarking to somebody recently that gold as an investible asset has only been around since the first day of first market day of 1975 in the US where you could own it and you could invest in it where it wasn't money. And then August 15th, 1971 was the day wasn't money again at least, or tied to the dollar. I would argue it's still money. So there was no possibility of a bull market before that date. So, I had been alive for every bull market in the history of this 6,000-year-old asset, and which really does make you feel kind of old and granted in the 1970s, I was a teenager and interested in other things, but I was alive for it. And there's only been, depending on how you define it, three or four bull markets in gold, whether you divide the 1970s into one or two bull markets.
So yeah, it is interesting to see how things have passed and how times passed. But I think that there are so many similarities to today with the 1970s that those inflationary pressures are going to be there. But there is the feeling that of instability now we've had back in the 1970s, and the solutions are now totally in the Fed's hands. The market is addicted to ever easier money and the Fed put to come in and rescue us when the bubbles that they have created burst. And every time that they come in with these rescue efforts, it has to be some multiple of what they did before to get the single effect because the market's developed a tolerance for the monetary drug. So the next time they're going to really come in of something truly, truly extraordinary, and every time they do this, currencies lose some credibility and gold gains credibility. So yeah, I think we're in another one of those periods right now. And rates right now are not tight historically or high historically, but still in all the Fed is going to have to lower rates again because of that debt load.
Mike Maharrey: And as you mentioned, that's definitely bullish gold because it's just from the investor mindset perspective, as you get lower and lower yields, the willingness to invest in these lower yielding assets becomes, well, why would we want to do that? We're actually getting real negative returns as opposed to real returns. So yeah, I can see that. What are a couple of the macro things that you're really watching that maybe you're not hearing about so much on CNBC or Fox Business?
Brien Lundin: Well, that's hard to, really hard to say. I think the Fed is the big thing. It's the big macro thing. And God knows they're talking about that a lot, aren't they, as always. Yeah. I think what's one of the things that's interesting to me is the whole debt trap
Brien Lundin: Is now getting some airtime, but again, reluctantly, if you watch CNBC, they're reluctant to do it, but yet they have to put Jamie Diamond on, they have to put Ray Dalio on. They have to put all of these titans of Wall Street on, and when they get on, that's all they're talking about is this conundrum that we're in the interest rates assigned the debt loads. So high Gunlock talks about it all the time, and they talk about gold, and you can practically see the talking heads cringe when they bring that up. And there is an innate and typically toward gold on Wall Street, but I think that's changing. I don't think that gets enough coverage except when they get those titans of Wall Street to come on there and talk about it.
Mike Maharrey: Do you have any sense of why there's kind of this negative perception in mainstream investment world surrounding gold? Because I've sensed it all my life. I mean, it is kind of funny because when I was first approached many years ago about writing about gold and being involved in the gold space, I was almost a little bit reluctant because I didn't want to be one of the weirdo gold bugs, right?
Brien Lundin: Yeah.
Mike Maharrey: But why is that? I mean, I don't really have a sense of, I know that negative sentiment is there, but I can't really put my finger on what it is. I understand why governments hate it. They don't want sound money because it restricts their ability to print, which restricts their ability to borrow and spin. But I don't really understand the investment of it. Do you have any sense of that?
Brien Lundin: Well, not really, but it's a great question. When it became free trading in the 1970s, you had the treasury secretary, Connolly was organizing treasury gold sales to try to keep the price down, and it was kind of official policy from the government to disparage it. You didn't want people getting out from under your thumb and out from under your control in these assets that not only did you not control, but were a barometer on how well you were managing things. So, I think at every turn there was this desire to make the gold bugs look like kooks, and then you have 15 to 20 years of sideways gold prices are declining gold prices, and that helps reinforce that image. And then in 2000 early two thousands, it started to change and it has changed to a large degree. So that's one reason. I think the other reason is there's no money in it. How do they make money off of gold? A brokerage can sell stocks, can make a market in stocks and lots of volumes. There's not that much the way of volumes the margins in gold or one or 2%. So if there's no way to really make money in it, then you can't get that kind of mainstream infrastructure and network effect within Wall Street to really promote it.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I think that's a really, really good point. Let's talk about silver a little bit. We've seen a really nice run up over the last three or four weeks. We've seen silver. I think it's comfortably holding that $35 support now and 36, it seems to be even maybe more tenuous, but still something of a support level. But we're still, what, 15 some dollars away from the all-time highs. Do you feel like that this is maybe the beginning of that gold breakout where we start to see gold catch up a little bit with the bull run we've had with silver? Or is this a faint, or how do you kind of see the silver market developing as we're moving forward here?
Brien Lundin: Yeah, I developed a really healthy skepticism over the last few years about silver, and every time you think it's breaking out, it falls back below. But I did a presentation over the weekend for a group in Miami, and it was a group that wasn't all gold bucks. So, I had to do some introduction and everything, and at the end I showed silver and made the argument for silver and how important $35 was. So I put up a long-term price. You got to go back 13, 14 years to see when silver was above $35. But if you go back on a 15 year chart, you see that big spike up to $50 that's near vertical and $35 is just the first step on that run. And you get an idea of the potential that, and which all the technicians have been talking about, that once you get past $35, there's basically just blue sky to $50 level. And I think you're exactly right that we're at $35 level, and I don't want to jinx it. I'll knock on some wood here.
It looks to be pretty strong support right now, and we're going up the ladder and setting new levels. I mean, we hit $37 not too long ago, briefly in our day. So yeah, I think absolutely. Then it's really simplistic in a market, in a gold bull market where people are buying gold. Well, in any long-term bull market, people are buying gold because they're concerned about their future purchasing power. So in that kind of monetarily based long-term bull market, silver has always outperformed gold. Therefore, it's a really good bet that it's going to do it again. And that's really all you need to know. In addition to that, you've got the argument that I've disparaged for decades at this point about the industrial usages for silver. I've always thought that was irrelevant because 90% of the value of silver was in its monetary cachet. That's changing by the way. And the next five years or so, every new ounce of silver mind is going to go toward industrial production. I mean, the industrial production will overwhelm all new silver supplies. So I think that at that point it starts to put a real bind on the supply demand dynamic for silver. So I'm a big silver bug. I think it's going to follow gold higher. It always has, and there's a lot of things arguing for it now.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I was talking to an analyst the other day and he was talking about the industrial demand, and he said he basically just sets the monetary demand for silver to the side. He went as far as to say he didn't think it was all that important. I disagree with his assessment of that, but he was just taking the industrial demand as you just outlined and talking about just how those dynamics are in place. We've run supply deficits for I think four straight years now where we've seen the amount of silver used exceeding the amount dug out of the ground. And so, he's looking at all of those things and he's very bullish silver, and even though he's spurning it as a monetary asset, and like I said, I tend to disagree with that. I tend to look at it as a monetary asset first. It's fundamentally money. And if you look at the charts, and I did this the other day, if you look at gold over a long term, you'll see silver going right along with it. It tends to piggyback on with gold. So, I think that you make a really good point there in terms of how that industrial demand increasing is really the catalyst that could push it much higher than maybe what we're seeing now. Would you agree with that?
Brien Lundin: Yeah, it really is. And what's interesting, one of the other big points I've been making to people recently is that this gold bull market is absolutely unprecedented. It's unique. And again, this history that only goes back to 1971, but still we've never had a bull market that was primarily driven or at least initially driven by central bank buying. And that means really a couple of things, a couple of big takeaways from that. One is that the corrections that the technicians look at this and say, we're going to go down 10, 15%, maybe 20% in this correction, but these corrections in this bull market have the exception of the post-election correction in November. They've been shorter and shallower than classical technical analysis would argue because central banks are not buying like the emotional swings that we get from investors. They're buying for strategic reasons and they're largely price and sensitive.
So, corrections have been shorter and shallow. The other big thing is that the traditional levers to gold, silver and mining stocks have underperformed during much of this bull market because central banks don't buy silver and they don't buy in mining stocks yet when the western investors all of a sudden try to get into this market, and it's been unique because of their absence at the beginning stages when they try to get into this market, they see that gold has made such a huge run. So, what's their entry point? Silver and mining stocks. So for silver, there's a lot of pent up demand there that I think is starting to evidence itself, and it's also doing that in the mining stocks as well. So, as somebody who owns silver who owns mining stocks and a bunch of silver mining stocks, I'm pretty excited about it.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I'm so bullish silver as well. I think as quickly as it ran up, $35 sounds like it's expensive, but it's still a bargain. If you kind of look at the big picture, just look at the gold-silver ratio. I haven't looked at it in the last couple of days, but last time I looked it was still in the 90:1 range, which is really historically high, which tells you that silver is still on sale. So I'm really bullish and enthusiastic about the trajectory of silver as well.
Brien Lundin: Yeah, if gold didn't move and it got down to 60, 65, that's $50 silver.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, a little pivot before we go, I want to just see if you have anything that you can tease for the upcoming New Orleans Investment Conference. You got anything on the agenda, anything that you can tell us about that we'll be excited to go?
Brien Lundin: Gold, silver mining stocks. How's that?
We have great speakers and I think you know that, and I think everyone knows that we try to lead the market with the quality of our speakers, all the people that you follow online and in social media, et cetera, that you really want to see and would love to meet. We've got the crème de la crème and we're still working on that agenda and got some exciting people coming. But also the best place to be has been proven over five decades. The best place to be during a gold, silver and mining share bull market is the New Orleans Conference. It's where you will find opportunities, great commentary, stocks that will often or known for going up 10, 20 times over or more following the event. You'll find next year's biggest winners, at least in the junior mining stock market on our exhibit floor and in our halls.
So, it is the place to be, and this will be our 51st event. We have a money backed guarantee. Everybody's happy. We've very rarely had to refund anyone's money. I can count the instances, can't count the instances on one hand over decades because the value is just so overwhelmingly good and worth the experience and the experience. You have to be there to really appreciate it. So yeah, if people go to GoldNewsletter.com, not gold … well you can go to GoldNewsletter.com and get there fatuitous route, but if you go to www.neworleansconference.com, you'll get all the information on this year's event and we are taking registrations and they're coming in. That's another great barometer for the market. We're getting more registrations now at this point in time than we've had for many years. So, it's going to be an incredibly enlightening and valuable event.
Mike Maharrey: A lot of interest out there. I'll say this too, doing this job and being able to interview a lot of people like you, folks that are in the gold and silver sphere, there's a lot of really interesting and friendly people that it's worthwhile getting in a position where you can talk to these folks because they're so knowledgeable, but they're also just interesting in other ways as well. So, it's a lot of fun to be able to interact and mingle and get to know folks. I think people will enjoy the social aspect of it as well. And it can be a little lonely being a gold bug. Sometimes if you're watching CNBC and Fox Business, you feel like, “Oh, everybody hates me.” So it's fun to get around a bunch of people who are like-minded and you're like, okay, maybe I'm not as nuts as they want to make me feel like I am.
Brien Lundin: And that's what we kind of specialize in. You're here in New Orleans, a great city, great food and entertainment and really great people, the intellectual energy in the halls. It's just amazing. And I open up the conference every year by telling the audience that, yeah, we've got fantastic speakers at this podium, but look around you and share your thoughts with this audience because it really is a very smart, intelligent, successful, and giving group of people. Everyone is very open to sharing their ideas or lifelong friendships made at our event. It really is a remarkable thing to experience.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned the Gold Newsletter website. Give that again and let folks know a little bit about what they can find there and about the work that you're doing with the Gold Newsletter.
Brien Lundin: Yeah, GoldNewsletter.com. We cover and I cover every month the macro picture, the markets and the metals, and we focus on junior mining stocks as well. I cover a dozen or two each month of the top junior mining stories out there, companies that I know very well, and they're performing very well right now. We're coming out this month with four new recommendations. Don't remember the last time I did that, but they're really four very exciting stories that were unveiling this month.
Mike Maharrey: Very cool. And I'll give you a little plug. We publish articles that you've written from time to time over it, money, metals, and you're a fantastic writer and a very, very good communicator. So I think people will find that the information that you're giving them, it's easy to read, it's easy to absorb, it's interesting and definitely a must follow if you're somebody who wants to keep your kind of knows on what's going on in this market. So
Brien Lundin: As are you as well, Michael? And we agree on so many things. I think we have to try and figure out something we disagree on so we can have an argument on one of these.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, a debate. We'll work on that off air. I'm sure we can find something it might not be related to our economics, but I'm sure you've got some kind of fault.
Brien Lundin: Yeah, A number of people would agree with that.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Well, same here. Well, I really do appreciate you taking time out of your day. I know you're a busy man, you've got a lot on your plate, but always appreciate your insights and looking forward to talking with you again in the near future and seeing what you unveil at the next version of the conference. I'm sure it'll be fantastic. And again, just thank you so much for taking a little bit of time to spend with me today.
Brien Lundin: Thank you for having me. Always a pleasure, and look forward to the next opportunity.
Mike Maharrey: Absolutely.
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Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview, and that will do it for this week. Be sure to check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. Check out the Money Metals Midweek Memo podcast as well. To listen to any of our audio programs just go to <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts">MoneyMetals.com/podcasts</a> or find them on places like Apple Podcast, Spotify or other podcast platforms. And as another reminder, and as a big help to us we would ask you to please like, subscribe, download and rate our podcasts. Doing so helps us extend the reach of this material.
Until next time, this has been Mike Gleason with <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/">Money Metals Exchange</a>, thanks for listening and have a wonderful weekend everybody.

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