States Retreat from Gold Market Takeovers

Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.
Coming up, don’t miss an exclusive interview with Joe Cavatoni of the World Gold Council. Joe is a market strategist with over 30 years of financial services experience and helps us make sense of how gold has reacted and likely will react in the face of dizzying geopolitical and war headlines that seem to change day-by-day, if not hour-by-hour. Joe weighs in on gold’s role as a safe haven asset given the current backdrop and explains why the recent moves in the gold price shouldn’t really surprise anyone.
Mike Maharrey and Joe also discuss the historic rise in the gold price over the last two plus years, and assess where we are today and what the next move might be in gold moving forward as he aims to help investors cycle out all the noise in the market considering constant uncertainty and volatility.
So, stick around for that and a whole lot more during another wonderful conversation with the highly respected Joe Cavatoni of the World Gold Council, coming up after this week’s market update. And as a reminder please download, like, rate and subscribe to this podcast wherever you consume this content.
So, you’ve heard of people looking at the world through rose colored glasses, right?
Well, when astronauts finally walk on the moon again, they’ll be looking through gold-colored visors.
That gold coloring isn’t just a cool look. It has a very important function.
The face shields on the spacesuit helmets look gold because the precious metal is literally incorporated into their design.
The Oakley sunglasses company developed the visor used by the Artemis astronauts. And when you think about it, it makes sense. If you think the sun is intense here on Earth during a summer day, it's way more harsh outside the Earth's atmosphere.
On a related note, we will very soon be shipping our brand new <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/nasa-artemis-ii-silver-round-1-troy-ounce-999-pure/3069">NASA Artemis II – 1 Ounce Silver Round Commemoratives</a>, so check out the <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/buy/new-arrivals">New Arrivals page</a> at MoneyMetals.com if you are interested in grabbing some of these neat collectibles made of pure silver.
Now, in space, the sun apparently feels as if it's piercing through your eyes. So, astronauts need an exceptional visor system to protect their eyes and maximize visibility to enable them to work in the challenging lunar environment.
It turns out that gold’s electron structure can filter out both infrared and ultraviolet light. As NASA explained it, the movable sun visor and sunshades protect the astronaut from the sun’s strong rays, while still allowing a clear visual field.
To take advantage of these physical properties, the astronaut visors include a coating of 24-karat gold. To make these remarkable visors, they shoot an electron beam powerful enough to evaporate the gold. That atomized gold is then sprayed onto the lens, creating the perfect coating for the job.
And who says gold is just a useless pet rock?
In reality, gold is one of the most useful metals in the world. Due to its utility, coupled with its scarcity, gold is also one of the most valuable metals in the world.
In the first place, gold is strikingly beautiful. It has captured people's eyes for thousands of years. That’s why people all over the world love to wear gold. About 44 percent of gold demand is for jewelry production. About 1,550 tons of gold were used in jewelry fabrication last year.
But gold isn’t just pretty. As we’ve seen with the space helmet, the metal’s inherent physical and chemical properties make it useful in many industrial and technological applications.
This is why we see gold increasingly used in the tech sector. In fact, gold would probably be used even more if it weren’t so rare and expensive.
Last year, tech used 228 tonnes of gold, mostly in electronics. That’s because gold has excellent electrical conductivity and, unlike silver, doesn’t corrode. It is also malleable, making it excellent for tiny, precise connections.
The point is that gold is far from useless.
But fundamentally, <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts/2024/02/28/gold-and-silver-are-real-money-003011">gold is money</a>. And everybody has a use for money – especially real money.
In other news this week, lawmakers in Tennessee have delivered another blow to the big-government “transactional gold” schemes proposed in numerous state legislatures this year.
The Tennessee legislature rejected a bill that would have created an entangling, government-run gold depository, investment, and payment system, putting the state in direct competition with private firms already successfully offering these services.
These damaging bills have been pushed by individuals associated with a self-interested European vendor seeking a contract to run a major government program that effectively turns a state into a bullion dealer, depository, and payment processor – while also allowing government bureaucrats to insert themselves right in the middle of people's private personal finances.
By abandoning this foolish and dangerous proposal, Tennessee joins a dozen other states that have done the same, including Georgia, Kansas, Arizona, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Dakota, Idaho, Mississippi, Wyoming, and Michigan.
Well, before we get to this week’s interview, let’s take a look at the market action in the metals.
Gold, is up about $80 or 1.7% to come in at $4,769 an ounce.
Silver meanwhile is up nearly $3 or 4.0% on the week and currently trades at $76.67.
Platinum is up 3.3% and checks in at $2,063, while its sister metal palladium is up 1.1% to trade at $1,537 an ounce as of this Friday late morning recording.
Well now, for more on the recent action in the metals markets, let’s get right to our exclusive interview.
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Mike Maharrey: Greetings, I'm Mike Maharrey and I'm joined today by Joe Cavatoni. Joe is a market strategist covering North America for the World Gold Council, and I'm very happy to get his insights today. How are you doing, Joe?
Joe Cavatoni: I'm great, Mike. How are you? Thanks for having me.
Mike Maharrey: I am outstanding and it's great to have you on the show. And we'll give folks a little bit of context because it's kind of necessary in a world where headlines are moving so fast, but it almost looks like maybe there's a ceasefire in the Iran-US-Israel conflict. I guess we can't really know what that's going to look like because everything changes minute by minute, but that's where we are today. So actually, gold is up a little bit this morning. So that's the context, but I wanted to start off and ask you just kind of your perception of how gold has behaved during this conflict. And if there's anything that you've seen in the gold market that has surprised you, a lot of folks are coming to me and saying, "Mike, I thought gold was a safe haven and it's tanked during this war. What's going on? " So I'm curious from your perspective as somebody who's watched the gold markets closely for many years, how you kind of see this.
Joe Cavatoni: So Mike, let me start by amplifying what you've said, which is headlines keep moving so fast. And I'm not sure about you or for your listeners, but for one thing for sure for me, is I don't think I put my phone down and I don't think I stopped watching social media for headlines twenty four seven. And it can be a little overwhelming, but I think that the thing that people need to understand, and I think they need to be keeping the context is actually gold is doing what we expect it to be doing. So what shocked me, and it hasn't been gold's performance during the war, what really shocked me early in the year was that excessive run up in the price to record prices of near $5,500, maybe a bit over that, and 30% return in January, which was followed by what we consider probably a very logical retreatment of 20%, which is factoring into some of the selloff of the year.
So, I think we need to keep it in context because that was a big moment in January, driven a lot by momentum and speculation. Now, fast forward into the Iran conflict, what we saw and expected from gold were what happened as an immediate response to a geopolitical conflict event, the price of gold spiked, but as the markets and investors are able to assess what the complications and outcomes of the conflict could be, we started to see that weigh in on the gold price and do what it usually does is it retreats back as people assess what the conflict is looking like. So that immediate reaction took us up about three or four, almost 5% on the day of the initial conflict. And we retreated back and actually people started to assess what it meant, meaning quite candidly, the price of oil was going to be significantly impacted.
Now, of course, everyone in the US looks at it from their perspective saying, "Oh gosh, now I'm going to have a $6 golden price at the pump." And then the market started to assess what it meant for global economies. And it's much, much more substantive in terms of its impact around the globe, meaning that emerging markets are energy dependent on oil and those economies were going to be likely severely impacted as a result of that. Those economies impacted inflation being an outcome of that. And actually in context, risk assets were being sold off pretty aggressively around the globe, particularly in those markets to start, then followed by risk assets around the globe as inflation was trying to be assessed as a consequence. And gold did what it does during those moments. People use safe haven assets during moments of conflict leading to outcomes that lead to need for liquidity.
So, you have to remember that there was a conflict where we saw the price move and then a consequence of the conflict where we saw what role gold plays – safe haven being utilized pretty aggressively. Profits were taken, I'm sure. I mean, you're talking about a near up 130% over the last 18 months. Margin calls were being made, liquidity get to cash mentality kicked in, and people were definitely taking money off the table, and gold was not immune to that. So the early selloff in the part of the year from the 30% up, plus the selloff that came as a consequence of get to cash during the outcome of assessing the war has taken us down to a low level of around 41, 4,200. And as you start to see that world looking clearer as a consequence of possible ceasefire in the war, you start to see gold moving its way back up, back on that steady long-term discussion we've had around why gold's going to keep climbing higher over the long term.
So, that's a very long-winded way of describing what happened, but hopefully it touches on everything. And to directly answer your question, we're not surprised by what gold has done outside of that 30% run in January. And actually over the course of the conflict, we actually think it's done exactly as we expected it would do.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Actually, that was not long-winded. That was a fantastic overview of what's going on and largely dovetails with a lot of what I've observed and what I've heard from folks that I've talked to as well. I think you make a really good point that folks use gold. I mean, we talk about it as a safe haven, but that means something, right? It does. And so sometimes you have to tap into that safe haven when need arises. I think maybe, and I'm interested if you agree with this, that Turkey is a really good example of that. They unloaded quite a bit of gold from their reserves. It looks like they've set it up to be a temporary kind of thing. Look, we have this situation, we have an oil shock, we need cash, we've got this gold, let's sell it, lease it, and then we can move on from there.
Joe Cavatoni: So, I think it's a great illustration of a central bank making use of the reserve asset that they need that they want. There's also been news around Poland, possibly using some of its gold reserves, which have actually grown faster and larger than they had budgeted for. So clearly they have profits and they're saying, "Look, we can use those profits." And through the mechanism that they have onshore in Poland, they can actually move those profits into the hands of spending in the hands of the government. But for investors, you're right, our use case we define as investment as a offset to risk assets, as a liquidity sleeve, as a safe haven asset. And guess what? When you're selling risk assets and you need to make margin calls or you need to have cash ready to hand and you need liquidity, that safe haven role triggers the sale of gold, and it's actually what we've been seeing.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's interesting when you kind of look at the war, it's almost a microcosm of life in the era of Trump, right? And I'm curious, just from your perspective as a market analyst, you're sitting here and you're trying to understand where markets are going and how they're moving. How do you deal with the level of, I like the term regime uncertainty, right? We have no earthly idea what is going to come out next on Truth Social or what's going to happen. How has that kind of affected your job over the last couple of years and how do you navigate that?
Joe Cavatoni: So, I think it's a great question and what we've been making sure that we are clearly communicating to people looking at any asset, including gold, is that the only thing that we can predict is the unpredictability of this new cycle. There's no crystal ball, there's no answer to what's next. And actually you just need to expect more uncertainty, more disruptive, potentially disruptive policies from the administration, and that's going to continue. It's having an impact, positive and negative on the economy, but ultimately you just need to expect it. As a result of that, I think all assets, including gold, have seen increased levels of stress on their levels of liquidity, but they've also seen increased sustained levels of volatility. And I think that that's something that people who have been looking at the gold market for a long time saying, "Oh no, this is meant to be a boring, stable asset. It's my safe-haven. I yawn when I think about it." Not the case anymore. It's an asset that's front and center with central banks. It's an asset that's front and center with investors and you should be expecting volatility, meaning the price ranging for gold to be a higher band than maybe you would've expected in the past. Now look, over the last four years, we've become much more pronounced in our role and in the portfolio in the investment landscape and a little bit less in the case of jewelry, but that's still a very large component of what's being consumed around the world as a gold mechanism. But at the end of the day, you need to expect higher levels of volatility and not be concerned about them because the strict and ruling of where gold's going to go over the long term is going to continue to take it higher because of fundamentals in the economy.
So, the noise is the noise and that's the tactical momentum and the strategic direction of gold continues to be what we would see as up 10, 15, 20% year on year while we're dealing with these types of conditions in global economies.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good way to look at it. Has the war changed your overall calculus in terms of looking at a little bit midterm, long term? Has it kind of changed the way you're factoring some of those fundamental dynamics that you mentioned, or do you see it more as kind of a political blip on the radar?
Joe Cavatoni: Well, it definitely is a little bit more than a blip on the radar. I think what it has been for many people is a very quick and valuable learning lesson around how substantive one factor like oil could mean to a global economy. In terms of our modeling and in terms of our thinking, where we're recalibrating and trying to get more accuracy from our estimates is around how to judge the uncertainty of these political cycles. That's probably been the thing we've wrestled with the most in terms of our overall ability to kind of expect and call the markets. And look, we're not here to call a price on the market. We're just here to help people understand what the performance has been and why. And it's a little bit more challenging to call the momentum and the short-term tactical activities in the gold market. And quite honestly, it's actually a bit of a challenge in that regard.
And that's where we're rethinking and how we put factors into what drives the short-term tactical driver of gold. Because I look at our numbers and I think that we're accurate to a degree, but I think we're underestimating the amount of momentum that's been put in the gold. I think January amplified that for us. We still looked at the post-January momentum up and down, and then we looked at what our numbers were indicating in terms of the momentum drivers. And we were probably lower than I would expect in terms of the overall factoring there. But some of that challenge comes in the fact that gold's an over-the-counter market. Some of that factoring is difficult to get your hands on because it's global in nature. But look, I think overall, we're standing comfortably behind our estimates for the year in terms of the bull case for gold to grow, but I'd say 15, 20, maybe even 30% on the year.
And I think that that's reasonable for us to see. And we're on track for that as we are up. It's about eight, 9% here, and as we enter April.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. From my perspective, watching your work over the years and of course tapping into your work quite a bit for what I'm doing, I feel like that you guys do a fantastic job considering all of the many factors that you have to weigh. And I think you make a really good point, and maybe this is something that we kind of need to emphasize. When you start looking at any market, we as human beings, we tend to tunnel vision, right? We've got a war. So, that's what we're looking at. And yet there's still all of these other things going on. And to really do good analysis, you really have to try to force yourself to step back, right?
Joe Cavatoni: You do.
Mike Maharrey: Is that kind of a challenge for you from a psychological standpoint sometimes, or have you gotten to the point that you're pretty good at it because this is what you're doing? How does that work from your perspective?
Joe Cavatoni: It's a challenge. You spend your entire career trying to be ahead of the game, ahead of the risk, ahead of the news cycle. And literally, as an example, I had an email exchange with someone we do some work with on the policy side in Washington, saw it, dealt with it, thought I was all over it. And then I realized I hadn't circulated it to our broader team outside of the US who had a lot of interest in it. And then I'm like, I'm looking at it and you're just always catching up. But I think that's a silly little example, but I think the bigger point is that if you use models, you need to always be calibrating and recalibrating models. They're never right perfect and set for good. You need to be dynamic in your assessment of markets. You need to be dynamic in the assessment of your models, and you need to have a little bit of humility to simply say, our model's good, but nothing's perfect and actually everything changes and you need to constantly reassess.
Now, I learned those lessons a long time ago living in Asia where we were looking at using quantitative models to drive big portfolios. And depending on how far back you wanted to look in terms of your data for testing markets, you had different outcomes in terms of positioning into the global financial crisis. You could have ignored 1997 for the Asian financial crisis and missed an entire shock to a market. So you have to have humility and you have to be putting your models in question constantly.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Humility is not something that's in large supply in this sector. And I guess that's just the nature of when you're trying to present a message. I mean, obviously we think we're right, right? I mean, and I don't mean that to be flippant. I mean, obviously we're not going to say things we don't think are true, but it is easy to cross that line into, well, I'm right and everybody else is wrong. I was curious about something that I've picked up on. I've been watching the ETF flows and of course, unsurprisingly with the selloff since January, we've seen outflows of gold from ETFs, but it's been dominated by North American funds. And I noticed that Asian funds actually were positive until the very last week of March. And so I'm curious if that's … How do you see that difference of the way maybe the Asian market and the North American market are viewing things?
And how do you account for Asians were still flowing gold into funds in early parts of this world? How would you explain that?
Joe Cavatoni: Well, I think it's a great question. And first, I do want to make sure we put it into context that it is still a small component of the overall gold market. So it is a good, nice, transparent slice of the market, but less than 10% of the investment market for gold. And I think that what you're seeing is definitely a bit more profit taking, a bit more of a tactical mentality around the use of some of the exchange traded funds in the US market. Some of the larger, more liquid funds that get used for long, short trading positions like GLD and IAU, they've seen the lion share of the inflows and outflows. So it tells us that there's a little bit more momentum driven there, a little bit more tactical activity driven there. And I'd say that you should expect that kind of volatility in terms of the ETF flows in the US.
It still is the largest holding of global ETFs in terms of the overall percentage. It still has the most liquid instruments of any ETFs around the world, but they do get used more tactically as people move around the instruments. And interestingly enough, over the last couple of weeks, as you've highlighted, we're starting to see the flows coming back into the gold market. And there was really just a blip in March when it was really a big selloff in the US. So expect a little more tactical behavior that can be transparent in the ETF market, again, concentrated amongst the number of big ETFs that get used as trading vehicles.
Now, Asia, which is an interesting dynamic, is one where you've had a shift of people who would use physical gold or maybe jewelry and the adoption much more readily of regulated financial instruments like ETFs. So what we've been seeing is more of a shift to a more stable holding, more structural shift in their investment dollars as opposed to just speculating the gold price. And I think that that's actually been an interesting dynamic. It's still small relative to the overall holdings in both the Americas and also in Europe or EMEA, I should say. But at the end of the day, it's actually a shift that's continuing to take place. Moving away from physical gold or jewelry and actually using instruments like gold in a portfolio where you've seen challenges around portfolios that hold real estate, challenges around portfolios that hold equities and questions around big market economies like China, for example, and what it's going to do and how it's going to play out.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Very interesting to watch the different dynamics. I think sometimes as Americans, we forget that not everybody in the world thinks exactly like we do.
Joe Cavatoni: Correct.
Mike Maharrey: And actually- And I'm definitely guilty of that sometimes. It's easy to get myopic.
Joe Cavatoni: I mean, that's been something we've been hammering home for people on gold for better part of two and a half, three years now, which is just because the dollar and US interest rates haven't done what you would normally expect to see the performance of gold improving, this decoupling, so to speak, doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a reason. The reason is that there's been the rise of the Eastern investor. There's been the rise of more consumption in Asian markets. It's actually really interesting to keep that global dynamic in mind. And to that end, one thing that I'm continuing to keep an eye on and having a real hard time just getting my head around is why European investors still haven't stepped in as much as I would've expected by now. And it's simply, I think, because the relative equity trade was cheap, I don't think that's the case anymore.
So, European equities versus US equities was cheap. I think that dynamic has changed. And I think that we should start to see more European ETF flows, more European flows into gold over the course of the year because spending's now on the radar for countries, deficits are going to continue to increase, challenges around Fiat currency, Euro, et cetera. And I think that you'll start to see that pick up. But let's see if that call is correct because it hasn't been something that I noticed that Europe's been notably quiet in terms of the transparent flows and ETFs.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious, it sounded like you alluded to the fact that you've spent some time in Asia, so you understand the Asian markets pretty well, I'm sure way better than I do. Can you give the audience a sense of … I think there's a perception that Asian investors view gold differently than North American investors. Is that a fair assessment? And if so, what is that difference in thinking?
Joe Cavatoni: So I don't know if they … Well, it's probably the role gold plays that they have a different appreciation for if I had to put it into context.
I think that we trust Treasuries, we trust the dollar to a certain extent, and we have a huge economy. And I think that it's not hard. Going back to a comment you made a little earlier, it's not hard to be very insular in the US. You've got a lot that you can look at. You get a lot you can work on. And innovation is just off the charts. I mean, in terms of financial market innovation, economies, just the way things happen here, and the pioneering spirit of the country is ingrained in all of us. Push it hard, throw caution to the wind, aggression, et cetera. I don't know if that's necessarily ingrained in a lot of the Asian markets. I think safety, saving, holding something that I know can transfer from generation to generation, which we have as well, but there's a lot longer history of the fear of currency devaluation and economies not having the same level of growth.
So, I think that's a fundamental difference there. And I guess as it translates into the modern era, having spent many years developing markets with a myriad of different firms and people that I've known over the years, it's been awesome to watch investment markets really go from fledgling to developed and in many ways just become mainstream. I had the opportunity to trade China A shares using the quota that the government would give to foreign entities, and that was a pretty exciting moment where you're actually trading something that many people thought would never happen. And over years, it developed into something that became much more easily accessible and transferrable, still not completely fungible across borders and free to trade, but where it started and where it is today, it's just a radically different place. And I think that that's been … I always thought it was a very exciting dynamic of when I spent my years there, and it was literally 17, 18 years I spent in the region.
So, you're looking at a market that had 50 stocks listed, and then by the time you left, it was several hundred and you could short and you could do all kinds of different things. And it's really kind of fun and exciting. But I think it's a shift in that whole developing nation. It moved from emerging markets to developing nations in terms of how we even refer to them. And so I think even locally, more people are banked, more people have access to the markets, more people have access to trading. Digitization of different assets and online access to different things has changed the whole dynamic. People are banking without having to go into a brick and mortar bank anymore. So, it's a pretty amazing development. And I think at the heart of the Asian investor is still this mentality of saying, "What's the safest thing I can have in my wealth?
And it's something that doesn't lose its value that I can use when I need it in times of liquidity." Sound familiar? And they keep it and they hold onto it and they pass it down generation to generation.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Yeah. That's really good insight. I appreciate that. I want to get you out on a couple of just more personal questions. And the first is, how'd you get interested in gold? I always find it interesting how people get into this “barbaric relic” as some have referred to it.
Joe Cavatoni: Sure. Well, I always understood and managed around a bit the commodity category, but never directly involved in it until about 10 years ago, the World Gold Council approached me about an opportunity to help them in the US with the investment direction of education and helping our research team kind of put together its content and think about modeling and think about the different aspects of what's happening in the gold market. We also are the innovators of the exchange traded funds, and I had a pretty comprehensive background in that. And there was a bit of work to be done there to make sure that our overall involvement in the ETF landscape was well-managed. So, that's how I got into it. And what I liked about it, which was something that took me back to the very early parts of my career, coming into the World Gold Council, it got me the opportunity to be less chained to a trading desk and more opportunity to see the value chain from the mine site to the market.
So, we do talk with refineries. We talk to those that are in the mining space who are our members. We talk to the people who are in the transportation business and the logistics business and also the storage business. I was literally at a site visit yesterday. Someone wanted us to see their vault just outside of New York City and Comex approved vault, which was really an interesting site business, talking about what the business opportunity is. So, it was that that drew me in, which was the opportunity to see industry start to finish from production to consumption. And actually, it was a large enough market for me to say, "Hey, this has got some real legs to it." You think about the big two commodities, it's gold and Oil. And I said, "That's actually pretty interesting stuff. So let's see where it goes." Now it's opened my eyes to a whole bunch of other things which we could go on for hours on in terms of critical minerals, et cetera, but I mean, it's just been a fantastic run.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting too. And you kind of alluded to something I think that maybe people don't really comprehend. It's just how big the gold market is in terms of all of the players in it. It's not just a guy sitting at a trading desk. And as you say, you've got miners, you've got explorers, geologists, bank. It's all of these different things that are kind of coming together, which is pretty cool.
Joe Cavatoni: I mean, just think about the simple impact that some of the logistical challenges we faced over the last five years between COVID shutdown, potential risk of tariffs. I mean, who would've ever thought that things like that could be impacting the gold market? If I hadn't taken the time to understand the gold market, I might not have. But then when you start getting there quickly, you realize, hey, logistics matter.
Mike Maharrey: Okay, here's the nerd question for you. Do you have a favorite gold coin?
Joe Cavatoni: Do I have a favorite gold coin? The short answer is no, I don't actually.
Mike Maharrey: You need to have a favorite gold coin. Come on.
Joe Cavatoni: I don't have a favorite gold coin. I just have Eagles, so I'm just sorry. So, I guess the ones that are in my possession are my favorite gold coins.
I don't have anything in the numismatic space. Although I did get a call this week from someone who says they have a friend who has a collection of coins that their grandfather passed down to their father to now to them, and they're looking for a little help with it. And I said, "Well, look, I know one thing for sure. If it's an eagle, then you can call your run of the mill dealer and see what you can liquidate if you want to. " But if there are any instances of numismatic value, which I don't dabble in the space, it's too complex for me to figure out and not one that I can protest to be an expert on. I said, be cautionary with that because you might be leaving a lot of money on the table without understanding what you've got.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, that's very wise advice. I'm the same way. And I'll tell you what, there's nothing wrong with a nice gold eagle because as you say, you can offload that place anywhere. Everybody recognizes that what this is and what its value is.
Joe Cavatoni: So- I'll nerd out for you a little bit more here if you want.
Actually, and this is not an anti-crypto comment. This is actually a factual story. Many years ago, I have two boys who are now no longer young boys. They're grownups now. But I was on a trip to India and I bought them both a coin and then actually they've held onto it. And the older one asked me if we could buy some Bitcoin at the time, and we did. So, we bought gold and Bitcoin at the same time. And he's actually had a fun time just kind of learning the whole dynamic between the two, watching the whole story of crypto claiming to be gold and not. But he still holds both of those assets. My younger son, we had to tear apart his room because he claims he never got the coin I gave him. We had to go find it and we did eventually find it and he no longer holds either asset.
And actually my wife's been an active buyer through Costco.
Mike Maharrey: Nice, nice. Yeah. But those stories are fun. I gave both of my kids, and like yours, they're grown now, but I gave them both silver rounds. They're real pretty Irish silver rounds. They weren't actually coins, but they're 0.999 pure. And I got to tell them the other day, I said, "Hey, you remember that round I gave you?" Because when I gave it to them, silver was like $12, right? And so that round's worth about 70 bucks now. My daughter's eyes got real big. So, it is cool because it's a really tangible way to teach young people about markets and money, right?
Joe Cavatoni: It is.
Mike Maharrey: All right. So, before we go, I want to let you point folks toward the World Gold Council, if you want to give a quick overview of what you guys have to offer and where folks can go to avail themselves to all of the fine output that you have.
Joe Cavatoni: So, we've got a lot of information on the gold market ranging from market development work, market insight, research data. You can find our main gold page is gold.org. Within there, you'll have Gold Hub, which is where you can go get investment research and insights from people around the globe. And that's what's actually really cool about our site is that you can actually get insights from our team on the ground in China or on the ground in India. So, you can start to get a much, much better appreciation for the global nature of the gold market. And shout out to my co-host, John Reed for our unearthed podcast. We have a monthly that we do, and then we have regular production of podcasts as well, where we give insights ranging from all aspects of the market, like you said, the logistics side or the production side to the market side, and some really interesting commentary coming up in the next couple of months with those that have some very insightful views on the investment landscape.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. And I just want to emphasize fantastic work that you guys do. I couldn't do my job if it wasn't for you guys doing your job. I visit the World Gold Council literally every single day. That's one of the go- to stops because there is so much great data, not just current news, but a lot of historical data that you can dig up if you're doing research. 100%.
Joe Cavatoni: And thank you for that, and that's why we're here.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. And we really appreciate it. And I really appreciate you taking a little bit of time out of your day. I know you're on the road traveling and that's always a hassle. And so I appreciate we managed to get this done early in the morning before I'm normally doing anything. So I think I've been remarkably cogent, which is good. But I really do appreciate it, and I thank you so much, and would love to have you back on again as things unfold in the future. That sounds great,
Joe Cavatoni: And I welcome the opportunity. All right.
Mike Maharrey: Well, thank you again.
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Another great interview there and it was wonderful to have Joe Cavatoni from the World Gold Council join us once again, and we certainly enjoyed hearing his very studied and informed view on what he’s been seeing in the gold market of late.
Well, that will do it for this week. Be sure to check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. And remember to tune in as well to the Money Metals Midweek Memo, hosted by Mike Maharrey.
To check out any of our audio programs just visit <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts">MoneyMetals.com/podcasts</a> or find them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. 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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