저자: MarcFaber · 외국인
요약 보기
중앙은행의 금 매수는 탈달러화뿐 아니라 자체 채권 평가손실에 대한 헤지일 수 있다고 주장. 금은 1970년 35달러에서 현재 약 4,500달러로 올랐고 투기적 과열은 없다고 봄. 금광주는 저평가 상태로 보며 본인은 실물 금 보유를 선호. 자산의 약 25%를 금에 배분하는 것을 권하고, 원자재 중 플래티넘이 금·은 대비 저렴하다고 봄. 단기적으로는 경기침체 가능성을 우려해 현금과 장기국채(30년물 제외 언급)가 전략적 선택일 수 있다고 함. 보관은 해외 분산을 권함.
다듬은 글
investors are chasing assets because they want to get rich quickly. Gold is almost the opposite. I mean, it's not a promise of fast wealth. It's kind of a way to protect purchasing power when the the promises around every everything else gets too aggressive. Uh I guess you can see why the younger generation goes for that AI winner as opposed to looking at something as boring as gold.
But you know central banks haven't been. And when we look over it because the the standard narrative here that they're simply dedollarizing is something our audience has heard a million of times. I mean, we're kick co. But there is a much more uncomfortable reality. I mean, many major central banks are sitting on massive unacknowledged mark-to-market losses of their own bond portfolios.
I guess the question is is when institutions that print the currency are technically insolvent by private market standards. I mean, is there is there accumulation of physical gold less about geopolitical strategy and just a silent hedge against the collapse of their own balance sheets? You're raising a very important point because for a commodity that has performed as well as gold, they when I started to work in 1970, gold was $35 an ounce and now it's um 4,500 what's not.
I mean, it's performed well over the long term and it's performed very well over the last 12 months, 18 months and there's no excessive speculation. And the inflows into ETFs have just recently picked up, but then with the correction, they've again uh sold. I mean, uh considering the performance of gold, silver and platinum over the last 18 months, there has been remarkably little speculation.
I go out to bars at night and people play pool and they they have people that are involved in sports betting and all sorts of investment schemes that are scams or dubious. What if the world's biggest financial institutions no longer fully trust the system they helped create? While retail investors chase AI stocks, crypto rallies, and the next big trade, central banks around the world continue accumulating one asset that has survived every monetary experiment in history: gold.
Investor Marc Faber believes this isn't a coincidence. He argues that rising debt, weakening purchasing power, and growing policy risks are quietly changing the rules of wealth preservation. But is gold really a safe haven? Or is this just another fear-driven narrative? I tell you, you hardly ever hear of anyone buying or selling gold.
Hardly ever. They buy and they're all active in Bitcoins and in Solana and whatnot. But gold and silver and platinum, it's a I tell you, of all the people I know, only maybe five are active in precious metals. Interesting. I'm not particularly active because I just hold gold, period. I I don't sell gold.
I've sold some of my gold shares because they had huge run-ups. And I'm I'm of two minds about gold shares. I think if you want to make money, you can make money, a lot of money, in gold shares [clears throat] if you buy them at the right time. The mining You're talking about mining assets. Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. But I I think the mining stocks are quite inexpensive relative to everything else. But I personally prefer physical under my mattress. Under my mattress. Any miners you're keeping an eye on? I I got I got to ask you that. I mean, I have South African gold mines and I have Canadians.
Yeah. And because I was a director of Ivanhoe I have still a fairly large position in Ivanhoe. It's not one of my favorite stocks right now. And I have a platinum I have a preference for platinum as a commodity because it's very cheap relative to gold and silver. And silver is relatively cheap compared to gold.
But wheat, corn, soybean is even lower relative to gold and everything else and oil since you talked about energy or we talked about energy before oil is low compared to gold. I mean, you can establish ratios. Uh 1 oz of gold how many buildings does it buy or how many ounces of gold do you need to buy a building?
I mean, a house. And how many ounces of gold do you need to buy a bushel of wheat and how many ounces of gold do you need to buy silver and so forth. And so you can establish what is [clears throat] relatively low compared to gold. And I can tell you what is relatively low compared to gold is your work.
It's a labor cost. And what is relatively low compared to gold are food prices. I mean, wheat, corn, soybeans, sugar and yes, that and rubber. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting one on the commodity side. I mean, listen for for for a serious investor kind of watching this looking to build out a defensive portfolio today.
I mean, you brought you brought up some of those allocations, but I mean, what specific kind of percentage of their liquid net worth should be allocated to physical precious metals and, you know, others in that portfolio? It's It seems like it looks a lot different this year. I mean, as a rule, I would say and I mean, it depends on the person because he may have large real estate assets and he may be diversified and so forth.
But I would suggest to hold about 25% of his assets in gold and some of my friends, they own 80% of the money in gold. I think it's very courageous because one feature of gold is that it doesn't really yield. It doesn't provide you with a regular income. I have a bond portfolio as well. Yeah. And as you say, in the last few years, it hasn't been doing well, but not as badly as say a 30-year bond.
When you look at the 30-year bond, Mhm. its price from the peak in 2020 has almost been cut in half. But you had the dividend, I mean, you had the interest payments every year. So, the total return hasn't been that bad and in the last 2 years, I just checked, the return hasn't been negative because Mhm.
the 30 years has gone down a little, but you got the 4% interest. You know, you're talking about T-bills and the bond market's obviously very interesting right now. But you I got to bring up the counter because we've we've frequently or I've heard you frequently kind of highlight the incompetence of these central planners, right?
I mean, I guess the question is is if if if the very people holding gold right now and are kind of hoarding gold right now are the same central bankers who trapped us in this inflation style, does Did you at all to be on the exact side of the trade as them? Look, as an investor and as a large asset holder, you know, I was fortunate in life.
I wasn't particularly smart, but I was lucky and I worked hard and with a lot of discipline. I mean, I'm 80 and I work every day because I don't mind working. I think it's better for me to work than to drink the whole day. But then my view is that everything is in danger zone. You know, when I grew up in the '50s, my grandmothers and grandpas said you have to save 10% of your income and put it on deposit with a bank.
Well, that advice was a disastrous advice over time because of the depreciating currency, the loss of purchasing power of paper money. They should have said, "Mark, you stupid young boy, buy every day some stocks or buy every day some gold and so forth and don't put it with a bank on deposit." But interestingly, nowadays, if I look at the asset allocation of people, the cash position of investors is at one of the lowest points in history.
And it tells me that maybe and the asset that nobody wants are Treasury bonds, long-term Treasuries. So, it tells me if we go into recession and the recessionary forces are much stronger than what people expect because if asset prices decline, it may affect consumption meaningfully. And if that happens, maybe cash and bonds is not such a stupid allocation for the next 6 months or 1 year.
You understand? It is not a long-term proposition. It's just a strategic opportunity. I want to point out one thing about holding gold. You know, one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century was Wittgenstein. And he studied actually with with Russell Bertrand Russell in at Oxford. And anyway, Wittgenstein, his family was one of the most affluent families in Europe at the time.
And they owned I think about 250 tons of gold in Switzerland in a vault. And when Hitler came to power, they found out that the Wittgensteins, they were Austrians, but they had Jewish blood. So, Hitler went to the family and said, "Okay, you want to stay in Austria, you want to keep your steel empire, you hand over the gold to us.
You don't hand over the gold to us, we expropriate you of everything and send you to concentration camps or whatnot. You know, that [snorts] they you have to keep quiet about your gold holdings and hide it. But you can hide it in if you have a piece of land like Ted Turner in America, you can dig a hole somewhere, nobody will ever find it.
Yeah, this is actually good because we can, you know, this this story brings the whole interview back to the core issue. Custody, sovereignty, and whether you truly control your wealth. I mean, for investors watching this, to wrap up, what is the lesson on gold confiscation and custody? Is it enough to just own gold or does where and how you own it matter just as much?
Yes, I I think this is a very crucial question. In what way do you own gold? And I would store gold not in the US, but overseas. But even overseas, you see in Switzerland, we have a trend towards socialism. The socialists essentially run the city of Zurich. If they come one day with the initiative and say, well, we have to expropriate the gold from people because they made unusually large fortunes and so forth.
Who knows? Uh but I would say this relates to all of your assets. First of all, you can't take your assets to heaven or hell. That is something you have to consider. And as a capitalist, it's always difficult to, my view, more difficult to distribute your wealth than to earn it. And the other question is about gold.
There are companies like uh Vontobel Krayer. Mhm. They They arrange the storage of gold outside of the banking system. And you can take the gold out in Singapore or I think Australia and uh Switzerland and Dubai and so forth. They have depositors in different countries, but outside the banking system.
Or I think that saying Thailand with all its disadvantages, the property rights are very well established. I mean, if you have a house, the certificate is watertight. It's unlikely that the government will take it away. But with real estate, the government can impose very high taxes. Mhm. That is, you know, I am as people know, I'm so anti-government.
I'm worried about the people that are in government and nowadays are not people who worked and they regarded as sort of a duty to be then looking after government affairs. They are professionals that went to socialist universities and they all are Marxists and dangerous dangerous for the prosperity of an economy.
You You know, in the 19th century in America, why did people travel to America from Europe? Immigrate? The reason was there were opportunities for ordinary people to make money. Uh jobs were better in America despite of all the robber baron uh saga and nonsense that people talk about. The American entrepreneurs, the robber barons, who built the railroads and the refrigeration cars and the machines and the trains and canals and so forth.
Yeah, they made money, but they allowed the cost of living of people to go down. The price level in 1900 it was lower than in 1800.
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