[0:06]I'm Charlotte McCloud with Investingnews.com and here today with me is Christopher Aaron, founder of Igold advisor and Elite private placements. Thank you so much for being here. Great to have you back once again.
[0:18]Charlotte, thank you so much for having me and hello to all the listeners. Yes, really good to have you back. We run into each other here in Vancouver at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, but we didn't have a chance to talk that, so a lot to catch up on. At that time, it was pretty exciting being at that event. Gold and silver prices were at all time highs, the sentiment was really strong, and then it felt like we went home from that and we had the correction in gold and silver. So, I wanted to ask you first to take me through that from a technical perspective, that breakout and the correction. What were you seeing there? Yeah, I think this is a mission critical moment for investors here to be thinking big picture, uh, as far as the markets, especially as far as the precious metals go. Because the corrections that we have seen were extremely violent over the last several weeks, a lot of volatility. Uh, these these markets have been so dramatic here over the last two years. I think they've they've blown away people's expectations on the upside and now also a little bit on the downside, but so for that reason, it's really important to think about the big picture here so that you don't get lost in these violent twists and turns. Um, let's just back it up for one moment. Let's uh, let's talk about commodities, okay? We're going to talk about mostly about gold and silver, silver specifically, but I do want to mention a few other commodities here, Charlotte. I want to mention uh, copper, oil, platinum and palladium in this conversation. Silver, three months ago, broke out of a 45-year consolidation. That is the consolidation that began in the year 1980, okay? 1980 through November of 2025, a 45-year consolidation, right? And and following the breakout, the breakout level was $50 per ounce. Following the breakout, silver more than doubled, it got up to about $120 per ounce a few weeks ago, when we were in Vancouver. Uh, and since then it has come back to about 73, as we are speaking today in the spot market. Now, that whole process, the the 45-year consolidation, breakout and now coming back. That is for for a number of people here, that is going to be a once in a lifetime breakout. We're talking a multi-generational breakout happening in silver right now, and it's really important to, I mean, the bottom line is this, Charlotte. After 45 years of consolidation, a market doesn't end with just two months after a breakout and then kind of withering and and petering out for the next 45 years again. That's not how 45-year breakouts happen. Um, when we look back, and and this is why I mentioned the other commodities. When we look back at gold, copper, platinum, palladium and oil, let's go at those five, the the precious and the industrial commodities. And remember, silver is both a precious and an industrial commodity still at this point, about 80% industrial, according to recent statistics. And then of course, that that investment demand, the precious, the savings aspect of it, the price goes parabolic over the short run. There's only 20% left for the precious demand for the monetary demand, when all is said and done. Now, if if we just go back to talk about those other commodities, all of those other five commodities, gold, copper, platinum, palladium and oil, they all broke above similar 1980 peaks, similar to how silver made $50 per ounce back in the year 1980. All of those commodities broke above their 1980 peaks, but they did it two decades ago. Gold broke out of its 1980 peak in 2008. 28 years of consolidation. Copper broke out of its 1980 peak in 2005. Oil broke out of its 1980 peak in 2004. Uh, palladium actually broke out of its 1980 peak in 1998. When we look at at all these other commodities that consolidated, but not as long as silver did, right? And then we say, what happened after the initial breakout? After they broke those those 1980 peaks, if we take the average of those other five commodities, I've I've done this. I've gone through with a fine tooth comb and studied this these cycles in the past. When we do that, we come to an average that that these other commodities tripled within a period of four years after breaking those those 1980 peaks. So, we've had a little bit more than a double out of silver. I mean, from 50 to just over 100. But let's be honest, it only held over 100 for about three days. So, we've had nearly a double. But that's after not 20 some odd years of consolidation like like all the other commodities, copper, gold, platinum, palladium and oil, 45 years of consolidation. There is a a principle in in price analysis, which is what I do, technical analysis, I mean, a better word for it is price analysis. I study price foremost. I believe in price. I believe price is the truth, and stories are floating around there and stories come and go, but but the price, that is the truth. If we study the truth, the price, we arrive at at the the most sound answers. Um, silver had been consolidating for 45 years. Not not 25 or 28 like like copper or gold. The idea that after two months and just a double, that silver is going to be done, you know, for the next couple of decades. That would fly in the face of of every data point that I've studied about these multi-decade consolidations. There's there's a phrase, the longer the base, the higher the move. And I I place an analogy, um, with with price analysis, because you have to remember, price is a function of of nature, to really boil it down. It's a function of human nature. It's it's a function of what we as human beings are doing when we either buy or sell or wait or don't buy or don't sell, including the legitimate buying, including the the industrial hedging, including the monetary demand, including even the manipulation. Because manipulation attempts have to happen at the price. They have to happen at that one moment in price. Even if if someone's going to come on and throw 20,000 contracts onto the silver market in the in the overnight hours, they impact the price, and we can see where the sum of human beings impact the price. And so, since human beings are an aspect of nature, and the markets are therefore an aspect of nature, and we know that nature moves in cycles and repeating cycles and sea seasons and rhythms, etcetera, etcetera. The markets move in cycles as well, and and if we just remember that the longer a market makes a base, the longer it consolidates for, the more energy that it's that it's building up. You think about like building a house, you know, building a foundation or or, I mean, think about any other aspect of nature that needs to build up for a while. The longer that you build, the more solid that you make your foundation, the higher that you can go eventually. Silver has been consolidating for 45 years. That's the longest example of any commodity consolidation ever, ever in the history of freely traded commodities. And so, here we've had that that breakout three months ago and now we're kind of coming back into the low 70s. Look, I don't have a crystal ball. I I don't know if silver is going to bottom at 70 or 65, maybe even maybe it's even going to come back to the upper 50s. But all I know is that a market is not done. This this move is not done after 45 years of consolidation. This market is not done after two months and and a double from the previous breakout point. It would fly in the face of every other example that we have available to us of how all the other commodities performed after breaking those those 1980 peaks. So, I think that's where we are. Investors have to remember that right now is we're coming back after that first breakout point. You come back, you want to be buying into this dip here, because after that, I think especially silver is going to be making a multiple of the previous, uh, the previous highs over the coming years. I think that puts what's going on into with silver into great context. And I wonder if you can spell out what you see coming in terms of the price for silver in this context. I know you gave us a lot of the numbers that you're looking at, but how how high could silver go? Yeah, well, I mean, if we if we just take, you know, again, if we take the average of those other commodities after breaking out of their 1980 peaks, the average was a triple following the 1980 peak. So, I mean, if we apply the average to silver, that would imply $150 for, you know, for, let's call it a multi-year peak. But now remember what I said, silver had been consolidating for almost twice as long as as the average of all those other commodities, gold, copper, platinum, palladium and oil. So, if we say, I mean, the longer the base, the longer the strength, the more energy that is built up, the longer the higher that a market should eventually go. Um, I have no problem seeing silver, uh, approaching a level in the mid triple figures. Let's call it 250, 300, 350. Low to mid three figures, I think is realistic when we when we consider the the models of all the other commodities and then how long silver had has been consolidating for. I mean, if we think about where gold is right now, just as an example, I mean, the 1980 peak for gold was $850 per ounce. And we are at near 5,000 right now, slightly below 5,000. So, what is that? That's like a a seven, you know, a 7X above the uh, above the the 1980 peak. If we apply that to silver, we'd be talking about $350 per ounce. Uh, I think in that that range of 250 to 350, over the next handful, single handful of years. One year, two years, three years, four years, five years, not overnight, probably not this calendar year. Uh, I think I think this market's going to need to come back, consolidate here for several months, maybe several quarters. Let's call it above $50 per ounce, and then round up, and when we take out that most recent peak, the $120 peak, I think that's going to be a a dramatic final wave for this part of the market. I wonder if we can talk a little bit more about the path to those higher price levels for silver because obviously we're seeing right now, we've seen the last couple of weeks that it can be really volatile, and that can be an opportunity for people, but it can also be alarming when that happens. So, the path upward, how is it looking and how how do you weather that volatility? Yeah, I mean, you have to know what type of investor you are, as as a person, as an individual. Um, and here here's where I'm going to say that no one pathway, no no one way of participating in these markets is going to be appropriate for all investors. Um, I happen to do a number of things in the silver in and in the precious metals markets. Um, I have physical silver. I mean, here's the the first coin that my father bought me, you know, nearly 40 years ago.
[13:09]Uh, so, you know, and this is just one that I leave out for for good luck sake. Um, I participate in in physical metals. I have some on my possession. I have some held in a vault in storage. Um, I think if you're a a physical metals investor or a stacker, what you want to be doing is into this dip here. You you want to be making your final purchases, let's call it below 100. You know, in this region around 70, if it falls into the 60s or even the upper 50s, you're averaging your way in.
[14:46]Um, and and by the way, this is what I would be saying to my individual clients. I work with a number of investors individually, we we come up with investment plans for them. You know, this comes from someone I don't sell the metals or I don't, you know, I'm just as happy if investors buy or sell. I just want them to be on the right side of the market uh, over time. Um, you know, so that's one way that I participate, physical metals. Um, another thing that I do though is with the mining companies, with with silver mining companies. Um, in in one of our services, we do private placements. I go out, I negotiate with these mining companies. Um, we have a group of high net worth investors and we come together and a few times per year, we invest in these mining companies. And we negotiate terms so that we get shares at a discount, let's say, compared to the open market. And I I just want to share a brief anecdote about where this market is right now compared to, let's call it the last 10 years. I've been publishing this service for 10 years. I've been in the precious metals markets for almost 20 years now. But because the sentiment in this sector, Charlotte, had had gotten so bad, just if you were to just rewind about 12 months ago, when when silver was still, you know, oscillating between 25 and $30 per ounce. And and it kind of had been in that range for five years, and people were getting really despondent. It was like, is this thing ever going to move, right? Is it ever going to follow gold? What's wrong with with silver? What happens is a lot of the mining companies, a lot of the silver mining companies were basically left for dead. And I'm I'm not exaggerating with that phrase, you know, there there are companies that were sitting on defined silver deposits, you know, you're talking 150, 200, 300 million ounces of silver in the ground. If you were to rewind one year ago, those deposits were selling for 25, 35 cents in the ground, when silver above ground was $25 or $35. So, it was selling for about 1/100 of of the value of above ground silver. That that was a year ago. Now, because the market is not efficient, I mean, this is the thing to remember as an investor. If you think the market is efficient, then there's no opportunity for you to make a profit. You have to disagree with the market, and I'm going to take it a step further. You have to disagree with the sum of all the world's investors. The market is the sum, the market is all the investors put together. As an individual, if I think a market is going to go higher or lower from where it is. What I'm saying is, I think the sum of humanity is wrong, and I think that I am smarter, I know more than the than the rest of the sum of humanity. That's that's what you have to say if you disagree with the current price on on an asset. Now, because silver had been just kind of grinding between, you know, the low 20s and in 30 for about five years there, back until just, you know, uh, one year ago. It had been grind grinding in this in this range. A lot of these a lot of these silver mining companies were basically left for dead. A lot of these companies were unable to raise money, and so they basically went on life support, you know, like care and maintenance. And so, what I'm saying for another group of investors, we we already talked about if you're if you're stacking or you're buying physical, you don't buy into a parabolic spike, but you wait until it comes back like right now or over the next couple couple months to retest a certain level. But if you're if you're another kind of investor, if you're looking to invest into the the silver mining companies, which are leveraged to the underlying price of silver. Uh, you just have to understand that, uh, one year of of of appreciation in silver is not enough to make up for the previous five years where a lot of these companies were left for dead. And so, we are still able to go out right now and negotiate excellent terms with these silver mining companies, because a lot of these companies are just rounding off multi-year bottoms, multi-year lows, right now in valuation. When silver is already broken out to new all-time highs, a lot of the silver miners are still just rounding off of multi-year lows. So, if you understand that discrepancy, I would say if you have the risk tolerance, um, if we're right about silver going higher over the next two, three, four years. A lot of these silver mining companies are are going to move orders of magnitude higher that that we're not going to believe, uh, that that actually happened when we look back just a few years from now. We're going to be saying, I can't believe how cheap these these companies were still here in early 2026. And so, if you have the risk tolerance, you you really have to understand, there are still tremendous values in uh, proper silver mining companies, especially if you can negotiate terms with the companies. Really interesting, and just to be clear on the silver stocks. So, are you most interested in the actual silver mining companies, or would you also look further down the chain at the developers, the explorers? Yeah, I'm actually specifically, I mean, that's a great question. I'm actually specifically more interested right now in the developers and the explorers, because the most, not all, but most of the production companies have already had significant moves off their lows. When when silver first starts to move, a lot of the a lot of the major or mid-tier production companies have already had multiple 100% uh, returns here over the last 12 months. I don't like to chase things like that. I don't like to chase things that have already begun to run, and then I'm, you know, I'm one of a number of people trying to bid something up, and too many people bid it up and then it comes crashing down after that. Uh, but yes, I am specifically referring to the development stage and the exploration companies. And and just so investors understand the difference between that development stage, we're talking about a company that has a defined asset in the ground. Let's say, uh, you know, 100 million ounces of silver, 50 million ounces of silver, depending on on how big that company is. where it's defined, it's either measured and indicated or proven and probable in a later stage of that. Sometimes inferred, there's another category, the third category is called inferred ounces. And and sometimes that word inferred gets a a bad wrap as if it's like imaginary, we're just thinking that there's metal in the ground. Uh, inferred is an actual technical term under the the 43-101 guidelines in Canada. It simply means that the drill spacing that they've already done into the ground is not as tight as it needs to be for the next category, measured and indicated. But they still have a fairly good idea with inferred that there are ounces there in the ground. So, some of the development stage companies that were nearly left for dead, uh, two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, you know, we're talking companies with with, uh, you know, uh, one of the companies that I like is called Equity Metals. Uh, just just to give an example. Equity Metals has the uh, Silver Queen deposit up there in in BC in British Columbia. And Silver Queen is about 85 million ounces of silver equivalent. And so you have silver above ground trading, you know, 73. And the the value of that silver below ground is still about 50 cents per ounce, according to my my recent calculations. And that's changing because silver is so volatile every single day. But, you know, approximately 1/100 of of the value above ground. When when we get into a final peak, uh, I mean, the value below ground is going to be trading at somewhere around 5% of of the above ground value. So, there's there's tremendous appreciation potential there. Um, so those are development stage companies, for example. And then and then exploration companies are are even smaller, and yes, I do like certain exploration companies. But here's the key. It has to be an exploration company. This is this is where we get back to price analysis, which is what I do. Certain exploration companies have already, you know, have already had two, three, four, 5X returns off the lows. I'm not interested. I'm I'm sorry, I'm just not. There's too much risk already priced in. The market has already saying, hey, there's something of value there and we're we're going to price that in. If I can go though and negotiate terms with with a mining company, I'll give you an example, a tiny little company called Silver Spruce. Silver Spruce Resources. We just invested in two months ago. Um, and they have, they're working on the the Pino de Plata project, which is just 10 kilometers away from from Cor Mining's Palmarejo mine, down in down in Mexico. And Palmarejo is like their flagship asset. The Pino property is about 10 kilometers away. Um, when we invested in Silver Spruce two months ago, the shares were trading at 20 cents per share, okay? We were able to negotiate buying shares at 10 cents per share. Half the price. I mean, we doubled our money off the bat just to start. And and I'm saying the way that you can do that is if you have connections with company managements, and you're able to bring in a group of investors together and go out and invest in these companies. That's the way I like to do it. I don't like to buy when companies have already moved significantly. I like to try and get below the surface and and get better values. I think that that gives a really good idea of how you're looking at the silver companies right now. So, thank you for going into that. And while we're on the topic of silver, I was hoping we could go back to the comments you're making about manipulation because with silver especially right now, there's a lot of concerns about what's happening and how it could impact the price. So, can you talk a little bit more about how how you factor that your analysis of the silver price? Yeah, I mean, first of all, with with manipulation, we know that it happens. It's it's not even a question. It's it's not up for debate. There were several cases over the last 10 years, uh, Deutsche Bank, uh, got singled out a number of years ago. There were a few other banks. Uh, we're talking large multinational banks that have big commodities trading desks that were uh, flagged by the SC and and some other organizations for, uh, spoofing. Is is what it's called. And that's when, uh, traders go in and and we're talking large traders, you know, large commercial traders especially. Uh, and they will go in and they'll they'll flash a big position in the commodities markets in the futures market. You know, they'll they'll show a big position. Maybe they'll show a thousand contracts or 5,000 contracts, 10,000 contracts at a time. And and they'll show that, uh, let's say on the ask. And then what they what they will do is they're trying to get everyone else who sees that position to to, uh, to have fear, to panic. And they say, oh my goodness, one of these big banks one of these big banks is coming in and they're about to slam the price down. Let's get out before they do that. And so, sometimes with these spoofing technique, and they got fined. This was this was about five or six years ago. They got fined, you know, a couple hundred million dollars, but really that's just a slap on the wrist for these these banks. You know, that have billions, tens of billions in revenue every year, it's like, okay. I'm sure they're doing it again. I mean, here's the thing also to remember about about manipulation. All markets are are manipulated. Every single market. Why do I say that? Um, when when we look at the very existence of of central banking, the existence of the Federal Reserve, let's say, or the Bank of Canada or the Bank of England. And the very fact that the central bank controls short-term interest rates, which is what they do when the Fed meets in a couple weeks and they come out and they say, hey, we're going to raise or lower interest rates by, you know, a quarter of a percent or half a percent. Right? Investors need to remember the Federal Reserve or any central bank does not just have like a magic lever that they that they pull and then the interest rate drops by a quarter of a percent. What they have to do to get the interest rates to to fall is to print or create electronically enough money to go in and buy the the bond spectrum, the short-term end of of the bond market. And by buying and raising the price of the bonds, they cause the interest rates to to go down, because price and interest rate of bonds move like a a seasaw. They move on opposite ends of the spectrum. So, the very existence of a of a Federal Reserve or the very existence of a central bank that controls interest rates. What are interest rates? Interest rates are the price of money, the value of money. What is the value of money? How much should it cost to borrow money? The very fact that a that a central bank controls the value of money, the short-term value of money, means that every market in the world is distorted, and it has been since 1913. I mean, so off the record, this is why I think we should abolish the Central Bank and all central banks, uh, as we have done twice before in the history of this country. Uh, the first central Bank of the United States and the second central Bank back in the 1800s were abolished for exact the reasons that we have today. That's, you know, a tangent for another day, but what I'm saying just to come back to the the question of manipulation is that because the value of money itself is manipulated by the central bank.
