Rachel Stolrow: As a quick starter, the Entrust Group does not provide or
Rachel Stolrow: Any investment advice or endorse any products. All information is always for educational purposes only. As always, every party is encouraged to consult with an attorney, accountant, financial advisor before entering into any type of investment.
Rachel Stolrow: Today's agenda, so we'll be introducing Allen House Metals. Thanks, Greg, for joining us today. Our… going over precious metals foundations, comparing gold and silver markets.
Rachel Stolrow: How rates are impacting investments.
Rachel Stolrow: Projecting 2026 landing spots, and as always, our Q&A.
Rachel Stolrow: So, a little bit about the Entrust Group. We are self-directed IRA administrators. We've been in the business for a very long time. Many of our staff, number one, have been here for quite some time. We are very educated, knowledgeable, many with CISP certifications, and just like this one, we host monthly educational webinars to continue our education to clients.
Rachel Stolrow: We have over $6 billion in assets under administration, so again, we work with a ton of clients, over 24,000 that are active currently.
Rachel Stolrow: 45 years of service, and we really pride ourselves on one point of contact, I should really say, too. We provide every company and client, with a team of two so that you feel served throughout your experience here at the Entrust Group.
Gregory Allen: Thanks for having us on, Rachel, and apologies for the slip up there on the slides.
Rachel Stolrow: stories.
Gregory Allen: Getting right into it, just a little bit about us. Transparency, convenience, integrity, our core values are really important to us, and I think one thing I'd like to just emphasize right off the bat, metals, like any investment, they're no different than anything else.
Gregory Allen: the investment needs and objectives of the investor are gonna dictate what's best, right? No one's here saying, put all your eggs in one basket, or, you know, you need to bet big on this. I think really what we need to understand is what we're looking to do for clients is give them a tailor-fit account.
Gregory Allen: That is suited to their risk tolerance.
Gregory Allen: Now, one thing I just want to head off before getting into this, because it's something we've been seeing a lot of lately.
Gregory Allen: In terms of when you're gonna invest in precious metals, I think the first thing I just want to hit, if you talk to us after the webinar or never talk to us again, what type of products you should be looking at?
Gregory Allen: The first thing I just want to emphasize is we're starting to see in IRAs, things like proof coins, or collector coins graded, you know, you'll see MS69, MS70, or the word, you know, proof American Eagle.
Gregory Allen: For everyone that's listening today, when you look into buying gold, silver, platinum, palladium, any precious metals.
Gregory Allen: You're trying to buy the most weight, the most bullion, for your money.
Gregory Allen: And so, if you see a word called proof before a product.
Gregory Allen: That's a collector's item. Not only are you going to pay a premium for that, but items that have proof before them are disqualified investments for IRAs. So the one thing I just want to emphasize off the top, because we've seen it a lot lately, whether you deal with Allen House Metals or not, if you see the word proof coin, or a grade like MS69 or MS70,
Gregory Allen: Stay away from buying that product, because if you buy that in your IRA, you will face a penalty for a disqualifying investment.
Gregory Allen: Now, moving forward, just a little bit of transparency in terms of who we are.
Gregory Allen: Dillengage is our exclusive service provider. We don't deal with anyone else. They're the authorized purchaser for the United States Mint, the Royal Canadian Mint, as well as most other government mints around the world.
Gregory Allen: All that means is they're the company that is buying and importing the gold and silver into the United States. They don't deal with retail investors or individuals.
Gregory Allen: They will distribute through individuals like myself with Allen House Metals, and they're the ones dealing direct to the banks or, you know, hedge funds that are purchasing.
Gregory Allen: They've been in business since 1976, and they're located in Texas, but the main reason that we deal with Dylan Gage is because we want to deal right with the tap, so to speak, just as most of our investors do.
Gregory Allen: Now, when it comes to purchasing precious metals within an IRA.
Gregory Allen: You are not able to take physical possession of that. The actual ruling, if you want to look it up, is IRS v. McNulty is the most recent ruling of someone that tried to use checkbook control to take possession.
Gregory Allen: Now, we're happy to work with a plethora of different storage facilities, as is the Entrust group. But the big thing is IDS, International Depository Services Group, they're a wholly owned subsidiary of Dillengage, the authorized purchaser for the Mint.
Gregory Allen: We use them because it's located in the same building as our warehouse from which we distribute from.
Gregory Allen: And so the only reason we recommend IDS Texas is because for customers with transactions, it ensures the quickest transactions, because all that needs to happen is it moves from the distribution facility, it's audited and deposited into the vault, and when a sale is made, they…
Gregory Allen: take the product out of the vault, they audit it, and they move it back into our warehouse. It ensures no shipping costs, and there's no lengthy delays by shipping product back to a dealer.
Gregory Allen: So, the big thing is, when you're looking at purchasing metals within an IRA, storage is going to be a necessity. Aside from IDS, I would also look at Delaware Depository Services Company. They're a great name in the space.
Gregory Allen: Now, moving forward, a lot of people hear gold and silver referred to as a true safe haven.
Gregory Allen: And, you know, when we think of Safe Haven, right, typically the reason gold and silver are referred to that is
Gregory Allen: they effectively act as an insurance policy as your wealth, right? As paper markets and dollar-denominated assets, or dollars, plunge in value, they typically soar, and vice versa. I think the one reason that we can attribute to this, and this is another big thing that I've, you know, everyone should learn, the most important thing for gold and silver, and we'll see this through today.
Gregory Allen: is the U.S. dollar, right? All trades in silver settle in U.S. dollars, and therefore, they're an anti-dollar asset, meaning they have an inverse relationship. So if the dollar's losing value.
Gregory Allen: that means gold is gaining value. And if the dollar is gaining value.
Gregory Allen: then gold is losing value, plain and simple. And so what I'd like for a lot of people to see today is I think gold and silver can be a great part of your portfolio at all times, they'll perform for you, not just in times of geopolitical uncertainty or economic turmoil, right? And that's what we're gonna see.
Gregory Allen: So, when we look at precious metals, right, they're guaranteed to hold intrinsic value, right? What that means is they rise in time with the cost of living, okay?
Gregory Allen: What we're really looking at here is your worst-case scenario with gold and silver should be that it acts as a savings account that matches inflation.
Gregory Allen: Right? When we have high inflationary periods, like we saw just 5 years ago, I'm sure a lot of people remember inflation, they were saying it was transitory, it was 9.1%. We saw gold and silver surge, right?
Gregory Allen: in periods of stagflation or deflation, where we have the dollar dropping in value, prices also soar, right? And the big thing is, with physical metal.
Gregory Allen: Unlike traditional stocks or bonds, there's absolutely no credit risk.
Gregory Allen: So, we've actually seen investors who hold gold and silver, who use it to secure things like mortgages on property or other loans. There's no credit risk to your physical gold and silver.
Gregory Allen: The other thing, too, is we get the question all the time, you know, should I buy an ETF, or should I buy physical?
Gregory Allen: The big thing that we're going to see here is that
Gregory Allen: there's been a decoupling between ETFs that you see, whether it be, you know, GLD or SLV,
Gregory Allen: And the real thing, gold and silver. And the big thing is what we saw in 2020.
Gregory Allen: after the pandemic was declared, there was a major supply and demand imbalance in gold and silver. And so, what happened was SLV and GLD, they changed their perspectuses. If you look back to 2020 with SLV, they actually changed their prospectus on page 6.
Gregory Allen: And what that was, was that, number one, they were no longer required to back the fund with purchases of physical silver and physical gold.
Gregory Allen: Okay? And so that's a big one. But previously, they were buying as much as 30% of money coming into the fund in physical gold and silver.
Gregory Allen: But, additionally, they also changed and said they could liquidate the fund at any time and give investors liquidation value without investor approval.
Gregory Allen: And so the change we've seen since then
Gregory Allen: Because they no longer have to back the fund with physical metal, they realized they could cut overheads by actually selling metal that was within their inventory. And so we've seen outflows from ETFs, even though there's more purchases, up to 70% in the last 3 years.
Gregory Allen: So what you're going to see as we go on here, if you're looking to purchase precious metals, physical metals will provide a higher return. ETFs will not, because they're not backed by the physical asset.
Gregory Allen: So what ends up happening is they go up and down, not when the asset goes up and down, but with volume, as people purchase and sell units in the fund.
Gregory Allen: So, moving on, and this is an example I wanted to give everyone.
Gregory Allen: If we said that gold matches inflation, right, it rises with the cost of living.
Gregory Allen: So the way we should think about that is, if you were to buy
Gregory Allen: a Corvette in 1971, right? The base price of a Corvette was just under $5,500, okay? At the time, that would cost you 135 ounces of gold.
Gregory Allen: Or 3,572 ounces of silver.
Gregory Allen: Okay? If we look to 2020, almost 50 years later, the base price of a Corvette
Gregory Allen: Went up a lot. It's almost $68,000 now.
Gregory Allen: But instead of it taking 135 ounces of gold, it only took 38 ounces of gold. And instead of 3,572 ounces of silver, it only took 3,300 ounces of silver.
Gregory Allen: Now, the profound thing, when you look at the difference, is if you calculate from 2020 to now.
Gregory Allen: That Corvette has gotten another $6,000 more expensive. The base price is roughly $74,000 today.
Gregory Allen: That $74,000 is now… it's not 38 ounces of gold, it's only 16 ounces of gold.
Gregory Allen: And that $74,000 is not $3,300 of silver, or sorry, 3,300 ounces of silver, it's actually only 973 ounces.
Gregory Allen: So we've quite literally lost a third of our purchasing power over that in just the last 5 years, and I think this is a good demonstration of that.
Gregory Allen: So…
Gregory Allen: Another thing I wanted to emphasize, and you'll notice this graphic is from January 26th of this year, so a little outdated, but I wanted to emphasize the market cap of gold and silver as a whole.
Gregory Allen: Sometimes investors look at the asset, and they think, yeah, it's an alternative investment, this isn't maybe something the most mainstream. If you look at the market cap, there…
Gregory Allen: miles above the largest company in the world right now. So, these are very mainstream things, and if we look at it as well, over the years, Investopedia does surveys of, you know.
Gregory Allen: Portfolio allocations in, accredited investors.
Gregory Allen: What we've seen is in 2019, they said that there were only 7% of accredited investors that owned physical invest… Physical metal in their portfolio.
Gregory Allen: And the major change we've seen since 2019 is that those ETFs that they held, instead of buying physical, aren't backed, just as we were talking about, aren't backed by physical gold and silver anymore. That number has now changed.
Gregory Allen: To over 35% of accredited investors have exposure to physical metal, and they're seeing allocations on average of over 20% at this moment in time, which is a profound change over just 7 years, right?
Gregory Allen: Now, one thing that I want to delve into here, right? I had just finished telling everybody the number one thing we pay attention to when we talk about gold and silver is the U.S. dollar, right? Because of the inverse relationship.
Gregory Allen: So when we're looking at making a gold and silver investment, the most important thing we track, aside from price trends and charts, is the monetary policy and the forward guidance from the Fed, right? That has a direct impact on what's going to happen with our dollar.
Gregory Allen: So, importantly, we have, this month, a new Fed chair for the first time since 2016. His name's Kevin Warsh. And the big thing here with Kevin Warsh is this was a surprise appointee to many, right?
Gregory Allen: He, if you want to know a little bit about him, he, is widely described as being Shumtarian. He hates bloated balance sheets.
Gregory Allen: This is not a young man without experience. He actually served on the Fed under Bush and under Obama. He resigned from the Fed because he disagreed with continued stimulus and continued quantitative easing.
Gregory Allen: post-2011.
Gregory Allen: He felt that once we bailed the banks out and got them to a certain point.
Gregory Allen: that was it, that we were propping up the economy effectively. He, is… Basically, looking at…
Gregory Allen: A $9 trillion, almost $10 trillion balance sheet.
Gregory Allen: And he plans on unwinding that in a hurry.
Gregory Allen: Now, when we say unwind a balance sheet, what does that mean? It means they currently buy debt
Gregory Allen: in the hundreds of billions every single month. Instead of buying that debt.
Gregory Allen: or securities. They are now going to be sellers.
Gregory Allen: Of that debt and those securities.
Gregory Allen: Aside from that.
Gregory Allen: The other thing is that the Trump administration right now is in the middle of refinancing $9 trillion of American debt
Gregory Allen: that was issued in short-term debt during the pandemic, right? This is all debt that was issued at lower interest rates.
Gregory Allen: So the issue that they're having is they're refinancing that debt, and the interest-only payments are crippling on the Fed.
Gregory Allen: Because, and everyone heard, I'm sure heard Trump attacking Powell to do… he'd do anything to get Powell to cut rates over the last 6 months. The reason is because last year.
Gregory Allen: The government paid $1 trillion in interest-only payments on the $39 trillion in debt.
Gregory Allen: So they are in between a rock and a hard place. They have no choice.
Gregory Allen: So…
Gregory Allen: Trump is… when Trump says that Warsh can produce a 15% GDP target compared to a 2% target, to many, this sounds profound, it sounds crazy, right? Until you understand what the overall plan of this administration is, right? Not to say the Fed is apolitical, right? They are not supposed to do anything one way or another because of politicians.
Gregory Allen: But the Trump administration and what they're doing, right?
Gregory Allen: the tariffs, in terms of trying to make the country more economically independent. The whole idea is to become energy independent. We once were, where we were… you had our own oil and oil reserves, right? We were dependent on our own agriculture. And the idea in doing that
Gregory Allen: Is by doing that, you can make the cost of goods and services that we buy every day
Gregory Allen: cheaper, or stay the same against inflation, okay? Now, because they have to refinance the debt, this is why you hear Trump hammering them that they need rates at zero as quickly as possible.
Gregory Allen: Now, typically, this tanks the value as the dollar every time rates are cut, which you'll see in a chart upcoming.
Gregory Allen: But…
Gregory Allen: We're not worried about the commodities around us soaring in value, like gold and silver, if those are the assets we own, because we benefit from the assets we own getting more valuable. And if we're independent on agricultural products.
Gregory Allen: fuel products, you know, oil and gas, and these types of things, the goods that we pay for every day are not actually going up by 15%. So we shouldn't be as affected overall. And this is the plan of what we're seeing.
Gregory Allen: Now.
Gregory Allen: what is going on with the data that we're seeing at the moment? Because I think a big thing is.
Gregory Allen: We've had cooling data.
Gregory Allen: But we also have a situation going on in Iran that has caused some data to come in even below expectations, but is causing some fear across the market, and so I want to go over everything with everyone.
Gregory Allen: The Commerce Department's Q1 data, in terms of GDP growth.
Gregory Allen: shows that we are exactly on target. We are right on target for 2% to 2.5% growth in GDP this year.
Gregory Allen: Consumer spending grew at 1.6% last quarter, which is a miss of almost half a percent.
Gregory Allen: And furthermore, consumer sentiment, consumer confidence, was at one of its lowest rates in 50 years, right? What this tells us is that individuals, the individual families, are actually feeling the effects
Gregory Allen: Of what's going on. Higher prices at the gas pump, higher prices at the grocery store with what's going on in Iran.
Gregory Allen: Then, in addition, we look, and with non-farm payrolls, those are up, our unemployment's up to 4.3% and lingering.
Gregory Allen: The Fed has a dual mandate, right? Inflation and employment.
Gregory Allen: That's the dual mandate of the Fed. The Fed has tackled inflation according to these numbers, right? Inflation is in line. Employment is… unemployment is elevated at 4.3%. We're not at full employment.
Gregory Allen: And so, those numbers dictate rate cuts, right? A big thing with Warsh, Warsh feels that Powell was reactive to the data.
Gregory Allen: He feels that that was a mistake, because ultimately, the Fed cuts, they feel, do not affect the economy for 18 months in totality, till they're really felt. So he feels they need to be proactive. This data would state they need to be proactive in cutting.
Gregory Allen: The final measure you see here, the PCE, the price consumption expenditures, this is the inflation metric that the Fed actually uses. When we talk about the number, it's core PCE that you see.
Gregory Allen: Poor PCE is stripped of oil and food, right? The things that have gone up the most from this crisis.
Gregory Allen: Those missed estimates. They're lower than expected. However, they are still coming in elevated. And so, effectively here, what the Fed has to decide is, do you leave rates where they are and have a stagflation crisis, re-1971 to 1980?
Gregory Allen: Or do you cut rates and deal with, you know, soaring commodity prices, but be able to manage the national debt and be able to give consumers relief?
Gregory Allen: What we expect is rate cuts to give consumers relief. That is directly in line with Warsh's M.O. and with what's being asked for by the administration. And I think one thing we all need to remember
Gregory Allen: is if Warsh is to come into office.
Gregory Allen: and not cut rates now. He would be a complete turncoat. The thought that Trump would appoint anyone into the Fed that wouldn't be cutting rates to be able to help the country refinance the $9 trillion worth of short-term debt.
Gregory Allen: it's… it's just not gonna happen, right? So…
Gregory Allen: I just want to show everyone this dollar chart here. This is a 10-year dollar chart, okay? And I want to show everyone what really happens when rates are… when rates rise, and when rates are cut. I think the easiest thing we looked at, if you look at the bottom of the chart.
Gregory Allen: On the x-axis, you see the line in 2020.
Gregory Allen: If you follow along right before April, when the pandemic declares, you see the dollar tanks when the pandemic declares, and then it pops in value. This is a huge swing, right? It goes from under 95 all the way up to 103.
Gregory Allen: The reason that happened is, remember the mass liquidations in the stock market when COVID was declared? There was a liquidity crisis. They halted trading multiple days, right? What happens when people liquidate en masse and institutions sell en masse?
Gregory Allen: is the dollar spikes up in value. Why? Because when they sell their securities and they sell their assets, it goes into U.S. dollars. So this is why the dollar bumps up.
Gregory Allen: What you'll remember is rates were slashed to zero, and they were slashed to zero because of the economic emergency.
Gregory Allen: The dollar fell precipitously from 103 and bottomed out just at the point of 89, okay? And what you generally see
Gregory Allen: Is as rates have gone between 0 and 2.5%, the dollar on the index has gone from 72, which is a low we see back in 2008,
Gregory Allen: up to 105, okay? What you'll see here, and you notice this is much above 105, it goes to 115.
Gregory Allen: The reason we see the dollar go to a high this century of 115 is because this time, instead of rates going up to 2.5%,
Gregory Allen: We had rates go all the way up to 5.5%, and that's where you see the dollar spike. You see it stair steps all the way up. If you remember, we raised rates at… it was 18 months consecutive meetings, where we had rates raising. So that's where you see the dollar jump up in value. And the reason we go to 115 instead of 105 is because rates didn't go to 2.5%, they went to 5.5%.
Gregory Allen: percent.
Gregory Allen: The minute, if you look here, December of 23 was when Jerome Powell came out and said, we've reached our terminal rate.
Gregory Allen: Meaning we're not raising rates anymore. We're gonna stay here, we might not cut, but we're even here. And you notice the minute he announced that, the dollar drops from 115 and falls into a comfortable range between 100 and 110, okay?
Gregory Allen: Now, we had a consistent period where the Fed evaluated data, and they did not make cuts. As soon as we resume the cuts, you see the precipitous fall in the dollar. All this is to show, in grave detail.
Gregory Allen: When rates are hiked, the dollar gains value. When rates are cut, the dollar loses value.
Gregory Allen: And the one additional point I want to point out to people, and this is indexed not to anything, but the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. I wanted to be as fair as possible.
Gregory Allen: If you left money in cash.
Gregory Allen: Versus having the general market take care of your money, whether that be gold, silver, a stock, anything.
Gregory Allen: In 10 years, you've lost 74.5% of your purchasing power to inflation.
Gregory Allen: So that's, on average, 7.5% of purchasing power a year. It's a lot bigger than this 2% target that we hear. And the reason I want to emphasize this, the price of gold and silver, yes, they've gone up.
Gregory Allen: But they haven't gotten more expensive. It's the value of our dollar and it's our purchasing power that's gotten weaker. Gold and silver are the same they've always been, and will be the same that they are right now.
Gregory Allen: So… Just an example here.
Gregory Allen: This is…
Gregory Allen: an average case that we see when rates are slashed and remained at zero. You have one point here that shows the 08 to 11, where we saw gold
Gregory Allen: surge. The other point that we had was in the 2020 pandemic. Overall, the average return in gold from the cut until zero and remaining is 145%.
Gregory Allen: Okay?
Gregory Allen: Here's silver. This shows each cut… major cutting cycle of this millennium, since 2000. There's been 3 of them until now.
Gregory Allen: The first cycle, which is also referred to as a major commodity boom, was 487% in silver.
Gregory Allen: The second cycle was 502%, the third was 250. The average is about 413%. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting here saying that silver's going up 4 times tomorrow, that would be crazy.
Gregory Allen: But we're gonna use this data to look into the charts and the projections and see where we're actually going.
Gregory Allen: Lastly, in terms of macro factors.
Gregory Allen: Remember what we've been talking about. This is a broader commodity market boom. Commodities across the board settle in gold, or sorry, settle in U.S. dollars, so they're all affected by the dollar losing value.
Gregory Allen: We've had two of these cycles before, 1971 to 1980, and 2003 to 2011.
Gregory Allen: Overall in commodities in both cycles, the average return from start to peak was well over 650%.
Gregory Allen: The 2020's commodity super cycle right now is in the high 300 percentages. So what I would say by that is, we are maybe halfway there of what we've seen over the course of the last 6 years, according to these past two commodity super cycles.
Gregory Allen: Now, I just wanted to highlight performance across markets in 2025.
Gregory Allen: We saw gold pull in almost 60… well, 65.5%, let's say. Silver pulled in just under 160%. The S&P, great year at 18%, and Bitcoin actually saw a loss of 7.5%. And the reason that I want to emphasize this
Gregory Allen: We see major gains in gold and silver last year because we also saw major losses in value of the dollar. We've seen the dollar fall from 115 to below 100 on the index, right? Many people have talked about crypto as an alternative to gold and silver. I'm not here to knock crypto. I think everyone should be diversified. I think the one point I would like to highlight
Gregory Allen: here.
Gregory Allen: is that we've seen crypto follow more closely in line with tech stocks and securities than we have with gold and silver, right? The reason that gold is considered the ultimate crisis commodity
Gregory Allen: is because…
Gregory Allen: Currently, 1 in 4 ounces of gold that comes out of the ground in the entire world is bought by the Chinese central bank. It is the hedge and the reserve that is used by every central bank, plain and simple.
Gregory Allen: Now…
Gregory Allen: Moving forward, I wanted to use this chart to explain to everyone what the differences are in returns of gold and silver. This is provided by Bloomberg, okay? And this chart is just a table of different assets and their performance on the year.
Gregory Allen: What you're going to notice, right, is year-to-date, and this is at the end of, the end of April, for gold, the end of March for silver. They provide these each quarter. Gold was up 7% on the year, silver was up 3%.
Gregory Allen: If you look at the ETFs.
Gregory Allen: Silver that was up 3%, you would have been negative 8.25% buying some of those ETFs. These are, known across… an average across all silver ETFs.
Gregory Allen: The gold, was even just a hair negative, even though we were positive here. And so I emphasize this to people to show, you are, in fact, making better returns with the physical asset.
Gregory Allen: Now.
Gregory Allen: where are the projections for gold right now? We know, that we have a new Fed chair coming in. We expect rates to come down. Where does that put us?
Gregory Allen: When we look at major banks across the board, all of them over the course of the next year are projecting between $6,000 gold and between $7,500 gold across the board. The situations for these vary. Michael Widmer, an incredible analysis, he's the head of metals research for Bank of America, he calls for $6,000 gold in 26,
Gregory Allen: He calls for $8,000 gold by Q4 in 2027, and if you look at his reasoning, it's exactly what we just talked about. There's falling rates, that's number one, but additionally.
Gregory Allen: Falling supply is expected, by 2% this year.
Gregory Allen: At the same time, investment demand is up 15%.
Gregory Allen: And so, the move from where we are now, $4,600 up to $6,000, it's a major move, right? We're talking of well over 30% at the base case that's left this year. That's 6 months on the year that they're looking at 30%. And the main reason that they're looking at this, or sorry, not the main reason, rather, how we can make an analogy to say this is real
Gregory Allen: Last year, when we saw gold move up by 70% in the year, that was a growth in demand of 30%, and that growth in demand came from law changes in China, okay?
Gregory Allen: What we're seeing this year is a growth in demand by half of that, and we're suggesting, from Bank of America, they're suggesting half of the returns.
Gregory Allen: That lines up. JPMorgan Chase, for the same reasons, is projecting $6,300.
Gregory Allen: Now, UBS has a range. They heightened $6,200 as their base case, but they're calling for $7,200 gold this year. The reason they're calling for that is they stated, no one expects
Gregory Allen: a rate cut in the June meeting. We do expect things to start being shaken up come July and moving through the summer. And so the base case for UBS is that if rates are cut quicker than expected, we'll see $7,200 gold within the year.
Gregory Allen: Now, looking at BMO, BMO is calling for $8,650 gold.
Gregory Allen: The reason they're calling for this is because of the general shift in the financial system that we've seen.
Gregory Allen: And this, I think, could be the most important part of today, to understanding why have gold and silver appreciated so much in the last 5 years? Because no one's talking about this.
Gregory Allen: Back in 2021, people on the webinar, you guys, you might remember.
Gregory Allen: Biden, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden kicked the Russians out of the SWIFT system. This is not to get political whatsoever, but it is to say
Gregory Allen: By kicking them out of the SWIFT system, he effectively debanked them. The SWIFT system is the system which all of us in the developed world bank in.
Gregory Allen: So, what this told every country was that the U.S. is, in fact, powerful enough to debunk you, seize your assets, take the reserve holdings you have, and send you out into the cold at the stroke of a pen.
Gregory Allen: And so what we've seen happen in the last 5 years since Biden did this
Gregory Allen: was central banks all over the world became sellers of U.S. Treasuries and U.S. dollars, and they became buyers of gold and silver, okay?
Gregory Allen: The other thing that happened is we had BRICS, the BRICS nations form. This is to less of a concern.
Gregory Allen: But another global authority, and the reason that this was significant is because these BRICS nations are no longer required to pay for oil in U.S. dollars. It's the first time ever that you don't have to pay for a commodity in U.S. dollars. So what that meant, the Chinese, they buy oil in gold or yuan now. The Indians pay in rupees.
Gregory Allen: Or they pay in gold.
Gregory Allen: The Russians, who trade a lot of diesel, but they also get a lot of fuel from the Middle East.
Gregory Allen: the Russians will pay in silver or in rubles, so no one's using U.S. dollars anymore. And so, for the first time since 1996, central banks now hold more gold.
Gregory Allen: than they do U.S. Treasuries or U.S. dollars in their reserves, the first time in 30 years. And this is the central driver of demand behind physical gold and silver purchases. This is why China is buying 25% of all gold supply.
Gregory Allen: So, moving forward, actually, and I should have had this chart as I was describing this, this is exactly what we're talking about here, right? The green line that you see goes across the screen. This is U.S. Treasury holdings, this is dollar-denominated assets, right? And what you'll see, the average since 1970, is nations have held about 30% of their reserves in U.S. Treasury
Gregory Allen: in US dollars, and it always made sense, because they had to use them to buy any type of commodities. And so what we've seen in this shift is
Gregory Allen: Back,
Gregory Allen: you'll see, you know, post-Bretton Woods, which was the gold exchange system that ended in 1971, central banks favored gold in their reserves to U.S. dollars and U.S. treasuries. And that disappeared.
Gregory Allen: Which is why we've seen this debt bubble balloon, right? The debt market. This, move of kicking the Russians out of SWIFT, right here.
Gregory Allen: has shifted us back to mercantile banking. This right here is why all the central banks are buying gold, okay? Now, this chart, and I wanted to emphasize this chart for a few reasons, okay?
Gregory Allen: The big thing here is you're gonna notice the peak we saw here earlier in the year, back in February, $5,600 gold, the all-time high we saw, okay? What's been happening since then? Number one, with the Iran war.
Gregory Allen: But number two, we've had no rate cuts, and we've been waiting… we knew Powell was not doing anything, and we've been waiting for Warsh to come in. So what I want to show people here.
Gregory Allen: If you see the blue circle here, where I'm hovering my mouse at the top of the screen, there's two. There's a blue circle that says $1,810 below, there's another blue circle here.
Gregory Allen: That blue circle is highlighting what's called the RSI, which is known as the Relative Strength Index. This is an amazing tool. You can use this on everything from Apple stock or Microsoft stock, all the way to gold and silver. What the Relative Strength Index tells us is if something's overbought.
Gregory Allen: If it's oversold, Or if, fundamentally, it's considered a good buy.
Gregory Allen: And what we see here is we have a reading that fell in this dip of gold to where we are now, below 30 into the 20s. The only time we've seen a reading fall below 30 into the 20s
Gregory Allen: was all the way back pre-COVID, right? And so we're looking at this.
Gregory Allen: as a huge buying opportunity, because readings between 30 and 70 mean something is a good buy, right? It's average value. The closer to 30, the better. If something is above 70,
Gregory Allen: That means it's overbought, meaning it's probably overvalued. And you'll see, we've seen gold
Gregory Allen: multiple times in overbought territory, and if you follow down the chart, each time we get to overbought territory, we come right back down to earth, to where the fundamentals say the price of gold should be. We are now in oversold territory. This was going back, until
Gregory Allen: April-May area. What this number currently reads is we've moved from a reading of 29 to 37.
Gregory Allen: So we're real low, we're close to the oversold territory. That would stipulate gold being a fantastic buy. What I do want to emphasize with this chart, you'll see the green lines pointing up, the black lines pointing down.
Gregory Allen: We are stuck in a trading range right now, which makes now a fantastic buying opportunity. The trading range in gold is between $4,500 and $4,900. The requirement for gold to break out of this $4,900 range would be
Gregory Allen: peace deal in Iran?
Gregory Allen: Or, the first rate cut will do that. And so, this is not an if.
Gregory Allen: This is a when. And we know, based on levels of resistance here, at $4,900, we are blowing off in the market straight to $5,600. So the big thing is, we've seen it rally.
Gregory Allen: And we've seen it consolidate, right? We're forming what's called a pennant pattern along a line here between $4,500 and $4,900. And what happens is it consolidates. It's like pressing a spring down, a coil from your pen, for instance. And when the prices get to its tightest point in the corner of the pennant.
Gregory Allen: That's when it's, like, letting the spring go, and the price shoots up.
Gregory Allen: Or the price shoots down, depending on the position of the pennant.
Gregory Allen: Right now, we're attempting to buy lower in the range, as close to $4,600 as we can.
Gregory Allen: Because we know getting up to $4,900, that that puts us at the top of the range. So we are at a fantastic buying opportunity, and if we look at this, the blowout valve of the point is pointing to $7,400, which is $200 more than the UBS case for accelerated rate cuts. So the chart is backing up the bank's projections.
Gregory Allen: Now, moving on to silver.
Gregory Allen: what I want to emphasize before we actually get into what they're estimating for silver prices is how
Gregory Allen: do banks project silver prices? And it'll surprise many people. It has very little to do with silver itself. Gold and silver trade in tandem, okay? And so gold's typically the first mover, and then silver follows. They trade within a set ratio.
Gregory Allen: Okay? And so all the banks do is they go over the analysis and the charting for gold, and they divide it by their set ratio to get the silver price. And this will become clear on our next slide, but I wanted to emphasize that as we go into how are they getting these prices.
Gregory Allen: Michael Widmer, the same gentleman we were talking about at Bank of America.
Gregory Allen: He's projecting a peak of silver prices between $140 to $160 this year, okay? He's projecting that the average price on the year is $100. So what does that tell you? It means he thinks we're gonna have violent price action. We're gonna have a quick
Gregory Allen: uptick in prices.
Gregory Allen: the middle to end of the year, right? We're right now in the mid-70s, so this would be almost… it would be a doubling move in the price of silver. And so, if you look at the similarities to last year, we saw 100% of silver's returns
Gregory Allen: after Labor Day in 2025. Furthermore, Widmer projects that silver will eventually reach $309 by the end of 2028 as part of this rally, and you'll see silver appeals to investors who seek extra upside
Gregory Allen: As the ratio of 59 suggests silver could outperform gold.
Gregory Allen: The big thing here is the average ratio, all time, has been about 53 to anywhere in the neighborhood, depending on your metrics, of 53 to 57 of 1.
Gregory Allen: Meaning, on average, you could buy between 53 and 57 ounces of silver for every ounce of gold.
Gregory Allen: If we see that that ratio is higher, meaning you can buy more ounces of silver than you can of gold, it indicates that silver is a better value buy. If it's lower, then gold's the better value buy. The other thing you're gonna note
Gregory Allen: is BMO, who is projecting $8,650 gold.
Gregory Allen: They are projecting $160 silver inside this year. They're projecting $220 silver by Q4 of next year.
Gregory Allen: They're highlighting a shrinking gold and silver ratio, and if you see, they're highlighting the ratio shrinking tighter than the average of 53 to 1. But more than anything, you'll notice in the direct quote from their analysts.
Gregory Allen: They are embracing what's called the Sell America trade, which in no way is anti-America. They call it the Sell America because people are abandoning U.S. dollars, right? U.S. dollars are becoming a thing of the past in terms of reserves at the moment, unfortunately.
Gregory Allen: Now, looking here in silver, and this is where I want to emphasize the support level. We've been talking about gold trading between $46 and $4,900,
Gregory Allen: The same time, silver's trading between $70 and $90. That's the range we're in right now with silver, okay? If you look at the long-term support trend line, the support trend line right now, the first line is at $76.35. The second support trend line right now would be just at the $69 mark.
Gregory Allen: And so this long-term trend line, you'll see, only a couple times have we broken the first, we've not broken the second in this entire rally, and the fact of the matter is, we are just off the bottom.
Gregory Allen: Now, when you look at potential upside objectives, you'll see they're highlighting the average price on the year of $100 in silver. More importantly, what I want to emphasize to people is how quickly
Gregory Allen: things change in this market. A couple weeks ago, we thought we had a deal with Iran. We announced a peace deal in Iran.
Gregory Allen: Within 72 hours, gold went from $4,600 to $4,900, and silver went from the low 70s to just $90 an ounce, okay?
Gregory Allen: The peace deal falling through saw us consolidate again. And the reason we're not pushing through that right now is because we're waiting for either rate cut.
Gregory Allen: or peace deal on that note. The reason I emphasize the quickness and the timeframe of this is because it's a move where sometimes it's like watching grass grow, and then it'll move 30% overnight, and you're like, I missed it. So it's important to position yourself
Gregory Allen: Like, anything, so that you can sit there and wait for those few days where you get the gains.
Gregory Allen: But overall, the last thing I want to emphasize in this chart is you're also seeing what I'm talking about, that triangle pattern, otherwise referred to as a pennant pattern. You're seeing this range tighten up and tighten up and tighten up. When it gets to the point in the corner of the chart, that's where we will see our blow-off.
Gregory Allen: And significantly, right, the last time silver broke through resistance at $90 was in February of this year. And silver needs gold to hold $4,900 to break through resistance at $90.
Gregory Allen: Last time it broke through resistance at $90, we were at $120 in less than a week. We anticipate the same move now.
Gregory Allen: The other thing…
Gregory Allen: that I'd like to emphasize. A lot of people talk about this major move in silver, and they say, hey, this is, you know, bandwagon jumping, they don't see the analytics. And I want to show everyone… the move that led up to this for silver was what's called a cup and handle on the chart, okay? And again, this is a tool, it's not just silver, it's not just gold, this applies to any equity, anything that you can chart.
Gregory Allen: So what you'll see with a cup and handle, the cup is formed here by this larger yellow line, the handle by the smaller yellow line here. And so the depth of the cup
Gregory Allen: is going to project the future gain. The length of the handle is going to project the breakout point.
Gregory Allen: And so, if you look at this, the breakout point that we were waiting for was $50, right? We got close in, back in 2011, which is where the cup starts at 49… or sorry, where the cup ends here at $49.82, and in 1980,
Gregory Allen: And we trimmed off. But what you'll see is this points the depth in the cup.
Gregory Allen: points to a $50-plus move, okay? And what you'll notice is in September of 2025, we crossed through the $50 leg. Within 5 months.
Gregory Allen: we saw ourselves go from $50 to over $100, and that move was solely projected by this cup and handle. This was not bandwagon jumping, this is an analytical tool, and this is something that was projected over decades. Furthermore, silver is the only asset class, or only individual thing you could buy that experienced a multi-decade cup and handle.
Gregory Allen: And handle across all markets.
Gregory Allen: Now, just to hunker down a little bit more on gold to silver ratio, right, the average you'll see since we started tracking it is 53 to 1.
Gregory Allen: To get more detailed, in the 20th century, it was 40 to 1, meaning you could buy 40 ounces of silver for every ounce of gold. In this century, it's a little wider, it's, actually 57 to 1, and so the blended is 53 to 1.
Gregory Allen: One thing that we know is our high has been about 120 to 1 in terms of the ratio. Our low, and where our historic average was when there was gold exchange system called Bretton Woods, and previous to 1933 when there was gold standard, was 14 to 1.
Gregory Allen: Where we're seeing the ratio stick right now is between 40
Gregory Allen: and about 65 to 1. And that's where we expect it to stay. And so, if you think about it, right?
Gregory Allen: The higher the ratio gets, the closer to 65 to 1, the more we buy silver.
Gregory Allen: The tighter the ratio gets, and the tighter to 40 to 1, and below 53, the more we buy gold.
Gregory Allen: So, if you look at the ratio right now, it's 59.5 to 1. That tells us silver is technically the better buy. But, on its head, and I want to emphasize this, your investment objectives are what's most important. And so, if that investment objective is you want stability and just to match inflation, you don't care about picking up a couple extra dollars because you don't want to look at any volume.
Gregory Allen: volatility.
Gregory Allen: Gold is your move.
Gregory Allen: If you're looking to pick up and maximize your returns as much as possible, then it's silver. And an even better idea that we see in a lot of cases is it's not a bad thing to diversify between the both of them.
Gregory Allen: diversification is the key to success, right? We don't want all our eggs in any basket. Now, a big thing I want to emphasize
Gregory Allen: when we saw this massive jump in silver prices. Yes, we saw 65% in gold last year, but we saw, you know, 150 plus percent in silver. All that happened was the ratio closed within
Gregory Allen: 8 months.
Gregory Allen: To the level that's historically appropriate.
Gregory Allen: The ratio had only been wider than 100 to 1 a handful of times previously in history, and the reason for that was times of war.
Gregory Allen: times of pandemic. So what we've seen is a return to normality in the ratio, and that's what's really surged silver, and why we saw additional returns compared to gold.
Gregory Allen: Now, I want to show, this study here. This is done by CPM Group, okay? It's a 50-year study. They did this from 1968 until 2018.
Gregory Allen: And what their target was, is what is the ideal portfolio allocation
Gregory Allen: for all markets. Not a great economy, or a bad economy, or a changing allocation. What is the… if I set it and forget it, how do I get the highest returns?
Gregory Allen: What they found, ideally, was 25% in physical metals, 75% split between other investments. They deem other investments primarily stocks, real estate, and T-bills, cash.
Gregory Allen: And so that was from 1968 to 2018. Investors with that allocation, on average, Saw 9.1% returns.
Gregory Allen: investors who invested less over the period of time saw less returns. If you look at it, the S&P, on average, did 7.1% a year. And while 2% on average over 50 years doesn't seem like a lot, that's more than double the money at the end of your investment journey. So it's a significant thing. As far as accredited investors, or sorry, aggressive
Gregory Allen: investors, rather. They deem an aggressive investor as being someone with as many as… or sorry, as few as 5 streams of income.
Gregory Allen: They stated that the ideal would be a 10% allocation. You'll see that they have about 7.5% to 10% in bonds and fixed income, the rest in stocks, for taking, risk on shorter-term plays. And then lastly.
Gregory Allen: This is an example of Ray Dalio. For those of you who don't know, Ray Dalio's the retired founder of Bridgewater, which is the largest hedge fund in the world.
Gregory Allen: he has 7.5% of his personal money in physical metals. He has another 7.5% in commodities, and you'll see he has a large portion in bonds and fixed income. Now.
Gregory Allen: One thing I want to emphasize, because you'll see, the banks have actually come out to recommend you take more allocation in that. And so I'm sure a lot of people on here have heard of the traditional 60-40 portfolio allocation. 60% stocks, 40% bonds, fixed income and cash.
Gregory Allen: set it and forget it, right? The fact of the matter is.
Gregory Allen: the banks come out and change recommendations like this, not for the benefit of the smaller individuals like you or I, right? We'd like to think it's for our benefit, because they're fiduciaries, or the financial advisors are, but it's not. It's for liability reasons, okay? And so when they come out and they recommend an allocation shift, the only reason they do it is because
Gregory Allen: When their projections come true, if people lose money.
Gregory Allen: Oftentimes, there's lawsuits, and they want to be able to point to press releases if people don't listen to them to say, hey.
Gregory Allen: you can't sue us, we came out and we warned everyone, we told you, okay? And so, what these banks are doing, when we talk about it, the first one was Bank of America, where we've heard Michael Widmer's analysis today. In 2024, they recommended swapping bonds for commodities.
Gregory Allen: Specifically gold, because they highlighted better performance and safety aspects. Then, we had Goldman Sachs come out and recommend swapping the 40% not to commodities, but directly to gold.
Gregory Allen: And then the third that's come out since then is Morgan Stanley. Their recommendation is 60-20-20, 20% oil and gas, 20% gold and silver. The oil and gas, I will emphasize, not to pour cold water on the fire.
Gregory Allen: they can be traditionally more speculative investments, so if you're going to look at that type of commodity, you need to make sure you're doing your due diligence, right? Because there's a lot of these that aren't producers and are explorers. But, when we look at this across the board, the reason the banks are giving for it
Gregory Allen: Falling rates, Yields, or rather the dollar is falling in value.
Gregory Allen: And the thing that we see typically with bonds is bonds will, well, will fall with the rate… low rate environment, right? And at the end of the day, what we haven't seen with a few rate cuts is those bonds coming down.
Gregory Allen: What we've actually seen in other markets, like Japan and Britain last year, and the year before, is in fact, in post-COVID economies, we're noticing that it takes more interest rate cuts before the bond market catches up. But in fact, in Britain, what ended up happening is after all of their successive interest rate cuts, the bond market collapsed. It fell out of bed.
Gregory Allen: Instead of coming down gradually each time. And so the reason they're highlighting this is because gold and silver are simply projected to perform better.
Gregory Allen: Plain and simple. Now, one of the last things I wanted to show
Gregory Allen: This is gold versus the 60-40 portfolio, and the main thing I want to highlight is this is during
Gregory Allen: the blue numbers here at the bottom are gold as a part of a 60-40 portfolio during one of these commodity super cycles. And so you'll notice in the 70s, again, it was almost 450% in that 9-year commodity super cycle. In the 2000s, the return was 180%, and these are, you know, in fixed
Gregory Allen: 6- to nine-year periods.
Gregory Allen: Over that period. We saw 121% at the time of this chart coming true. That, as we saw, was 160% last year, and we'll see where we end up. What we do know is when rates are being cut and gold is added to the 60-40 portfolio, it always outperforms. Now.
Gregory Allen: Last thing here I wanted to emphasize on, this is part, you'll see the, you'll see the, watermark for CPM group from that 50-year study.
Gregory Allen: This is a risk versus reward thing.
Gregory Allen: And you'll see the return is actually higher the more that you have, more gold that you have in your portfolio. The risk is actually that you lose out in higher-yielding short-term investments in the stock market, because, as I said, sometimes gold and silver can be like watching grass grow until overnight we have that rate cut, and things explode. And so you'll see
Gregory Allen: 25-30% on average is going to yield high 7% every year. I think the one thing that we need to remember right now, the reason people are recommending higher allocation shifts, the reason we're seeing this stuff, is because this is not a normal environment.
Gregory Allen: This is the third time in 100 years that we have a commodity super cycle.
Gregory Allen: And the reason we ultimately have this is because 80% of all dollars ever printed were printed in 18 months after 2020.
Gregory Allen: The only reason we didn't have an immediate reckoning is because inflation went to 9.1%, and we surged our interest rates up to 5.5%. With interest rates coming down, we are going to see significant turbulence in markets now, and so that's something to keep in mind.
Gregory Allen: One thing, just in wrapping up here, again, if we're to remember from today, just please, if you can, avoid coins. I'm happy to give everybody a lowdown on
Gregory Allen: why it is. Generally speaking, the reason I say this is, you don't care what it looks like, the product you're buying. It doesn't matter that it's shiny, or it, you know, it looks great. You care that you're getting your money's worth for your investment, and you care that you're paying the thinnest spread between the bid
Gregory Allen: and the ask, right? Meaning, when you buy something and you sell it back.
Gregory Allen: to the dealer. You want to make sure the difference between the price you pay and the price you buy… they buy it back at is the smallest it can be.
Gregory Allen: And so, we don't want to buy products that are not going to retain their premium, and we don't want to pay for overpriced products.
Gregory Allen: So, the last thing I'll say is avoid the coins, remember the dollar above all else, right? It's an anti-dollar trade, so it's really simple. If you think the dollar's getting less valuable.
Gregory Allen: then gold and silver's probably a good bet. If you think the dollar's appreciating and your purchasing power is getting better, then completely upfront, it is not the investment for you, right? And so…
Gregory Allen: just to move on, I know, Rachel, you have a couple of things you probably want to get to here, and
Gregory Allen: Here we go…
Rachel Stolrow: Perfect. So, in wrapping up here, we have actually a quick poll that popped up here, so if you want more information.
Rachel Stolrow: With Greg from Allen House, please go ahead and make your selection. He's happy to get some additional information over. Greg, that was very, very informative. So let's wrap up here, and then, of course, as promised, we will get to a Q&A as well.
Gregory Allen: Awesome.
Gregory Allen: The… just while we're voting, the other thing I do want to emphasize while we're going through this, I might have forgot to mention, make sure, whether it's us or anyone else you contact.
Gregory Allen: ask them the question if they'll buy the product back from you. And I say it because an assumption made to people not getting involved in gold and silver before, because they've bought stocks, is if you buy something, that dealer will buy it back from you. Make sure that they will. We guarantee we buy everything back. We've run into customers dealing with other people where they bought something and they haven't been able to sell it. So liquidity is a huge
Gregory Allen: piece, right? And that's something to keep in mind as well.
Rachel Stolrow: Thank you for that context. Okay, next slide here.
Gregory Allen: Of course.
Gregory Allen: Let me… there we go.
Rachel Stolrow: Thank you. So, getting started with a self-directed IRA, very…
Rachel Stolrow: Three easy steps. Number one, you would establish your account. Number two, funding accounts can be done through contribution, transfer, or rollover. And number three, directing your custodian to purchase your investment. So, something like, you know, gold and silver, precious metals.
Rachel Stolrow: Any other alternative investment, you name it, you direct us, and then we would go through and process that request.
Rachel Stolrow: So, what's next here? So, number one, we'll be sending you an automated replay, so you can go back, re-watch this video, or any other educational content that we have. You can register for our next webinar, our real estate webinar that will be in July.
Rachel Stolrow: And then, of course, as always, our Learning Center is an amazing place. Our marketing team does a wonderful job at putting webinars just like this one on our website, so that you can continue to learn and read and be informed in the self-directed IRA or alternative investment space.
Rachel Stolrow: All right, now on to the questions. So I see a few have come in here, so I'll just start off with reading them. The first one is.
Rachel Stolrow: Most of the analysis assume that gold and silver go in tandem with silver moving with a delay and more
Rachel Stolrow: Sorry, I gotta spin over here. Violently compared to gold. Now, given the industrial demand of silver significantly increasing, as well as the ongoing supply deficit, do you see that correlation between gold and silver to continue or not, or to maybe…
Rachel Stolrow: Or to maybe the silver breakouts and become more extreme.
Gregory Allen: whoever wrote this question is extremely… you've done your research, because it's a great question.
Gregory Allen: Believe it or not, in Michael Widmer's projections, one of the things he specifically writes with silver is a decoupling between gold and silver and how closely they trade in tandem. The decoupling, he believes, happens in that range between $140 and $160 silver. The reason he believes that's where it happens is because
Gregory Allen: Currently, silver has massive industrial demand.
Gregory Allen: And that is mainly fueled by this electronic surge, AI surge, these types of things. What happens when we get over $130 is we… or, sorry, $140, is we start wiping out the profits that the entire solar industry faces. And you have to think each solar panel has 2 ounces of silver, and that's a major portion to demand.
Gregory Allen: So when Michael Widmer's writing those projections, one thing he cited specifically is between $140 to $160 silver, he expects a period of lag where we have a decoupling between the markets. Once that picks up, he believes that that ratio ultimately closes back to where 14 to 1 is, and that's why he says, in that case.
Gregory Allen: silver becomes violent and goes over $300, which is much more lofty than where BMO, who's calling for $8,650 gold, they're calling for $220 silver. The main reason there is that decoupling. And truth be known, part of that is the incoming of copper demand as well, once you get over the $140 mark in silver.
Gregory Allen: Truthfully, when we speak to investors about this.
Gregory Allen: And you have to think about this. You're not stuck in any of these investments. So a lot of people have looked at, hey, if I can maximize profit in silver, and I care more about profit than stability, maybe I look at riding silver as close to 140 as I can, and reallocating towards gold at that point, because I know there's going to be that cost struggle. It's a decision you absolutely can make.
Gregory Allen: But I think, ultimately, you just have to make that consideration of.
Gregory Allen: are you the person that wants to set it and forget it? Or are you the person that, you know, when we have those changing metrics, wants to look back in and do that again, type of deal?
Rachel Stolrow: Awesome, thank you for that. The next one is not coins, question mark, then what? Bullion?
Gregory Allen: Yeah, so we specialize in what's called investor bars. Investor bars are… in silver, they're kilo and 100 ounce. In gold, they're kilo and 10 ounce, and platinum, they're kilo and 10 ounce. These bars are all from… we don't deal with anything that's not LBMA or COMEX approved, right? London Bullion Market Association, and COMEX being our equivalent here in the United
Gregory Allen: States.
Gregory Allen: The reason we deal with these bars, they all come from government approve mints, they all have a mint mark on them and a serial number. So when they go into the vault and they audit them, they literally track the serial number, they verify it, there's no need to drill into the bar. It's, you know, the modern age, effectively, with gold and silver. And the reason we like those is because when you go to sell them back.
Gregory Allen: They're trading at a set…
Gregory Allen: price for those bars, because they can be authenticated in a hurry, so we want those bars back.
Gregory Allen: The issue is, when we look at around
Gregory Allen: or a coin, right? You're going to pay more upfront for the price of that, because there's more work that goes into it, right? It's a product premium, and the product premium is the work that it takes to take that from a liquid ore to a finite product.
Gregory Allen: the issue in what we're saying. A round is just a less decorative coin. A coin would be considered, you know, an American Eagle, a Canadian Maple Leaf, these types of things. The difference is they're laser-etched, so if I was to take a loop, I can see that it's authentic.
Gregory Allen: The issue is, with the market moving, we've seen premiums on coins fluctuate, and so you might not get a lot more than a bar when you sell it back.
Gregory Allen: but you're gonna pay more when you buy it. And so that's a price that, again, it's not set by us. We don't make money from people when we're buying metal back. It's set, by, you know, Dylan Gage and that institutional market. It's set at a set market price for these approved products. And so the reason I say this to you.
Gregory Allen: We don't care what it is we buy, as long as it's qualified for the IRA, and it has the thinnest premium between the ask, where you buy it, and the bid where you sell it. Typically, those are investor bars, which is why we stick to it. That's plain and simple, but we can transact in any type of, you know, coin you want.
Gregory Allen: I just say we've seen a lot of people go wrong, because once you get into coins, the words proof come into it, graded coins come into it, and people get bait and switched into a product that they didn't actually want, if that makes sense.
Rachel Stolrow: Awesome, thank you. Alright, next question, and just a heads up, we have quite a few here.
Gregory Allen: Okay.
Rachel Stolrow: Can you please comment on platinum relative to gold or silver?
Gregory Allen: Yeah, this is… so, platinum was sneaky last year, right? Platinum had a fantastic year. It outperformed gold.
Gregory Allen: When we look at platinum, a lot of people have eyed and been all over platinum because, traditionally, it traded above gold, right? People remember when you had platinum double the price of gold, and so it was a value buy, right? The thing that we see in platinum, and the one
Gregory Allen: metric for concern is it tends to be a manipulated market, and I say that not from a conspiracy type of thing. Platinum and palladium are exchangeable in their uses. So when we look at automakers with catalytic converters, when we look at jewelers with their plating of products and this type of thing.
Gregory Allen: What they typically do is they'll ride one market up.
Gregory Allen: And then, when it gets to a peak, they'll dump it and buy the other, because it's then cheaper, and then that will go up, and the other market will go down. And so, I only say this because I still think Platinum's a great value buy. I think that Platinum will appreciate over time. I just think the fact that
Gregory Allen: they have exchangeable demands creates an uncertain scenario. Like, it's not as certain as looking at the monetary policy and tracking it on a chart. There's other demand objectives that are out of your control that should be a consideration. If it's something that is a long-term
Gregory Allen: you know, let me buy this and set it and hold it, I think it's a good investment. But if it's something that you're looking over a short period of time and you want to match or exceed gold or silver.
Gregory Allen: it could be challenging. And I'm trying to do justice to all the questions, because I know we have a lot coming in.
Rachel Stolrow: Give that.
Gregory Allen: So I'll try and keep it as direct as possible.
Rachel Stolrow: Thank you, that's why I prepped you there. That was a great response, thank you very much. So, the next question, it says, so you recommend bullion bars versus coin?
Gregory Allen: Yeah, I… I would 100%. And listen, that's not to say I had a customer today, a few customers, but recurring customers who like eagles, and they demand Eagles, so they're buying gold and silver eagles. That's not… I'm never gonna say I'm not gonna sell you something.
Gregory Allen: But, transparently, talking on the phone, if we look at it, and you can save money in the buy and the sell by buying bullion, then yes, I think that's the better move.
Rachel Stolrow: Awesome, thank you. The next one, how can I be assured that I will get my medal that I ordered using Entrust as the 401K or IRA administrator?
Gregory Allen: Really good question, and Rachel, I think you're probably partially gonna say this, because I… and I've been through this. So, it's a two-tiered system with the depository, but also with the custodian, right? And I think…
Gregory Allen: customers don't understand the level of rigor that goes into some of these facilities audits. When we deposit metal, whether it's IDS in Texas or Delaware, whether it's DDSC in Delaware, when they do that audit, they send a report to the custodian. That audit is not only stating that the metal that was ordered is, in fact, what it is.
Gregory Allen: But they will actually check
Gregory Allen: if there's no serial numbers, just for purity, right? So when they get that, they will send a report.
Gregory Allen: To the custodian and trust group, and they say.
Gregory Allen: the metal's here, we've itemized all the metal, we've audited it, and it's called a transfer-in activity, and it's logged on the screen for them to see. And that's… the fact of the matter is, in terms of your 401 , it's record keeping, right? And trust is… they need to make sure they're communicating that, and so they have a constant line directly with the depository. The only reason in a retirement account
Gregory Allen: that you don't have a direct link to the depository is the IRS makes that quote-unquote Chinese wall requirement, because if you had direct access to it, you could take it out of there, and we'd have, you know, the custodian would have no control.
Gregory Allen: So that… that's, you know, it's very secure. The stipulation… the only stipulation in storage you're gonna get, as well, is with some, like DDSC, you can do segregated or non-segregated. That's the choice you have, and if you're really… if you want to make sure, I have my own spot, I have my own vault, I know no one can touch it, you can do segregated storage where you're absolutely insured to all that.
Gregory Allen: The difference with non-segregated is just that everybody's metal is allocated and marked with your name on it and all that stuff, but you're all in one big vault, so you pay less money for the storage.
Rachel Stolrow: Thank you. And then what I'll add to that is, when we fund any metals investments, we send the money to the dealer, and as Greg noted, dealer sends metals to the depository, where they will verify, and then let us know. This is why it's really important when you're going through your due diligence process.
Rachel Stolrow: Make sure you're going with a reputable
Rachel Stolrow: reputable dealer, we can't do due diligence for you, it is a self-directed plan. So just really making sure, is this going to be somebody that's going to be accountable for sending the metals once I make the purchase, right? That is one large piece of the puzzle.
Rachel Stolrow: Again, we send money prior to metals being shipped so that they can make that transaction for you. So always do your due diligence, for sure.
Gregory Allen: The last thing I want to add, Rachel, just to arm everyone here, it's a legal requirement. Delivery has to be made in 28 days, calendar days, not business days, so that's under a month.
Gregory Allen: unless it's stipulated as a pre-order or agreed upon beforehand. And so I say this to you because
Gregory Allen: dealers count… a lot of dealers count on individual investors not knowing that. That is the truth. And Entrust knows that, and they keep people honest with that, so that's just the… kind of how it works, overall, I guess I would say.
Rachel Stolrow: Yep, and then thank you so much for adding that. And then what you'll see in your actual account here with us, it'll show as, like, quote-unquote, escrow, so you'll know once we get that report from the depository, we actually move it from being an escrow metal that we're holding to the physical metal. So, you'll see that change, and then, of course, you can reach out to us as well.
Rachel Stolrow: Alrighty, on to the next question. Does Allen House Metals only buy or sell precious metals for IRA accounts?
Gregory Allen: No, we deal with all, so whether it be… if it's physical delivery, we ship FedEx 48 Hour Express anywhere in the United States at no cost to the customer, or we have storage accounts that are non-IRA as well, so we do offer everything full service. It's, typically, the reason IRAs, it's a very involved
Gregory Allen: product. You know, there's a lot of moving products, so that's why you see us front-facing with IRAs.
Rachel Stolrow: Yep. Very popular in IRA accounts, but, as Greg mentioned.
Rachel Stolrow: Very common to do with both IRA and outside of the IRA as well. Alright, moving on, does Allen House Metals only buy? Same exact question, we just got that… got to that.
Rachel Stolrow: Can I use my existing Entrust account that has real estate in it, and what are the fees? For fees, please reach out, because I'm happy to give you fees in depth.
Rachel Stolrow: But in terms of can your current account hold it, absolutely. So many clients use their account to diversify, so whether that's precious metals, real estate, venture capital, you can hold several investments within one retirement plan here at the Intrust Group.
Gregory Allen: Yep.
Rachel Stolrow: Can you, next question looks like it's for you, Greg. Can you provide any insight how you see the value of silver mining stocks relative to the value of silver developing over time?
Gregory Allen: This is a great question again. Silver…
Gregory Allen: And mining stocks are typically closely correlated with one exception.
Gregory Allen: When you're doing… when you're dealing with minors, you have to be extremely careful on your due diligence, because minors are notoriously mismanaged, right? And so the thing is, at the end of the day.
Gregory Allen: Miners' costs do not go up because silver goes up. So they make more money, and the stock grows as the price of silver goes up.
Gregory Allen: Plain and simple. And a lot of our customers that buy silver, buy gold in an IRA or out of an IRA are also invested in miners. The fact of the matter is, if you buy a miner where the operation's mismanaged, the issue that happens is the stock tanks and the price of silver still goes up. And so, effectively, it's how convinced you are on the operations of that company that will deem this success.
Gregory Allen: Obviously, there's variables that they can still
Gregory Allen: whole supply. But that's just…
Gregory Allen: as brutally honest as I could be about them.
Rachel Stolrow: Awesome, thank you. Next question. What is the minimum investment amount for gold and silver?
Gregory Allen: None. We, don't have any… I mean, you probably want to make,
Gregory Allen: Well, we've had people at Entrust invest as little as $2,500 at a time, to tell you the truth. You probably, because there's some transaction fees and account opening fees, you probably want to start with more than that, but there's no problem, we have no minimums, we're happy to take any order.
Rachel Stolrow: That's right, yep, and on our end as well, we have no minimums, but as Greg mentioned, to make sense for fees, if you know you're going to be investing X amount over, you know, the next couple years, seeing if you can maybe invest that up front, just so that you can kind of slim back some of those transactional fees, or make the administrative fees make sense.
Rachel Stolrow: Is there a market for copper?
Gregory Allen: Yeah, so there is a market for copper. The bullion market for copper's hard, though, like, what you would be able to purchase right now. I say this because institutionally, we're lucky in being involved with Dill Engage that we get access to things like copper, and we get a lot of information from, you know, the global mints.
Gregory Allen: The issue with copper is a lot of the copper bullion products were coming from inns like Germania, Nadir, Eastern Europe, Middle East.
Gregory Allen: Those supplies have somewhat dried up. To give you an idea, to pull… we were getting silver and gold, because these are LBMA and COMEX improvements. We were getting silver and gold from these places during COVID, because they were working at full capacity and not shut down here. We were paying up to $50,000 a week in logistics costs to fly over, like, plane loads of bullion and copper and silver and gold from these places.
Gregory Allen: The issue is, since the war started, the supply's dried up on the copper for the most part, where they're just not minting and sending that product over, because it's all going to industry, that entire demand. And so, the truth of the matter is, we built all the infrastructure, we have all the product SKUs and this type of thing, but right now, in bullion and copper, it's…
Gregory Allen: kind of… it's hard to get, is the truth, right? There's just not a real supplier or market quite yet, but I think it's coming.
Rachel Stolrow: Awesome, thank you. So, this one, it looks like it's a little bit more for the depository. What does the insurance cover as to how the storage of the product is? For example, fire, you know, any other event that may happen, do we get an insurance certification with the account?
Gregory Allen: So, great question. I'll speak on IDS, because I know their insurance through and through. I think I know DDSC, but I don't want to speculate.
Gregory Allen: IDS is one of the only… they have an all-risk policy wrapped
Gregory Allen: And that all-risk policy's from Lloyd's of London. If you haven't heard of Lloyd's of London, if you Google them, you'll see they are probably the most
Gregory Allen: notable name. They've insured everything and every war for hundreds of years, right? They've never had to use it, but as far as the all-risk policy goes, it covers any need for replacement, and you would have the choice to either replace your, like, your actual metal, or take cash value at the time.
Rachel Stolrow: Thank you. And then through our website, we have a section on precious metals. Please look there. It actually has, I think there's 5 depositories that we work with. What they cover, I would assume that, yes, the insurance does, especially, like you said.
Rachel Stolrow: Greg, they are looking at the… every single metal that hits their account, so if there's something that, for some reason, that goes missing, or that ends up being fake, I'm sure those types of things are covered. I've, you know, absolutely seen it in the past, but if you have a specific question about a depository, let me know. We have a wonderful precious metals team that knows the ins and outs of what those policies are, so
Rachel Stolrow: Please feel free to let us know, we're happy to help.
Gregory Allen: Rachel, if you don't mind, I just wanted to give one comment, because it was depository-related. Yes.
Gregory Allen: although we don't own DDSC, one perk to DDSC that, if you're asking depository questions, is important, they provide a transaction guarantee. They get stuff done in 48 hours, right? The reason this is significant is if you deal there, you're T plus 3.
Gregory Allen: Unless there's some type of unforeseen circumstance. So, other facilities, IDS, they strive to do things in two business days. They don't have a guarantee. So just keep that in mind as well when you're looking at depositories.
Rachel Stolrow: Yeah, that's very good to keep in mind. Next question, what is the spot price?
Gregory Allen: are…
Rachel Stolrow: Maybe general, like, what does that mean? Oh, okay, perfect.
Gregory Allen: So, part and parcel spot price is a contract for either 5,000 ounces of unsmelted or of silver deliverable in 90 days.
Gregory Allen: or 100 ounces of gold deliverable in 60 days, which is effectively a futures contract. You would take delivery in a warehouse in New York. You then would have to coordinate your own shipping out of said warehouse, and you'd have to refine that into product.
Gregory Allen: The difference between spot price and the price you're actually going to pay for a product is the work that goes into it. So if you think of a bullion bar, whether that be a kilo, 100 ounce, a 10-ounce bar, they're pouring the liquid in, they stamp it.
Gregory Allen: And that's it. It's just a mold and stamping. So the reason they should trade at the thinnest premium, unless you have a dealer that, you know, is not being honest, is because they have the least amount of work in them. Above that, you have what's called a round, a Buffalo, you know, a Liberty, some of these other, you know, traditional silver pieces.
Gregory Allen: It's just a less decorative coin. So the thing is, they're gonna pour… they're gonna chop them in one ounce out of a sheet.
Gregory Allen: And then they put ridges on the side and stamp a design, but because they're in 1-ounce quantities, more work, more money. When it comes to a Silver Eagle or a gold maple leaf.
Gregory Allen: Those actually have laser etching in them to be identified under a microscope, so there's no acid testing necessary. That costs more of a premium. So again, above, spot price. And then above that is your collector coins.
Gregory Allen: If you're dealing with someone that's honest.
Gregory Allen: what you're doing is, when you purchase that, you're paying a set product premium. When you sell it, it sells back at the bid, which is the set product buyback for that thing. And so you're looking for the thinnest spread between the two.
Gregory Allen: spot price should have zero to do with the bid and the ask, other than it's the base price that went into the metal before it was manufactured into the product that you got. And so, the bid and the ask trade at a spread between those.
Rachel Stolrow: Awesome, thank you so much for that. Can't… the next question is, and I don't know if this is something that you do, will you expand on rare earth metals?
Gregory Allen: Yeah, rare earths is fascinating right now. It's huge because of, obviously, we have the AI boom. It's also a… it's a defense, defense tech thing right now.
Gregory Allen: Currently, the U.S. government is trying to source everything they can, and the fact of the matter in rare earths is we have some of the best quality rare earths in the world in the United States. We haven't explored and we haven't done justice to mining those, because the whole world has gotten their supply from China.
Gregory Allen: China, even under this new trade deal, has sectioned off. There's an embargo. They are not selling rare earths. So we are now cultivating these things.
Gregory Allen: When we're looking at rare earths overall, and I wouldn't consider… I'm not saying copper's a rare earth. I think copper should be put in the conversation with rare earths because it's essential to this AI boom, but when we look at them overall.
Gregory Allen: the big issues with rare earths is how do you acquire them at a lower dollar value for investments where you're not an institution that can put 50 or 100 million dollars into something that leaves you with a little amount of risk. And so, you know, we've been looking into exposure to a lot of these things. Like, I'm talking as in-depth as, like, cesium-187 and stuff like these types of rare earths.
Gregory Allen: The issue that you see with it is it requires a huge exposure to get involved, and the lower exposures require trusts on certain broker-dealers and agreements with percentages, and it's just…
Gregory Allen: not quite there in terms of maybe an IRA investment yet, of a…
Gregory Allen: smaller size, but I think it's getting there, and I think, you know, rare earths are really the future, right? We looked at silver, it's all been industrial demand. This next boom, yes, it includes silver, but rare earths is a huge part of it. All the chip making, all the data centers, it's a requirement, right?
Rachel Stolrow: Yeah. Awesome, thank you. Next question. Are we able to sell our product to another depository or dealer, and how would that process work?
Gregory Allen: Good question. So, physically speaking, you're selling to a dealer, the depository is going to sit there, hands in the air, and say, we're in charge of holding your metal, and making sure we either give it to you, or we send it to the right party. When you're dealing with us.
Gregory Allen: Obviously, we're not dealing in any unregistered products, meaning non-government minted, non-IRA approved. You could sell our products to anyone else that you want. I can somewhat guarantee that their buybacks aren't going to be as high as us. We will also buy product back that you've bought from any other dealer, and that's no problem.
Gregory Allen: So long as you're dealing with a legitimate partner, there should be no issues to liquidity.
Rachel Stolrow: Awesome. Thank you.
Rachel Stolrow: Next question. So, somebody just asked, can we take out, a distribution in metals? Absolutely.
Rachel Stolrow: perspective of the current, yep, the in-kind distribution of the current value of that metal. Correct. And then, next question is, could you please, and this one's for you, Greg, re-clarify your stated caution about physically backed ETFs? From my understanding, the underlying issue was
Rachel Stolrow: the underlying issue was supply scarcity and potential decoupling between NAV and ETF price, and not so much a change in obligation to hold 100% in physical assets.
Gregory Allen: Yeah, 100%. I am not suggesting that you should take 100% of your money and put them in physical assets. I think it's a decision that's based on every investor. I think what I was trying to say, and I want to emphasize, because the analyst I got a lot of this information from, his name is Peter Krauth, K-R-A-U-T-H. He writes something called the Silver Report.
Gregory Allen: And, I meet him at the metals and mining seminars that they have every quarter. He's a great presenter. He spent a lot of money doing research, because for 4 years during the pandemic, we saw silver and gold that seemed, you know, we were seeing at least 30% a year, every year, and the ETFs
Gregory Allen: And this is not to say people weren't making money.
Gregory Allen: But they weren't making the same dollar amount, and they weren't making more, it was less. And so what Peter did is he spent money to see what did they do with their existing holdings. What I was stating is his position was that they, once they stopped purchasing to add on to their supply, which they were purchasing at a 30% rate, to my knowledge, before.
Gregory Allen: They, in fact, started selling, because you have to think, they were holding 30% of reserves and physical metal.
Gregory Allen: that requires them to pay a depository, whether it be IDS, DDSC, Brinks, it doesn't matter who it is, they have to pay that depository. What they realized is if we don't have to buy it, we also don't have to hold it. And so Peter's research stated that in 4 years afterwards, that these ETFs, major ones like GLD and SLV, sold as much as 70% of their physical holdings.
Gregory Allen: because they were able to cut their overhead, juice their profit on the fund, and they can just leave it there in cash. It's not that there's an issue with that fund. It's not gonna go belly up, that's not what I'm saying at all. It's just it won't track physical metals as closely.
Rachel Stolrow: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for that response and staying with us as, you know, we went through all of the questions. That is it for.
Gregory Allen: What's the…
Rachel Stolrow: And thank you, Greg, for coming on today and providing such a wonderful session.
Gregory Allen: No problem, and thank you, and I appreciate everyone for all the questions. This was actually a great Q&A.
Rachel Stolrow: Yeah, great Q&A. If you have any questions, reach out, or you can, Greg, on the next slide, do we have our contact information?
Gregory Allen: Of course, yeah, actually.
Rachel Stolrow: Just so they can take a screenshot of yours. Mine, of course, is on the Intrust website, but Greg's is there, so feel free to reach out. I'm sure he's happy to go in depth if there are any additional questions that come up.
Gregory Allen: 100%, and I did want to say, just as we wrap, if anyone is curious about the metal you're holding, we give free quotes all the time to people. If it's, you know, you're wondering, hey, do I have coin that might be disqualified or anything like that, feel free, and, you know, we do really try to help and do our best, so if you need anything and it's not something that you're buying, but you're trying to sell, we're still here to help.
Rachel Stolrow: Awesome. Well, I appreciate that, and thank you again for such a wonderful session. I'll chat soon.
Gregory Allen: Awesome.
Rachel Stolrow: Thanks, Rachel. Hi, everybody.