Fireside Chat: Pinnacle Silver & Gold, Ronald-Peter Stöferle & Michael Kott

0:04 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. The speakers are quite an international audience today, but that is also true of the folks in the room. I think almost every time zone is represented, So I really appreciate everybody taking time out of their day, night, midnight to join us. Really, really appreciate that. Today, we've got a really exciting precious metals macro conversation between old friends. So we've got Bob Archer, CEO of Pinnacle Silver and Gold. We've got Michael Kotz, founder and CEO of CM Equity AG, and also Pinnacle's largest single shareholder. And finally, we've got Ronald Peter Stofferly, who's a fund management for Incrementum AG and also participated in Pinnacle's recent financing as a shareholder of the company. And they all go way back, So I'm pleased to be able to reunite them for our precious metals conversation today.

0:50 Gentlemen, how are you today? Doing well, thanks, Romeo. Doing great. Good evening. Awesome. Thank you very much. So I'm just going to do a quick bit of housekeeping because I know there's a lot of folks in the room. There is a chat button at the bottom. This is an interactive event. If you have any questions that fit the topic, so your macro for gold and silver, we'd be eager to hear what you got to say in the chat. And I'll try to include as much of that content as we can in today's conversation. Individual questions about Pinnacle Silver and Gold, please do feel free to put in. I may not get to them today as it's just slightly off topic, but I'll make sure the Pinnacle team gets those questions afterwards and they'll be able to get back to you as quickly as possible. Only other piece of housekeeping is today's event is being recorded and will be available for replay at the end of day Eastern time. So it should pop right in your inbox. It'll be available on the same link, but also be available on Six's YouTube page. So be able to see it right there.

1:40 Without further ado, though, I'm going to throw it first to Ronald Peter to go through a brief presentation before we get into a conversation. So Ronnie, I'll throw it to you.

1:49 Thank you very much, Romeo. I'll share my screen. I'll try to... So, Can you see my screen now? Hope that works. Romeo, please let me know. We can, yeah. Looks great. Perfect. So, thank you very much. As we've got a German here, Michael is from Germany. I promised not to talk about the World Cup, but Austrians and Germans like to tease each other so in Austria quite a lot of people were happy that Germany is out of the World Cup now. I think it's a little bit like Canada and the US, big brother, small brother. But we'll focus in the next couple of minutes, we focus on gold.

2:38 Actually, a couple of takeaways from our last report called Back to the Monetary future. We published that report

2:48 on 20th of May. It's already the 20th edition. You can download it totally for free. It is available in English, in German, in Mandarin, in Spanish. And it wouldn't be possible to publish such a report, such a massive report, without the support of our premium partners. And I'm very happy that Pinnacle is one of them, alongside of many other big names of the gold industry. We've got Agnico, we've got Newmont, we've got Barrick and so on. So very happy that Pinnacle came on board as a premium partner. Let's briefly talk about the performance of gold. Now, Here's a chart showing the performance of gold in major currencies. And I think it's to put things into perspective, it's really interesting because many people are now a little bit disappointed about the most recent performance of gold. But have a look at the performance last year. 64% in US dollar terms, 44% in euro terms.

3:51 In Canadian dollar terms, 56%. So from my point of view, 2025 has been a spectacular year. So I think the fact that we're now taking a breather is something very healthy, something normal. In US dollar terms, we're down almost 7% since the beginning of the year. In Euro terms, 4%. So I would say seeing that extreme amount of negative sentiment, so most of my sentiment indicators are really flashing red, which is from a contrarian point of view, that's positive, is a very good sign based on the fact that this drawdown hasn't been that dramatic. Now, what's interesting is the so-called CAGR, the compound annual growth rate since 2007.

4:37 So gold made 9.6% in dollar terms, 10.4% in euro terms. And it's also interesting to see the hit rate. So the number of positive years in Euro terms, it was 80%. In Canadian dollar terms, it was 85%, for example. So that shows you that gold has been in a brutal bear market since then. Or if we just take another perspective, if we say it's not the price of gold rising but rather the purchasing power of fiat currencies falling, then you can see that most of those currencies have devalued versus gold over the time frame. So we're down like, we were down in purchasing power terms 40% last year, which is pretty significant.

5:30 We're down in terms of purchasing power 92.8% in dollar terms since 2007. Since 2000, sorry. And I think this clearly shows you that it's actually not the price of gold rising, but it's the purchasing power of money measured, the purchasing power of the US dollar, the euro and so on, measured in gold that is falling gradually then suddenly. Now, Let's briefly talk about the current correction. I think in January when we saw new all-time highs, I think everybody was excited on the one hand. I remember I was back then at the Burey conference. But then on the other hand, everybody knew, okay, this cannot go on forever.

6:18 Since then, we've made a correction of roughly 25%. Now, in absolute terms, obviously, it sounds pretty dramatic that the gold price is now $1,500 away from its all-time highs. But then again, 25% is, I would say, the course of a normal correction. And from my point of view, and this is one of the key takeaways of this year's InGold with Trust report, It is a correction, a healthy correction, not a reversal of this trend. We stick to our long-term price target. So back in the year 2020, we published a report called the dawning of a golden decade. Back then when people couldn't care less about gold, when it was one of the most contrarian things. We said the price of gold will rise to $4,800 in the base case scenario or if inflation should become a topic in the 2020s, then we could go up to 8,900.

7:22 So we already reached this 4,800 target price and I think this 8,900 price is still very much realistic. That's a CAGR of 15% from now until 2030. And I think due to the reasons that we described in this year's report, I think this can happen. Of course, gold is not a contrarian asset anymore, like in 2020. We're somewhere like, in hockey terms, I would say we're like in the second third, in football or in soccer terms, I would say We're like in the middle of the second half, let's say minute 60 or 70. But we can go to overtime. We can go to penalty shootout.

8:08 So gold is in an established bull market that is now taking a breather. I think we're definitely not in a bubble yet and as we know, every secular bull market ends in euphoria, ends in a mania blow-off. But we haven't really seen that yet. So, briefly talking about silver. Well, obviously, the silver price tracks the gold price. From my point of view, currently at those gold-silver ratio prices, On a relative basis, silver is obviously looking more and more interesting. But we also know that silver actually really needs a rising gold price. So from my point of view, we will see over the course of the next couple of weeks, and this is actually exactly what we wrote in this year's report. Don't expect too much from gold.

9:06 Usually we're seeing the seasonal lows somewhere in summer, end of July, mid of August. I think we are now we're getting closer and closer to a bottom where a bottom is a process as you know, but I think we might still see some sort of a final shakeout. But I can tell you from the emails that I get, from the media inquiries, from our investors, we are already at a very, very negative sentiment. Now, is gold expensive? I mean, measured against equities, gold is still far away from being expensive. So, we're still above the long-term median. If we have a look at the market cap of gold versus the market cap of equities, we're also currently around the mean levels. So we're definitely not at expensive price levels and far away from those price levels that you usually see at the end of a secular bull market.

10:11 Now, we write in the report and this is really the main thing because, ladies and gentlemen, I think we can all talk about prices, but the real question is what's wrong with our monetary system and what's the solution or the future of our monetary system?

10:29 And The report is called Back to the Monetary Future, which obviously plays with the great movie Back to the Future. And we say that if you want to understand the future of our monetary system, you have to go back, you have to go back in history. And in this chapter, we explain that there are 6 different vectors that are independently showing that we are in a process where gold actually will be re-monetized. And this is really one of my key takeaways. This is not a normal gold cycle. This is a remonetization cycle that we're currently in. And talking about not only gold and silver, but real assets in general.

11:18 If you have a look at real assets versus financial assets, you can see that we are far away from a mania. I think this bull market is just getting started. And as you can see here, those

11:33 phases of outperformance, those bull markets usually last for over a decade. So this is still very much early stage. Also Here, if you have a look at the allocation

11:51 of central banks, but also private gold allocation, at the all-time highs in the 1980s, we had 62% of central bank gold reserves invested in gold and 8.3% private gold allocation. Now we're at 26% and 2.7%. Also an indicator, well, we're coming off the lows, but we're far away from extreme levels. We all know that central banks keep buying first quarter of this year another 250 tons of gold. We all know that mining stocks are dirt cheap and this is also a reason why I think that we haven't seen top in this market because what do you usually see at the end of a big secular gold bull market?

12:37 Crazy M&A. But so far most of the deals that were announced, I would say mostly in the mid-tier space. I think the valuations, the premium that was paid, I think was very, very reasonable. We haven't seen any crazy M&A yet, despite the fact

12:57 that companies are printing cash. So we are seeing ridiculous amounts of free cash flow production. So profitability definitely has increased significantly. Here are just some key messages. And I think, yeah, that was slightly above 10 minutes. Many, many things to talk about, many things to discuss with my fellow panelists. And yeah, I'll hand back to Romeo for the conversational part of this format. Thank you very much.

13:32 Awesome. Appreciate it very much. And thank you really for your insights. I know our audience appreciates it. I want to get started. I'm not going to make you repeat yourself, Ronnie, so I'll start with Michael. I was in Las Vegas last week and gold slipped below $4,000 USD. Silver dropped under $60. There's a lot of sad faces in the room at a mining conference. Michael, I'll throw it to you for a quick gut reaction to open us up. Was last week a local bottom, a buying window? How do you look at it? Well, thanks for inviting me, Romeo, here. But how I see it as a family office investor is, I see it clearly as a buying opportunity. We are in a window, which we are building the bottom, which Ronnie just said before.

14:22 I go in macro trends and I'm investing in macro trends. As a family, you have to be long term. You should not be starting being very active trading positions. This period of my life is behind me, the trading side. For 20 years I was trading at the floor, but now I'm investing and investing.

14:45 A trend is not just 1 or 2 years, which we have seen right now since 2024, when the precious metals and the base metals and the resource industry suddenly came back into favour again. This is a trend, it's a macro trend, it's a macro, and investing is always long-term. So when we have seen this really exorbitant

15:13 performance as the last year, It's very clearly that it's only a consolidation of what we have seen in 2025. Awesome. Appreciate that, Bob. I'll throw it to you next. What was your initial feeling last week? And it's funny, we've been on webinars for a long time. I know 2, 3 years ago, somebody said there'd be a lot of frowns with gold at $39.95. We probably would have been shocked a couple of years ago, but I'll throw it to you. What your gut feeling was last week?

15:44 I agree with the guys that this is just a long-term cycle, and within that, you'll get mini cycles. So you get periods of consolidation you get upswings and and and then there's the seasonality as well which you know we're in right now The whole war in Iran was a bit of a black swan. I think that most people weren't anticipating. So there've been a number of things that have happened over the last 6 months or so. But

16:17 overall, I just look at it as a buying opportunity. And I've been looking at my own portfolio and I guess I'm a fairly active investor as well. And looking at picking up stocks that I've been watching or perhaps averaging down a little bit on others.

16:36 So it's one of those things that you just kind of take it in stride. We've all been in this business for a very long time And we've seen a number of larger cycles. And I just think back to the 2001 to 2011 cycle, which was the last really sort of large bull market that we had. And at that time, I was more focused on silver as a co-founder of Great Panther Silver. But within that cycle, we saw,

17:12 I would say, 4 mini cycles, certainly in silver anyways. And because it's a smaller market, silver tends to be a little bit more volatile and the trading, these cycles tend to be sort of hockey stick shaped where they'll consolidate for a while and then they'll go parabolic and then correct about 50% and then consolidate again for a period of time and then another parabolic rise. So, what we've seen over the last year is exactly that. We had a long period of consolidation, we had a very sharp rise, we've had a 50% correction, and now we're in this consolidation phase. So that's the way I look at where we are right now.

17:56 And I wouldn't be surprised to see this continue for several months yet, before things start to pick up again. So, you know, I'm not concerned about it. It's a healthy pullback as Ronnie mentioned. And, you know, I think people should be looking at it from that perspective. I'm inclined to agree. I think people sometimes have short memories and metals. That is interesting to see sometimes. Ronnie, I'll throw it to you for 1. It's a mix of kind of my question, something that came in in the chat. And we've been talking about so far is why

18:26 this current pullback consolidation are actually happening. Jay Roster from the chat asks, one thing nobody seems able to answer, whenever nobody can answer, Ronnie, I'll throw it to you. Why gold is no longer increasing alongside instability? They want to know, is gold still a safe haven? Why is war in the Middle East not increasing the gold price? I guess it would be a question for you.

18:51 Great question. I think we crunched the numbers on that topic. And often people think that gold is a great crisis hedge. So geopolitical things blowing up, terrorist attacks, whatever, buy gold. But actually from a short-term point of view,

19:12 the numbers just don't confirm because gold doesn't usually doesn't really perform after such events. However, it has an impact over the longer to medium term because why? Walls always mean more debt, higher inflation.

19:33 So, I would regard it in that way. Now, coming back to the Iran crisis, I know that many people are super disappointed. But we shouldn't forget, first of all, that gold, as I showed before, had a tremendous performance. So I think market participants were also looking for reasons to actually take profits. We shouldn't forget that, you know, I compare it to, you cannot run the Mount Everest. They're like base camps, where you just have to get accustomed to the altitude. Stay there for a while, relax, and then after a couple of days, you're used to the altitude. And I think that we're now in kind of that process.

20:23 Now, the interesting thing is that also many people blame Kevin Walsh for being reasonable for weak gold prices. And obviously, I mean, Kevin Walsh, what should he do as the new head of the Federal Reserve? Obviously he wants to play the tough guy, the new Paul Volcker, the guy who's really hawkish because everybody said that

20:50 he's like a puppet of Donald Trump and he will lower interest rates immediately. So it wasn't a big surprise that he sounded a bit more hawkish. But what's interesting is if you have a look at 1 year inflation swaps, they actually fell to below 2.2% recently. Now,

21:13 this is the lowest since Donald Trump took office. So from my point of view, we won't see any rate hikes this year. And I think that this should be one of the major drivers that, you know, we went from rate cuts to now rate hikes. But I think at one point, the market will realize, okay, actually, Kevin Walsh will be able to lower rates. So, it's not easy these days, yeah, but I think what's really important is zoom out, try to understand the big picture,

21:49 reading Gold with Trust report where we've really tried to analyze all the different drivers of gold. And then I think it makes you pretty much relaxed. Awesome. No, I appreciate that very much. And it is certainly a good report. I encourage everybody in the audience to read it. Michael, I'll throw it to you on the same topic. So we went over both global instability, but also the new helm and the new shaping of the Fed, we'll call it. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what impact you think it'll have on precious metals prices.

22:23 So, Romeo, I think people try to explain every kind of movement in the market with every kind of movement or political saying and if it's the Fed, if the central bank or if it's the politicians, they try to explain everything. I think given the fact that prices, sometimes these markets, they are driven by very few players, big players, which have to unwind positions or have to move on options

23:04 or on any kind of things. But, you know, these movements are not, really should not be explained on a day-to-day basis. I think what Ronnie is doing and there's several others who are macro specialists. I think this is what gives you a good guideline along the market, but don't try to be an active player on any kind of movement. This will be definitely

23:35 catch you on the wrong leg and I try to avoid, to be honest, I try to avoid this day-to-day noise as much as I can. I know exactly which reports I'm reading. There's a couple of people. Ronnie is one of them. He has a wonderful newsletter as well every Friday. I can also recommend everybody who would like to participate. This is a very good guideline along the markets. There are several others which I'm also close with and which I really appreciate. But me as a family, I'm not dealing with these day-to-day

24:18 buzzwords or events. This is really keeping me cold. Yeah, I tend to do that whenever my friends and family ask what moved the gold price, I tend to quote Keynes and say, listen, sometimes it's animal spirits. I can't explain every single move with a press release. Bob, I'll throw it to you. I know you've built and operated through more than one of these cycles, not to call you old, just experienced. But from an operator's chair, does a week like last week even register or is it truly just noise against the kind of timelines that miners should be looking at? You're on mute Bob.

24:56 Sorry about that. If you're actually in production, it would make a bit of a difference, you know, from the standpoint that you're getting paid, you know, for your product in some fashion tied to spot prices, depending on the type of contract that you have. So, you know, it does make a little bit of a, have an impact that way, but, you know, as, as an investor, and as a operator of a company, you know, building towards production, it really doesn't make that much difference at this point in time. Obviously, if you're still relying on the markets to raise equity, then it'll have an impact on financing prices and the ability to raise funds. But aside from that,

25:43 once you have funds, then it just becomes noise at that point. And you just focus on operations and trying to do the best job you can. Awesome, I appreciate that. Now, here's something I know everybody hates when I do on panels, which is ask them to tell me what the gold price is going to be in the future. So I encourage you all to look in your crystal ball for a second. Ronny, I'll start with you. Your model still, as I understand it, points

26:09 to $4,800 USD, with the more aggressive path running towards $8,900. After this correction, how is your conviction in that arc holding up? Well it's holding up pretty well. I mean, first of all, I would say like I used to work in a bank when I was a young kid and started with the GoldwithTrust report. And we had like a super, super smart colleague. She had like, I don't know, a gazillion PhDs and she knew like everything. And she had the most complex models. But the problem with those models was they didn't really work.

26:50 So we said, okay, let's keep it simple and just analyze what's really the most important driver for the price of gold. And one of them is obviously monetary growth. So we've got based on M2 growth, this is basically the foundation of our model. And the current price really tracks

27:17 our expectations and our forecasts extremely well. Now what we also did for one of our funds, because primarily I'm a fund manager and I'm managing an active gold strategy, and our active hour room signal told us actually beginning of March to be a little bit more defensive. So we didn't hit the brake, but we really took our foot off the gas pedal. So at the moment we run like roughly 65-68% cash, which is great at these price levels. We like to be contrarian. We like to buy when everybody else is being super pessimistic. To quote Warren Buffett, we feel like little kids in a candy store.

28:08 And again, I think, you know, at these price levels, we're seeing extremely attractive valuations in the mining space, not only in the large cap space, but also in the developing stage, and especially in the junior mining space, where we don't see too much liquidity at the moment, unfortunately. But we know that probably after the summer is over, I think

28:36 I would expect much, much better performance. So probably the next couple of weeks will be a great time to pick up bargains in the market again. And if we zoom out, we'll probably say, well, 30th of June back then when we had this webinar, that was what a great buying opportunity that was.

28:57 Appreciate it. Michael, I'll throw it to you if you dare put a price tag. Keep in mind, people will clip this and put it on Twitter if you're right or wrong. So keep that in mind. I will turn to you for a price target if you dare. You know, you know, I think it's a trader, you have to have price targets, but I'm not a trader anymore. So so I am I'm an investor and you know, as a trader, you should you

29:21 should make your targets and then you should make your trade accord because as your plan so you have your selling limits at the target. I'm very aligned with what Ronnie just said. I think this sounds very reasonable. If this can be reached or not, I don't know. When gold price was at 2000, my password was gold5000. So my password really, in all my logins, worked very well for me.

29:53 I think we are far from over. And I think the big opportunity is the junior mining space. It's a place where nobody is in. Because all the groups which are here assembled in this call, I think they are the group which are anyway the followers of the resource industry. And many of them, you see them from 1 conference to the other conference and speaking to the it's always the same audience.

30:24 I think the key thing is we need more people coming in and I think we will get there. We will get the mass market waking up. We will get much more analysts houses writing research about companies and also about the junior and exploration companies. And I think this will be happening. When this happens and every kind of boutique is spreading out like mushrooms and by a sudden creating research reports and people sitting with magazines there in the subways, then we have seen the full cycle and then I will be on the selling side. I appreciate that. And I will certainly be trying to log into your email using gold 800, or 8000 as a password.

31:11 Bob, I'll throw it to you if you dare give a price target or if you're on board basically with Ronnie and Michael. Yeah, I mean, I guess I am to a large degree. I mean, if you want specific numbers, you know, again, I always look back to that last major bull run from 2001 to 2011. And, you know, during that timeframe, you know, we saw gold going up about 6 to 8 6 to 8 times depending on where you choose to to pick the bottom and then you know silver went up about 10 times you know we started Great Panther in 2004 when silver was around $5 and then it went to $50 by 2011. So if you use those same kind of metrics and again, depending on where exactly you choose the bottom for this cycle, but yeah, I mean picking 6 to 8 times for gold and maybe 10 times for silver, you could be looking at somewhere around $8,000 to $10,000 on gold and $150 to $200 silver.

32:16 And seeing where we are at now and how fast we've gotten to where we are now, I don't think that's unreasonable to think that that's possible over the next few years. Great. Appreciate that. I want to talk about central bank buying pretty explicitly if we can, because obviously that that is a driver and certainly an interesting note to gold investors. And Ronnie, I'll start with you. As I understand it, Central Bank's net bought another 244 tons in the first quarter of this year. And China within this year posted its biggest monthly gold imports in 2 years, even as the paper price fell. How should investors read the split between physical and the paper market? Gets a lot of heat on X.com and elsewhere. I'm curious for your perspective on that gap. Well, I think that there will be a point when we will see some sort of a divergence between the price of gold and the gold price.

33:08 And I think that there are some players that are really not really sensitive when it comes to gold price levels. Now, I think what has really changed and we described that in our 2024 report called the new gold playbook. Unfortunately, most people in the Western world still think that the US, UK, Germany, whatever, are the center of our world. But just travel to Shanghai, go to Mumbai, to Jakarta, where Michael is currently, go to Dubai, And you can tell that actually the dynamic and the whole vibe that you can feel is a completely different one.

33:57 Now, we are currently seeing that more than 50% of physical gold demand is just coming from China and from India. And if you talk to Indian and Chinese gold investors, you will realize that they've got a completely different attitude when it comes to gold. They've got this monetary insurance. They don't regard it as a trade. They regard it really as a monetary insurance. And I think with the growing importance of emerging markets, This so-called love trade, so

34:36 very, very solid GDP growth in emerging markets correlates very highly with gold demand from emerging markets. I think this is something that is vastly underrepresented in the Western world because most Western financial media says, well, hyperinflation, civil war, only negative things buy gold. But there's actually a very positive case for gold and we're seeing that when it comes to private investors in emerging markets but also when it comes to central banks in emerging markets. So now central banks altogether hold 26% of the total reserves in gold, but it's primarily dominated by western central banks. Now emerging market central banks from China, from India, from Turkey, you name it, they just continue buying.

35:34 And recently there was the new survey by the World Gold Council coming out and it actually said that 95%

35:45 of all the central banks that were surveyed, want to continue buying gold. So I think this is kind of one of the primary drivers of this bull market that we see. Awesome. I appreciate that very much. Just folks in the room, I've heard that the chat is frozen for folks. I think there may be just too many of you in the room. I apologize. If you do want to shoot in a question, you can at Romeo at the number 6, I x.com. I'll try and get to as many as we can today. But one person in the chat did mention, they said it better than I could. I was going to ask if silver is a higher beta way to trade this precious metals market. Somebody in the chat said it better. They said silver is such a drama queen with 5 exclamation marks, which I appreciate as a framing very much. So I want to talk about silver really explicitly and Ronny, I can start with you, but I do want everybody to get in on this.

36:35 Do we think silver is perhaps a better bet in the current environment as the ratio is widened? I would say that I don't really see silver ever completely decoupling from gold. I know that there are people even said that the gold-silver ratio could flip, so actually silver could be more valuable than gold. And that's pretty extreme. But from the data work that we did, in every secular bull market, silver tends to outperform gold. I think we've seen, we already got kind of a feeling what silver can do if there's like a little bit more excitement in the market with, you know, hitting triple digits and more than 120 bucks in January.

37:30 But I still think, and this is another reason why I think that we haven't seen the top in the gold market. I mentioned already that usually at the end of a big secular bull market, you see crazy M&A in the mining space. We haven't seen that yet, talked about it. But we usually also see at the top of a gold bull market, we usually see a significantly lower gold silver ratio. So in January, I think the lows in the gold silver ratio were around 50. Usually the lows are between 15 and 20. So we kind of got a feeling for what the party in the silver market could look like, but I think this was only like a preview.

38:17 Now, obviously, what we really need apart from the structural growth coming from a demand from the energy side, be it photovoltaics, but also EVs continue to be a big driver on the demands. I think what we really need to see is investment demand kicking in. And I think at some point we will see that, But for the time being, I think probably over the next couple of weeks, silver will continue to be extremely volatile. I think I was actually a little bit shocked that we went below 60. I thought that we would see the lows around in the low 70s, but it is what it is. But I think, again, if we zoom out in the big chart, in the weekly and in the monthly chart, I think those should be pretty good buy levels here.

39:17 I appreciate it. I certainly was in line to buy physical silver at 65, so I'm definitely in line as it gets closer to 60. Michael, the version of this question I'll throw to you is, you've run obviously a dedicated gold and silver equity strategy for a long time. When the ratio sits where it does now, does that shift how you weight silver names against gold names? Actually, not at all, because I'm not investing in the ratios, I'm investing in people. I think this is a very important message that during this consolidation and also during this run up, I consolidated my stock portfolio to very few names. I would say I hold now 8 companies and maybe only 50% of them that are in the resources.

40:08 And Pinnacle Silver and Gold is one of them. So the reason is, I think it's For me as an investor, I want to understand in what I'm investing in and I understand the macro trends I understand what Ronnie writes But I I'm very good in and I'm also good in other trends, you know, so because I'm I get I Have the nose. What's the next big thing? You know and a lot of lot of these trends I I'm really good in that But I always made the mistakes. I was focusing on technologies and IP and this and that. And then I realized I need to focus more on the people I'm investing in. So I'm spending a considerable time with people which I'm investing in and what before I'm investing in because I want to see if the interests are aligned and I think from an investor from a family office investor point of view, and I think a lot of people can can do this the same, you know, they have to, they have to focusing and understanding what is this guy which is which I'm investing in? What is this team driven? You know, what they are driven by what, you know, they are hired CEOs, or they are really investing in their own companies.

41:27 All these kinds of things I want to see and there's a lot of other topics it would lead to far now, but I'm a people-focused investor. So I'm investing in the combination of people and big trends. Oh, great. I like that perspective quite a bit. Bob, the version of this I'll ask you, Pinnacle Silver and Gold obviously says in the name, has both metals in this project. In a market like this one, do you think that blend is a strength or are you finding the pitch harder to land with investors? What have you heard from investors in this market? I think it's a positive, Romeo. We're currently focused in this year, Madre trend of Mexico, which is a gold silver trend. And it really, I mean, whether your project is gold dominant or silver dominant, It can vary considerably, not just between regions and different districts, but even on the same project.

42:25 We can find that within different parts of our project, sometimes the gold numbers are higher and other times, you know, the silver numbers can be quite high. You know, we've had individual silver assays more than 2000 grams per ton. So we're still learning as we go along and drilling off the system and understanding it better. But I think it's having both commodities there does help to diversify you a little bit. And when it comes time to actually getting into production and then selling those products, having that diversity tends to smooth things out a little bit because even though gold and silver sort of tend to run more or less in parallel, but there are differences over shorter periods and silver is much more volatile as we've been discussing.

43:26 So they can at times balance one another. So I think overall it's generally a positive thing. And yeah, I've always enjoyed working in precious metals, either gold or silver, so a little bit biased. Hey, bias is good. I think always helpful. Ronnie, I'll throw this one to you. This is a question that came in all over email. There are probably 10 questions that ask basically the same thing. So I'll throw it to you. But I want everybody to give their take on it. Metals have had this historic run over the last 2 years, But a lot of juniors are right now, especially after this pullback, trading like none of it happened. Like this whole period never actually took place. Why do you think equities are lagging the metal this badly this time around?

44:15 It's a good question. I think that, you know, we basically saw this bull market in the mining space, 2004 starting like second half of 2024, sorry. And then 2025 was obviously a great year with the GDX being up 120%. But let's not forget everybody in the mining space was super excited. Everybody was basically feeling, okay, now this is it. Finally, we've all been waiting for that. But for generalist investors, I think it was too far too quickly.

45:02 So, it's always at the big mining conferences, it's always like, now the generalists are coming, we're super excited. Now, you know, there's the big endowment funds and insurance companies and family offices coming. So far, I haven't really seen that. And I think this is also something that I really stress at my keynotes. I think that the whole mining industry has to get better in communicating the story, has to get better in making a positive case for mining, has to just show the numbers. If you go for the large cap producers, I mean, they're value stocks now. But I think just preaching to the choir and talking to the same people for 20 years, that's wrong. So I think we really have to reach out to people that don't have a clue about mining.

46:00 We have to educate them. Management teams have to deliver. I mean, that's, it resonated very much with me what Michael said, that you're actually investing in people. And, you know, just have a look at the track record that Bob has. I think that speaks for itself. But I think it's really, and that's why we invested in a Swedish company called Mining Visuals. We really have to simplify the story. We have to reach a different set of investors and not show like 20 drill results on 1 slide, but really deliver a simplified message because as we all know, you know, the average attention span nowadays is like very, very short. So, and, and, you know, there's so many different sectors and investment opportunities chasing capital now. I think the mining industry itself really has to get better to really attract capital from outside of our little niche.

47:10 No, I definitely appreciate that. Sometimes when I look at a mining company's deck, I think, would my mom understand this? And if it's a no, you might want to actually change some of those slides. Michael and Bob, I'll get you guys in on why you think equities are lagging and if you think that'll turn around. Go ahead, Michael. Bob, you want to start or shall I start? Go ahead, go ahead. Okay, so I simply think that nobody has this sector which is called resources or Metals and Mining, which was so underperforming for over a decade, from far over a decade, on the radar. So it was not popular.

47:59 The prop trading desk, they closed, they closed their research departments, you know, the investment banks, there is no research out anymore. The companies, they didn't come anymore on a regular basis for their usual suspect roadshows, which they see the usual suspect people. So Ronny said it before, we need a new audience. We need to educate people that this is not boring. This is, in fact, a very sexy industry. And with the highest margins with there would be no NVIDIA if there would be no metals and mining, because there would be nobody who producing the raw material for semiconductor chips. So So the whole AI, the whole clean tech, nothing would be existing if we would not have metals and mining. And I think this will wake up a lot of people.

48:57 And I do that. I go with my family on the road explaining how I'm investing, I'm investing in the combination of people and megatrends and then I do this exploration, why is this so important, why metals and mining is a megatrend and showing that with examples like Pinnacle, I think this is the right way to do it. Because if you follow the series of news releases from Bob Archer in Pinnacle, This is an educational journey of how to get from exploration, development into production. And he's fulfilling step by step. And therefore, I think that's a reason why I'm so close with Bob since now 20 years.

49:51 And now I'm following this big baby, which we will make to a big baby and feeding it along the way. Who doesn't love a well-fed baby? Bob, I'll give you the last word on mining equities. Yeah, I'm not sure where to go with that one. But yeah, you know, I think people are starting to get the message. You know, I don't recall in my 45-year career the amount of general talk coming from governments and mainstream media about mining. We're talking about critical metals and how they're all important for the AI build out which is so much the focus of investing these days. So you know I think it's starting to filter down to the retail level. But in our sector, the retail level has often been very focused on drill results and, and high grades. And, and so, you know, you can throw out those, those kinds of things. But, you know, people react on those, they trade on those, but they don't necessarily step back and try to understand the context.

51:12 You know, what do these numbers actually mean? Do they mean anything at all? You know, and where's the company going and so on. So, you know, I think we still need to bridge that gap and get, you know, as the guys are saying, it needs to be a bit of an education to let people understand, you know, how we get from those high-grade drill results to a production decision and, you know, and why that's important and all the steps along the way. So, you know, there's very much an educational process to be had there and is needed. And, you know, as Michael said, that's something that I always try to get across to people and get them to understand, you know, context is everything when it comes to that.

52:04 So it's super important. So I think right now it's just we're seeing sentiment play out a little bit with the downtrend in metal prices, but that can pick up very quickly with an uptick. And I expect we'll see that in the not too distant future. Great. Based on the feedback of people who wrote in before the event, I know there's a lot of bullion and ETF traders in the audience today. Ronnie, my question to you is, as somebody who's in fund management, what's the case for adding equities to your portfolio right now rather than just trading gold and ETFs, GDXJ, etc.? You mean mining equities? Yeah. I would say, you know, what we're doing now, for example, is we're writing put options to collect a really nice premium and just to also make use of that volatility in the space and perhaps pick up some high quality names at even slightly lower prices. So this is our strategy.

53:07 Then we've put in some stink bits at lower levels because I think that over the next couple of weeks, obviously, volume will be very, very low. And we all know that the volume in the mining space is an issue. And for us as fund managers, it's not easy to navigate in such an environment. So my kind of game plan is, again, we've got very high cash allocation. We're doing our homework now. We're talking to management teams. We're screening the news. We're screening reports. We will, over the next couple of weeks, probably over the summer time, we will increase our allocation.

53:54 And I think you just see, if my assumption is correct, again, yeah, if we're in a bear market, then yeah, we'll probably have a hard time. But if my assumption is correct that we're just taking a deep breather over the course of this secular bull market, then I think it's a great opportunity. And sentiment-wise, we had a couple of days where, for example, the bullish percentage was at all-time lows. So therefore, I would say it's a very skewed risk-reward profile at the moment.

54:40 Why do we buy the single stocks in the mining space and not just an ETF and a GDX or a GDXJ? It's quite simple because there are lots of names that we don't like in those indices that don't fit our criteria, the quality that we want to have in our portfolio. That's basically it. I appreciate that very much. Bob, I want to ask you one question about recent news because I know this week, actually I believe just Monday, you announced that Aromat Capital Partners has come on as the lead project financier with up to $5 million USD in non-equity financing for Alpachurro. Why, just for folks listening in the room, why does landing a metals merchant like Aromet matter more than the headline dollar figure might suggest?

55:29 Yeah, Romil, it was a very significant milestone for us and it brings a few things. I mean 1, it brings a lot of credibility having a group like Ormet because I mean they are a global, you know, well-recognized and respected trader and I've dealt with them in the past. And so we've got a great relationship there. And it's, you know, through that relationship, having their confidence in our business model, our management team and and the project itself really means a lot to us. And just knowing that we have the ability to move forward to production, because you're right, the headline number is not huge.

56:17 5 million US is really all we really need to get this project into production. But I would rather do that through some kind of an offtake, a non-dilutive, non-equity type of financing and maintaining shareholder value rather than trying to raise 5 million US at current price around 10, 11 cents. That's going back to one of the earlier questions, these ups and downs in the markets can be tricky because, you know, you get caught at the wrong time and need to raise those funds. You know, it's not great for shareholders. So knowing that we can do that and sit down and work out some terms with a great group like Oromet is very, very significant and really gives us that confidence to know that when we need to spend some money for buying equipment, for extending the power line and doing the mine rehabilitation that the funds are going to be there. So it's a great, great event for us.

57:26 Oh, it's certainly good news. I was thrilled to see it this week. I want to give everybody last word. And here's where I'll end it for today. Imagine we're having this webinar in a year and let's say gold is testing its highs or gone well beyond into the more aggressive cases. What will have been the reason why? What will be a catalyst people should look for over the next year to say that gold will be pushing back towards those high numbers. Bob, I'll start with you, then go Michael, and we'll finish off with Ronnie. I think a lot of the things that have been driving gold and silver, I mean, they're slightly different, but in the last short while, haven't really gone away. There's all the uncertainties over geopolitics, macroeconomics, and then just maybe more so on the silver side, you know, supply demand equation and, and, you know, where all of that is going.

58:26 None of that's going away. And so I think that's really what's going to drive things over the longer term. And that's a I see that as a multi year trend. So I think it's hard to say what specific catalysts might be to see major run ups like we saw at the end of last year and into January. But a lot of this is just it's investment demand that drives those run ups, especially in silver. Silver is a much smaller market than gold, And it really doesn't take very much to drive prices either up or down. There's a lot of leverage there. But it's driven by investment demand more than anything else.

59:14 Thank you, Michael. I'll leave it to you for in a year, Canada Day 2027. What will have made gold and silver punch through the moon? I think it's what Bob said at the last thing, it's the investment demand, which is not yet there. I think the mass market is not yet involved in this trend. This trend is still in my mind in his kinder shoes. I think in particular, you know, I'm an equity person. I like equities. I'm not buying physical. I think there's a lot of reasons to buy physical, but I stay with my equity focus.

1:00:03 I invest in what I really know, where I'm really good at, and that's the selection of equities. And I think this needs to be, you know, much more, the educational part is a very important element that needs to be taught to the mass market and more, let's say more journalists need to pick it up, broader market, newsletter, not just the usual suspect companies and research houses and IR boutiques, but more the mainstream media. They need to write serious articles about it and this can drive the market. And then central banks will be joined by private investments. And I think these private investments, to be honest, I have seen that in the last 40 years, twice, these private investments can be so much bigger than any kind of institutional money you can imagine.

1:01:09 They will drive and they will run over everything. And then you will see a really, really big movement and the momentum getting into their play. Awesome, Ronnie, I'll give you the last word for your crystal ball gazing on gold and silver today. Yeah, well, I think my big question for the gold bears at the moment is How can a gold bear market start from high real interest rates? I think that really makes me very, very confident. So, I think the main drivers obviously will be a continuation of the debasement trade. From my point of view, that's a one-way street. There's just no way back on this track in our monetary system.

1:01:56 Then I think we will see, as I've said at the beginning, I think as we're seeing quite a disinflationary trend, I mean, who would have thought that oil prices would collapse that dramatically? There will be more leeway for central banks to actually reverse and lower interest rates. I think that, you know, 4th of July is very soon. We had an interview with Dr. Judy Shelton, who was suggesting gold-backed treasury bonds to re-establish trust in the US debt market. That might sound like a crazy idea, but I think that Donald Trump is quite creative and some ideas that sounded crazy were actually realized. So that could happen at some point.

1:02:51 And then I think we shouldn't forget that at some point when markets will probably return to sanity, there will be what Larry Lippard calls the big print. So central banks, if you have a look at the balance sheet of central banks, they have been quite conservative shrinking their balance sheets, But I think that's only temporary. I think they will, as soon as we've got more volatility and more stress in the financial system, they will print amounts of money that I think we all probably cannot imagine at the moment. And I think that the price of gold is already, it's kind of smelling that at one point there will be this big print. So again, this correction, it's a correction within an ongoing bull market.

1:03:45 A little bit similar like in the 1970s where we also saw a mid-cycle correction. But I think we're getting closer and closer to the lows of this correction. Appreciate it so much. And yeah, I'll leave us with the overwhelming sound of money printers as we wrap up for today. I know we've gone over time but Ronnie, Bob, Michael thank you so much for joining me I think this was an excellent conversation. I know there were so many people in the room really appreciate all your time I know we didn't get to every question I'll make sure we pass those along, get you an answer. And because there are so many of you, I do appreciate you all behaving. I like to say that when the audience is so large. But Ronnie, Bob, Michael, thank you so much for having this conversation today. I hope to talk to you all soon, at least in a year, so we can recap and make sure your numbers were all right.

1:04:32 Thanks a lot, Romeo. Thanks very much. Thanks, Romeo. Thanks a lot.