Dave Iben: The World Is on Sale While America Trades at a Premium | #652

David Iben (0:00)

Since I was born, I think the money supply has gone up 111 times, and the debt's gone up, I think, 135 times, i.e. the dollars lost more than 99% of its value. And every one of them was a bubble, because bubbles always happen around the real deal. I like the saying, if we're all playing poker, and we look around the table and see who the sucker is, and we can't figure it out, we're probably the sucker. Two months in Brazil, the number of people I met that were bullish on their stock market, zero, zero. So I was right and still got wiped out.

Meb Faber (0:33)

Welcome back y'all. Today's guest is David Iben, Co-Chief Investing Officer at Kuprenik Global Investor, which manages over $10 billion. David, welcome to the show.

David Iben (0:43)

Thank you. Great to be here.

Meb Faber (0:44)

You're kind of a world traveler. Where do we find you today?

David Iben (0:47)

Only Tampa, Florida. But yes, I have been to 108 countries, I think it is. It's a great world out there.

Meb Faber (0:53)

You travel though, like you spend a lot of time on the road. You almost like HQ de-camp every year. What's been on the passport in the last year or two?

David Iben (1:02)

So three weeks ago, I got back from Brazil, where we spent the summer doing research. Perfect timing. Everybody's worried. Oh, what about the crime? I think we had 20-some people there for a couple months. No crime, no pickpockets, nothing. So a little different than what we're led to believe and a lot of bargains.

Meb Faber (1:20)

Here we are in 2026

It feels like the word cloud, everyone talking about central banks and printing money. But in a world of digital abundance and the infinite, can't print a gram of gold or the next uranium mine. Does scarcity still matter in 2026? How are you thinking about it?

David Iben (1:42)

That's the key question. It's all about looking for misperceptions.

And I came into the business almost 45 years ago, and it was the opposite of now. All people care about was scarcity. Everybody wanted to own oil. Natural resource is gold. I think they added up to about half the index. Everybody knew you did not want to hold paper assets. Bonds were considered certificates of confiscation. Stocks had gone down for 15 years into a highly inflationary. And so in real terms, it left a lot of money. And nobody could imagine inflation ever cooling off and interest rates ever going below 15, say.

You know, probably the, and this was 2021, but we're still pretty much there where people can't imagine inflation being a long term thing. They can't imagine interest rates going up. They don't care about scarcity whatsoever. They don't care how much money is printed. They don't care how much debt is going up. I did some calculations since I was born. I think the money supply has gone up with 111 times, and the debt's gone up, I think, 135 times. And we're not 100% times, i.e. the dollars lost more than 99% of its value. And as you would expect, things that can't be printed have gone up a lot in price. So, gold's gone from 35 to 4,000 something, and it's doing what it ought to do. But I think people still don't appreciate it. If you look at oil and gold and copper and everything else, it's still just a single-digit percentage of the indexes. So, that's pretty good. They, I think, underappreciate the scarcity. And then, another thing we like is that they not only underappreciate it, they misanalyze it. You can have 40 years of copper underground, and they set this elaborate cash flow model. And if the company announces they're going to push their production back by three, four months, they kill the stock. The value of 40 years with the copper has not dropped one spec.

And so, that we think is great. And another thing we think is great is any other industry on earth, people assume that the dollar loses value. They do discounted cash flow. Fine. The dollar loses value over time. Only in commodities, gold, oil, copper, do they fix it to the dollar, and then assume the commodity drops in price every year.

Why is it that it's the only industry out there where the dollar gains and these drop? So that means the longer live the reserve, the cheaper they will sell it to you. And so we've been able to take advantage of that for many years.

Meb Faber (4:38)

The natural resource sector in general, when it comes to commodities, commodity equities, I mean, you're just referencing what they used to call Dr. Copper, which, I mean, who knows by the time this publishes, all time high is around seven bucks. But Americans, and in particular, when we review portfolios, they tend to be light real assets. That's one area almost universally. You go to some other countries, because of their background, whether it's Canada, Australia, India, China, they maybe have a higher allocation. Maybe talk to us about the whole complex. Where do you find opportunity? What are you looking at?