Gold Expert Projects Surge Past $5,000 Mark

**Tim Elliott** (0:00)
This is the Morning Drive, it's Mira Business FM. Good morning to you and a very warm welcome all the way from the United Kingdom to Jeff Rhodes, the MD for Business Development, Middle East and Asia for Monetary Metals. Jeff, it is nice to see you.

**Jeff Rhodes** (0:13)
Very good morning to you.

**Tim Elliott** (0:15)
How are you this morning? How is the mood this morning when recording this or streaming this live as well, the day after Argentina beat England to get through to the World Cup final, 2026?

**Jeff Rhodes** (0:29)
It would be strange, actually, if we started our chat about gold, not talking about soccer. It was Premier League before, now it's the World Cup. Did you watch it, Jeff?

**Tim Elliott** (0:40)
I did.
I kind of... It's terrible. I hate saying this as an English person. I have to admit to that, but I kind of lost interest in the second half and stopped watching for a while. Then I went back and it was 2-1. I thought, oh, well, time to go to bed.

**Jeff Rhodes** (0:57)
Well, the best team won. There's no doubt. They did.
You know, fair dues. I thought that Argentina were fantastic and England won. I think we had about 10 defenders on at the end.
You need to score goals to win football matches, Tim. You know, I know that much about soccer, but it was very good. And I would say congratulations to the US, Mexico and Canada for a really truly superb World Cup. It's been brilliant. And we have the top two teams in the world in the final.

**Tim Elliott** (1:46)
Yeah, it's kind of the way it should be, isn't it? It's funny, we talked kind of on and off about the World Cup with people that come in. We've talked about it.
Most of the guests that we have here mention it in some way. But the one thing you do notice is before the World Cup, the press, the media are always looking for the extra bits of stories, how it's not going to work. And it seemed to work pretty well. And the stadiums in the US in particular are fantastic.

**Jeff Rhodes** (2:14)
Well, it's incredible. And it's clearly the way to go in our part of the world, or in the Middle East, because obviously we have the heat of the summer and so on. But the stadiums, I have stadiums in the US that were air conditioned stadiums.
It's amazing. It does. Of course, it is possible to do it. I mean, I love tennis and watching Wimbledon. Wimbledon was transformed when they had a roof, and you could include it. And, you know, England really in June normally rains a lot. June, July, it rains a lot. But, you know, Wimbledon solved their problem with that. And Wembley, of course, does have, there does have a roof.
You would have thought that going forward, the big stadiums in the UK probably should be, should be enclosed, or the ability to enclose the stadium. And then you can have a lot more events going on. So, yeah.

**Tim Elliott** (3:30)
Do you know, it's a really good point, actually. And the obvious argument is the cost is a very difficult thing to do logistically. It's very expensive. There are zoning regulations. There may be particular planning permissions, whatever it is. But it's such a big, most of these teams are such huge teams. It's such a big sport.
And if you could do what your team have done, Tottenham Hotspur, for example, can use the ground for different things quite easily. You know, famously, you've got that kind of extra pitch underneath, you know, that slides in and out. You can see, you can make a pretty strong business case for it.

**Jeff Rhodes** (4:07)
Well, you definitely can. But Tim, I think, you know, looking at this, wouldn't it have been better to have a roof?
So that you'd be there. I mean, it's not, it's not. I mean, the Americans have shown you can do it. But anyway, but the one thing that hasn't got a roof, of course, is gold.

**Tim Elliott** (4:30)
Oh, you are so smooth at times.
And you know what, actually, I wanted to go back to basics with you a little bit today, because to kind of look at where we are in the market in the current, in the current cycle, we're halfway through the year. Gold began this year at an all time high. It's kind of spent six months coming back down to earth in a way. One of the sharpest corrections in Gold's modern history probably. But lots of counterintuitive stuff going on that you and I have talked about quite a lot. So central banks are still buying. Silver's on a roller coaster. Wall Street can't agree whether the next stop is $3,000 or $6,000.