Gold & Silver Have "Stratospheric Upside" | Andy Schectman live Q&A

**Adam Taggart** (0:01)
And we should be live. Welcome to Thoughtful Money, everybody. I'm Thoughtful Money founder and your host, Adam Taggart. I welcome you here to a special edition of Thoughtful Money's podcast. We are joined today by Precious Metals Expert, Andy Schectman. Andy, how are you doing?

**Andy Schectman** (0:19)
I'm doing great. Thank you, Adam, for having me. I hope you're doing well also.

**Adam Taggart** (0:23)
Thanks. Total pleasure to see you. I see you there in beautiful South Florida. It looks gorgeous there. Are viewers who are in more northern climes are probably very jealous at the moment?

**Andy Schectman** (0:33)
Yeah, a little bit of construction and banging and sawing and drilling going on inside, so I figured I'd bring it outside. And sorry if I'm making anyone jealous. Remember, I paid my dues. I lived in Minnesota for 50 years, so a little bit of warm weather is something that's easy to get used to, that's for sure.

**Adam Taggart** (0:54)
I think you've earned it and same deal coming here from Northern California after having grown up in New England for half my life. So yeah, I feel like I put in my stripes too. All right. Well, look, lots to talk about, Andy, and I've got some questions prepared for you, and then folks will open it up to live Q&A from the audience here. So make sure that you have a question for Andy, you ask it there in the group chat, and I will be pulling from that in the second half of today's conversation.
And you're seeing the sausage made in real time here. You're seeing Andy in his backyard. You're seeing me straight out of the shower, so you'll get to watch my hair drying in real time, which I apologize for everybody. That's not going to be a pretty sight. But Andy, we are talking in, since you and I last talked, gold has reached an all-time high. I guess first question for you is, I know you have expected gold to do well over time. How surprised are you by how well gold has done in the short term here? Did you think we'd get up to close to $3,300 this fast?

**Andy Schectman** (2:00)
Look, I've been conditioned for so long to expect the other shoe to fall that it is somewhat surprising to see how fast it has gone higher. But I think markets go higher to the upside than anyone really ever thinks possible. And if you take a step back and you are really being honest with yourself, ask yourself, why would the most powerful bank in the world in 2019 reclassify gold as the world's only other Tier 1 reserve asset and along those lines? Why would the most well funded and well informed traders on the globe, the central banks, go on a repatriation and a buying spree since 2017 that the world has never seen before? Why would that continue unabated? And bring it closer to home. Why would the United States become net importer since November of the world's only other Tier 1 reserve asset?
And when we see the countries around the world that are voraciously accumulating gold, there's talks of it being pegged to a new system, as we were told by Delma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil and the head of the new development bank, that they've agreed in principle to a new settlement currency called the unit, which is 40% gold-backed and redeemable upon demand. And everywhere we look, from accumulation to repatriation to reclassification, to slow moving higher, or even Judy Shelton, who you interviewed, who has told me, it's flat out, Trump is going, by her belief, will issue gold-backed treasuries next July, 2026, the 250th year anniversary. You put all of these puzzle pieces together, in and of themselves, each one is significant, and put them together, and it's almost impossible to not expect gold to go much higher. So yes, on one hand, as a guy who's been doing this since I was 19, for the last 35 years, I am surprised that it's moved in the manner that it has, as fast as it has. But when I take a step back and look at all of the pieces that are coming together quite eloquently, and outside the purview of the mainstream, mind you, which gives me more confidence that this is the right path, because the insiders never want to be too transparent about the direction that things are moving. Yet they're positioning, as if that is the direction that they're moving. To me, it becomes, well, yeah, that is pretty convincing that maybe, indeed, that is where we are heading. Quite frankly, I would be, without being completely honest, I would say that it's going to go higher than people think. You even got Goldman Sachs or UBS, one of the two coming out and saying, yeah, you could actually see $4,500 gold by the end of this year, if things get bad in the bond market with the basis trade or whatever it is that could trigger that. Raising their low-end projections to north of $3,500, yeah, I think perhaps we're going to see gold outperform people's expectations, mine included.