The Grant Williams Podcast Ep. 116 - Simon Mikhailovich

**Grant Williams** (0:10)
Before we get going, here's the bit where I remind you that nothing we discuss should be considered as investment advice. This conversation is for informational and hopefully entertainment purposes only. So while we hope you find it both informative and entertaining, please do your own research or speak to a financial advisor before putting a dime of your money into these crazy markets.
You're about to listen to a special preview edition of The Grant Williams Podcast, featuring my great mate Simon Mikhailovich of The Bullion Reserve. With things going kind of crazy in the precious metal space, it felt like it was a very good time to bring Simon on, because he is just about as sane and sensible a voice as you'll find anywhere in the precious metal space. This conversation is an example of the many extraordinary discussions in which I regularly engage with a series of smart, insightful and experienced people across the financial, political and business spectrums. So if you'd like to become a part of this growing community of subscribers looking to gain an edge as we navigate what is an increasingly turbulent world, then why not head over to grantwilliams.com and find out more about both my multiple podcast series and my written work, Things That Make You Go Hmmm, a monthly letter that analyzes important issues affecting the world around us, providing clarity, insight and understanding in an accessible way. So with that out of the way, please enjoy my conversation with Simon Mikhailovich.
Simon, my dear friend, what a pleasure to see you. It's been a while. It's been a while. You've been busy?

**Simon Mikhailovich** (1:51)
It's been a while. We've been busy, not as busy as we should be, but we've been busy.

**Grant Williams** (1:56)
What a week it's been. It really has been a wild week. I don't think we've seen anything, perhaps the old grey-haired guys, like you and I weren't expecting, given what's happened in the last couple of months, but let's take this opportunity to take a step back, and with all the fuss, all the noise around gold and silver in recent weeks, let's trip it back to the basics. Let's talk about what's really going on with precious metals rather than the gold price, because that's the thing that everybody gets wrapped up in and everybody's focused on, but that's not really what's going on. So when you think about where we are and what's important and what's really transpiring here, how do you frame it when you talk to your clients?

**Simon Mikhailovich** (2:40)
Sun Tzu has this great line, Strategy without tactics is the longest path to victory. Tactics without strategies is a noise before defeat.
When things like what happened this week happen, I think the most important thing is to just do a reality check. It's just to step back from the whole thing and say, is it crazy or is this real or what am I not seeing or understanding? And revisit first principles as to what we know, what we don't know, what we should know and so forth. So in that sense, I think what, and it's amazing that most people in the West still haven't gotten to this framework that we're about to discuss.

**Grant Williams** (3:19)
No, no, no.

**Simon Mikhailovich** (3:20)
So what I think is important is to first, I know that most of you listeners probably understand this and know this, but I think it's important to repeat. What is exactly gold? What exactly is gold? What is the attraction? Why demand for it in sometimes, it sometimes increases and it sometimes declines. And then if some people are running towards gold, what are they running away from exactly? And what is causing them to do that? What is the motivation? And look at the sort of the mindset and the framework from which they're exiting, if you will, when they're going into gold. And then take a brief look at current events and just illuminate what are the dynamics that we're observing and how they relate to potentially what is going on with demand for gold. And then where does it stand relative to potential demand? Where gold might be going? Where this crisis might be going? And so forth. And so in that sense, the first very basic thing is what is exactly gold? Peter Schiff did a interview with Tucker Carlson just recently, and they traded some barbs about certain things and they agreed on certain things. But I think what's missing is a lot of people are making a lot of declarative sentences. This is this and this is that. And therefore, this is going to happen or that's not going to happen.