With Trust Breaking The World Over, Quality Collateral Is Now Key | Jonathan Wellum

**Jonathan Wellum** (0:01)
We're going to need more silver, we're going to need more copper, and when it comes to gold, this is part of our monetary system. I think it's becoming integrated back into our monetary system. I'm not saying we're going to go to a gold standard, but I don't have to tell any of your listeners that when you see all the central banks hoovering up the gold, and this become a larger asset than the US treasuries in terms of their reserve assets, then this should tell you something that the world doesn't trust each other. And when you don't trust somebody, you look for collateral.

**Adam Taggart** (0:37)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money founder, Adam Taggart, and your host today. I'm very pleased to be talking here with Jonathan Wellum, who is the founder and CEO of Rocklink Investment Partners. Rocklink, as many of you know, is the Canadian financial advisor that is endorsed by Thoughtful Money.
I like to get Jonathan on as regularly as I can to give us an update, not just about giving us a perspective outside of the US, but also to get the latest on what his firm is focused on, because they are a very good financial advisory team. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us.

**Jonathan Wellum** (1:15)
Thank you very much, Adam. It's wonderful to be back on the program and talk to your listeners.

**Adam Taggart** (1:20)
All right. Well, a lot of things I'd like to dial through with you here today, including an interesting mind tour that you took recently.
If we can, let's just start, it's been a little while, I think, I've asked you this general question, but let's just start with your 30,000 foot macro view. As you're looking at the markets right now, what are some of the key trends, some of the key price actions that you're looking at right now that are potentially affecting how you're going to manage the portfolio?

**Jonathan Wellum** (1:50)
Right.
I think if I've been on previous shows, I've talked about these Ds, the Ds that we like to look at. That would be digitization, which again, it continues to be a major area. But one, we'll talk, I'm sure, about the risks there. There's a lot of uncertainties, but there's certain-

**Adam Taggart** (2:09)
You'd throw AI into that, correct? Yes, I would.

**Jonathan Wellum** (2:11)
I would throw AI into that, the whole revolution, the technological revolution, the AI, the data centers, the electric vehicles, robotics, all of that I would put into that whole digitization.
The debt, we've talked a lot about the debt. That has to be front and center from our perspective, even though a lot of people say, well, it hasn't blown up yet, so why worry about it? Well, that just means we're that much closer to a problem. And so we think you have to invest cognizant of the debt issues.
The continued debasement trade in currencies, it's inevitable. The pressure that is on our currencies, because of the monetary and also fiscal policies of our governments, they just continue to spend recklessly. De-globalization, that continues to be a major, major trend. That whole reshoring and the tension between China and the United States, that's not going away anytime soon. And the two wars are only exacerbating that situation. And maybe, you know, I don't have to tell you about, you know, more Chinese interest in Taiwan and so forth. So I mean, that's that whole critical minerals, protecting ourselves, not having these dependencies on the global economy the way we have over the last three, four decades. That's a big trend. The demographics also are a big trend. And the last, I'd say, are dear valuations. I mean, the market is not cheap. It's expensive. And so if you're a value investor and you're trying to protect capital and you're trying to grow it prudently, you're focused on valuation of these businesses and trying to understand them so that you can actually put a rational value on the businesses. And so there's a lot of hot businesses out there right now, which are, in our view, very, very difficult to value and understand where they're going to be three to five years from now. So those are some of the, you know, the big picture kind of trends that we are focusing on and then trying to find businesses within those longer term secular trends that are positioned well, trade at reasonable prices and are pretty defensive. Like, in other words, they have robust business models that aren't going to disappear overnight. And that's very important for our investors because, as you know, we're focused investors, so we typically have, you know, 18, maybe up to 25 companies. So all those companies have to pull their weight. We don't want too many of them underperforming or that won't be good for our investors.