Be A Gold And Silver Bull Or A Victim Of The Death Spiral Of Debt And Broken Global Debt And Fiat Currency System

Gold has recently gone through an extremely bullish basing period over the past few months with around a $200 range, hitting the low end of the range in the middle of May. Since then it has made a series of higher highs and higher lows and is now breaking out to new record highs.

Other tremendously bullish trends are that silver has made an important breakout above $35 and the gold stocks (from the majors down to the explorers with important discoveries) have gained confidence.

In 2024, the gold bull market was a stealth bull that didn’t get a lot of attention from generalist investors. But, the performance of silver and the gold stocks is an important indicator that the generalists are starting to join the gold bull market.

Many are talking about gold rallying due to the Israel and Iran conflict. But, gold basing and then hitting the low of the basing range and rallying off of it with higher highs and higher lows happened well before the conflict.

Gold doesn’t need a war in the Middle East to drive it higher. The primary reason it is in a bull market is due to the Death Spiral of Debt and cost of servicing the debt that will only get worse with Trump’s big spending bill.

The US debt market, Wall Street stocks and the US dollar all have issues. Which could cause them all to drop which usually doesn’t happen because foreign and domestic investors will pick one or more of them to park their money.

On Friday, I was watching CNBC and a good amount of the commentary was talking about bonds being down and yields up. What confuses the commentators is the old narrative that US debt is the premier safe haven that investors flock to when there are military conflicts. The times they are a changin’ and gold has emerged as a much better choice.

It is fair to say the rally in gold on Friday was due to the Israel and Iran conflict, but again, the basing and the rally off the mid-May low of the basing range has nothing to do with the conflict. That is all about the Death Spiral of Debt and cost of servicing the debt made worse by the big spending bill driving the rally.

The conflict is adding wind to the sails of the recent rally in gold. I do find it intriguing that investors flocked into gold instead of US debt and Wall Street stocks, which is an impressive shift.

The reason US debt is losing its position as a safe haven is because the US debt has extreme supply and could have a problem with attracting enough buyers to help keep the house of cards from falling.

I do find the action in gold on Friday important because it looks like a change of actions by institutional money. They are the ones with the money to move markets and the fact that they didn’t want to park short-term money in US debt or Wall Street stocks and instead made the flight to quality into gold could have big ramifications well beyond military conflicts.

It doesn’t look to be a one-off event as the fundamentals of the US debt market, and other important debt markets like Japan, are in flux. I’ve been saying for a long time that the debt and currency markets are broken.

The US and global debt is not nearly backed up enough by gold. Plus, the constant destruction of purchasing power of fiat currencies is a one-two punch combination that is leaving gold as the best choice for investors. Which is why gold is trading at record highs against practically every fiat currency.

Another traditional safe haven are Wall Street stocks, they didn’t like the escalation of the military conflict either. They are already priced for perfection, while CEOs can’t give guidance due to economic uncertainty. At their current valuations combined with economic uncertainty, they could easily head into a significant correction. Putting another pillar of American exceptionalism on thin ice.

The US dollar is already in a correction that will likely take it much lower. If US debt and Wall Street stocks are under pressure the US dollar will be as well.

The three pillars of American exceptionalism have cracks and key reasons they could all enter corrections. In the meantime, gold is doing its job as the best place for investors to protect their wealth and purchasing power. This recent conflict between Israel and Iran only reinforces that reality.

For those that are selling in May and going away until Labour Day, will miss a fantastic move in gold and gold stocks. Silver has joined the gold bull market and is primed to go over $40 and head toward its record high.

The best play for investors are in the gold and silver stocks because they are lagging behind the gold bull market and primed to play catch up.

I’m focusing my attention on companies with plenty of catalysts and stories that are not being appreciated for what they have. In a rising gold market, in which generalist investors are starting to position themselves in gold stocks, I see the junior gold miners, developers with high-quality projects and explorers with important discoveries as the place for exceptional performance.

Next up is a group of picks that have great projects and plenty of catalysts coming out soon. They are presented in alphabetical order.

Catalyst-Rich Picks

Amex Exploration is a Quebec based gold mine developer that I have been watching closely since their discovery hole at their Perron project. Since that discovery hole, their high-grade zone called the Champagne Zone has advanced in an impressive way. It has unique continuity of the high-grade gold in an orogenic gold system. Almost always those kinds of systems have high-grade in fairly small lenses, but they have such high-grade and low mining costs that they are free cash flow machines. Goldcorp’s Red Lake mine and Fosterville in Australia are perfect examples. What makes the Champagne Zone unique is that it starts at the surface and has exceptional continuity of high-grade beyond 1000 metres of depth. You just don’t see that continuity in these kinds of systems, which is why a renowned expert in orogenic systems wrote a peer-reviewed scientific paper about the Champagne Zone. Recently, they announced an updated resource estimate for the Champagne Zone in which they increased the inferred to measured and indicated. Usually when a project converts from inferred to measured and indicated they don’t get a jump in the size and grade, but they got a 173% increase in the resource and a 43% increase in the grade. The Champagne Zone now has 831k ounces of gold measured and indicated with a phenomenal average grade of 16.2 g/t of gold. Plus, 128k ounces is inferred with an average grade of 9.83 g/t of gold. Rarely do you see such an increase in ounces and grades when converting from inferred to measured and indicated which shows that the Champagne Zone is an important high-grade gold discovery. I love their plan to move to bulk sampling because in these high-grade systems the bigger the sample the more representative. I’m confident they will have two pleasant surprises when they do the bulk sample, the grade will be higher than from the drill holes and they can actually make significant money off it due to the extreme high-grade gold. Concurrently, they are working on a toll mining PEA for the Champagne Zone that I have high hopes for as well. The gameplan is to start with toll mining and then use the free cash flow from that to build their own processing facility. Ultimately, I believe Amex’s Perron project will be a near-term high-grade gold mine, in one of the best mining jurisdictions worldwide in Quebec, that will be in production for a couple decades or longer.

Borealis Mining is an emerging Nevada focused junior gold miner. Recently they started contract mining of the stockpile of material at their Borealis Mine. That will keep them busy into 2026, then they will be gearing up to stockpile material from their permitted pits and process that material. In the meantime, they are drilling for new deposits to mine. I’m confident that as they ramp up contract mining and then start pulling material from the permitted pits that they will have plenty of important news. They are a relatively new public company that is not well-known yet, but are primed to grow substantially. They have a tight share structure with key shareholders including Rob McEwen and Eric Sprott, plus they have an exceptional team and board of directors. Ultimately, I see them becoming a much larger Nevada gold mining junior that can grow into a mid-tier.

Goliath Resources is my highest conviction gold explorer with an important discovery. It is in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia. Recently, they started their 2025 season and got off to a great start by logging core from past drilling in reduced intrusion related gold (RIRG) dykes with impressive visible gold. They had hit the dykes in past drilling but because the conventional wisdom for exploration in the Golden Triangle was that the Eocene dykes were not considered prospective for gold, they didn’t pay much attention to them. That has changed for the Surebet discovery due to the fantastic work being done on the project at the Colorado School of Mines. In a recent report, they made exciting observations. They dated the series of stacked, gently dipping veins and the vertical RIRG dykes cutting through them and determined they are very close in age. Plus, they studied the gold in the veins and dykes, and found two different temperature regimes and that the dykes have fine-grained abundant gold and the veins are more coarse-grained. Impressively, the veins and dykes have that visible gold in cross cutting zones that are being called Goldilocks zones because everything is just right. They also believe that there is a magmatic intrusion not far below the veins and dykes that is the source for the entire gold mineralizing system. In their recent news release, they showed images of the core that hit the RIRG dykes and I saw something that I don’t think many picked up on. I saw visible gold in the quartz, at the contact of the quartz and the granitoids beside them and in the granitoids. Often in these kinds of systems, the gold is only in the quartz, to have it at the contact with the granitoids and in the granitoids is indicative of a very powerful gold mineralizing system. To date, the drilling into the RIRG dykes is at the top of them, where they have found abundant fine-grained gold, and I think that as they follow them deeper toward the source they will see a transition to coarse-grained gold. That is exactly what happened in the stacked, gently-dipping high-grade gold veins. I’m very much looking forward to the 2025 drilling season due to multiple targets to drill. They will keep expanding on the known stacked veins and the vertical RIRG dykes. Now that they have learned a lot about the RIRG dykes they can plan holes that intersect them at optimal angles. Plus, they will target more Goldilocks zones, of which I believe there will prove to be many. Additionally, they will drill deeper to target the source of the entire gold mineralizing system. I have high conviction that the 2025 drilling season will be the best ever and that the discovery will keep getting better with several pleasant surprises.

McEwen Mining has an impressive value proposition with several catalysts to unlock value and I think it is very cheap at its current valuation. If I look at them as a junior gold miner with a world-class copper kicker, I think McEwen Mining is extremely undervalued. I’ve recently been studying the valuations of gold miners based on market value per 100k ounces of production. The valuation for that production is currently $800 million plus. McEwen Mining currently has around 130k of production with a $513 million valuation. Which brings me to the conclusion that the gold mining side of the business is significantly undervalued and investors get the copper development project for free. Conversely, if I look at them as a copper development company with a junior gold miner kicker, it is also very undervalued. Their Los Azules project in Argentina ranks as one of the top 10 copper development projects for size and is also in the lowest cost quartile. Currently, the value for the copper in the ground is trading at a very cheap valuation for pounds of copper in the ground based on historical metrics. At the PEA stage it is undervalued and they are currently working on a Feasibility Study that should be out shortly which could very well unlock shareholder value. So, if I consider them as a copper development story, they are undervalued and the junior gold miner side of the business is free. I think that the reason for the disconnect is that they are a high-cost gold miner, but not all high-cost gold miners are created equal. With gold where it is, the high-cost gold miners are seeing healthy margins. When I look at high-cost miners I look for those that are able to increase their production and bring down their costs, which is what McEwen Mining is doing. Another reason for the disconnect is that Los Azules is owned by a private company, McEwen Copper, of which McEwen Mining owns nearly 50%. This makes the price discovery of the value for McEwen Mining’s interest in Los Azules challenging. Another catalyst they are working on is taking McEwen Copper public on the NYSE, which will make it much easier for those interested in investing in a copper development company to invest directly into that asset. Plus, it will help investors in McEwen Mining calculate the value of what that means for their interest based on the percentage of McEwen Copper owned by McEwen Mining. I have a scheduled interview with Rob McEwen on June 23rd, and my goal is to discuss the value proposition for McEwen Mining with him plus of course talk about his views on gold, copper and the mining stocks.

Vizsla Silver is a silver miner unicorn in the making. They have a tremendous project in Mexico that they are moving toward production in the next couple of years. One of the key reasons that I like them so much is the data in their PEA that sets them apart from their peers. If you use current silver and gold prices, the IRR is well over 100% which on its own makes them unique. The Capex is around $200 million and the payback is less than 6 months which is also unique compared to their peers. They have almost half of the Capex in the bank and they are trading at several times the Capex. Which means that they don’t need a bigger partner and can easily develop it on their own. Usually, juniors need partners to develop mines because they are strapped for cash and they have cheap valuations which makes their cost of capital to build very high. Vizsla Silver doesn’t have those issues. My last pick that I thought could turn into a silver miner unicorn was Silvercrest. They had tremendous success at their Las Chispas mine which I covered closely in the reports from when they had a very cheap valuation until they got taken over by Couer Mining. They started production with $100 million in debt, and due to the high grades and low costs were a free cash flow machine that paid off all the debt rapidly and built up nearly a $200 million warchest of cash, gold and silver by the time they were taken over this year. They built the mine during Covid and high inflation, it was built on time and on budget, which was no small feat. The guy who built Las Chispas is the COO of Vizsla Silver, so they are in good hands to build their mine. I recently did an interview with their CEO, Michael Konnert, that you can find here to learn about the company.

In Closing

Gold broke out above $2000 in early 2024 and since then has gone from the lower left of the chart to the upper right. Along the way it made a series of record highs and is perfectly primed to do the same in 2025 and end the year at $4000 per ounce or higher.

Recently, silver, plus gold and silver stocks have joined the gold bull market which is confirmation that we are still very early in the gold bull market.

The last great gold bull market lasted for around a decade from 2001 to 2011 which was driven by the emergence of China and India who were buying a lot of gold. This one is being fueled by the Death Spiral of Debt, an alarming cost of servicing the debt that will only get worse with Trump’s big spending bill. Trump and the GOP are so opposed to fixing the debt crisis that they want to raise the debt ceiling by $4-5 trillion or eliminate it completely. Which is clear evidence that the current gold bull market will last longer than the previous one.

Another great gold bull market was in the 1970s after America went off the Gold Standard. Which caused inflation that turned into stagflation, then hyper-inflation followed by a recession. Although Nixon said it was only a temporary measure, it took the shackles off the Washington politicians to spend like never before, and not long after Reagan turned the country from the largest lender to the largest borrower, which was his greatest regret. Politicians after him, on the left and right, didn’t learn from Reagan’s greatest regret and kept driving the debt higher to the point that it is now unsustainable as is the cost of servicing the debt.

Going off the Gold Standard was a colossal economic mistake that has caused the Death Spiral of Debt that is now much worse due to the cost of servicing the debt. It has destroyed the purchasing power of the US dollar and even worse many other countries followed suit. These actions have broken the global debt and fiat currency system.

Next, the central bankers of the world will need to back up their debt with gold in a much more significant way. Evidence that the fiat currency system is broken is that gold is trading at record highs against practically every fiat currency, including the world reserve currency.

Investors have only two choices. Be gold and silver bulls, including in the stocks, or be victims of the Death Spiral of Debt and broken debt and fiat currency system.

All the best,

Allan Barry Laboucan

Disclosure

Allan Barry Laboucan is a shareholder of all the companies mentioned in this report. Amex Exploration, Borealis Mining and Vizsla Silver are sponsors of Rocks And Stocks News, content creation about them is for the benefit of the companies. Sponsors also benefit readers and viewers of the reports as it makes content creation possible for no charge to the Rocks And Stocks News audience.

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Founder’s Background and Expertise

Allan Barry Laboucan, the founder and owner of Rocks And Stocks News, has extensive experience in the mining sector, beginning in 1993. Since 2005, he has been reporting on the sector. He has worked with talented geoscientists in geology, geochemistry, and geophysics throughout his career in mining. Allan applies the expertise gained during his career to evaluate sponsors and sector picks for reporting purposes. Whether a company is a sponsor or a sector pick, it undergoes the same rigorous review process, with coverage focusing on significant news or developments. Allan may hold shares in companies discussed in the reports, whether they are sponsors or picks, and he discloses such holdings when relevant.

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