Rocks And Stocks News - Outlook 2025
Gold
Gold is in the earliest days of a renaissance as investors in the East and central bankers in the BRICS nations, and others, are loading up on gold. They have come to terms with the fact that the debt and fiat currency system is broken. Those in the West have yet to come to the reality that there is a Death Spiral of Debt and relentless devastation of purchasing power of their fiat currencies. Which is causing massive problems that will require a rebuilding of the entire economic system with an emphasis on gold being the foundation.
These issues started when Nixon took America off the Gold Standard. Which allowed politicians to create debt with no meaningful restrictions and they cranked up their fiat currency printing press to devastate the purchasing power of the US dollar. It is still the world reserve currency, but gold looks to take a run at it as it has surpassed the Euro to become the second leading reserve currency.
Investors in the East and central bankers in and outside the BRICS alliance are on the path to putting themselves on a modern version of the Gold Standard. They were forced into it after the 2008 GFC as they realized they held too much US debt and US dollars. This started them on the path of divesting their holdings of the US debt and US dollars then in 2022, 2023 and 2024 they amped it up and went on a gold buying spree.
Gold’s performance has been driven by a combination of the Death Spiral of Debt and the central bankers in the BRICS alliance buying. With Trump winning the election, and having proved he loves to create debt, the reasons to be bullish on gold are in place for 2025 to rival 2024 by setting a new series of record highs.
My speculation for 2025 is that gold will reach the $3500 to $4000 range this year.
Silver
Silver has remarkably bullish fundamentals. It is a monetary metal like gold, but has not really entered into the gold bull market, yet. Gold made several new record highs in 2024, silver is still a long way from its record high. This in itself is a powerful argument that gold is still in the earliest days of a bull market. In every past gold bull market, silver joins the party and starts significantly outperforming gold on percentage terms. That has still not happened.
It is somewhat surprising that silver has not yet joined the gold bull market party as it has been in a supply deficit for the past few years. A very big one, as physical demand has been around 200 million ounces more than physical supply. Key drivers of the deficit are that mine supply has been unable to increase, while demand has been very powerful from solar panels that are getting cheaper and a very good alternative energy source in several jurisdictions.
One of the reasons people feel that silver hasn’t been stronger is because investors are looking at it more as an industrial metal than a monetary metal. The deficit has been filled somehow, but it is unlikely that it can last much longer. Silver production from mining is around 800 million ounces, and with around a 200 million ounce deficit for the past few years, silver is ready for a massive move.
The bullion banks are the likely source of the supply that has filled the deficit, but they must be running that down to critically low levels. They are putting themselves in a precarious position with so much paper derivatives trading with diminishing amounts of physical silver to back them up.
At any point now, I could see us wake up to the beginning of a tremendous bull market for silver as it has one of the best setups I have ever seen in any metal.
My speculation on the price of silver in 2025 is that we will see it get well above $40 per ounce with a chance it could take a run at its record price.
Copper
Copper is the most critical metal in our electrified world. We constantly hear about alternative energy, the need to rebuild aging power grids in developed economies and build new ones in developing economies, electric vehicles, Artificial Intelligence and many other things that need massive amounts of copper. What we hear less about is where all that copper is going to come from to make all of these things work.
For the past couple of decades, new discoveries of important copper mines have fallen off a cliff. Most of the copper mines being depended on now were discovered in the 1980s and 1990s. It takes 15-20 years to find a copper mine and bring it into production. The supply chain is broken, precisely when it needs to be perfect in order to meet the near-term and long-term demand. It isn’t and it won’t be able to, which will drive the price of copper multiples from its current price.
Higher prices will help spur more exploration and new mine development, but it won’t fix the problem. It still takes massive amounts of drilling, years of economic studies and permitting, then billions to develop them and bring them into production. People may want to turn on the switch for all the electrical products, but turning on a copper mine is much more difficult.
Every major mining company has a hunger for more copper mines in their portfolios, but due to the decline in copper discoveries over the past couple decades, the copper cupboard is bare.
The broken copper supply chain is very bullish for the price of copper. My speculation for 2025 is that copper gets into record highs above $5.00 per pound and stays there for the foreseeable future.
Gold, Silver and Copper Stocks
Gold is on its way to resuming its important role as a key reserve currency and the key to fixing the unsustainable growth in debt and devastation of purchasing power of fiat currencies.
The economic world is on a path to a modern Gold Standard, countries and investors that understand what is happening and are prepared will be well positioned to protect their wealth and their purchasing power.
We are still in the earliest days of backing up the failing debt and fiat currency system and as more countries build up their reserves of gold, then we will see a transition to gold resuming its past glory as a key currency for international trade. It is the soundest money by far.
The powerful bullish trend in gold during 2024 has been very good for best in breed gold miners like our two top gold miner picks Agnico Eagle and Alamos Gold. They have significantly outperformed gold and most of their peers. So far, only the big gold miners have joined the gold bull market.
The same thing happened in the 2001 to 2011 gold bull market. First the major gold miners moved, then the mid-tiers joined in, followed by the new mine developers and finally the explorers with important discoveries. The gold bull market hasn’t really moved down the food chain yet, but 2025 is primed to be the year that it does.
I also expect to see silver and copper stocks join the gold bull market as well. When it comes to new mine developers and explorers with important discoveries, there is a very tiny menu for investors bullish on silver and copper to choose from. They are rockets ready to blast off.
Over the past several months I have been doing a lot of deep dives into projects of companies that I follow closely. The goal of this work is to prepare myself to do a series of deep dive video reports starting in the next few days.
I’ve been going over drill holes, maps, scientific papers, technical reports and discussing projects with geologists and company executives. My mentors in geology, geochemistry and geophysics have helped me over the years to be able to take highly technical information and present it in a way that investors that aren’t geologists can appreciate.
A couple of themes that I will be discussing in the series are where a company is in the Lassonde Curve as well as where they are in a gold, silver and copper system. Understanding these topics are a great way for investors to better understand the value proposition in a particular company.
As I have been doing my prep work, I have been overwhelmed at how much unlocked value I’m finding in several gold, silver and copper projects.
Digital Marketing For Miners
In addition to being convinced that there has never been a better time to be bullish on gold, silver and copper. There has also never been a better time for miners to promote their projects with some of the great digital marketing tools at their disposal.
The mining industry has a terrific story to tell and broadcast across the digital airwaves.
Without mining, nothing in our modern world gets made or operates. Although the mining sector is crucial for everything, it doesn’t get much help from the financial media and brokerage industry. Which puts the industry in the position that it has to take the storytelling bull by the horns and tell the story of how important mining is to the modern world.
Fortunately, the tools to do that are available like never before. Investors are on X (formerly Twitter) and Youtube consuming content and networking to learn about metals and mining stocks and then promote them to each other.
I’m seeing more and more mining companies that are embracing the digital marketing tools to help spread the word about the metals they are involved in and what their companies are doing to unlock shareholder value. This is a welcome trend, and I think it will only pick up momentum.
Another reason that I am so bullish on mining companies more aggressively using digital marketing tools are the analytics that the best websites provide. In advertising, a well known saying is, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." That is certainly true for print ads and television ads, but not true when it comes to digital marketing tools as they have backend analytics to track all the key engagement statistics.
It is also true for a traditional marketing method that mining companies have used for many years which are mining conferences. A couple of days ago I heard a great comment from a young mining executive. He said that he is only going to mining conferences that also provide video coverage of his presentation.
His reasoning was that he has plenty of great one to one meetings with investors when he goes to mining conferences, but is unsure of how much value that has for the money he spends. He added that if there are videos of his presentations, they can be consumed by many investors. It was music to my ears because I have been trying to get that exact message across to mining company executives for many years.
His company has a great project, and he does plenty of online interviews and can see the benefits from that in his stock valuation and trading volume. I hope more mining company executives come to the same conclusion.
The mining sector is crucially important as it provides the raw materials needed to make everything in our modern world. Plus, there are very compelling bullish arguments for metals and for the companies exploring for new discoveries, developing new mines and mining metals.
Miners have a tremendous story to tell and it makes me happy to see the industry more effectively using digital marketing tools to tell their stories. It will ultimately help the industry draw the attention it deserves for mining, metals and their companies.
Politics, Interest Rates, Stock Market, Bitcoin, BRICS, US Dollar
In my 2024 Year In Review report (you can read it here) I wrote about why I think the above topics are bullish for gold.
Politics
Where debt goes, so will go gold. Trump made a lot of campaign promises to get elected, but keeping them will be an entirely different matter.
His key advocate, Elon Musk, has talked a lot about out of control spending that could bankrupt the country. He is right, but getting politicians, including Trump, to slash spending is an insurmountable hurdle. Politicians on the left and right love spending and growing the debt which is why the debt to GDP ratio is so alarming.
America is the biggest economy in the world, but it also has a debt to GDP ratio climbing at an alarming rate and at a level that in the past was reserved for basket case economies.
Much of the spending is ingrained in the system, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Interest on the Debt and Defense consume more than what comes in from taxes. They are untouchable. Everything else the government spends money on pushes the deficit to over $2 trillion. Those expenditures are how politicians pay off their financial supporters and how they get rich in office from kickbacks.
Politicians on the left and right will fight tooth and nail against cutting any of that spending, and will have nothing to do with slashing them. We saw that in the recent funding battle to keep the government running. They cut down the pages in the initial huge bill that had bipartisan support, while keeping all the spending.
Even more telling about the spending that will happen during the next administration is that Trump wanted to eliminate the debt ceiling. He was and is a debt junkie and that certainly hasn’t changed.
He will cut taxes, without a plan to pay for them, only hoping that they will trickle down to economic growth. It didn’t work for Trump in his first term, other than to widen the gap between the rich and everybody else, and it won’t work in his second term. Other than to drive the debt higher.
He also wants mass deportation, while the economy needs the cheap labour from immigrants to keep it together. If he goes ahead with this plan, which his MAGA crowd is demanding, he will slow the economy, when it least needs it, and also drive up inflation.
Elon Musk and his fellow tech bros also need cheap labour from H-1B visas to keep their costs down and profits up. Musk’s support of importing tech workers while deporting others is a topic that is boiling over and will cause a huge chasm between his fellow tech bros and the MAGA crowd.
Trump talked tough about tariffs before and after the election, but if he goes ahead with them, another campaign promises the MAGA crowd love, he will cause more inflation. He may be able to fool voters into believing that foreign companies pay the tariffs, but the reality is that they pass those onto the consumers that want to buy their products. In addition to causing inflation it will also slow down the economy, when it is already on shaky ground.
The bottom line is that Trump will spend like never before, and likely run the debt up to $50 trillion by the time his second term ends. Plus, cause another wave or two of inflation. He said that America is headed toward a Golden Era, in that he will be proven right as his policies drive gold much higher.
Interest Rates
Bond vigilantes are worried about a second wave of inflation, as they are on a buyer’s strike and are driving yields up. Meanwhile, Powell is saying the economy is great, the jobs market is great and their interest rate policy is great.
Voters don’t agree with Powell, as they showed up on election day to voice their displeasure with jobs, the economy and inflation.
Voters and the bond vigilantes have it right, they have plenty of reasons to be concerned. Even the Fed policy makers are predicting that economic growth will be significantly lower than inflation. Months ago, Powell said he doesn’t see stag or flation, but if you pay attention to their forecasts for economic growth and inflation, they are making the case for stagflation.
The last time there was stagflation in America in the 1970s, it was very bullish for gold and it will be again.
The real economy is much softer than the government statistics suggest, and combined with Trump’s policies, it is likely to slow down to well below the target rate of inflation. Which means that the Fed will have to accept higher inflation and lower rates to spur economic growth.
This won’t be easy because the bond vigilantes aren’t cooperating. I see a few factors coming into play on interest rates in 2025.
The jobs market and economy are going to need lower rates to keep the, from declining into a serious recession or troublesome stagflation. In order for the Fed to keep cutting rates, they will need to get back into the QE business for two reasons. One is to manipulate the yields down, and secondly that as the bond vigilantes stay on a buyer’s strike, the buyer of last resort will need to get in and buy, buy, buy.
I suspect we will be hearing more about stagflation and QE in 2025, likely in the first quarter of the year. This will put wind behind the sails of the gold bull market.
Stock Market
The S&P 500 is priced for perfection and the risks of a correction, or prolonged market with a bearish bias are high.
Executives running the Wall Street stocks see the writing on the wall, which is why they have been selling aggressively into the strength. Warren Buffett has also been selling to build up the highest cash position he has ever had. In a market that is trading at a huge premium, he is unable to find value opportunities. He can’t even bring himself to buy his own Berkshire Hathaway because he sees that trading at a premium as well.
While Wall Street executives and Warren Buffet are sellers, the rest of the market participants keep driving valuations higher to valuations that are present prior to corrections.
The only reason that I am not arguing for a steep correction is because I doubt the Fed will throw Wall Street under the bus. Nonetheless, the risks of downside are much higher than the prospects for significant upside.
At worst, there will be a serious correction in the stock market in 2025. At best, it will be choppy in a sideways market with a bearish bias. I think the latter is more likely than the former.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme wrapped up in a mania. It is reminiscent of the Dotcom bubble before it burst.
We will know the Bitcoin mania is over when it trades below the average cost of mining it which is around $75-$80k per bitcoin mined. And when it trades below the average price that buyers paid since the Bitcoin ETFs came out, which is around $65k.
While all the Bitcoin bulls believe it can only go up to millions per Bitcoin and Michael Saylor (its biggest pumper) says sell everything you have and borrow whatever you can to buy more Bitcoin. I see that there is a potential for it to implode.
What the Bitcoin bulls don’t seem to understand is that it doesn’t come from the Bitcoin factory in their fantasy land. The backbone of the system are the Bitcoin miners that mine to make new Bitcoins and also process the trading transactions.
If the price of Bitcoin goes below the average cost of mining, then the high cost miners are in trouble. If it goes well below the average cost of mining, then the entire system breaks down and the price crashes.
Bitcoin recently topped at over $100k and it looks like the bubble could be ready to burst. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have pulled investors attention away from gold, silver and the stocks in those metals. In 2025, I expect to see those trends reverse.
BRICS
Central bankers in the BRICS nations want to own less US debt and US dollars, while also want to own more gold.
They are concerned about the weaponization of the US dollar and want an alternative to it that gold is perfectly suited to be. Not only as a reserve currency that is the soundest money as it has nobody printing debt and fiat currency around it. Plus, it used to play an important role in international trade, and once they get their gold reserves high enough, it will again.
Their actions to load up on gold is a clear sign they aren’t fond of the entire debt and fiat currency system. Nobody can blame them because debt is in massive supply and fiat currencies are constantly destroying purchasing power.
Gold is at record highs against every fiat currency precisely because it is the soundest money and has been doing its job to fight inflation and protect wealth. Investors in the East and central bankers in and outside the BRICS nation see the writing on the wall and it is a when not if scenario when investors in the West see it as well.
The BRICS nations have been buying gold aggressively over the past few years, and everything is in place to see them continue that trend in 2025.
US Dollar
The USD index has been on a run since before the election when it was trading in the same direction as yields. Then it went into overdrive after Trump got elected on the hopes that his policies will be bullish for the USD.
Now the USD index is looking extremely stretched and ready for a significant correction. As I discussed in the section above on the Fed, I think they will need to cut rates to protect the economy, the jobs market, as well as Wall Street and ultimately get back into the QE business to protect the bond market because the bond vigilantes are on a buyer’s strike.
None of these issues will be bullish for the USD and it is heading for rough waters in the early part of 2025 and throughout the year. Which is another bullish argument for gold.
In Closing
As I was writing the 2024 Year In Review report, it struck me as to how many bullish factors are in place for gold’s performance to rival 2024 in 2025. When I add it all up, there has never been a better time to be bullish on gold and I have made some of the arguments about why I think gold can do even better in 2025 than it did in 2024.
Even more compelling, are the arguments to be bullish on best in breed gold miners, developers with high-quality gold mines and explorers with important discoveries.
All the best,
Allan Barry Laboucan
