|
Perspective
By Rich Checkan
Where is the bottom for gold?
I honestly do not know. We may have just seen it below $4,000. Or we may dip a hair further from here.
In either case, gold and silver at these levels are screaming buys. If you are not accumulating here, you are making a mistake.
I have read an awful lot of opinions out there from financial gurus who clearly do not understand the role gold plays in your portfolio. They are singing at the top of their lungs about how they predicted gold’s demise from the highs at $5,500.
They are not seeing this as a much-needed correction. They see this 25% drop in gold as the end of a short-lived and laughable run by gold.
Of course, they also called for gold’s demise when gold tripled in price over a few short years. They have been wrong since the dawn of this new millennium – twenty-five and a half years now – as gold’s performance has dwarfed the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq.
These short-term traders do not understand gold’s role at all.
Here is how the U.S. equities indices performed against gold and silver this millennium through the end of the second quarter…
DJIA – Up 361%
S&P 500 – Up 415%
Nasdaq – Up 535%
Silver – Up 995%
Gold – Up 1,289%
And these numbers were taken after the Dow had its best first half of a year in 5 years, the Nasdaq had its best quarter since 2020, and gold and silver had their worst quarterly drops in a decade!
Gold and silver have been mopping the floor with the U.S. stock market since 2000. There are actually only a handful of stocks that have performed exceedingly well. The rest drag down the index, and that is what most investors have… a balanced portfolio with returns far inferior to gold and silver.
So… when you hear financial gurus pontificate that gold is a barbarous relic and is not worth holding in your portfolio, simply know that they do not understand what gold does for you.
It Is Not All About Profit
Now that I have shown you that gold and silver have resoundingly beaten the equities indices for a quarter of a century, please understand that the roles of gold and silver have nothing to do with profit. I only shared that to poke holes in the weak arguments of gold’s naysayers.
Gold is always about wealth preservation.
Unlike gold’s naysayers, I do not see the ownership of stocks or precious metals as a zero-sum-gain. I see them both acting to secure your financial health.
Everybody is different. They have the number they feel comfortable with for a variety of reasons. When it comes to gold allocation, for me, that number is 10% of net worth. It has served me well over the past thirty years.
I buy it. I hold it. I maintain that allocation as my net worth varies.
I will only sell that gold if I have a financial crisis. Until that time, gold is sitting there, collecting dust, and quietly doing its job.
It is preserving purchasing power, in a liquid form, for a financial crisis I hope to never have.
As our Congress overspends year after year, Treasury expands the money supply to cover the shortfall… growing the debt to the current astronomical level of $39 trillion. But since there is nothing of value behind the creation of the new dollars flooding the economy, every single dollar in circulation is diluted.
It is “worth-less.”
But gold holds its purchasing power. It cryogenically freezes that purchasing power for you… for your future.
And it only takes a little bit of gold to insulate your entire portfolio… increasing overall return while minimizing overall risk.
Profit Is Not a Four-Letter Word
While my primary reason for owning gold is wealth insurance or wealth preservation, I am not opposed to making a profit in gold (and especially silver) when the market is ripe to do so…
… like it is right now…
… like it has been since the central bank gold buying began in 2022.
In conditions like these, I allocate an additional 10% to 15% of investible assets (not net worth like my wealth insurance) in gold and silver for profit. And I personally weight this allocation toward silver.
Silver is more volatile than gold, but the lows tend to be lower than gold’s lows, and the highs tend to be higher than gold’s highs. This presents an out-sized profit potential in silver for those who buy well.
I already shared that I believe now is the time to buy well… after the worst quarterly performance in a decade for gold and silver. I am not alone either. There are some financial gurus out there who do understand the role of gold and silver.
Good friend Tom Dyson is one of them. Recently, he fielded a question from a paid subscriber of Bonner Private Research. If you are not receiving this subscription research, you should strongly consider it.
Here is what the subscriber asked…
“I wonder where the floor is for gold and silver, and really for ALL metals. Is there sufficient blood in the streets? Every Bonner reader must be wondering the same. Are you on the case? Love to read your thoughts.”
Here is Tom’s reply…
“The gold price has now fallen 28% from its January 28 high. Today it traded below $4,000 an ounce, making a fresh 7-month low. Silver is at $59, down 49% from its peak on January 29. Sentiment is maximum bearish now, which suggests we’re near the end of the correction. Whether the correction ends now or in a few weeks, this is the time to start buying. If you don’t already own enough gold – and I know there are many subscribers who feel this way – this is the time to accumulate again. It’s a bull market. Prices have corrected from their recent highs, and sentiment has been fully washed out. Sooner or later, even if it takes a couple of years, the metals will be setting new all-time highs again. “Accumulate on weakness” is the new instruction for the metals.”
Thanks to our friends at Bonner Private Research for permission to re-print Tom’s pearls of wisdom.
And… I could not agree more.
If you are on the fence about buying gold and silver here, it is time to get off the fence. If you are in the wrong yard – like so many clueless financial gurus – jump the fence and join us in this yard.
Buying gold and silver well… here… is the best way I know to Keep What’s Yours!
We would love to help you consider what is best for you. Take advantage of a free consultation to look at all your available options. Send us an email. Call us toll free at (800) 831-0007.
It is time. We look forward to hearing from you.
—Rich Checkan
Editor's Note: This article was originally published in Porter Stansberry's Daily Journal on June 23, 2026. To subscribe to this free daily newsletter, click here: https://join.portersdailyjournal.com/ The guest writer is a longtime Porter & Co. friend – Garrett Goggin, who founded Golden Portfolio. Garrett will discuss how stablecoins will enable the flow of investor money into gold.
Feature
It’s Go Time For Gold
By Garrett Goggin
How Crypto And The Clarity Act Will Make The Metal Shine
The next war isn’t being fought with guns and bombs.
It’s being fought in the financial markets every day, right before our eyes. The U.S. hasn’t made many friends around the world with its decision to invade Iran – what it’s done to the global energy markets will last months. But these nations are not fighting back against the U.S. on the battlefield. Instead, they are hitting America where it hurts them the most, in the wallet. The U.S. dollar is feeling the pain… and the winner from it all is gold.
Mainly driven by the petrodollar system, the dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for over 50 years. Millions of barrels of oil are traded every day – and if you want to buy or sell oil, you need greenbacks. Oil sellers recycle dollar-denominated oil sales into the petrodollar system by purchasing U.S. Treasury debt. It’s a closed-loop system. Demand for the U.S. dollar remained high, and the dollar remained the world’s reserve currency.
But now that’s over.
The U.S. petrodollar system is on the ropes, and right behind it is the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The rest of the world no longer wants to finance the U.S. bombs that drop on their heads.
• In April, major oil producer the UAE exited OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) and moved its oil trades away from the dollar and toward local currencies
• Saudi Arabia has begun to accept non-U.S. dollar payments from non-U.S. countries
• Iran is charging tolls (“maritime service fees”) in Chinese yuan and Bitcoin from oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz
• The BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South America – are developing their own digital currency to reduce dependency on the dollar
The U.S. is already $39 trillion in debt and owes over $1 trillion in interest per year. The only way out of that deep debt hole is through growth, which is simply printing more money and devaluing the dollar to make the debt easier to pay back. It’s been the same game since 1971 when U.S. President Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard.
The U.S.’s competitors in foreign trade have figured out the most efficient way to destroy America is to stop buying U.S. debt and let the U.S. collapse internally. Look at China’s U.S. Treasury holdings – they have dropped from $1.2 trillion in 2017 to about $600 billion now.
China is the U.S.’s major trade partner, and it tapped out years ago, choosing to buy gold instead. In fact, at the end of 2025, world central banks now hold more of their reserves in gold at 27% of reserves versus only 22% in U.S. Treasuries.
As our trade partners stop buying U.S. debt, the government itself will have to step in and fill the demand gap. We at Golden Portfolio expect it’s just a matter of time before the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve once again begin some form of quantitative easing (“QE”) – unleashing more liquidity into the system to ignite commercial lending.
To avoid interest rates from rising, the government will institute Yield Curve Control – higher rates will increase the already excessive interest cost and dig the U.S. deeper into debt. But artificially-capped rates would make U.S. bonds uninvestible. The U.S. would be the only buyer left for its own debt.
Clarity Act Opens New Doors For Gold
G7 member banks used to buy most of the Treasuries, but they are backing away. The U.S. sees the writing on the wall – that’s why the Clarity Act will likely pass the U.S. Senate in July. The Clarity Act is a last-ditch effort to boost demand for U.S. Treasuries through cryptocurrencies – by enabling the use of stablecoins within bank accounts, allowing consumers to choose between traditional U.S. dollars and Tether’s USDT.
Tether’s USDT is a stablecoin – which is a cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar. Issued by the company Tether Limited, it functions as a digital dollar on the blockchain, bridging the gap between traditional finance and the crypto market. We believe Tether’s USDT serves as a gateway to gold, potentially triggering a major shift of capital out of dollars and into gold, as the integration of crypto technology facilitates this transition.
With Tether, all you need is a cellphone and one of thousands of digital wallets to store USDT. One cell phone tap and a transaction is complete – transferring value from your digital account to someone else’s digital account. Transactions are completed without any bank or financial intermediary. These small transactions have driven Tether to be one of the world’s top 10 buyers of U.S. debt.
The Clarity Act will enable the use of stablecoins in bank accounts. And it inherently favors Tether – whose USDT is the world’s largest stablecoin. If it passes, U.S. consumers will now have a choice of which currency to use – Tether’s USDT or traditional U.S. dollars. The problem is stablecoins – including Tether’s USDT – are prohibited by law from paying any interest to their users.
Because Tether USDT doesn’t pay any interest, it’s simply a value placeholder – and so nobody is going to hold Tether over any significant time frame. Tether corporate receives all the interest on its $400 billion in assets under management.
But the Clarity Act will result in the largest bank run ever out of dollars and into gold, enabled by crypto. The combination of gold, the world’s best store of value for 1,000 years, now with crypto’s instant transfer and frictionless exchange, makes gold the ultimate currency. Gold has never been able to be used as a medium of exchange before, until now.
Tether’s product Tether Gold is a digital token that represents physical ownership of gold, where one token corresponds to one ounce of physical gold stored in secure Swiss vaults. It combines the traditional safe-haven benefits of gold – such as a hedge against inflation – with the 24/7 liquidity and transferability of blockchain technology. Tether has been stockpiling gold – it is buying two tons of gold per week, over 100 tonnes in 2025, making it the top gold buyer in the world in 2025. Golden Portfolio expects Tether to keep Tether Gold outside U.S. compliance and control to retain gold’s status as a bearer asset safe from seizure from any government.
The USD Is Done – It’s Gold’s Time
The U.S. dollar is in trouble. Gold is going on a run that goldbugs have been waiting 50 years for. It’s truly gold’s time.
Editor's Note: Frank Holmes is the CEO of U.S. Global Investors —a company that produces quality analysis concerning gold, precious metals, natural resources, and emerging markets—in conjunction with his work as a fund manager. Frank is a long-time friend of ours, and we've chosen to share his article originally published June 12, 2026. For more articles like this from Frank and other leading experts, you can subscribe to the U.S. Global Investors newsletter here.
Hard Stuff
Gold Looks Oversold. Is This the Contrarian Moment Investors Have Been Waiting For?
By Frank Holmes
Gold has always had a way of testing investors’ expectations.
Just when the headlines appear most supportive—inflation is rising, geopolitical risk is escalating and confidence in fiat currency is being questioned—gold can suddenly move in the opposite direction.
I get it. To many investors, this behavior can feel frustrating.
But for contrarian investors like you and me, these moments can also create opportunity.
Take a look at the chart below. Our 60-day percentage change oscillator for gold, measured daily over the past five years, shows the metal has moved deep into oversold territory. Historically, readings near these lower bands have represented moments of liquidation and negative sentiment. But they’ve also often marked periods when investors should begin paying closer attention.
When investors believe rates will stay elevated, yields become more competitive with gold, which pays no income. That can create short-term pressure on bullion, even when the long-term case remains intact.
There’s also the matter of liquidity. During moments of market stress, investors sometimes sell what they can, not what they want to. It can be liquidated to cover margin calls, rebalance portfolios or rotate into assets that appear to offer more immediate protection, such as energy stocks during an oil shock.
In other words, short-term selling doesn’t necessarily mean the gold thesis is broken. As I see it, it simply means investors are repositioning in a volatile environment.
The Fundamentals Remain Intact
There are many reasons why I believe the longer-term case for gold remains strong.
First, global debt levels remain historically high. The U.S. continues to run large fiscal deficits, and there’s little political appetite in Washington for meaningful curbs on spending.
Second, central banks around the world continue to view gold as a reserve asset. The World Gold Council (WGC) reports that institutions resumed net gold purchases in April after selling a sizeable amount the previous month.
And third, inflation remains a risk. Even if headline inflation cools temporarily, the structural forces behind higher costs haven’t disappeared. Supply chains remain fragile, while energy markets remain vulnerable to geopolitical disruption.
The Contrarian Setup
A real contrarian opportunity exists when sentiment is negative, but the fundamentals remain intact. The yellow metal appears to meet those conditions today.
The standard deviation chart above gives us the technical signal. Gold is oversold on a 60-day basis relative to its own history. That suggests the recent move may be extended.
On the other hand, the macro backdrop gives us the fundamental support. Inflation, deficits, geopolitical risk and institutional buying remain in place.
The Broader Hard-Asset Story
Gold isn’t the only hard asset worth watching, of course.
Across commodities, supply constraints are becoming more visible. Take aluminum. The Midwest Premium has become a growing share of the all-in U.S. aluminum price, reflecting regional tightness and the higher cost of securing physical supply. Aluminum is currently trading around $3,500 per metric ton, but when you include the historically high premium, U.S. buyers are having to pay over $6,000, according to the Wall Street Journal. For American manufacturers, this affects everything from cars to aircraft to defense systems and infrastructure.
Doctor Copper also remains central to the global economy. The red metal is essential for electrification, power grids, data centers, defense applications and industrial growth. Even if parts of the energy transition slow, the world still needs more electricity, more transmission capacity and more critical infrastructure.
Fitch recently raised several near-term metals and mining price assumptions, including copper and aluminum. For copper, the 2026 price assumption has increased from $11,500 to $12,500 per metric ton. Aluminum’s rose from $2,900 to $3,400 per metric ton.
That’s consistent with what markets are telling us. Supply growth is constrained, permitting remains difficult, inventories are tight and geopolitical risk is adding a new layer of uncertainty.
What Investors Should Watch
For gold, I would watch three key factors.
The first is real interest rates. If markets begin to believe the Fed is ready to start hiking, gold could respond quickly. CME’s FedWatch tool shows that the probability of rates staying pat at the Fed’s June 17 meeting is near 100%. But looking ahead to the end of the year, the probability of rates rising a quarter to half of a percentage point climbs to 41%.
The second is ETF flows. Global gold-backed ETFs saw 2% net outflows last month, according to the WGC, but flows can reverse when safe-haven demand returns.
The third is the miners. Gold equities often lead or confirm turns in the price of bullion. If miners begin to outperform, that could signal renewed investor appetite for the sector.
In short, gold looks oversold right now, at a time when the hard-asset case remains strong. For contrarian investors, that combination deserves consideration. As many of you know, I’ve long believed that investors should consider a 10% weighting in gold and gold-related assets, with 5% in physical gold or bullion-backed exposure and 5% in high-quality gold mining equities.
Editor's Note: Jim Woods is the editor of Investing Edge, Bullseye Stock Trader, Fast Money Alert and his latest publication, Crypto & Commodities Trader. A self-described radical for capitalism, he celebrates the virtue of making money from his Southern California horse ranch. You can read more of his work here.
The Inside Story
Greenspan’s Greatest Work Happened Before the Fed
By Jim Woods
The death of Alan Greenspan brought out volumes of really thoughtful reflections about the former Federal Reserve chairman and his legacy. One article that I liked quite a bit and that I recommend was by Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal, titled, “Greenspan Left a Lasting Mark on America—and Me.” I particularly liked Ip’s personal touch here, as it reminded me of my approach to writing.
And in the spirit of personal reflection over Greenspan, allow me to tell you how I become acquainted with the man’s thoughts even before he became Fed chair in 1987. In the spring of 1985, just months before I began my undergraduate work at UCLA, I was introduced to the writings of Ayn Rand. I started with her seminal novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” which sent me into my bedroom for about two weeks with the sole mission of devouring the gargantuan philosophic adventure novel, one with a brilliant plot and an even more brilliant world view.
Reading “Atlas Shrugged” was then the most-important event of my life, and thinking back on it, it is the event that shapes my intellect most to this day. Now, devotees of Rand’s work know that she didn’t just stop with brilliant fiction. In fact, she wrote non-fiction books and articles on aesthetics, morality, epistemology, social issues of the day, and perhaps most importantly, on capitalism, which she considered to be the “unknown ideal” in the realm of politics and economics.
Her book on this: “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” was a collection of essays by Rand on the virtues of laissez-faire capitalism and how a free society functions best. But Rand also included several contributors to this collection of essays, and here is where Alan Greenspan comes in.
Greenspan penned three articles that became part of “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.” These articles included, “Gold and Economic Freedom,” where he argues that a gold standard is vital for a free society. In the article, Greenspan argues that a fiat currency allows governments to dilute savings through inflation, concluding that gold serves as the ultimate protector of property rights.
From this article, my young intellectually curious persona sent my mind down the path of gold advocacy, and that’s a position I’ve held ever since. And while Greenspan later chose to try and work from within the fiat currency system as Fed chairman, I am firmly convinced he knew that the ideal monetary system was that of the gold standard, however distant that might have been in terms of a practical reality.
President Reagan congratulates Alan Greenspan during his Fed Chair swearing-in ceremony on Aug. 11, 1987.
Another article he penned for “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” was titled, “Antitrust.” This was based on a 1961 paper that Greenspan wrote, and it argues that antitrust laws harm consumers by punishing successful, efficient companies. He asserted that true harmful monopolies are only created through government subsidies and regulations, and not as a result of free-market competition.
Right again, as today’s antitrust laws are punitive, restrictive, wielded as a weapon for lawfare warriors, and just simply anathema to a free society.
Finally, there was “The Assault on Integrity,” an essay that critiques government regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Greenspan argued that government regulation destroys the financial value of a company’s brand reputation. His view was that in a completely free market, the financial necessity of maintaining a good reputation naturally protects the consumer better than bureaucratic oversight.
Now, I read these three articles when I read “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” around the summer of 1986, or thereabouts. About a year later, on Aug. 11, 1987, to be exact, Alan Greenspan became the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a position he held for nearly two decades before his final day at the helm on Jan. 31, 2006.
I recall reading Greenspan’s essays with a sense of clarity and admiration. He was a strong explainer of ideas and their consequences, ideas that I hadn’t really been acquainted with until then. Later, when I was exposed to the obligatory university litany of Marx, Hegel, Kant, and Keynes, I recall being intellectually armed to confront these bad ideas—and I got that intellectual ammunition from Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan, along with Ludwig Mises, Milton Friedman, Adam Smith and other freedom-oriented minds.
Interestingly, later in my journey as a free-market advocate, I was fortunate enough to collaborate closely with Dr. Mark Skousen, whose work in defense of liberty and free markets carries on the spirit and substance of these iconic intellectual figures.
If you’ve never read “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” do yourself a favor and buy it today. It will give you a whole new perspective on the meaning of freedom and free markets, and how capitalism isn’t just the most-efficient, most-practical political philosophy, but why it’s also the only moral political system.
So, thank you, Alan Greenspan. Your mind helped illuminate mine, and your contributions to free market thinking were, in my view, your greatest work. And though your work at the Fed strayed far from your Ayn Rand roots, your intelligent hand did help steward a nation through a whole lot of tumult, which is something not many associated with big government can claim.
|