Precious Metals Market Premiums, the COMEX and the Macro Picture
Commodities / Gold & Silver 2020 Apr 28, 2020 - 05:48 PM GMTBy: The_Gold_Report
Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable speaks with Andy Schectman, president of Miles Franklin Precious Metals Investments, about the present situation with physical precious metals.
Maurice Jackson: Today, we're going to discuss precious metals premiums, the COMEX and the big picture. Joining us for a conversation is Andy Schectman, the president of Miles Franklin Precious Metals Investments.
Andy, investors in physical precious metals are upset with high premiums over spot for precious metals. Can you discuss the reasoning behind the high premiums, the supply chain, and just a number of the intangibles that really go into what's causing premiums to soar at records highs above and beyond the spot price?
Andy Schectman: I believe we are experiencing a realization of a very large fear that I have. And let me try to explain. I think most of the readers will have noticed the tremendous volatility in the stock market recently where the market may be up 1,000 or 2,000 points one day and down 1,000 or 2,000 points the next day.
When you look at the pre-market trading often and you'll see things like Caribbean Cruise Line and Norwegian Cruise Line. Now, that to me, stinks of the Fed coming in and buying up the stocks as they said they would do via (MOPE), I call it Management of Perception Economics.
When the stock market isn't crashing, it's not the end of the world for all of us locked in our homes not working, at least we can feel the world is normal when the stock market is going higher, quite frankly. I think it's very telling what the Federal Reserve is doing because it is supposed to be a reflection of the economy and the forward guidance of the economy.
But suffice it to say or let me say I digress. But let me tell you what I think is happening. That volatility is very scary to me for one reason. And if we look at what's happened since 2008, the Federal Reserve has made money very easy and has flooded the world with dollars and low interest rates in an effort following the Keynesian economic model to spur economic activity.
The Keynesian economic model that the West it finds itself under is one based upon consumption, debt and spending. When you shut off the consumption and the spending and all you're left with is a mountain of debt, you have problems.
And one of the reasons why I think the Federal Reserve is trying to keep things together by buying up the stock market amongst many other things that they're buying these days, but suffice it to say, as the stock market moves up, what I believe we see happening is a culmination of 12 years' worth of easy money has inflated all of the asset prices.
And so, when the stock market moves up now, when people have already watched 35% of their wealth vaporize in a matter of 10 days earlier in the month, there's a great deal of fear and especially for the baby boomers. And what I see happening is a transition from asset price inflation, which we saw over the last 12 years in stocks, bonds and real estate, to price inflation.
We are witnessing it no better place than in the precious metals market. In other words, what I see happening is people, in particular the older people, who have made a lot of money over the last 12 years due to the Fed policy, that when the market shows any strength at all they're selling.
They're selling on strength, and they're coming out and now they have money to do something with, which will translate into price inflation, and you're seeing it with precious metals. In other words, you have a broken supply chain. You have a whole bunch of money chasing the items in the broken supply chain, pushing premiums up higher than I have ever seen in my 30-year career.
And I'm getting phone calls that go something like this. And by the way, in 30 years, I've never gotten any of these phone calls. But the call goes something like this. Mr. Schectman, I just cashed out of the stock market, I have $2 million to spend, what should I do? I'm hearing that every single day now repetitively. And I guess what I'm very concerned about is a tremendous amount of price inflation in this industry. Now the question becomes, is it too much or isn't it? And I don't know how to answer that simply to say this, if things don't change very soon, I am very, very, very certain that within a couple of months, there'll be nothing left in this industry for anyone to buy.
In 1980, the average allocation to precious metals was 8%; that was the last time we saw the Dow Jones and the price of gold cross at 800. Since then, the average allocation to precious metals amongst the United States portfolios is now 0.5%.
If everyone who had $100,000 were to pull just $2,500 out of their portfolio and buy gold with it, this industry would experience a fivefold increase in demand from what it already has right now. And within a few days there would be nothing left to buy.
We have a supply chain that from the very top is broken. Most of the mines across the globe or many of them are shut down. The refineries in Zurich are shut down. The Royal Canadian Mint and the U.S. Mint have had to close down operations.
So, you put it all together you have a tremendous amount of money fleeing financial assets and looking in search of somewhere safe. The first place they're looking at is precious metals. And that price inflation, which means that we have to look harder, search further, and pay way more money to get the product to retail buyers just to have something to sell is a problem the industry is facing right now.
Are we paying too much to buy it? Am I my charging too much to clients when we have to pay three, four times what I normally do? And the answer, as far as I'm concerned, is no. But the bottom line is unless things change, the price really doesn't matter. Investors should focus on the following: it's not about the dollar value, it's about having ounces of gold and silver. And if they cost more to buy now, I can only imagine what will happen if the demand continues to increase and the supply chain does not get fixed anytime soon. So that's the question that people need to ask themselves.
Yes, the premiums are high. I've been buying it every two weeks for 30 years and my last purchase of Gold Eagles was the highest I've ever paid in 30 years premium wise, but didn't bother me because what I see coming is a complete destruction of the supply chain.
And if that happens, then getting gold at any price will be next to impossible. So, that's the dilemma we all have to face. Is it going to get fixed anytime soon? If the answer is yes, then premiums will come down. If the answer is no, premiums will only go higher and then disappear altogether.
Maurice Jackson: I'm glad you referenced that because I think sometimes someone who's buying or looking to buy precious metals, they are forgetting that you and I are active buyers. We don't want to pay that premium.
Andy Schectman: No, we don't.
Maurice Jackson: In regards to premiums, readers may wish to consider the following: what can you buy that's below its 1980 high? If you put that into proper perspective, I'm referring to silver in this case. Even with the premium as it is, you're still purchasing below its 1980 high. That to me still is a great value proposition.
Andy Schectman: Well, I can't think of another asset on the planet you can say that about.
Maurice Jackson: If buyers factor in the aforementioned catalysts and are not satisfied with the premiums now, I can only imagine as things continue to progress this way a period of time, we will look back in 6 to 10 months from now and say premiums were low in April 2020.
Andy Schectman: I agree with you 100%, They say there's no bull market like a gold bull market for one reason, and that is that every other bull market appeals to people's greed. They want to make money. And very often it's conventional wisdom that when you double your money in equities, you pull your initial principal out and play with the house money that's smart, and I agree with that.
But in this industry, the higher the price goes only reinforces people's concern and fear and so nobody sells. We've done record volume of business over the past six weeks, nearly six months-plus worth of business. And in that time, there have been less than five people who have sold anything. There is no one selling anything. This is all people buying. And so, I'm concerned for the long-term viability if indeed this doesn't get better anytime soon.
Something we all need to consider. When we look to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the second wave killed six times as many people as the first.
There's a big push by a lot of people to get everyone back to work and get the economy going and I understand that. And, gosh, I would give up so much of everything I've done over the past six weeks, all of it if we could go back to normalcy and sit at a bar with a buddy and watch the NCAA tournament and I 100% mean that.
But the bottom line here is that if things don't get any better anytime soon, I am all about convinced that gold and silver will be near if not completely and totally impossible to find.
Interesting to note, this is not the first time that mints have not been able to meet demand. There have been several instances in my career when nobody was buying gold but we ran into major problems with the five major mints of the world, U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia and Austria, where they just could not keep up with demand. So things have the potential to get ugly really fast based on these demand levels. You start putting a lot of mainstream demand on this fear on top of that, and supply chain problems on top of that, and literally, there'll be nothing to get. And I'm concerned about that because nobody's selling product. I have to pay way more to find anyone who will be willing to sell it.
And when that ends, look, you've got mints in North America, the United States and Canada. Canada was shut down for two weeks and the U.S. mint is in New York. So, the potential of those all but just ceasing operation to me is fantastic; it could totally happen. So, these are real issues, let alone the infrastructure here in the United States, delivering packages into Seattle, into Manhattan. How does that work?
I'm not sure how this plays out. We've never experienced anything like this, nobody has. In 2008, when the precious metals markets behaved this way, premiums went to the moon, product disappeared, people were scared with plunging markets, the Fed stepped in, goosed the markets, lowered interest rates and flooded the market with money, and it should have stopped shortly thereafter but it continued unabated until now. I don't see a soft landing in this anytime soon.
And I guess I will just simply say that the premiums right now are not the issue. The issue is what makes this end? How does this end? When does it end? And if de-dollarizing and mitigating exposure to the dollar in the equity markets is important to people, if they're waiting for the price to pull back, waiting for premiums to come down, I think they're making a monumental mistake.
And I hope I'm wrong, I really do. Let me put through this way, if someone wanted to spend $10 million right now, and we are one of the only companies who has had product, I don't think we could place the order right now other than locking in the metal price on the COMEX market with futures contracts and filling it as product came in.
Now, that's almost embarrassing. We're a company that in a bad year does $200 million in sales. We did almost $100 million in sales in the last six weeks. So, I would say to you, what has been normal is no longer normal, and it's concerning me greatly.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of the COMEX, how does the COMEX play into this?
Andy Schectman: The COMEX is breaking. And this is another thing to be worried about. People always used to say the COMEX will default because of the rehypothecation. And the term rehypothecation, means that each bar is sold multiple times over to different people.
And the reason you could do that on the COMEX market is that most people don't stand for delivery. Almost everything is legitimate, hedge and it's cash settled. What happened for the April contract is really very enlightening and illuminating.
I think it could be the beginning of the end for the COMEX. Let me explain. Typically, 5,000 to 6,000 contracts stand for delivery out of all the contracts they have and the COMEX deals in hundred-ounce gold bars. So, that's still a lot of gold, 50,000, 60,000 ounces of gold that stand for delivery, that's a lot of gold.
But this time, it was 28,000 contracts, 2.8 million ounces of gold stood for delivery, and the COMEX market didn't have all the bars. And so, they changed the rules in midstream. Now, if I were one of those people that stood for delivery, I'd say, where's my 100-ounce bar that it says that I own?
Now, coincidentally, this is what the Hunt brothers did in 1980 when they realized there were more contracts issued than bars in the vault. But suffice to say what the COMEX did was they changed the verbiage saying, you may have to settle for a fractional interest in the 400-ounce gold bar, then those are traded in London.
London trades 400-ounce gold bars supposedly where there's more gold and a big stash, and Chicago trades 100-ounce gold bars. But the point of it is that when 28,000 plus contracts stood for delivery, many of them were not granted and it had to be settled in a fractional interest in the 400-ounce gold bar.
I'm not sure how they plan on doing that, cutting it with a saw or recasting it into 100-ounce bars. But when that happened, the two markets decoupled. And I have seen it over the last couple of weeks as the price diverged $50 an ounce.
In other words, COMEX says the price is $1,688. London says the price is $1,733, and London has the bars. And so, in reality, what that is saying is that the COMEX market is being exposed for being a fraud. And the price that they say that it is, which is, by the way, the world Western mechanism, the price setting mechanism of the West is being exposed for being a scam and not what it is.
Now, if I were a trader, I would suspect you'll see in the next delivery month, which I think is in June, I would think you would see a massive amount of people try to stand for delivery. And if that happens, my expectation is of force majeure and cash settlement.
And really the beginning of the end of the COMEX market, maybe you see price set at the Shanghai Gold Exchange, or maybe it moves to London, or maybe they just change the rules all over again and try to become a little bit more accurate with what's going on with the price. But anyway, the bottom line is the COMEX market is beginning to break and here's another reason to be concerned.
Maurice Jackson: Now, does that favor someone who currently owns physical precious metals right now?
Andy Schectman: Yeah, absolutely. Because right now, the actual price of gold is $1,702.40. If you go to Kitco, it will still show it at 1,687, or somewhere in that neighborhood. The point of it is that London is telling us right now that the price is higher than what COMEX is saying it is. And if COMEX doesn't have the gold and London does, then what is the real price?
Maurice Jackson: Interesting dynamics. Now, we started off at the 10,000-foot level with premiums and then we moved up to the 20,000 with the COMEX. Let's take it now to the big picture to the 30,000-foot level. What can you talk to us about the big picture that you see? Because you're a big thinker. You're exposed to a lot of information that many of us wish we only had access to. So, just give us a glimpse of what you're seeing.
Andy Schectman: Well, I'll tell you, I'm here again. And I don't mean to be a purveyor of doom and that's why I wanted to preface things by saying I don't speak this way, but I'm very concerned. I'm working 20-hour days since mid-February because I really believe this is an important time to be working hard and helping people.
And the thing is this, the Western economies are based upon a Keynesian economic model. Now, gold bugs would prefer a model that was Austrian based, which is you build a society like a brick house with investment, savings and reinvestment.
And if you do that, it's got a solid footing, like the three little pigs. Our house in the West, Keynesian model is based out of straw, it is based out of debt, consumption and spending. And there's record debt over $285 trillion in global debt, which doesn't even take into account the derivatives, which are a big problem all together.
The Keynesian based system works just fine when the engine of growth is working, you can go into debt. And as long as you're able to finance that debt and service that debt, everything is fine. And look around you, no one really owns anything anymore.
It seems everyone's got auto debt and student debt and mortgage debt and credit card debt. And well, that's how you get record levels of debt. And not to mention the national debt of $24 trillion, the tremendous amount of stimulus that the Fed is putting in and the Treasury is putting in, pushing our deficit to $7 trillion this year.
A trillion seconds ago was nearly 32,000 years ago. So, we have so much debt that is being carried by spending and consumption throughout the entire Western world. If you shut off spending and consumption, lock it in its house for two, three months at a time, that debt collapses upon itself.
And what makes me very, very nervous is that we're entering a period of time where that debt cannot be serviced by anyone. And so we are heading toward what appears to be a massive depression. What frightens me is what I started out with earlier, big money pulling out of the stock market, looking for a safe place to put their funds, and it will translate into price inflation across the board.
It may manifest itself in precious metals first, but you'll see it in things like food and medicine and things that we need will become harder to get in a compromised supply chain with tons of money looking for somewhere safe to put it.
Not to mention the tremendous amount of monetization of assets and printing of money by the Federal Reserve, which will find its way into the real economy creating a hyperinflationary scenario, which I am afraid will turn into hyper-stagflation, which has little or no economic growth characterized by rising prices.
It's a horribly painful experience. It's a depression meeting hyperinflation. No one has a job. No one has any money. Everyone has debt that's collapsing upon itself. And the big money that is pulling out of the collapsing equity market is looking for somewhere safe to put it.
They'll buy up everything they can in this compromised supply chain, and all of that money will push the prices of the few items available too high for most of us to afford. It's very concerning, Maurice. This is very concerning. It's no joke. This is different than anything we've ever seen before.
So, the bottom line is, I really hope I'm wrong. But in that scenario, it doesn't get any better before it gets probably a whole lot worse. And I think that all we can do right now is trying to mitigate our exposure to the dollar, go to cash, get out of harm's way of the stock market.
Remember that the second wave of Spanish flu killed six times as many people as the first wave. So, if people are jumping back into the market and they sounding you're all clear this spring, God forbid, we see it come back stronger for the second wave. You can only imagine what that would do to the stock market. And I think that what this is doing is breeding a whole generation of people who are terrified.
The stock market is based on spending and consumption. And if spending and consumption die, all you have is world-record debt that will collapse. And with that, our standard of living will as well. So, I hope I'm wrong, but something tells me I'm not and that's the reason it doesn't matter what the premiums are and what you're paying, you need to get out of harm's way.
One should really consider buying gold and silver. It should have been bought before when it was cheap, but it's not anymore. And now, you have to ask yourself, is this the beginning of a new extended reality or isn't it? And if it's not, sit back and wait for the correction and the lower premiums.
But if you think that it is, it's time to move now. And if nothing else, get out of harm's way of financial assets and go to cash. To me, that is the best advice I could give anyone because the traditional wisdom of waiting for this to correct, you have time on your side, don't worry, it always comes back. The old term normalcy bias, this isn't normal anymore. This is not anything like we've ever experienced ever, ever, ever before. All of the corrections and problems we've seen before were issues of liquidity. This is anything but a liquidity problem. I don't care if they drop bundles of $1,000 bills out of a helicopter. It's not going to stop people from being terrified to go and spend it.
It's not going to open up the small businesses or the restaurants or the movie theaters or any of the things that once were and we took for granted; it's going to take a long time to get back to that. And until that happens, our economy is in big trouble. And to expect it to go back to normal anytime soon I think is foolhardy. I wish it were. But here again, hopefully, we all survive this healthy. But what it's going to do to the economy I'm afraid will take a long time to come back from. And you know what, it may never ever come back the way that it was.
Maurice Jackson: You reference so much here. Let's talk about reality. I have an 11-year-old son and nine-year old twins. And they ask my wife and I, when was the last time this happened when you couldn't go outside? Our reply: Never. This is unprecedented. This is unprecedented.
The psychological warfare that goes on here with the markets, with the people, you're absolutely correct. I believe you're being 100% responsible. And anyone that follows our work is aware that I don't believe in using fear tactics to sell precious metals.
I believe in being responsible. And just using the ratios and trying to buy something that's on sale, and what's the best value proposition and try to keep it simple. If you study monetary history, it is difficult to refute what you have been conveying.
In reference to precious metals, there's one more thing I want to ask you about, because again, I know you're in these discussions and you know people that that have so much influence on the world. Will there be a country that will create a currency backed by precious metals, most likely gold. Who would it be? And do you think that's a likely outcome?
Andy Schectman: I'm so glad you asked that question. And, I mean, I don't want to talk conspiracy. I know how you feel about that. And I'm not going to but let's just talk coincidental.
So, if we understand that the whole Western world is Keynesian based, how do you blow up a system that is so far indebted, accumulated at the lowest interest rates in human history without really blowing it up? You keep everyone from spending and then the debt absolutely collapses upon itself, and everyone's debt collapses at the same time.
Everyone faces the same misery and pain at the same time. If you notice, when Nancy Pelosi a couple of weeks ago came out with her House Finance Subcommittee proposal, in it was the digital dollar proposal, a Fed wallet of sorts.
Because evidently, the virus is enabled to live on currency, I guess. And I don't know for how long or the veracity of that. But that's the general thought that the virus can live on currency. And so, now, that gives them the ability to go to a digital dollar, something that everyone's always talked about, I could never figure out how they would get rid of cash.
Well, certainly the whole Western world would be happy to get rid of cash if they felt that the virus lived on it. And I think you could very well see that. But more ironic than that is the reclassification of gold as the only other tier one asset in the world by the Western central banks a year ago almost to the day, Basel III.
I find it interesting that in April of 2019, the Bank of International Settlements, the central bank of central banks, reclassified gold and not a Special Drawing Rights from the International Monetary Fund or euros or anything else, they chose gold. So, you have rumblings of a digital currency, you have unrefutable tier one assets of gold after 80 years receiving the same classification as the U.S. dollar and Treasuries.
So, if you told me that all debt in the Western world would be forgiven because it all implodes at the same time, culpability of the people who arguably did this with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the trade act that allowed the savings and loan banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to become investment banks at the same time.
The high frequency trading, the derivatives, all of these financial instruments that have created the mess that we are finding ourselves in, not to mention all of the record debt, $285 trillion in global debt, which doesn't include the many hundreds of trillions of derivatives, all accumulated at ultra-low interest rates.
The only way to blow it up is to keep everyone from spending in the collapses all at the same time. The misery both physically and financially is felt the same across the globe. All debt then be forgiven a new digital currency free from the virus backed by gold.
If you told me that was going to happen, I would believe that. And one of the things I've believed for a long time is in that scenario, the East will come out with a currency backed by gold as well. We'll have two currency systems, one in the east, one in the west.
The BRICS nations, for someone that's not familiar with the term that's Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, are financial allies and they're looking to make a new currency basically to compete with the Federal Reserve note. They have already taken steps to ensure this with a system that mirrors the SWIFT system that the BRICS nations have created that much of Europe is signing on to. And let's not forget about the Shanghai Gold Exchange and the Chinese petroyuan.
The Chinese petroyuan is already taking steps to usurp the U.S. petrodollar. Chinese petroyuan is a bond that the Chinese buy oil with from countries like Iran and natural gas from countries like Russia. They pay for it in a bond denominated in yuan that is then immediately convertible into gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.
And that's probably why the Shanghai Gold Exchange has delivered over 90 times more gold than the COMEX says in the past two years. So, you're seeing countries try to usurp the dollar in trade agreements, in purchasing energy, setting up a system that usurps the SWIFT system, which is if you transact in dollars, you have to be in the SWIFT system.
And I would think that the likelihood of the currency in our pocket that we call dollar bills, hanging from a museum frame in the Smithsonian Museum in the next few years is likely. Whereby, everything is digital. Everything is monitored and tracked and followed.
And the gold backing would enable people to be able to swallow the Kool Aid once again. Because I don't think you would have mass adoption certainly without resistance of a new currency after what is happening right now based upon the mismanagement of the dollar over all these years.
But again, the virus gives all of the mismanagement to cover of culpability. There is no culpability for the people who did this because it never would have happened if it weren't for the virus. And it happens throughout the entire world. So, everyone experiences the same pain all at the same time.
Now, if you really want to go down the rabbit hole and make the assumption that this was released and this isn't from a bat in the wet market, then you probably would also agree that they already have—whoever "they" are—a vaccine.
Now, there are rumblings if you watch the Bill Gates' TED talk that just came out, they took a part of it out. And there are people on YouTube who have the original video. And at the very end of it, Bill Gates is saying, everyone will need a digital certificate of vaccination in order to get on airplanes and do all sorts of stuff.
That's his opinion of what's happening. And in that scenario, the vaccine would be sold to the pharmaceuticals enriching whomever released it for generations, and everyone would have to be vaccinated every single year. Now, I don't say that I subscribe to this ideology, but I will simply just say this that there are a lot of coincidences here.
And in particular, the thoughts of a digital dollar, the reclassification of gold as a tier one asset for the first time in the last 80 years, and the possibility of all debt being forgiven. And if you believe this was done intentionally, then you have to believe that whoever did this unintentionally as God awful as that is, probably already has the cure, God willing.
And again, please, I am not saying I believe this, I'm just simply saying I talk to people all day long who do believe this. And the rabbit hole can take you to some deep, dark places. But there is no other better answer as to how to stop a Keynesian based society than to lock everyone in from spending and consuming.
And the mountain of debt just collapses upon everyone at the same time. And so, forgiveness would be accepted if everyone suffered at the same time. There is no, well, that country didn't suffer and we did, this as we all suffered. Let's start over. Let's have a new system and start fresh.
If you told me that was going to happen, I believe it, And I hate to even think this way. But when you're locked up in your house and have nothing but time on your hands and talk to people all day long who are very concerned and believe a lot of this to be true, I think there's a fine line between conspiracy in reality and somewhere the truth lies somewhere between that and what you see on CNN. There is some conspiracy in every bit of reality these days, I believe.
Maurice Jackson: All right, Andy. We've gone to the 10,000-foot level, the 20,000 and the 30,000. Let's descend the interview back down to 10,000 feet. And let me ask you again, you referenced it earlier. What are you buying right now and why?
Andy Schectman: I'm buying Gold Eagles. I'm buying one-ounce silver bars and coins. Partially because there's not a lot to choose from. Also, because I think that you want to keep it as simple as possible and if it's available. But one-ounce Gold Eagle is the most recognized coin in the world.
And quite frankly, I wouldn't keep a large amount of money in the banks. We haven't even talked about the repo market prices. But the Federal Reserve is putting $1 trillion per night into the repo market, which is the overnight lending system between the banks because the banks don't trust one another.
Here again, rehypothecation of assets. They don't trust each other's collateral; they're backing away from each other. The Federal Reserve to keep the banks liquefied and the hedge funds from blowing up. And these massive derivative books that are all based upon a set of assumptions in interest rates and counterparties ability to perform while interest rates are at the lowest level in human history.
And counterparty risk is growing exponentially by the day with all these corporate entities in lockdown and business suffering, derivatives are going to blow up. The Federal Reserve is putting as much as we spent in over 15 years in the Gulf War, every single night into the overnight lending market.
Things are very, very upside down and in disarray. And I think the worst thing to do is have the huge amount of exposure to the banks or to the dollar or to the stock market. So, I don't care if I had $2 million to spend right now. I wouldn't put it in the bank. I wouldn't put it in the bond market. I wouldn't put it in the stock market. I would put it into gold and I wouldn't care what I paid to do it. I can put it into silver and I wouldn't care what I paid to do it. Silver is the most undervalued commodity on the planet.
As you said, it's the only asset on the planet that is trading at a third of what it was in 1980. And gold, because it was reclassified as the tier one asset because the central banks are accumulating the crap out of it. To me, the only thing that I have confidence in for the long game, I don't have confidence in the dollar as we know it, and don't have confidence in the stock market as we know it.
And I certainly don't have confidence for the mother of all bubbles, that's the bond market, which can only go one of two ways negative and then their bonds will go up, or interest rates go up for some unforeseen reason like a new gold backed currency from the BRICS.
And overnight you would see interest rates spike so high you couldn't believe it. So, for me, I'm buying gold and silver in any form I can get, currently some Gold Eagles and silver bars and one-ounce Eagles.
Maurice Jackson: Interesting. And just for the record, what I'm buying, I'm buying those Australian Dragons and my strongest allocation the last 3-4 years and continues to be towards platinum.
Andy, please share how someone may contact you and or Miles Franklin Precious Metals Investments.
Andy Schectman: I can be reached at andy@milesfranklin or call 800-255-1129. Please reference you read this interview with Maurice. I pride myself at accessibility. We do publish a daily newsletter. Sometimes, it's three or four days a week but a semi-daily newsletter, which can be found at our website, www.milesfranklin.com.
We do not sell online so you will have to contact Maurice (maurice@milesfranklin.com or call 855.505.1900) or myself. And I understand that frustrates some people because I believe identity theft, online fraud is only a problem that's getting worse. I believe gold and silver acquisition it belongs in the analog world, not in the digital world.
I think in a world that as rapidly changing as it is, relationships are very important. And you never realize how important it is until there's a problem, which I'd like to mention one more thing. I'm sorry, to do this. But one last thing. There's been a big slowdown in the industry from all of the companies in delivering product that is not anywhere near fraud on all of our parts.
All of the shipping departments across the whole spectrum are practicing social distancing, what normally is 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 people boxing things up are now 2, 3, 4, or 5 now working 30, 40, 50 feet apart. And that same thing goes with the major mints.
And that's because if one person gets it, the whole place gets shut down for a few weeks and deep cleaned and then the whole thing goes pear shaped. So, please understand. Delays in shipping are normal right now. But everything will be delivered.
Maurice Jackson: And you referenced some good points here something that I think we didn't reference yet. And I want you to just clarify the importance of being licensed, insured and bonded.
Andy Schectman: The precious metals industry, it's federally nonregulated. That means it's the wild west. Minnesota is the only state in America where you have to be licensed, bonded and background checked. We have a very large 30 bond annual background checks of everyone, Maurice, myself, all employees annually.
And some clients and continuing education that no other state in the United States mandates. Whether you own a company in Minnesota, or own one in another state doing it and selling into Minnesota, you would have to be subservient to the same set of regulations, we are to the Commissioner of Commerce.
Therefore, most of the companies outside of Minnesota won't sell into the state because of that licensing requirement. What it means is, you cannot do business in this industry in a more safer manner than with a company in Minnesota. And hopefully, it will be with ours.
Maurice Jackson: A lot of us that are shopping around that are reading to this program. You may see a fancy website, but there's some things that you need to make sure they before you purchase. Are they licensed? Are they insured? Are they bonded? And another thing is, are they providing you education? Are they preparing you, other than just price? And that's something to consider. And it goes without saying, we are more than happy to price match an online competitor if there is a rare occasion where they have a lower price.
I welcome the opportunity to earn your business. Please call me, Maurice Jackson at 855-505-1900, or you may email maurice@milesfranklin.com. And ladies and gentlemen to my clients. They all know this, I am available to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Finally, we invite you to subscribe to www.provenandprobable.com. We provide mining insights and bullion sales.
Andy Schectman of Miles Franklin Precious Metals Investments, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Andy Schectman: Thank you, Maurice. You take care of yourself and your family. And I hope to talk to you again real soon.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
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