Peter Krauth Names One Silver Stock He Likes Right Now

[00:00:00] Peter Croth: So I think we're a ways off. To be fair, I think it's going to take a while to get there. You know, people that I have a fair bit of respect for that analyze this space, silver in particular, and commodities and precious metals as well, you know, think that it could be a matter of a couple of years. And frankly, look, I was somewhat wrong in terms of how quickly we would get to triple digits. I didn't think it would come this fast. I like to say, look, it took 45 years to get back to 50, and then it took three months to get to 100. Right? So what do I know? Right? But the sense I have is that we could see triple digits, frankly, again, maybe by the end of this year or at some point next year. That's tough to say. [00:00:51] Speaker 2: Good day, everybody. It's your host here, just Steve Yang. I am with NRS World, where we mine for stories that matter, natural resource stocks. I'm here, joined by Peter Croth, one of my heroes, author of The Great Silver Bull, publisher of Silver Stock Investor and Silver Advisor. And he's been investing in precious metals for several decades now. He's one of the clearest voices that I know in the space. And he's been very influential to me. So, Peter, thank you for being here. How are you today? [00:01:22] Peter Croth: I'm doing well, Steve. Thank you for having me. And it's a big day in some ways, you know, given [00:01:29] Speaker 2: a new Fed chair taking over. Yeah, you've been watching the meeting today? [00:01:35] Peter Croth: I have. I have that post-meeting press conference and trying to get a bit of a sense of, you know, what kind of leadership, you know, that might mean for us going forward. And, well, we can talk about [00:01:49] Speaker 2: that a little bit. Yeah, I'm looking at the price now, just kind of seeing what the announcement did. But, Peter, you've been calling a major silver bull market for years now. And we saw silver rip earlier this year to an all-time high of just over $120 before now pulling back to where we are today. Again, from 70, 69, 68, back to maybe 70. We'll see. But has this cycle played out the way you [00:02:15] Peter Croth: expected? And where do you think we are today? Yeah, I mean, generally, the way I expected, yes. I will admit that, you know, both gold and silver's relentless climb last year surprised me. I did not expect it to be quite as strong and for it to peak temporarily quite as high as it did silver in particular. So the degree of that took me by surprise. But, you know, one of the things I've been telling subscribers and people when I do presentations is that I came across, actually, it's a former colleague who shared this chart not long ago. And it was a chart of basically of how assets behave generally, you know, in a bull, in a cycle, you know, bull to bear. And what I found interesting is that relatively early on, so the first phase is sort of that stealth phase when just the very, very early money or investors get involved, have, you know, conviction and watch and wait. And it's kind of quiet, like it doesn't do much. It just rises very slowly. And I think we were through that phase for the last couple of years. And then when we hit sort of early to middle of last year, we moved into the next phase, which is the sort of a bit of a, of a, what they call, I guess, a smart money phase. We're out of the stealth phase. And what happens is some smart money starts to move in. You know, you could call those different things institutional money or whatever, but, you know, realizing kind of what's starting to happen in this sector. And then, but what happens is you get a kind of an early blow off, and then it pops, and then it corrects significantly. And what's interesting in this chart, which is meant for assets in general, is that whoever created this chart said, you know, what would they call that part, the, the bear trap. So after that first kind of pretty significant correction, people who got in late, that, okay, that's it, this bull market is over, it's never going back to these previous highs, right? I see you're laughing there, Steve. I think you're, I think you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking. But, but what happens is, so, you know, a lot of these sort of late comers think that that's it, it's over, and they'll never come back. They may be bought in at 80, $90, $100. They see it go to 60, they sell, they've been burned, and they're out. And, and, right? Yeah, so that's unfortunate. It really is, because, because I think there's a long way for it still to go. But then you start a really long, much more sort of intense climb after that correction, after that bear trap correction. And where I think things differ for silver versus the chart that I had, is that, you know, that, that rise is pretty, pretty, I guess, quick. You know, you could call it a few years or whatever. I actually think it's going to be several years for that rise to, it's not going to happen without volatility and, you know, further peaks and big corrections. But I think, ultimately, it's going to get, that part of it's going to stretch out much farther going forward. [00:05:37] Speaker 2: Peter, a few years ago, $300 silver sounded outrageous to some. Today, more people are taking, you know, taking the idea much more seriously. Does that $300 target feel more like a someday number to you? Or are we actually closer to that than people realize? And what does that climb look like if, you know, in terms of phases? I mean, I know you mentioned, it's a long period, but how close are we to that $300? [00:06:05] Peter Croth: So I think we're a ways off. To be fair, I think it's going to take a while to get there. You know, people that I have a fair bit of respect for that analyze this space, silver in particular, and commodities and precious metals as well. You know, think that it could be a matter of a couple of years. And frankly, look, I was somewhat wrong in terms of how quickly we would get to triple digits. I didn't think it would come this fast. I like to say, look, it took 45 years to get back to 50. And then it took three months to get to 100. Right. So what do I know? Right. But but the sense I have is that we could see triple digits, frankly, again, maybe by the end of this year, at some point next year, that's tough to say. And then we could see, you know, my top target of about right now, at least for now, I'm willing to say that maybe it'll go higher eventually. I'm willing to adjust. But for now, my top target eventually is going to be, say, 300. And look, I was surprised how quickly this happened. Maybe it is going to be a couple of years that that's what I'm hearing some some pretty, you know, bright minds saying that that we could see it that quickly. But frankly, my sense is that it's going to take longer than that. It could be more like maybe four or five, six years till we ultimately see that kind of a number. And and to be fair, for some of industry that that, you know, relies on silver significantly, that's going to have a big impact. That's going to be really that's going to really hurt. So, you know, we've heard all sorts of stories about how the the solar panel industry is having to readjust at, you know, 80, 90 hundred dollars. So we're back at 60, 70. Frankly, that's a lot more manageable than we think it is for them. It really is. And we can talk about, you know, what this this war in the Middle East has done and how that's actually been very, very stimulative for demand for solar panels. But I mean, you know, even at these higher prices, don't there all sorts of things can happen. And I can elaborate on all of them. Yeah, why why that could remain very supportive for silver and for one of its biggest consumers, which is the solar panel [00:08:11] Speaker 2: industry. So silver, as I understand it, is, you know, has been known as the poor man's gold as it becomes more industrialized. Is that the whole money aspect going to fade away eventually? Is that coming sooner than we think? And as the industrial side increases in terms of supply and demand, are we typically underestimating the demand? Are we overestimating how quickly supply can respond? I mean, [00:08:38] Peter Croth: like what's driving this price forward or up? Yeah. So the first part of your question about it being money, I think that's going to just ebb and flow a lot. You're right. There's, there's a really interesting stat. If you look at, so call the silver market a billion ounces a year, right? So that's, that's essentially what we produce between mining and, and recycling, but a billion ounces. We consume a little bit more actually. So we've been in, in deficit for the last four or five years. Um, but despite that, what's interesting is how much industry has taken on in terms of importance within that demand on the demand side. And five years ago, industry industry was 50%. Last year, it was about 65%. So it's gone up by a third. And, and here's the, I think the key part. That means that five years ago, the other 50% was in some form available for, um, for, uh, investment purposes. And I, and I lumped together silverware, jewelry and, and coins and bars that people buy for investment as all of it as investment, et cetera. Exactly. Exactly. And so if you, if you fast forward from five years ago to last year, now you've gone from half of silver being available for investment to now about only a third of silver being available for investment. Yeah. So what does that, what does that do? Well, I think we have a perfect example of what it does. Um, the end of last year and into early this year, when people want to buy it as money because they see gold going from three to four to 5,000 and they think, oh my God, you know, gold is not backing off. This is going to continue. There are all sorts of reasons why I need to own some gold. Gold's gotten crazy expensive. Now what alternatives do I have? And silver has always been that alternative when it comes to money. And by the way, historically silver has probably been responsible for more transactions globally than gold has just because silver is a day-to-day money, right? Uh, you, you don't, you, you, you, it's been used to, to, as I say, for, for daily transactions to buy small things, you know, people could in the past go out and do groceries and, and pay for, you know, [00:10:59] Speaker 2: small cost services, all sorts of things. Are we talking about the history of mankind or just recently? [00:11:05] Peter Croth: No, no, no history period. Yeah. History of mankind. It's been, it's, it's thought that silver is responsible for more transactions globally, historically than gold is simply because gold has a higher value for a small, you know, per unit, right? So, uh, you, you'd read it. You'd basically need a tiny piece of gold, right? To go out and buy a loaf of bread or, or, uh, you know, a, uh, uh, uh, uh, a carton of milk for, for example, and that's not the, that's not true for silver. So anyways, that, that aside, um, I think, like I say, the, the, the money side of it ebbs and flows, um, what we've seen is industrial demand is picking up. That's squeezing out the available silver for investment, but when it does come in, that just causes a squeeze because there's less silver available. And I think that contributed to the squeeze that we had at the end of last year and into early this year. Um, I'm trying to remember what was the second part of your question? [00:12:00] Speaker 2: Well, what's the, what are you mentioned solar panels? Uh, what's the driver that people are [00:12:07] Peter Croth: underestimating right now? Oh yeah. So, you know, yes. Um, there's been so much talk really about because of much higher silver prices that we're going to, we're going to see manufacturers, um, you know, move towards things like copper, use copper pastes. Um, they're going to, you know, there are so, so many things around that. I, again, I'm not here to say this is not going to happen. Maybe it is going to happen, but there are big challenges for that. First of all, it's very costly to retool these massive manufacturing facilities. Um, there's huge capital investments. You have to shut down for, for weeks or months to, to bring in new equipment. You have to train people. Um, the copper does not last as long as the silver does. It's not as efficient. It'll corrode sooner. Um, again, I can go on and on, but there are all sorts of reasons why, you know, people will prefer silver. It's, it's just, it's longer lasting. It's more efficient and, um, it's proven, right? So there's a really interesting stat and, and this is not to compare it to copper, but I came across this. This is, was, uh, Ember research that, that put this out. And then what they were saying is, you know, let's say you have a hundred million dollars and you need to generate one and a half, uh, terawatts of energy for a year. Well, you can go out and buy natural gas, natural gas will do that. Or you can take that same, uh, one, uh, a hundred million dollars, and you can buy solar panels. Those solar panels will also generate one and a half terawatts of energy, but it'll do it every year for 25 years. So natural gas or for one year or solar panels for 25 years for the same cost. And these are the silver solar panels. So, you know, uh, you know, with, with the war that's that, uh, we've been experiencing in the Middle East, um, people, uh, and to, to go back for a second, we, you know, we were thinking and, and hearing about how the demand for solar may drop off because of the price of silver and, you know, substitutes coming online. Well, I can tell you that the initial reaction was soaring demand for solar panels. People looked at high price, uh, gasoline, high price heating oil. And they said, wow, like, what are my alternatives? I don't want to deal with this. So, um, there's, there's this, uh, the electric, the largest, uh, electricity provider in the UK is called the octopus energy. And they saw that in the months of February and March demand because they sell solar panels, the men jumped by, uh, basically doubled month over month for two months. Um, China in the month of, I believe it was April, um, saw their, their sales of solar panels almost double over the prior months. Um, so people have been flocking to solar panels as an alternative to, you know, high oil and high gasoline cost. Um, you know, you've got all kinds of countries that are encouraging people to use, um, EVs instead of their ICE engine cars. Um, and, and I'm of the opinion that, uh, you know, this was a big shock, uh, actually the guy who's, uh, who's behind the, um, the international energy agency, the, the director of fatigue, uh, be role. He said that we're facing the biggest energy security threat in history. Um, when we had this, this shock from the, uh, for in the middle East with, uh, you know, uh, Iran us, uh, confrontation. Um, and so I'm convinced that you've got all sorts of players, you know, sovereign players, large manufacturers, anyone who, who relies on energy. And by the way, there are countries out there, some very, very, uh, first world developed countries that don't, that rely 70, 80, 90% on their oil from the middle East. It's just incredible. Right. So they can't be without, these are big manufacturing economies. You can bet Steve, that they're looking at alternatives. They're, they're looking at not just, I'm not just talking about solar panels, but in general, they're looking at, uh, globally, how do we make sure that we, we're not shocked like this for energy, uh, in the future. Right. I mean, this is, this is terrible for them to deal with. You can bet that they're looking for alternatives in terms of on shoring or what we call friend shoring, looking for suppliers that they call quote unquote, more friendly, either closer by or more reliable or whose oil doesn't come through the straight of Hormuz, um, all these kinds of things. And I don't know about you, but I can tell you if I'm, uh, you know, uh, uncharged of some huge company that, that manufactures things that relies on diesel, for example, or, you know, plastics that, you know, are, are derivatives of oil. And, uh, and this is wreaking havoc on my, on my planning and on my costs. I'm going to look at suppliers that will say, all right, I can guarantee you your supply. Um, I'm going to have to charge you more, but let's say for the next three years or five years, you're going to have this supply. It's going to cost you more, um, but it's reliable. And so that's a much easier way to do business. And they might absorb those higher prices for a little while, but they're going to start passing them on. So it's very inflationary. And I'm willing to bet that to some degree, solar panels have [00:17:20] Speaker 2: a role in some of that as well. You're my understanding with minds, especially if they've been undermined for years. I mean, it's not like you could just turn the spigot back on. It's like, yeah, you got, you know, everyone says, you know, higher prices, you solve, you know, supply shortages. And if you can expand on a little bit more, why that might not be the case for silver and how it [00:17:44] Peter Croth: works and just the lag time that it might take. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, you're right. And that's, especially true for silver because silver is unlike many other metals. Um, 75% of it is a by-product. So of the mind silver every year, only about 25% of it comes from what we call primary silver mines that mostly produce silver. The other 75% comes from mines that produce silver as a by-product. So silver is not their main product. They're producing gold or copper or lead and zinc. So imagine that it's the case 75% of silver comes from those mines. So they don't care if the silver price moves up. I mean, they're happy to take a higher silver price, but they're not going to try even try not, not that it's easy, but they're not going to try and produce more metal to therefore produce more silver. Um, just because the silver price went up, this is usually a small part of the revenue stream. So it, some of them don't even report the silver revenues. It's so small, right? But again, they're happy to take that higher price. So the one, so, so we like to say that silver is silver supply is price inelastic. Um, and in fact, you've got some, if you look at the primary silver miners that where silver is the main product, they may look at higher silver prices and say, heck, you know, I can silver so much higher. Now it's, it's double, let's say what it was last year. And if they have the flexibility to mine from an area of the deposit that is lower grade and make the same profit or more than they did at lower silver prices, but produce even less silver, they'll do it. So that could actually exacerbate things and bring less silver to market. And we haven't even talked about how difficult it is to ramp up a mine. So all this stuff is, you know, has to go through permitting. If you operate at a thousand tons a day and you want to expand to 1200 tons or 1500 tons per day, you've got to get permission for these things. There's a time lag. Um, sometimes the answer is no, I don't think necessarily that often, but sometimes the answer is no, or you've got to go back to the drawing board and, and rework some of your, uh, you know, environmental data and so on. So there's at the very least, there's a lag to that. You know, the, the numbers I've seen, um, from discovery of an economic deposit to actually breaking ground and, and, and having built and start actually producing silver is typically up to at least 10 to more like 15 years. So, you know, if, if you, yeah, exactly. The, the last time that the highest, yeah, it's, it's crazy. The, the highest amount of silver we've ever produced was in 2016. It was 900 million ounces from mining. We've not been above about 840 million ounces per year ever since. And yet demand has, has just soared since, since, since the lot over the last 10 years, but we're actually not producing more mind silver. We're producing less than we did 10 years ago. So, so one is that is an inability or, or a lack of interest in reacting. Right. And the, and frankly, the price hasn't been high enough either to, to, um, to encourage, um, more production. And I, I think that the high, the price that hasn't been high enough, because there's been, you know, prior to say about, um, 2020 or so, we've been producing a bit more silver than we consumed. So a lot of that ended up, um, you know, in, in w w it was bought by investors, uh, but, but a lot of it ended up on these futures exchanges. And so it just got pushed into inventories and it piled up. And then when we shifted into a deficit, in other words, say 2020, when we started actually consuming more silver than we were producing, it was easy for these big consumers to just go to these exchanges and start buying it there and drawing it down. That puts zero pressure on bringing new silver to market. You're just going and buying from a stockpile. So once that, but the key is that once that stockpile draws down and gets critically low, then price reacts. And that's exactly, I mean, I said this two and a half years ago in January of 2024, that's what I was saying we should expect to start happening. I said 12 to 18 months of this, and then it's game over. And then by the early part of middle of last year, we started to see the price rise significantly and that's essentially how it ended up playing out. Peter, let's say someone buys your silver thesis. [00:22:22] Speaker 2: You know, what does a sensible silver bucket look like? You know, how would you split between physical metals, ETFs, majors, juniors? And, uh, I would love to get your thoughts on maybe junior companies that you like and how you separate the winners from the pretenders because, uh, there aren't very many good, like one, it's hard to find a company, even though it says silver in the name, or it's actually a majority silver company. Uh, but you know, how do you filter those out? And if you [00:22:52] Peter Croth: can kind of give me some tips on what to look for. Sure. So, um, you know, the way I would, I split the, uh, the, the pie is I say 10% physical and then 50% ETFs slash majors. And the majors can be, there's really one big player in terms of royalty companies and it's a Wheaton precious metals. Um, so in other words, ETFs majors and large royalty company would be 50%. And then you've got 20% that would go to mid tiers. So that's sort of mid-sized, small to mid-sized producers, and then the, in another 20% to junior explorers. Um, and that's how I would split that pie. I'm not, you know, giving advice. I'm saying how, how I do things. Um, and then, you know, you're right. Absolutely. Uh, there are way too many, uh, companies out there that have silver in their name, but when you actually drill down and do the research and look, I mean, silver may represent 15, 20% of what they actually have. And I just find that disingenuous, you know, when I started my newsletter, I said, okay, if this is a silver newsletter, you have to have silver, right? Like that sounds reasonable. And so when I, when I looked more closely at how these, how these companies, you know, what they actually have, I felt that was being pretty generous. And I said, actually, you know, it's gotta have, it's gotta be at least sort of in the range of 40% silver to kind of start calling them a silver company. Um, I'm willing to, to, you know, go a little bit below that. If gold makes up, you know, um, a significant portion of the balance of the metals, um, to at least push it over to 40, 45 or so. Um, but you know, filters, the first one is that it's gotta be in the range of 40%. Um, and then, you know, I think that if people have followed this space, uh, I agree with most of the, you know, um, existing, what I call wisdom at least is that people are key. Um, and frankly, people, uh, you want to look for people who have a history of successes. Um, likely they're going to be successful again. Uh, likely they're going to surround themselves with other successful people and people who can get the job done. Likely, they're going to pick projects that have the ability to become successful. Um, they're going to be able to get them permitted and, and, and, and grow them and so on. Um, frankly, I'd rather, uh, I'd rather back a team that has had prior successes and really has done, uh, serially, uh, you know, a great job and with prior companies and prior projects and go with them. Even if I think that, you know, they have a, a suboptimal project because I know they've pulled it off before rather than what looks like the absolute best project, but has a sort of mediocre team, uh, because you know, they're, it's a minefield and chances are, um, you know, they, they make, may make some, some important missteps. So those are the ways that I try to filter. Um, you know, you want to look at capital structure. You don't want too many shares out. You certainly want a decent amount of cash or the ability to raise cash when it's necessary. Um, uh, you know, and, and a good communication strategy, because I think that's important too. You can have all the best, uh, people, uh, project, uh, cap structure, cash position, et cetera, et cetera. But if, you know, if you can't communicate that story to the market, it's, it's going to take a while for people to catch on. So that, that's certainly an important [00:26:25] Speaker 2: part of the, of the, of the puzzle. Peter, about jurisdiction, do you have favorites? Do you have ones you won't touch? And then if you can share maybe, uh, maybe a couple silver stocks that you can share, uh, without giving too much away. And then if, uh, you can tell us a little bit more about silver stock investor and silver stock advisor and what that's all about. [00:26:46] Peter Croth: Sure. So, um, actually, interestingly enough, uh, when it comes to jurisdictions, uh, they have, uh, it's expanded for me in the last, I'm going to say maybe a year or so. Um, I used to, um, for example, used to shy away significantly from Bolivia and there's been a lot of places in Latin America. Interestingly enough, that's where a lot of the silver is, um, have, have, uh, have shifted to the, to the right, uh, you know, significantly. And so, um, they have policy, they have people running, uh, the country, they have, they have policies or the, or at least the communication towards policies that are more friendly towards mining and, and towards, uh, open markets, um, Bolivia, I think was less that way, um, in the last few years has, has significantly changed. Um, and so what I really like about, and one of the reasons I'm mentioning Bolivia so much is that that's been the case or had been the case for a long time. I'm going to say maybe 15, 20 years. And because of that, it's very underexplored. Um, I I'm keen on, on Bolivian silver plays, frankly, because, um, that's a place where there's a lot of silver. Um, very few people have been looking for it. And yet now you, you, you've been able to operate if you were big, I think for the most part, you've been able to operate there pretty well. Um, but I think that now for the explorers, it's become a lot easier. So there's some really interesting plays there. Um, you know, I like, uh, Chile that has shifted, right. Um, Argentina is an, is an obvious one as well. Colombia is, I think, uh, on the verge of, uh, perhaps a new, uh, a leadership new administration. That's one I'm kind of watching closely. Um, Peru is, I'm going to say, uh, in the middle right now. Um, there are some changes coming there as well. I believe, uh, that, uh, is gonna, I'm gonna have to kind of watch that one and see it play out. I, what I will say in a lot of these places is if that is that if you have a company that has, you know, sort of existing long running operations that has been able to do that safely, um, securely, uh, smoothly, uh, you know, dealing with governments and dealing with, um, you know, the local population, all the sort of stakeholders, then jurisdiction remains important, but, um, it takes, uh, it takes on a little bit less importance because, you know, that company has been able to demonstrate that maybe even in a bit of a, a generally more challenging environment that they've been able to, to pull it off. So, uh, I mean, again, you know, I like to say go where the silver is, um, but, but be, but be careful. And if you look at a map, I mean, I want to just sort of throw in this last point, you know, when I started focusing on silver a lot, um, looking at maps and looking where projects are, uh, there, there's some silver in Australia. There's a little bit in, in, in Europe. Most of it is in, is in Poland, a little bit in, in, in Germany, uh, you know, nothing really that significant. Poland. Yes. Definitely. Uh, there's some in Russia. That's a difficult place to operate as obviously right now. Um, and frankly, besides that, uh, you've got in Africa, you've got Morocco that I know of, uh, there's a silver. You were asking about names, uh, a gold and silver. Uh, that's a really good one. Um, and besides that you basically look at the Americas. If you, if you take a step back and you look at a map of the Americas, so all the way from say, Alaska all the way down to, uh, Argentina and Chile, everything, all, almost all the silver is on the left. It's all along that, that whole range of that whole mountain range, the Andes, the Rockies, um, and, and way up through to, to Alaska. So, um, that's where most of the silver is. So those are the jurisdictions that are interesting, Alaska, BC, Idaho, Nevada, and then you've got, uh, you know, sort of the, the Western part of, of Mexico and then the Western part of, uh, South America as well. So, um, yeah, I mean, and, uh, to your last question in terms of, uh, sorry. Uh, what was your silver pick again? Oh, that was Aya, Aya gold and silver. And what did you like about them? Uh, well, they, they have been operating for several years in Morocco. Um, they were very much a first mover in Morocco. Um, I, I thought that was quite key. Actually, uh, the, the mining industry only opened up about a, about a decade or 15 years ago. Um, you know, more broadly in, in, in Morocco and they, as I say, have been a first mover. They have a, a producing mine that is over 5 million ounces of silver. It's a very, very rare, large silver only mine. Um, I mean, there's some minor other things, but essentially it's a silver mine. You, you've very, very rarely find that. Um, and they went through a big expansion that, uh, was completed at the end of last year. So they're essentially tripling or quadrupling have been able to triple or quadruple their output. Um, so it's become a cash machine and just a little bit farther east in Morocco. This is in what we call the Atlas mountain range. They have a second big project. Uh, so the first one's called Zgunder and the second one is called Boumeddin. And Boumeddin is, um, uh, more of a poly metallic, uh, project. So there's a fair bit of silver. If you take silver equivalents, which we talked about earlier, you know, you really want the silver, but, but still there's a, there's in silver equivalents, we're talking about over 400 million ounces of silver, which is very big. Um, and, uh, they, uh, they just are, are pounding the ground, drilling, um, huge amounts of, uh, numbers of meters actually on both projects to, uh, to prove out the size of, of this, uh, of this and, and, and that, uh, at the operating mine as well. Um, but there's a lot to like, and, uh, they actually just got added to the GDX, uh, uh, ETF, uh, which is pretty significant as well. And that should drive, uh, some, some demand for the shares as, uh, you've got index followers, uh, you know, looking to, uh, to take that on. [00:33:07] Speaker 2: And that's, uh, OTCQX as well as a TSX as well. [00:33:11] Peter Croth: Yeah. Actually they're on the NASDAQ. [00:33:13] Speaker 2: Yeah. [00:33:15] Peter Croth: Yeah. But they're on the NASDAQ about a month and a half ago, they listed there. So, uh, that, that's actually a little bit of a, of a rarity too. Uh, very interesting in terms of, you know, exposure to, uh, to us investors. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. I've certainly been telling the companies that I talked to and deal with, look, get, get yourself an OTC listing. Um, that's going to open up a lot of money, um, towards you. And, uh, I, I think that that's, that that's key. You know, the U S is a big market. People are willing to invest. They're willing to the, uh, they're open-minded. They're willing to take on risk. Don't these juniors, at least in particular are, are certainly a risk. Uh, um, there's a fair bit of risk. And so that there's a lot of risk money. So at least having a U S OTC listing will open up tremendously for you as a, as a, as an operator. So, um, I've been seeing that happen more and more, and there are ways that companies can do it. There are versions, I guess, if you want to call it of the OTC, um, that are pretty accessible. And so, um, uh, again, that I think that's important, but you know, bigger players like Aya are listing on NASDAQ. Uh, there's a couple of other names I know of that are working on doing the same thing. I can't say, I can't say who that is, but, uh, I just see more and more recognition. That's a place to be listed. And, um, uh, you know, that's going to be big money flowing into some, uh, some names and it's gonna, it's gonna have an impact. [00:34:45] Speaker 2: Well, Peter, I always learned so much from you. Thank you for the Aya name. I, I enjoy it, but I do want people to know where to find you. And if you can tell us a little bit more about silver stock investor, silver stock advisor, and how people can benefit from your services and socials. [00:34:58] Peter Croth: Sure. Thanks. So, um, I'm easily, uh, accessible. I'm on, uh, X I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me there. I'm pretty, uh, pretty active there. Uh, so the paid newsletter is silver stock investor and the free letter is silver advisor and, um, silver stock investor, silver advisor. You can just, we have a portal site. So I have a, uh, an associate, uh, Jeff Clark. He runs, uh, a couple of, uh, comparable, comparable newsletters as well, uh, focused more on gold, copper, uranium. Um, but our portal site is, uh, the gold advisor.com. You can find our newsletters there and you can subscribe there as well. Um, you know, if people want an intro to the silver sector, uh, I recommend, you know, my book, which talks about everything from the history of silver to, uh, the economics, um, generally, uh, the, the market, the supply demand fundamentals for silver, how you can get invested in silver and ultimately how, and when to take profits and, and, and to sell, uh, you know, Steve, this is going to be, I think, uh, a market, a bull market for the record books. That's why, you know, I'm talking about $300 silver, you know, frankly, people that I, that I, uh, have a lot of respect for are talking about even higher numbers and they're making me look pretty conservative, frankly, [00:36:18] Speaker 2: at 300 dollars. Yeah. I've heard some outrageous numbers myself. Yeah, absolutely. Four digits or five [00:36:26] Peter Croth: digits. Oh, I haven't heard those, but I'll keep my eyes open and my ears open. Yeah, for sure. But, um, frankly, I think this is going to be, uh, um, a bull market for the, for the record books. So you want to participate. You don't have to take huge risk. You can buy physical, you can buy some of the larger producers, you know, some of these names like Pan American and Wheaton precious metals, multi-billion dollar operators today were up 16 times in the two thousands. Pan American was up 16 times. I think it was from 2005 to 2000, um, uh, 8 Wheaton was up between 2008, 2011, something like that. Um, again, 16 times, these are some of the largest public silver companies you can be invested in. And, uh, they, uh, you know, they've, they, they, they performed fantastically. So, uh, again, don't shy away. It's, it's a, it's a space that has risk. It's volatile, it's volatile, but I say, you know, use the volatility to your advantage by when people are going crazy over, over it, like they were back in January, I was warning, look, we're due for a correction for 40%, 50%. And within days, it went from 120 to high sixties. So, um, you know, the, the, the best can, the best thing I can say in terms of having confidence in silver at this point in time is how it has behaved since it corrected. I mean, what was, frankly, what was to stop it from going from 120 back to 30? You tell me, I mean, it didn't, it went, it went to the high sixties and went to 70. It's even gone back to over 90 since it corrected to, to, to, to sit to the sixties, um, you know, in February, but we've been in for, you know, for give or take about 60 to $70 range. And to me, that is one of the most important points. You know, one of my, um, one of my subscribers sent me a really interesting bit of research pointing out that, um, you know, how the market typically reacts and plays out is that it needs several quarters, typically three to four quarters of the sustained higher prices so that, um, the analysts will start to model, uh, their projections with the new higher prices. Um, investors, especially big money has to start to see, Oh, okay. So it's going to stay at 60, $70 at least. And so now these profit, um, these, these profit, uh, ranges, um, that are being reported are not just a one-off quarter, but it's actually two quarters, three quarters, four quarters in a row. And then you've got that conviction. And so, uh, once that conviction sets in, then people start to move into these names and say, wow, these are cash machines. I want to point out a really, really interesting, um, stat. And that is that, uh, the, uh, primary silver miners at $12 now, because, uh, many of them, uh, you know, uh, have, have managed actually to keep their, their, their production costs pretty low. All in sustaining cost was about, uh, $12 at, at, um, about 80 or $90, uh, silver. You're looking at 85% profit margins. It's just completely off the charts. And I'm going to sneak in one other one. And that is that, um, if you look at, uh, the S and P for example, and all the different sectors, and you take the 50 largest gold and silver producers as a group, their, their, uh, their, uh, profits, profit margins are 31%. The next closest sectors are tech. And, um, uh, trying to remember, uh, I can pull this up. Actually, uh, the next two closest sectors were, were tech and, uh, uh, financials at 17%. So close to double from the largest, um, uh, uh, uh, precious metals and, uh, and metals miners, uh, on the S and P this is, these are cash machines right now. It's only a matter of a little bit of time before the big money catches on and really starts to rotate into, uh, [00:40:50] Speaker 2: into this sector. Peter, once again, you're one of the people know publicly that your book, the great server bull was very influential to me. Uh, thank you for writing that and getting my, uh, appetite for silver or where it is. So thank you for that. Uh, everyone listening. I'm just Steve Yang learning alongside you from great people like Peter Kroth. I'll be putting Peter's socials inside the show notes. Uh, check those out. Everyone stay smart, curious, disciplined, be like Peter. Thanks. Peter. [00:41:20] Peter Croth: Pleasure, Steve. Thanks. And looking forward to chatting again. [00:41:26] Speaker ?: Bye.