Gold, Silver, and 25 Years of Performance Data

Elena Reyes: Welcome to Outside the Dollar, a weekly look at the stories shaping the economy, the U.S. dollar, inflation, debt, financial markets, and precious metals. I'm Elena Reyes, and I'm glad you're here because this week's episode connects several headlines that all point towards the same larger question. In an economy defined by uncertainty, sticky inflation, and renewed interest in hard assets, why are so many prominent investors and public figures talking about gold and silver right now? Here's what we're covering today. Billionaire Eric Sprott reportedly has nearly his entire fortune tied to gold and silver. Bond king Jeff Gundlach is pointing investors toward cash, gold and real assets. Silver just made headlines after a sharp price jump. Fort Knox is back in the news, reviving old questions about America's actual gold reserves; and Lear Capital's latest research looks at how gold has performed compared to stocks and real estate over the last twenty five years. Taken together, these stories make a case that gold and silver are not outdated relics from a pre digital economy or simple panic trades; they remain part of a serious, Speaker 2: all weather portfolio. Elena Reyes: This ongoing conversation about wealth protection, diversification and what financial resilience actually looks like when the next shock arrives. So let's get into it. Here is a number worth sitting with: According to Forbes, billionaire Eric Sprott has ninety eight percent of his fortune tied to gold and silver-not ten percent, not thirty percent, ninety eight percent. Sprott is eighty one years old; he started building his position in precious metals back in the nineteen eighties, and over the past two years alone, those bets have grown four fold; his net worth now sits above Speaker 2: three billion dollars. Elena Reyes: Of three billion dollars. Forbes caught up with him recently in Costa Rica; silver had just hit an all-time high of one hundred dollars an ounce. His reaction? He thought prices were going much higher; he told Forbes he sees silver reaching two hundred dollars, even three hundred dollars. Gold, in his view, has even further to run. Now, the important thing to understand here is what this story is. is and what it isn't. Sprott's portfolio is not a template. Most investors need diversification across asset classes, and a ninety-eight percent concentration in anything, gold included, carries real risk. That's not the point. The point is this: Sprott is not a fringe actor; he's not a doomsday blogger or a weekend gold bug; he built a multi-billion dollar fortune with precious metals at the center. After, over decades, through multiple market cycles. Think about it this way: when you hear people dismiss gold as a relic or a panic trade, Sprott's track record pushes back hard on that framing. Sophisticated money has taken gold and silver seriously for a long time. His conviction started in the nineteen eighties, when most investors weren't paying attention to metals at all. He stayed through the down times. He added, during pullbacks: "The compounding of that patience is a three billion dollar net worth." So here's the question worth pausing on as we move through today's episode: Sprott built a three billion dollar fortune by taking gold and silver seriously when few others did. He's one data point, but a hard one to dismiss. What does it mean for investors who've never seriously considered these metals at all? Speaker 3: Oh Elena Reyes: Now, Sprott is one data point-a fascinating one-but here's a different voice arriving at the similar place. Jeffrey Gundlach, the CIO of DoubleLine Capital and one of the most closely watched fixed income investors in the world, published his updated investing playbook recently. According to reporting from AOL, he's recommending a twenty percent allocation to cash and hard assets (cash, gold, Speaker 2: and gold miners). Elena Reyes: Real Assets." That's not a gold bug talking; that's the Bond King. So what's driving this? Gundlach's view is that no rate cuts are coming in twenty twenty six, none, and he's looking at stock valuations he described as "very, very high." When you combine stretched equity prices with a Fed that's not riding to the rescue with lower rates, where do you go? His answer: away from risk on trades and toward assets that hold Hold purchasing power when inflation stays sticky." Gold has long fit that description; so does cash, which actually earns something when rates stay elevated. Here's the thing worth understanding: Gundlach's case is not the same as Sprott's. Sprott built a four decade conviction. Gundlach is reading the current moment, the rate environment, the valuation picture, and making a positioning call. Two different time horizons, two different frameworks. Same destination. And the practical implication for anyone listening: gold does not move in a straight line. Gundlach himself noted its worth considering on a pullback. So the question he's really posing isn't "should you panic buy gold today?" It's more fundamental than that. Do you have any exposure to tangible assets at all? Have you even thought about it? Most retail portfolios are overwhelmingly weighted to equities. equities, and maybe some bonds. That's the default. Gundlach's recent comments suggest that default needs rethinking. Silver also gave us a live demonstration of that point this week. It jumped as much as seven percent to nearly eighty six dollars an ounce even as U.S. Iran talks stalled. Now that kind of move cuts both ways. On one hand, it shows real demand for hard assets when geopolitical risk spikes. On the other, a seven per cent swing in a single week is exactly the volatility that makes timing driven buying so difficult. That's not a contradiction of what Gundlach said; it's an illustration of it. He didn't say "buy silver today." He said think about whether you have any exposure at all and consider entry points on pullbacks. A seven per cent pop is not a pullback; it's a reminder of why you'd want to To already be positioned before the nerves hit. Speaker 4: CHAPTER twelve Elena Reyes: Fort Knox is back in the news and it connects directly to something worth understanding about gold. Here are the facts. Facts-The US Treasury officially holds around one hundred forty seven million troy ounces of gold there, valued on the books at forty two dollars and twenty two cents an ounce, a price frozen since nineteen seventy three. At current market prices that gold is worth north of four hundred billion dollars, and there has been no full independent audit of Fort Knox since nineteen fifty three. More recently President Trump signaled a renewed interest in verifying what's actually inside Fort Knox, which is the real update here. Officials have confirmed the vaults are intact, but a confirmation is not an audit and that distinction matters. So here's the takeaway: Governments hold physical gold because it can be counted, verified, and held in your hand. The U.S. Treasury has kept one hundred forty seven million troy Speaker 2: ounces of gold at Fort Knox. Elena Reyes: And troy ounces in reserve for decades. And now there's political pressure to confirm it's still there. When the most powerful government in the world treats gold as a store of value worth protecting and auditing, that's worth paying attention to. So we've looked at what the experts are saying, what the headlines are flagging, and where the macro pressure is building. Now I want to bring it back to something more concrete, money. A hypothetical one hundred thousand dollars invested in gold in January two thousand would have grown to roughly seven hundred forty four thousand seven hundred thirty dollars by end of twenty twenty five, that same amount in the Dow Jones, about three hundred seventy thousand forty two dollars, in real estate using FRED's Case-Shiller index approximately three hundred twenty three thousand nine hundred ten dollars, gold more than doubled the return of stocks, more than doubled the return of real estate. of real estate, over the same twenty five year window. Now, the obvious question is two thousand cherry picked, it's a fair challenge, and the answer is no. Starting in two thousand means you captured the full sweep of what modern markets actually delivered-the dot com crash wiped out trillions, then two thousand eight cut the housing market in half, then near zero interest rates for over a decade, then COVID locked down the global economy. Then the highest inflation in forty years, then federal debt crossing thirty nine trillion dollars-gold held through all of it, not without some volatility, but it held. Here's the thing about the dollar, though: in twenty twenty five alone, it lost roughly ten percent of its value. CPI ran at three point eight percent year over year as of April twenty twenty six. That means the assets priced in dollars-the stocks, the bonds, the savings accounts- are all being measured with a ruler that keeps shrinking. Gold cannot be printed; its supply is limited by geology, not by a committee meeting; that is not a philosophical argument, that is a structural difference; and here is where I want to be direct with you: gold does not replace stocks; it does not replace real estate; the question is simpler than that: if you had to argue against holding any gold at all, what would that argument actually be? That inflation won't return; that the dollar will strengthen; that the next twenty five years will look nothing like the last. If you believe the economic turbulence of the last twenty five years is behind us, then gold may not feel urgent; but if you believe more volatility, more inflation, more debt pressure or more market uncertainty could be ahead, then the data says the time to start thinking about it is before the next shock, not after. That is the question the twenty five year record puts on the table, not whether gold is the answer to everything, but whether it deserves a seat at the table with your other investments. That's a wrap on today's episode. The thread running through everything we covered is that serious investors and governments across different decades keep landing in the same place. When multiple frameworks, long-term conviction, and near-term macro caution point toward the same asset class, that's worth examining. If you want to go deeper, Lear Capital can help. Visit learcapital.com. or call 800-576-9355 to talk with a specialist. And if this episode made you think differently, leave us a review. It genuinely helps. Thanks for spending time with Outside the Dollar. We'll see you next time.