Grant Williams on the 100-Year Pivot That's Bigger Than Markets

And the world last changed really in 1971 when when Nixon ended the the dollar peg to gold and before that it was 1945 when Bretton Woods was put in place after the end of World War II. These are big changes that happen so far apart that they create these windows whereby you have generations of people who've only known the world to function in one way. And I believe strongly that we are at one of those points. To Understand that this change is bigger than markets and and to spend time thinking about what it means may

well give you the best opportunity to get ahead of the phase when it is reflected in markets which which you know could be extremely traumatic for a lot of people who are used to buying the dip and are used to markets going up and to the right. Grant Williams, author of the Things That Make You Go, Hm. newsletter and Host of the Grant Williams podcast. It is so wonderful to welcome you back to the show and great to see you as always, Grant. It's been way too long. Hey, Julia, thanks for having me back. I'm

always uh pleased and surprised when I get a return invite anyway, frankly. Well, we we love having you on and um I'm glad that you like receiving return invites because we will keep those coming because I have to say you you're a real hit with this audience and I Actually have I have viewers who are subscribers to things that make you go hm and they do email in that they want you on. So, I'm thrilled uh to I love it. I love it. Um so, let's start where we always start because it's been about 6

months since we've had you on. I can't believe it. Time is flying. So, let's start with that big picture macro view. I want to know how you're looking at the world today. And as you know, Grant, you can take all the time You need to set the table when it comes to that big picture. Uh, I am looking at the world today from behind my couch and through my fingers. That's that's how I'm looking at the world like this. It's just like every day is head and your hands trying to figure out what the hell's

going on. It's um it's kind of crazy, you know, and that and that for for any of us that are that are looking at markets or committing capital or god forbid Managing other people's money, that's a really really tricky environment to be in um because of the uncertainty. You know, markets hate uncertainty and even though the we've seen kind of this um this shakiness in markets and we've now we've seen an incredible retracement back up over the last nine days and you know, today is looking like it's pretty unchanged at the moment. um that kind

of volatility, that kind of uncertainty is is really bad for markets long term. And Um until we get any kind of clarity around how we're going to get the general volatility lower, you're going to see that nervousness in markets. But perhaps more importantly for me is the the uncertainty as far as the business community is concerned. And that that takes a while to feed into the stock market. But, you know, given all the stuff post liberation day, um, all the tariff uncertainty, the the constantly shifting numbers, the constantly Shifting allies and enemies, it it's it's

impossible for for CEOs to think about capex at this particular point. It's impossible to really think about hiring. It's impossible to think about doing anything that is required to run a business effectively, assuming it's not, you know, a wholly domestic business. And even then, you know, it's very difficult to find a business that doesn't have some kind of um uh some kind of um connection to overseas Imports or parts or anything. So, it's a really difficult time to be in business and we haven't seen that feed through the stock market yet. You know, I had

a I had a dinner in London um a couple of weeks ago and uh what I was hearing around the table from from people who who have businesses uh startup businesses that rely on technology but have import components was shocking. I mean, it really was shocking in terms of how big A problem this was for them and and the and the drastic nature of the plans that they were being forced to to put into action to kind of mitigate this. And also at the table was um uh was a gentleman who'd been in Germany and

he'd been at an event with um uh a person I don't want to disclose names because it's not my place to do that but someone who will have some kind of influence within the Trump administration and it was an open session an open conversation Uh with a whole group of German businessmen. Now, Germany's got problems of its own. That that's fair enough. But the the phrase he used was that um there was white heat in the room from the Germans in terms of the the the the disruption that Trump's tariffs were causing. Um and you

know, the the push back from this gentleman was interesting. You know, this guy said, "Look, you know, you've had you you have free university tuition over here. You Have free universal healthcare. um you know maybe some of that stuff ought to go to your defense budget and things have changed and you have to say as far as NATO is concerned um you know the points Trump makes about that are are fair and he was making those points before he came to power in the in his first term and he was laughed out the room by

a lot of people that he when he said that NATO was going to have to pay for itself. So all of these decisions by Trump um they feed through to the business community and businesses are ultimately what are manifested and represented by the stock market. It used to be that we talked about companies and businesses and I I kind of get on this hobby horse of mine every now and again and now we talk about stocks. Um that's just a shift in mindset where where the you know the price of the shares is way more

important to most people than the quality of the business itself and the Quality of the company. Um that I suspect is going to have to change because without the quality of the company the share prices have no real business performing well except you know multiple expansion expect FOMO except FOMO all these things that have driven stock prices higher without necessarily improving business. And I think the focus is going to return squarely to businesses, not among the retail investment crowd at the moment as we've Seen in the data. You know, retail is is still in that

FOMO move. We saw record influx from retail into the markets after the big dip. Um so we're in this kind of air pocket to me where um the effects of the tariffs haven't been reflected on a company level yet, but I think that could start happening quickly. in some of the anecdotal data you're seeing about port um occupancy and trucking numbers and we're starting to see that in the data that you have to Kind of look reasonably hard to find. Um and there is a lag but I don't think it's a particularly long lag. So,

you know, I would think that in the next couple of weeks, unless things change and the anecdotal evidence I heard at dinner the other week bear that out, you are going to start to see um the kind of knock-on effects of ramifications of the tariff uncertainty feed through into company downgrades into um scarcity on shelves into all the things that once They manifest make it really difficult to simply ignore that and just buy stocks anyway because of the number and hoping the price goes up. So, that's kind of where I think we are in this

air pocket and which way it resolves itself is yet to be seen and and you know, Trump, I'm sure, will flip-flop multiple directions between now and then. But, but I think the you know, the grenade has been thrown into the plumbing and we're just waiting for it to explode and See where the damage is done. And I I suspect in the next uh couple of weeks we are going to start to see that manifest. Wow. Great frame up to the conversation, Grant. Um, as you put it, we're in this air pocket. We have yet to

see some of these things feed through to the broader market that um we are kind of going to probably get back to looking at what really matters. How are these companies doing the getting back to the fundamentals? Maybe Getting back to like actual stock picking here. Um wouldn't that be crazy? Yeah, wouldn't that be crazy? That' be maybe a little bit of a different regime change from what we've seen in I don't know the past 15 or so years. question for you though. Um, from an investor perspective, um, and I'm hearing this from other folks

on the show, is this a time to like have more liquidity on hand than usual? Yeah, I I I think it is. I think it is. I think it's it's an environ Well, look, I mean, look, you only have to look at what Warren Buffett's been doing, okay? He's one of the greatest investors of all time, and all he's been doing is building up liquidity for 10 quarters in a row now, which is mind-boggling. Um, and you know, when when when the markets fell over, you know, we've been watching that Berkshire Haway cash pile build

up and accumulate and it it was remarked upon every time they Came out with some numbers and then kind of forgotten about. When the markets fell, suddenly that was viewed in a different light and everybody was commenting, oh, you know, Buffett's the greatest. He was doing this and now look, he was anticipating all this. And so, you know, when when you see someone like that step down after 60 years and actually walk away from the business as he did at the at the AGM last week, um I wonder how in time we're going to view

That decision because he he he does understand this business. He's his performance has been truly truly extraordinary over a phenomenal period of time. And yes, he's 94. Yes, he is 94. So, so it's very easy to say, well, you know, he's 94, that's why he's stepping down. And I'm sure that's a part of it, but you know, Charlie Munger kept going to 99 and he didn't want to stop. And in the past, Buffett has talked about, you know, his his Retirement being a long way off. So, there has to be a component of, you know,

what has he seen to to make him step away now? Um you I remember I remember talking to Piper Malgren about this um uh not about Warren Buffett but many many years ago we were having a conversation about Alan Greenspan and Pip said to me that when she heard that Greenspan was stepping down from the Fed uh she sold her house because she knew how important his legacy was to him and He was a handful of days shy of becoming the longest tenure Fed chair and Pipper knew Greenspan and knew how important that was to

him. So in her mind it's signs like that like she knew how important that was and yet he still stepped down when he did. I think it was a 100 days shy of becoming the longest tenure Fed chair and things like that you you if you're paying attention at the time they they hit some people harder Than others. Sometimes you need hindsight to be able to look back and go oh isn't that interesting? Now we see where the Fed where the crash started and look Greenspan stepped down just 100 days before that. Um, so these

little things that you see that maybe a headline, maybe a piece of passing interest, um, if you're if you're stepping far enough back and you're thinking about these things, they do help you create perhaps a more holistic Picture of what's going on. And I'll give you two examples from the last from the last week. Yes. Yeah. We saw we saw uh last week amidst all the stress about tariffs on China and not understanding what those tariffs were going to be, we had Donald Trump come out and say, you know, we're talking to China. We had

a great conversation and you know, we're in talks with them basically. And the following day, you know, Xiinping basically came out and said, I haven't Spoken to Trump. And you know, that was sneered at and laughed at and oh god, you know, the more chaos, who knows what's going on. But if you think about that, this is the kind of diplomacy that was always done behind closed doors. This was not done in public. And even if it even if uh Trump in the past has said these things in public, the Chinese have never responded to

it in public. They've never basically come out and called the US President a liar. They understand that the game he needs to say things to to his people to get things calmed down or whatever. The negotiations still go on in quiet. You can say what you want. It doesn't matter. We all know what we're here for. We all know what we're around the table trying to sort out. You know, it doesn't matter. You say what you want. The Chinese are never going to say anything. So, they don't have to. They don't have an investing public

at home That they have to necessarily keep a breast of what's going on. And they don't, you know, Xiinping doesn't need a win. So, for him to come out publicly and say something that he didn't need to say um really raised an eyebrow with me and that that that's important. And I think what happened a few days later with the Japanese was equally important. you know, the Japanese a high-ranking um official at the Ministry of Finance talked about Japan, Japan's Treasury Position and talked about the tariffs and basically implied that, you know, we got some

leverage here and if if you want to stick tariffs on us, we're going to think about dumping our treasuries. whether or not it's a credible threat, whether or not it's something they're seriously thinking about. To have an official like that quoted in Bloomberg and in the Washington Post and it was quoted as saying those things is a major major shift in tone. It's a major shift In how these negotiations take place and is a major signpost that this is not something that Trump and and the Treasury are going to be able to bully their way

towards without some of these countries pushing back. And I think, you know, in in the in the wake of the immediate announcements by Trump, you know, we saw Vietnam immediately kind of buckle and go, we're going to go straight to zero. And that was a win and and a very public win for Trump, which They amplified, and they talked about all these countries lining up to do big beautiful trade deals and all this kind of stuff. But when you get trading partners the size of China and Japan publicly saying the kind of things they've never

said publicly before, that to me is a very important shift and something that that people need to make note of and not assume that this is business as usual and here's how this is going to go because this is how it's Always gone. I I I think things are very different and so I think this uncertainty is going to be here a while and I suspect that Trump is not going to get it all his own way and the question is going to be how does he how does he back down a little bit? How

does he concede ground given the very public stance he's taken about how all these people will fall in line. Now in the past he talked about um in the first um well let's talk about Doge, right? Doge Was going to be $2 trillion savings. Then it went to one. Now we're down to $150 billion. Um, and they just don't talk about Doge anymore. And it's kind of worked so far, right? I suspect when Elon Musk steps down, finally is gone, there will then be postmortems gone and the numbers will come out and people will start

to ask those questions. But for the time being, as long as we don't talk about Doge, our our pronouncements about what we're Going to save don't matter, right? I mean, look at the Epstein files, right? we were they were going to be released in a couple of days and now there's no timeline for them and so that all kind of gets forgotten. This stuff is not as easy because there are two sides to these discussions and if the other side are willing to talk publicly about them, you have a much harder problem in managing expectations

and managing responses by saying what you need to say In order to keep the markets do. So that's um just two examples of you for there for things that I think are important for people to realize. Yeah, you gotta say, Grant, you're making me go hm with a bunch of these things. That Buffett point was really interesting, too. I didn't even think about that, but um got my wheels turning there. And then, as you point out rightly, there are two sides to these discussions, but it makes me want to step back and ask Maybe a

bigger question here. And you have a new podcast out with Dimmitri Kofenas around this like hundredyear pivot. And maybe um the world has changed. I think a lot of folks, not a lot of folk, certain folks are talking about this change, a generational change, but maybe the bulk of people haven't yet realized that that the entire world has changed. Is that fair to say? I I think it's absolutely correct. And, you know, Demetri and I Have been looking for something to do together for many, many years. You know, we've been friends for many years and

um we've been looking for something to collaborate on. And this um this started I I had some podcast conversations at around the start of the year with Dimmitri and Ben Hunt and a couple other friends of mine. And and from from my perspective, the reasons I wanted to have those conversations was I was I was struggling to to think about the change I was feeling in in in the right way. And I wanted help from people I know think a lot about about the world. And I didn't have anywhere particularly to go with it, but

I just I talked about some of the things I was thinking about and some of the things that were concerning me. And they're they're very big picture things. They're not necessarily tariffs and Trump and markets. And you know, it's not that stuff. It's a much bigger broader sense of unease that I felt that That the change that you I I've been talking about for a while now coming is here. And the thing that kind of um I guess rattled me was the fact that despite the fact that I've been talking and writing about this for

you quite some period of time now, I would have thought I was more prepared for how I feel when it when I felt it was happening than I and I was. And even though I was prepared for it, I was still unsettled by it. And and that Kind of puzzled and and unnerved me a little bit. So I I had some of these conversations and from those conversations, Demetri and I both went, "Ah, this is the thing we can do together." And so what we're going to try and do is is is just follow these

threads of change and follow the kind of threads that aren't necessarily directly translatable into markets. Um, but that I think for me is One of the problems. We we've we've we've we've reached the point where the shifts are so big, but everybody ultimately tries to drill them down to markets. And I think the change that's happening is much much bigger than markets, is much more important than markets. Um and so, you know, what Demetri and I are trying to do is is have these conversations, understand the nature of the change through various other people's lenses,

and then, you Know, if there are applications for investment and markets, great. Let's try and tease those out. But that's not the ultimate aim. The ultimate aim is if the world has changed, and I believe it has. I think the change is already here. And if the size of that change is as big as I fear it could be, and if the nature of that change is as potentially dangerous as I think it could be, then what is this new world that we're navigating? How do we how do We navigate it as best we can?

How do we give ourselves the biggest uh chance of navigating it safely? And the problem with the nature of this change is that it it is generational. One of the big um bedrocks of of all these conversations was Neil House's book, The Fourth Turning. And and Demetri and I released our first episode with Neil um this week. We talked to him for a couple of hours about this. Um these are the kind of changes that you can't really see, You can only feel. um you can see them if you step far enough back, but when

you're in the middle of them, you just feel unsettled. And so, um we've all lived an entire lifetime, the vast majority of you, I've been doing this for 40 years now, and I'm I'm an old man. Uh and I've got the gray hair and the grandkids to prove it. But we've been navigating this long enough. It's the only thing we know, you know, it's the only world that we know. And The world last changed really um in 1971 when when Nixon ended the the dollar peg to gold and before that it was 1945 when Bretton

Woods was put in place after the end of World War II. So these are these are big changes that happen so far apart that they create these windows whereby you have generations of people who've only known the world to function in one way. And so as far as human beings are concerned we don't like change. We don't deal with change well. And when these Changes are this big, we either can't comprehend them. They're too scary for us to really think about or we just simply can't see them and we assume the world is going to

go back to the way it was. And I I I fundamentally believe that's changed now and we are in a different world. So, um, you know, Neil's framework about the fourth turning makes so much sense because, you know, the reason these things take 80 to 100 years to happen is you need Everybody that lived that last cycle to die. You need those memories to be gone. You need those those those visceral reminders of what it was like in the Great Depression to be gone and the stories to not be reinforced and retold in everyday life

by grandparents to grandkids. But those stories are consigned to the history books and only the people that are willing to go and look for them will find them, read them, recognize them and be able to adapt to Them. And that's that's where we are. You know, the the the the the generation that lived through the Great Depression are all but gone now. The generation that lived through German hyperinflation are all gone now. So we are so I say lived through, you know, at an age where they could actually understand what was going on. They weren't

just babes in arms. So that's when this change happens and and I believe strongly that we are at one of those points and it's about so Much more than markets and that will be reflected in markets as time goes by. But to understand that this change is bigger than markets and and to spend time thinking about what it means may well give you the best opportunity to get ahead of the phase when it is reflected in markets which which you know could be um which could be extremely traumatic for a lot of people who are

used to buying the dip and are used to markets going up and to the Right. Yeah. putting on that lens though like and bringing it back to markets, how are you thinking about this new change like how do you think about like the risk? I mean I mean there probably so many scenarios as to like how this could play out or how this change could manifest itself in markets but how do you think about it from an investor perspective? I know it is bigger than markets as you point out. Uh yeah. Well, let's let's start

with Something that's close to my heart and that's this idea. How do you think of it as an investor perspective because um that's a very specific perspective that of an investor and it's a very different perspective to that of a speculator or a trader. And I've talked about this until I bore myself with it. So I apologize for anybody out there. I'm boring with it. Um the word investor is thrown around uh and it's used as a catch all for all This. You know, we talk about retail investors and the vast majority of retail is

not investing, it's trading. Um and the numbers bear that out more and more so in recent years. So when you try and think of the investment implications for this, they're very very very different to the trading and speculation implications of this. If you're a trader and a good Trader and there will be a lot of people who have been fooled into thinking they are good traders because of the just the the the slope of markets have have made a lot of people feel like they're good traders because they haven't really had to deal with with

sustained volatility and buying the dip has worked. So so people who just buy the dip have become good traders based purely on their P&L. Um, what you're about to see, I think, if if if I'm right about the nature of These changes is the kind of volatility that doesn't allow you to buy the dip. You know, Fred Hickey posted a great chart in his latest high-tech strategist of the of the basically bursting of the NASDAQ bubble. And he showed the chart going down 78% from peak to trough and then staying down there. It's important to

remember it stayed down there for years. Um, but during that 78% fall, there were rallies of 30%, 40%, 45%. Um, but every one of those gave you a chance to make some money if you were a good trader, but ultimately if you kept buying the dip through that rally, you would ultimately been carried out. And that down 78% was the ultimate wash out of all the retail that kept hoping it was going to come back. So, if you're a trader, these changes will give you the kind of volatility that will either be a godsend for

you because you really know What you're doing and you can trade volatility well, or they will slowly but surely and over time completely disaval of everything you've learned and everything you thought worked. And so, understanding who you are and what you are and your competency level is absolutely crucial. And there's no shame in looking in the mirror and saying, you know, I've made a lot of money trading, but am I a good trader? Am I a good Enough trader for completely different markets where buy the dip doesn't work? Uh, and where ultimately we're just going

up and to the right. We're not going to go sideways or down for an extended period of time. And there's nothing wrong with that. If you've, as I said in one of my presentations last year, if you've been invested in markets, you got rich. Period. Now the the the the mindset changes to how do I stay rich? And you stay rich First and foremost by not giving money back. Um if you're an investor again it's it's it's potentially going to be a terrific environment but probably not yet. Probably not yet because you haven't seen the

kind of falls. haven't seen the kind of valuations that investors, genuine long-term investors, love to see and and can commit capital to with that allimp important margin of safety that allows them to stomach the short-term Volatility and then sit and hold these positions over time when when you hope the business will prove the stock valuation wrong. Um, so whichever you are, getting the timing right is important. If you're an investor, now's the time to be liquid um and be raising cash into these into these spikes in order to deploy it longer term at better valuations

and lower down. If you're a trader, it's time to be nimble and get in, get out, keep your stops tight, and Understand that, you know, buying the dip is not going to work forever. So, it it's a really tricky environment to be either. Um, and that's why it's so important to know what you are and who you are before you decide what you're going to do. Monetary Metals offers you the ability to grow your wealth outside the banking system and gain greater control over your finances through gold. Increase your precious metal ounces every single month.

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and silver every month with monetary medals. Visit monetarymetals.com/julia to learn more. That's such a good point. um knowing who you are and I think I believe you have a talker presentation on this as well. Um so it's a good lesson. All right. Um I want to bring up a topic with you and the last time we talked you had a great um Jim Grant quote and I'm going to butcher it. I Can't even remember exactly but it was around gold. Um gosh I can I wish I I'm like kicking myself. I can't remember. Is this

is this the quote? I mean there's so many. Jim Jim Jim is a walking quote. Is it the one about gold being the price the gold price being the reciprocal of faith in central banks? Yes. Yes. Exactly. So, I wanted to ask you about gold um and the movement we've seen in gold. I'm looking at it today. Let's see. It's like um 3,318. Yes. Up 7490. Um spin on a tear. I got to Okay. What do What do you make of the movement we've seen in gold? And does it reflect is it a reflection of

that Jim Grant quote? Uh yeah, there's there's there's so many components to this. Um and um yeah, I believe that's part of it. Um the the thing about gold is uh I think a lot of people look at gold the wrong way. They they they stand in the financial system and they look out at Gold and they look at the price and they look at the movements and they and they try and figure out what that means. For me, the correct place is to stand on top of gold and look out at the financial system.

You know, gold is the only asset that that doesn't move in price and everybody fixates on the price. Gold is gold. It's an inert object. It's an elemental metal. It just it just sits there. It doesn't do anything. Doesn't produce anything. It doesn't make Anything. It doesn't have any overheads. Um it just is. And so, if you think about why the price of gold moves, there's no real reason for it. It's a relative um thing. And that's why you can have gold trading at all-time highs in every currency on earth except the US dollar and

then suddenly the dollar plays catch up and now gold's trading alltime highs in US dollars. Gold isn't doing anything right. There's there there is a loss of faith in Central banks. There's a loss of faith in the dollar. Uh there is a need to have a neutral reserve assets. There's all these things happening that are being reflected in the demand for gold. The price is secondary to that. there are more people that feel a need to own gold right now. And as we know, when when there's a a greater need to to own gold, and

I choose that word very carefully, not buy gold, because when your mindset is I'm going to buy gold, There is an implicit idea that you're going to sell it. It's a it's a it's a price thing. I'm going to buy gold here cuz it's at 3,300 and the charts tell me it's going to 3,500. Fine. That has nothing to do with gold. You are looking at a chart. You're looking at something you can trade. and you're going to trade it. You're not owning it because it's gold. You're owning it because the charts tell you you're

going to make some money out Of it. What we're seeing now, I believe, underpinning this move uh alongside a a loss of to some extent of confidence in central banks is uh a loss of confidence by central banks. And that is much more important because that confidence and and the confidence I'm talking about here in particular is the confidence in the the US Treasury as a as a partner and in the sanctity of the US dollar. Those are the places where confidence is ebbing. And it's Interesting that that it's the central banks are losing confidence.

And this all goes back, I think we spoke about this last time, but it's it's important to actually reiterate um this freezing of Russian central bank assets uh after the Ukraine invasion and the subsequent appropriation of the interest payments on that $325 billion of assets changed the calculus for every central bank in the world. Um, every single one of them now knows that there are a set of Circumstances under which the US government will confiscate your sovereign reserves. Period. And you know the Taiwan is not going to invade Ukraine and they are a solid ally

of the US. But who knows what happens? Who knows if Taiwan and China come to some grand bargain and they decide to reunify? What does the US do at that point? Do they freeze Taiwanese dollar reserves? You can't you can no longer say no they would not do that because They've proven that it's a possibility. Uh so because of that every central bank in the world has to think through what would happen if we no longer had access to our sovereign reserves the dollar component the dollar portion that we hold in treasuries which is a

significant proportion of just about every country on earth because of energy um payment dynamics. If you go through that exercise and you sit there and think What would happen if that came to pass there there's no positives that's a all the all the answers to that question are negative for you and so you have to have some plan to mitigate that potential um will there come a day when the US is a can be a a 100% trusted partner again absolutely is that right now no it's not and if you inject 1% % of doubt

at this level and of decisions of this magnitude, you have to do something about it. And that's what I Think gold is. You know, gold that the the reason gold has been so strong and has climbed so steadily and has climbed against um a set of circumstances which would normally not be positive for gold is because the bid underneath gold is from central banks who are finding ways to diversify their foreign exchange reserves and more importantly finding ways to hold those reserves in an asset which is absolutely under no one else's opaces. If you have

gold in your own country, guarded by your own soldiers, nobody on earth is going to do anything with that unless they want to come and invade your country and then you've got way bigger problems to worry about. So that's what I think is happening here. Um there are still an awful lot of people focusing on the price. You know, all the tweets I see today about, you know, oh, gold at 3,300 bucks again. Um to me, the the headline is the buyers are back. It Doesn't matter what price they're paying for it. It matters that

after the uncertainty that we saw at the weekend, um the buyers are back and it doesn't matter to them if it's 3,300 or 3500 or 4,000. You know, they're not looking at charts and thinking about pullbacks and thinking, "Oh, you know what? We'll stick a stink bid in at 2,000. If it drops down there, we'll buy as many as you want." No, they don't have that luxury. They've got a problem to Mitigate. Gold is a solution to that problem. And so, they're going to they're going to carry on and do that. So that's to me

the biggest driving force. Ultimately the more relentless that bid becomes and the more relentless um that rise in the gold price which is so important to so many people becomes you do suck in other people. You suck in traders, you suck in investors and the positioning is so low particularly in the west of people that actually own Gold. There is a potentially massive upside there once you start getting people in and you start seeing things like Goldman Sachs upgrading their forecast for gold. start seeing all the little signs that bring uh speculators into gold and

bring um people who are not necessarily short-term speculators, but they want to own it because they feel they can make a gain holding it and trading and flipping it. Well, if you're buying at 3,300 and Goldman is saying It's going to 4,000, you know, that's a decent percent profit for a lot of people. So, you're going to you're going to suck in more and more people. Um, and that's a problem with gold because obviously you can't print more shares if demand gets crazy. Um, you can sell more paper futures contracts, but let's not go down

that rabbit hole. No, let's not do that. Let's not do that. Let's not do that. We don't want to lose the audience. But, you know, that that's That's roughly I think. So, I think what gold is saying is incredibly important. Um, but I think maybe the message is being lost on a lot of people because they're looking at the price and thinking that the price is important. I I don't think that's the important part of this. I think it's the demand and the nature of that demand. Mhm. You mentioned the sanctity of the US dollar

and I kind of imagine like with this bigger theme of like generational global Change, what's more of your outlook on the future for the US dollar? Well, I've got to be really careful what I say here because I know how this goes. If I say to you, don't you dare do this to me. If I say to you like every other fiat currency, gold, the dollar is going to zero. I don't want the headline to this no conversation being Grant Williams says dollar's going to zero. Okay. My point is I did a presentation um back

in uh Gosh 2018, so seven years ago now called Crywolf. And one of the slides in that I had a I was talking for like 30 seconds and I had a stream. You couldn't read it. It was going so fast of of things going up behind me just scrolling and they were all there was 300 fiat currencies that had all died and uh you know I said every fiat currency ultimately goes zero. Voltater said fiat currency ultimately returns its intrinsic value which is zero and And the dollar will as well. um maybe not for a

while, but it it will ultimately go to zero like they all do. And we've seen its purchasing power decline 97% in the last 50 years. Um and that's what we're talking about here. But the dollar uh the the the dollar environment has changed. The dollar today's dollar is not the 2015 dollar. It just isn't. And the changes are really slowm moving. And you can look at any number of charts and you can argue It from both sides all you want and and both sides win the argument because you can pick things that demonstrate the dollar's

going nowhere. I agree with that. And you can pick data that says the dollar's days of reserve currency are numbered. And that can also be true. Um because we're talking about different time frames here. And I I um I'm reminded of this of of the great Billy Connelly who's who said famously that um the the definition of intelligence is Being able to listen to the William Till Overture and not think about the Lone Ranger. And I think that is incredibly true. And and why I always reminded of that is is the the importance of being

able to hold these two ideas in your brain at the same time that the dollar is still going to be the world's uh trading currency, but it's still one day going to be irrelevant. And so the the just because it is what it is doesn't mean It's not going to be what it's going to be. And so that's that's what we have to navigate. What does that process look like? Is it a slow grind over time? Is it a slow grind and then a drop? Is it a sudden drop? It's impossible to say, but most

likely if you look at previous um instances of reserve currencies that have ceased to be the reserve currency, it's a slow grind and then a drop. um in you know Britain the pound sterling had this slow grind into Irrelevance but it wasn't really until the sewers crisis 1956 when the US basically applied the cuda grass and stuck the the final knife in the chest of the of the pound sterling and killed it once and for all as a reserve currency. Um, if you think about that, that long decline and that drop and you think about

what we said earlier about the fact that the dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power over 50 years, that's a pretty long decline to me. To Be clear, I'm not saying we're on the edge of the drop. I'm not saying that at all. But I'm saying the direction of travel is clear and the um the reasons for other central banks to diversify out of the dollar have been growing over the last 10 years. A lot of it around energy dynamics, a lot of it around oil flows and the acceptance of payments in in currencies

other than the dollar has been talked about more and more. If you look at um foreign official Holdings of US treasuries, they've essentially gone sideways for a decade now. If you look at individual countries holdings of de of treasuries, you will see steady uh deaccumulation of treasury bonds. People will point to things places like the Cayman Islands and Belgium and say well look you know obviously this stuff's being recycled and bought back here and it's true but if China is reducing its official holdings of treasuries and let's say There are uh significant increases in purchases

through the Cayman Islands which there are and let's say as the people defending this that it is the Chinese central bank buying them through the Cayman Islands and and net net they're actually still buying treasuries But the composition is different. And yes, their official holdings going side cyber, but they're still buying them. Look, it's all going through the Cayman Islands. Okay, let's assume that's true. But what that does is the more they hold in the Cayman Islands and they don't hold officially, the more they can sell without scaring the horses. So if I was looking

to do this, it's exactly what I'd do. I' I'd keep my official holdings dribbling lower. I'd be buying them in the Cayman Islands and I'd be telling the US Treasury, look, you know, we're doing some work here. Real, we're still buying them. We're still showing up in The auctions, but we're going to put them in the Cayman Islands and look, you can see here there there are existential threats everywhere to everybody right now because of the period we're in. And there's no um there's no putting anyone's interests above your own domestic interests anymore. Globalization is

dead. Um, and this idea that we all want to do what's best for the global community and we'll Take a bit of pain here, but it's going to come back to us on that. And no, that's gone. That's dead. It's domestic only now. And Trump has been the most obvious uh harbinger of that in terms of his uh MAGA policy, which is, you know, America first, make America great again. Um, but as soon as America does that, because they are the biggest trading partner with just about everybody in the world, it necessarily forces everybody else

to do that too. You you can't you Can't be the good global citizen if your trading partner is America and America said to you, "We are going to prioritize our interests over yours." You're not going to sit back and go, "Okay, fine. Well, we're happy with that. We'll prioritize your interests over ours as well." So, the world has fundamentally changed. And the sooner people understand that and the sooner people think about what these changes mean, these big slowmoving changes that will Ultimately be reflected in the price of every single asset on the planet, the more

equipped you're going to be to think that through and and come up with a plan. Not to make money necessarily, although there will be opportunities to make significant money, but your plan should not be first and foremost, how do I make money out of this? It should be how do I protect myself from this? Um that I think is the big shift you know all all the all the Mindset uh all the press all the talking heads everything has been about your gains and oh you've made you know Bitcoin has appreciated by X times in

3 years and Burkshire Hway is up 5 a half million% compounded and all this stuff has been all about the gains and that's terrific because that's been the environment we've been in. It's been the time to make gains with risk assets for 40 years. We've had a 40-year tailwind. And I'm telling you that wind is blowing In the opposite direction now. And the simple the simple task ahead of you is how do I protect what I have? And I let the gains take care of themselves. I've already made my gains. How do I not give

them back? And that's a very different mindset for a lot of people and and one that people will struggle with. Yeah. Fascinating. Okay. as you point out, this is not like how to make money. The plan needs to be how to protect yourself and shifting that mindset. It also just Makes me wonder, Grant, I imagine we have a lot of people then who are totally misallocated as we head into this like bigger I guess we're already in it. This big gradual shift and I guess it is it gradual and then what's the Hemingway quote? and

the sun also rises like gradually then suddenly all at once. Yep. That that that that tends to be how these things play out. Um and look, the the simple truth is the vast majority of People aren't positioned incorrectly for this because of course they are, right? You can't unwind 40 years of positioning uh overnight. But you but the important thing is and I want to go back to the idea about not being able to make money. you will be able to make an awful lot of money if you are if you have the right temperament

and the right skill set for what happens next. But for the vast majority of us, um that should be secondary is what I'm saying. The idea Of how do I make money out of this should be secondary in your thinking to boy oh boy, I don't want to I don't want to give up half of what I made here cuz I I' I've had this 40 year tailwind. I don't want to waste it. I was also thinking for boomers too. Yeah. like boomers as they leave the workforce and a lot of them already have but

they're going to have to be of that mindset they are going to have to protect right because they're also the life like life Expectancy like they're gonna have to live longer as well so well and where are they all now right they're all heavily skewed into stocks which is crazy I mean it is crazy if you are if you are going to a point where you're leaving the workforce you don't have an income and you are piled into the highest allocations of stocks I think in history if it isn't now is it certainly it's there

or there about because it has been recently. Um that is Madness. It is it is the definition of irresponsible stewardship of your irreplaceable capital to to to give up your income and have everything in the stock market unless you've got only dividend paying stocks. But we all know that everybody's not in dividend paying stocks. They're in the Mac 7. They're in tech. They're in all the stuff that we've seen. So that's the big mind shift, right? Because because you can you can sit and think About this conceptually. You can sit there when you're 25 and

say, "Right, you know, here's how I want you to allocate my things. I want to take plenty of risk and, you know, I'm 25. I want to take plenty of risk. And then when I when I when I'm into my 40s and 50s, we'll slowly adjust that because by the time I retire at 65, I want to be much safer and be focused on income and not growth. And that's that's how we're going to do and you sit there at 25, you Got your whole life planned out in front of you. And every investment advisor

worth his salt will give you advice that is somewhere in that ballpark because that's the sensible way to invest capital over a career, over a lifetime. What's happened? You know, we we've we've had the markets we've had. Now we find ourselves with the boomer generation all retiring in their droves and they're all in stocks. Why? because it was just too sexy to be in stocks and The returns were too good to be in those boring bonds and we and we the bond market hasn't been great because we got to that point where it was all

uh we had $18 trillion of negative yielding bonds. That was the time to get out. So, we got out and we're in stocks now, but let's hang on to the stocks. Yeah, if the world is the same, great. But if you think we're going to get another 40 years like the 40 years you've just had, um, I'm not Saying there's a 0% chance of it because anything could happen. But I'm saying if you're looking at thinking about what to do with the capital you have that needs to last you and sustain you and provide you

with the lifestyle you want for the rest of your life when you don't have an income. Your primary thought should not be how do I how do I get the highest return on my capital. You should be there already. If you've done this Right, you should be at the point if you're retiring. I can infer from that that you believe you have enough in your nest egg to retire on. Otherwise, why are you retiring? If you have enough, don't worry about the gains. Don't worry about the gains. make sure that you don't give it back

and have to go back to work in 5 years time because you lost a whole lo of the stock market. So the vast majority of people are com Not only poorly positioned for this but they are positioned in what could potentially be a very damaging way rather than just means they miss out and they don't quite they're not in the right pockets that are going to go up. It could it could be damaging. So think this stuff through. If you're a millennial, if you're a Gen Z and you've got 25 years to make this back,

fine. Roll the dice. It's okay. You got time. But there have been 10, 15 year periods Where stock markets have gone sideways, not since probably the 80s. Um, but it happens. And so if you're if you've built a lifestyle around 20% annual returns and income from your stock portfolio and you get 10 years of nothing and in that 10 years several years of down performance, how does that change your life? You know, probably quite materially depending on your age. So, you know, all all I'm saying is it you you haven't really had to Think too

much to be invested in the last number of years. And you haven't even had to think too much to trade. You know, if you've continually bought the dip, which is what you've been conditioned to do by the media and CNBC and all these people that are constantly trying to get you in by the dip, you haven't had to worry about that. I believe you do now. And so taking the time to think it through at the very least is it's just a smart choice. And If you decide at the end of it, yeah, you know

what? No, I think he's wrong. The world hasn't changed. It's fine. Absolutely fine. At least you've taken the time and the trouble to analyze it, think about it, and make a decision instead of just carrying on doing the same things that have worked so well for so long. Grant, what is the what's the risk that's keeping you up at night these days? What is that one risk for you that you can't stop thinking about? Uh, you know, it's a good question and it changes. Um, you know, I I think I think for me and going

back to this um this kind of existential nature of this this this journey with Dimmitri, um my big the big thing that keeps me awake at night is not necessarily a specific risk per se, although you know I worry about my kids and I worry about my grandkids as as everybody does and should. I worry about the life that they're going to live and And how hard things might be for them if all this plays out as previous periods like this of crisis have played out. I worry about that. But what keeps me awake at

night, not necessarily from fear, but just from from curiosity or confusion is trying to understand the nature of this change. And not just in markets, you know, uh we we all tend to prioritize markets and think that they are the most important thing. Um and they're really not. You know, the things That are important are are family and community and and and and the kind of things that you don't have to think about when everything's going great. But the nature of this change is such we've seen it on the political spectrum in every country in

the world. Um these these dividing lines tend to be horizontal. It's left and right. It's Democrat and Republican. It's rich and poor. Um, but there's there are dividing lines which are vertical too. You know, It's it's boomers and millennials. Um, I should put rich and poor in that in that vertical dividing line, too. And so, the nature of these changes and understanding what they mean. Um, you know, the return of of spirituality. Uh, one of the big things we talked about in this podcast was religion, the return of religion. And I I have I've stated

whenever I brought this up, I'm not a religious man. I'm not a practicing anything. I didn't grow up in a Religious family. And in fact, I grew up in England that was was really post religion. My my family's generation kind of identified as Christians or Church of England or they identify, but they weren't necessarily in church every week. It's different in America. I understand that that the the the church component in America is very different and much stronger. Um, but there is a a clear return To and I I I I call it spirituality rather

than religion because not everybody finds that in in God. They find it in other things. But that's a big change and it's an important change. Um, and you can wonder does that change drive the outcome or are we seeing that change because of what's happening and and you can argue in both directions. So, in terms of keeping me up at night, you know, I I I've I've I've been thinking about what's Happening now for a long time. And anyone that's listened to me talk at length knows that I I've been a proponent of gold uh

as a significant allocation of portfolio for precisely what's happening now. So, I don't I don't sit and worry about my stock portfolio. I don't worry about what the markets could do. But I think what I was talking to uh a good friend of mine here today and I said to him, you know, if you'd have if you'd have asked me what Surprised you the most about now, um I would never in a million years have guessed that the correct answer to that in the moment would be I was nowhere near cynical enough. Wow. And that

is something that I'm still trying to grapple with to be honest with you because you know I've been cynical for a long time um about the way I've seen the world going and and I've been called cynical by by by friends and uh and haters Alike. And I and I totally get that. I get that and I and I I own that. But the simple truth is I wasn't nearly cynical enough. And and that worries me because if I wasn't cynical enough, then the people who were not cynical at all are going to find themselves

in a world of potential hurt because the not only are the financial ramifications of not being cynical enough Uh extreme, but I think when you when you when you have misplaced optimism And it is proven to be misplaced in the worst way possible. Uh it's not just a shock to your P&L. It's it's a shock to your very core that how could I have been so wrong about this? Not not markets necessarily because we all know that with markets we're making a bet on a completely unknowable future, but how Could I have been so wrong

about um the sanctity of the US Constitution? Perfect time to think about that, right? Trump saying yesterday he wasn't sure if he needed to uphold the US Constitution. I mean, it's literally in the oath that he took when he took the presidency. Um, or this idea that he might run for a third term. Now, look, Trump's being Trump and he says these things and people get their knickers in a twist about it. And I I I get That. But at some point, at some point, you start to question the very foundations of how you believed

society functioned. civil society functioned. Um, and and I, you know, Demetri and I talked with Neil about this last week and in the fourth turning, Neil talked about during a fourth turning, what happens is the institutions which the people believe are no longer fit for purpose get torn down. And I said to him, I said, you know, I've been Thinking about um, you know, the World Bank and the IMF and the United Nations and NATO, these these big super national bodies that were created at the end of the last fourth turning post World War II.

and they've been at the center of how the world's function for many years, but you've seen confidence in these institutions waver and break and fall. And Neil said something to me that I hadn't thought about, but as soon as he said it, I realized I'd been worried About it for a long time. He said, "Yeah, what about the US Constitution?" And I hadn't thought about that as an institution, but of course it is. And it's it's by far the most important institution in America. And if you start to question the US Constitution, um, and I

don't mean me as some stupid Brit with a plumby accent picking holes in the US Constitution. That's not what I'm doing at all. I happen to think that And the Bill of Rights are arguably two of the most two of the greatest documents ever written. But if they no longer have the sanctity that they've had for 249 years now, 249 years of being the absolute bedrock of America, American life, American society, American exceptionalism, if you call those into question, which is being done now, um, both overtly by sort of things Trump's saying and covertly by

conversations People are having about, man, I can't believe he's even thinking about running for a third term. What are you doing? You know, you are questioning the fabric of the greatest country on earth. And this is not me having a pop at America. I happen to agree that America is the greatest country on earth. So, it's not that. And what I see saddens me enormously. And I'm not putting this on Trump. This is not Trump. Trump is the guy who was Probably always going to be here for this moment in time. This is where this

was leading us. Trump is the guy. He's he's not the disease. He's the symptom. And he's doing what he's doing and he's having some success and some failures. But in order for all this to unfold the way it is, you kind of need Trump there. If he had a different kind of president, we'd be in a different point in the cycle. So to blame Trump is is I think to to seek a simple explanation for Something that is much more existential is much more um difficult to face up to, difficult to contemplate, difficult to believe

can actually happen. It's much easier to say Trump's ruined America than it is to say, "Wow, maybe over the last 50 years we've gradually picked away at the sanctity of what makes this country great and now we're at the crossroads and Trump is just highlighting that." I don't know. But these are the things That keep me awake. These big existential things that have nothing to do with markets. They will be reflected in markets for many, many years to come. But markets are so secondary to the kind of changes that these changes will create for us

in our everyday lives outside of markets. It's a long-winded answer to, you know, I I I could have just said um you know, my football team, but um that's the stuff that I'm trying to think through And trying to think about and and with Dimmitri's help and through my writing and through the help of some of the people who've who've helped me try and get people to understand firstly the nature of these problems which are nothing to do with markets. Um, and secondly, think about how to think about the nature and and what to do

about giving yourself a chance to to mitigate them to the best degree you can. And Grant, that's why we love having you on This show because you help us think through these things and have that longer form conversation. Before I let you go, um, let folks know where they can find your work, listen to this podcast that you and Dimmitri have. Anything that you'd like to plug, any final thoughts? The floor is all yours. Well, thank you. I mean, look, as I said, you can find me behind my couch with my head in my hands

most days, but um uh I have a website, grant-wills.com, And everything I do is up there. Um the podcast, uh I I'm talking about the hundred-year pivot with Dimmitri. Um you know, we're we're we're taking this journey. We don't know where it's going to lead us. We don't know who we're going to we're going to talk to along the way. We started with Neil How because he was one of the one of the planks of this for both of us. We've we've just recorded Russell Napia because his work on um on uh capital Controls um

and the persecution of capital has been foundational. So that'll be out um on Thursday, I think. And this podcast, you know, our subscribers will will get that podcast um before everybody else, but we're going to release these publicly to everybody. So you will be able to listen to that a week after our subscribers if you just um find my public uh podcast feed, Grant News Podcast. And I'm on Twitter, TTMY GH. So, um, you know, I'm Happy to engage with people that want to talk about this stuff. And I'm happy to be called all the

things I normally get called when I when I when I do shows like this because it's all part of the of the fun and games. But, um, yeah, I I I I think the message is important, Julia, you know, and and and thanks for giving me a chance to get it out there because there's not one single stock tip in this conversation. No. And that's okay. We don't need that on this Channel, right? And I think that's that's a big change. It's it's time for people to stop looking at stock tips and try and as

I said in for the last hour, just really spend some time thinking about the change that's happening, the nature of it, and what it could do to you worst case and then think to myself, well, I definitely don't want the worst case to happen. So, what am I going to do to try and mitigate that? I love it. Grant Williams, author of Things That Make You Go, Hm. and host of the Grant Williams podcast. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, all of your knowledge, your wisdom, your ideas. Really appreciate you.

appreciate you being a friend of this show and we look forward to having you on once again. Thanks again, Grant. Grant Williams. Anytime, Julia.