Jason Burack of Wall St for Main St interviewed first time guest, Senior Precious Metals Analyst at GoldSilver.com, Jeff Clark. Jeff was a former mining analyst and newsletter writer at Casey Research where he wrote the Big Gold investment newsletter.
Jeff writes a gold market newsletter for GoldSilver.com and his also writes articles for their blog https://goldsilver.com/blog/
Here's some of the questions and topics Jason asks Jeff about during this 30+ minute interview:
1) There was record physical gold withdrawals in November 2016 and February 2017 from the Shanghai Gold Exchange yet many mainstream gold organizations like the World Gold Council, GFMS, etc claim gold demand is weak. What's your take on demand for physical gold globally?
2) The gold to silver ratio is around 71. Do you think this means that silver is the better long term value relative to gold at this point?
3) I want to talk about the primary gold and silver mining industry. Do you think that in general the industry has done a good job at cutting costs in order to survive since gold hit $1900 and silver hit $48 in 2011 and a cyclical bear market started?
4) In December 2016, Bloomberg ran a story showing how primary gold miners are running out of economic gold reserves https://www.bloomberg.com/ news/articles/2016-12-21/gold- miners-are-running-out-of- metal-five-charts-explaining- why
Do you think the industry can replace reserves at current gold and silver prices or will gold and silver prices have to go substantially higher to maintain current production levels and also to replace mined/depleted reserves?
5) Can primary gold and silver miners significantly cut more costs without shutting down mines or going bankrupt?
6) The CEO of Franco Nevada recently said that it will almost be impossible for the gold mining industry to grow production beyond current production levels. Do you agree with him? https://www.bloomberg.com/ news/articles/2017-03-01/gold- miners-running-to-stand-still- after-cuts-franco-ceo-says
7) Large gold mining companies like Barrick Gold, Newmont Mining and Goldcorp have written off their proven and probable gold reserves since 2012. Reserves have declined to 61%, 62% and 69% of the 2012 heydays. Is the gold mining industry facing very difficult supply problems now and in the future?