Dear Readers,

We’re continuing with our series of video conversations, as we believe they will be most useful to you while they are fresh. But fear not: if Doug has a “guru moment” or experiences an urgent need to comment on something in the news, we’ll step in with his thoughts. Meanwhile, John Hathaway’s comments are particularly relevant and reassuring, given the fluctuation we’re seeing in gold this week.

Thanks for reading/viewing, and more soon,

Sincerely,

Louis James

Senior Metals Investment Strategist
Casey Research

[John Hathaway revealed more valuable insights about the precious-metals market at the Casey Research Recovery Realty Check Summit. Joining him were Doug Casey, James Rickards, John Mauldin, and 27 other financial experts. You can hear all of their presentations – which include timely stock picks and asset-protection strategies – on the Summit Audio Collection.]

Interviewed by Louis James, Editor, International Speculator

Louis James: Ladies and gentleman, thanks for tuning in. We’re at the Casey Research Recovery Reality Check Summit. We’re talking with John Hathaway, one of the more successful fund investors – institutional investors – in our precious metals field near and dear to my heart. John, can you give us a quick version of what you talked about here, for those who didn’t make it to the conference?

John Hathaway: Sure, yes. I think we’re at the end of a correction that resulted from the peak last summer. It was overcooked, kind of hyperventilated hysteria over the debt-ceiling talks, the rating downgrade of the US sovereign debt, and I think basically the stocks and the metal had been working off that boiled down to what we now have is a simmer. I think we are at a position where there’s not a lot of downside, and I would not be surprised by revisiting the previous highs of $1,900 and maybe even new highs over $2,000 this year.

What will do that is basically – so much of the narrative has been quantitative easing. When Bernanke announced on the 29th of February that they were done with quantitative easing (and if you believe that I’ve got a bridge to sell you, but for the time being let’s assume that there won’t be any), I was very impressed that gold did not go to a new low. It printed somewhere below $1,600 at the end of the year, made a couple-of-day swoon, but it didn’t go to a new low. And then when the Fed minutes came out it also did not go to a new low, it kind of reiterated what Bernanke said. So the narrative may be changing. I’m not ruling out quantitative easing as a possibility, but there are things out there that gold might be looking at that the CNBC mentality hasn’t figured out.

Remember that gold rose for many years before we even heard of quantitative easing; it was in a steady uptrend. So what could those things be? What would take gold – what would be the new headlines that might take gold to higher highs? To me, the biggest thing is that the Federal Reserve has purchased something like 61% of all new Treasury debt in the last year; and if they aren’t going to continue that, then what’s going to happen to rates?

Louis: Right.

To Read More or Watch the Video CLICK HERE