 Well welcome to Investory Intel at PDAC 2018. I'm lucky enough today to be joined by Byron King. Byron's a very well-known to many of our viewers as a letter writer. Byron, you've got two quotes that I want to ask you about. First of all, I hear you've said the mining industry doesn't make sense. Tell me more. I haven't said that. Here we are at PDAC, which is the world's largest mining convention surrounded by mining companies that the lights and air being paid for by the mining industry, and we're in the midst of an industry that makes no sense. A couple reasons. First of all, the mining industry has done a terrible job of telling its story of how necessary it is to the world. People generally do not like the mining industry. They see movies about evil miners, whether it's science fiction like Avatar or whether it's other movies that show what bad guys they are. At the same time, while people are belly aching about mining, they drive around in their cars that are made of metal. They live in their house, which is made of everything that came from a mine. They talk with each other on their cell phones and smart phones. Your iPhone has something like 63 of the 92 elements on the periodic table in it. None of them are there by accident. The mining industry has done a terrible job of explaining why it's important to the world. Another thing is more internal to the mining industry. That is because the mining industry has a destructive business model. You discover something. You create value in the sense that you drill it up and identify minerals and ores and elements that are of value there. Then you destroy it. You dig a mine and you pull it all out and you process it. Something goes someplace. The value stream goes someplace. You're left with a big hole in the ground in the end. That's the tradition of the mining industry. A wasting sort of an asset. This morning I gave a talk. I said, what if Boeing, the big airplane builder, built airplanes using the mining business model? If you know anything about Boeing, you know that they designed their airplanes down to the last screw in the last wire bundle and the colors of the seats. If they used the mining model, they would design about 30% of their airplane. Then they would build a construction shed and they'd hire a bunch of people to come in and they'd start banging it together and they'd put together this odd looking bird at the end of the production line. It would be overweight, overpriced. It would crash. The first couple of airplanes would crash. Finally they'd get it right and they'd sell about 15 or 20 airplanes that were actually good airplanes. Then they would shut down the airplane assembly line and fire everybody and tear down the construction shed. A very strange business model for a company like Boeing. It sounds more like software actually. That's the mining industry. We could get into software too but the mining industry, they build a mine, they dig it out, they destroy the asset, they make some money along the way. The trick to investing in it though is you need to understand this idea that it is a wasting, destructive asset. You have to get in at the right time when value starts to be created. You need to know when to get out and you can't just think that you're a genius because the stock price went up and now you're sitting on a gain. No, it's not a gain unless you get out at the right time. There are cycles. There are exploration cycles, followed by development cycles, followed by production cycles. As you look at mining companies, that's one of the things you want to keep in mind. One of the things that we do in the newsletter, the Records Gold Speculator newsletter, which I write. We're focused right now on gold silver and we get into copper or copper lead zinc, base metals, but things that are associated with gold silver. We do think that the precious metals and those other metals are where the value is right now. Well, PDAC every year, we're just getting kicked off again. Every year the flavor is different. Every year the feel is different. This year is different again and it's kind of strange and almost seems a little quiet to me. What are you seeing out there? Great question. Wonderful question. Let's do a little history. Three years ago, it was the PDAC mausoleum. This building was a tomb. In 2015, people were glum. A lot of empty booths, people didn't show up. They couldn't afford to pay the booth fee. 2016, we were just in that upswing that was just kicking off. Some of these companies had had double and triple and quadruple share price gains. Even big companies, big guys, tech mining or tech resources was booming. It was just the sense of euphoria two years ago. Then last year, we had our euphoric 2016. We were into that 2017. People were, oh, we're confident. We've raised our money and we're going to be doing our thing. Now this year, we're in it. We're about eight months into a bit of a slide here. A lot of people are tight lipped about it. There are a lot of good companies. They've raised money. They've done great things. If they're explorers, they've got good handle on their exploration. They've got a good asset. The geologists have gotten smarter. We've paid a lot of tuition as shareholders. We have paid a lot of tuition to send geologists and management teams to school in the last two years to learn about what it is that the next great thing, the next great project that's coming down the line. We've paid that tuition. Right now, it's certainly not somber. It's not tomb like three years ago with the mausoleum PDAC that we had. People are looking forward saying, what is going on? What's going on? The big stock market is way up in the sky. There's all these weird things going on. All this money flowing into marijuana. All this money flowing into cryptos. I mean, even the mathematicians don't understand what cryptos is. There are people who are making immense amount of money on crypto who don't have the first slightest clue what it is. I mean, it violates Warren Buffett's first rule of understanding what you invest in, which is why he owns Dairy Queen. I mean, you understand ice cream cones. Nobody understands crypto. Give me a break. I mean, blockchain crypto. I mean, you can talk about it, but show me the math. Here's a blackboard. Here's a piece of chalk. People can't do that. Very, very, very few people can do it. But they think they're going to be smart investors by going into it. At least on my side, at least I can sleep at night thinking, well, I understand gold and silver and copper and lead. I understand mining. And if we play our cards right, we are in the beginning of the next upswing of the commodity cycle. The world needs stuff. Seven and a half billion people in this world, and they want more stuff. I mean, maybe you've got enough stuff here in North America, and you're not worried about it. But the other six and a half billion people in the world, they want more. They want cars. They want air conditioners. They want refrigerators. They want a roof over their house. So we can make some money there. Well, thank you very much, Byron. I'm sure I can sit here and talk to you for an hour on this, and a lot of our listeners would be interested in it. But it's just a pleasure to get your thoughts on it. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to be here. I write for Gore Financial, and we're on the newsletter circle. The Rickards Gold Speculator with Byron King. Jim Rickards is my partner international economist who has a forecast for much higher gold prices. And I slipstream behind him talking about the kind of gold and silver companies that ought to do well. Well, thanks, Byron. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. It's great to be here.