July 2024 - Week 1 Edition
Happy July 4th to everyone, and Happy Birthday, AMERICA!
I’m Headed for Freedom Fest Next Week
Next Week, I’ll be at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. First, I’ll be featured on a metals panel chaired by my long-time friend Gary Alexander, where I’ll talk about the fundamental case for gold and coins, and how to buy metals better in Nevada, considering their sales tax on coins. We’ll also have a booth and are holding our popular financial seminar there, so I hope anyone coming to Freedom Fest will drop by and visit us.
Thursday, July 11, 5:05 to 5:20 on the Main Stage, “Gold: The Freedom Hedge”
Friday, July 12, 1:30 to 2:15 pm, Room 116-117, “Meet the Experts” Financial Seminar”
Steve Forbes will also be speaking there, so I hope to catch up with him, to see if he has revised his 2024 gold prediction. In past years, gold was a big part of Freedom Fest, but this year, after such a strong bull market in gold and silver, with recent all-time high prices in gold, I’m surprised to see that there are very few speakers on gold and silver, with very few gold or coin dealers as well, so we have a near monopoly on helping those interested in investing in gold and rare coins. As 2021 ANA Dealer of the Year, we have a prominent position in the exhibit hall, so we hope to gain a new family of clients at Freedom Fest 2024.
Report on the Markets in the First Half of 2024
Precious metals had a spectacular first half of the year. Gold is well on its way to our predicted price of $2,500 by the end of 2024, and silver has already reached our $30 target, surpassing all stock indexes.
We first dared to predict $2,500 gold in late October 2023 after meeting with former Republican Presidential contender Steve Forbes, where he and I predicted $2,400 to $2,500 gold when the price was in the $1,900s. He said that the gold price could go even higher “if the wrong guys win the 2024 election,” and after last week’s dismal presidential debate, we all know that the wrong guy “isn’t all there” anymore. He stumbled, rumbled and bumbled his way to the finish line last week. President Joe Biden’s cognition issues can lead to greater uncertainty, both at home and abroad, and uncertainty is almost always a driver of gold prices
The major stock market indexes rose from 3.8% (Dow) to 14.5% (S&P 500) to 18.1% (NASDAQ), while gold was up 13.3% and silver was up over 23.4% in the first half of the year, despite the U.S. dollar index rising 4.5%. This means gold averaged about 18% gains in other major currencies and silver was up over 28% in global terms. Crude oil rose about the same as gold, so American consumers were suffering from rising inflation, despite what the President’s advisors were trying to tell us about the decline of inflation in recent months. The price of crude oil has risen by 6% during June (2024) alone.
Sales of American Silver Eagles rose strongly in the first half of 2024 (up 46.5%), reflecting silver’s superior performance. Don’t forget, our professional representatives are here to help you purchase the best bullion products in gold and silver, as well as the most promising numismatic coin series. Don’t Wait! Call today!
Gold and Silver Both On Track For Additional Gains
Gold and silver beat the Dow badly in the first half of the year, while silver beat the S&P 500 by nine points. In the first three days of July, silver is up $1.59 and gold is up $38. In the first half of 2024, gold has risen by $305 and it has only $142 to go to reach $2,500, so we are more than halfway to our 2024 goal.
The President Keeps Bragging About His Economy “Wins” That Didn’t Happen
It was a painful debate to watch this past Thursday, particularly as President Biden kept bragging about his “wins” that didn’t happen. As he shuffled onto the stage and spoke in a weak, raspy voice, making it hard to follow him, he made a series of unsupportable claims about how he engineered a huge recovery from what he compared to the Great Depression of his parents’ generation. It was somewhat embarrassing, and all wrong:
This was the President’s opening remark:
“We’ve got to take a look at what I was left with when I became president, what Mr. Trump left me. We had an economy that was in freefall … There were no jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 15 percent. It was terrible. And so, what we had to do is try to put things back together again. And that’s exactly what we began to do. We created 15,000 new jobs (and) 800,000 new manufacturing jobs.”
I’m sure he meant to say he “created 15 million jobs” (not 15,000) since that’s what his ads say, but the economy was going gangbusters when he was elected. The GDP was growing at a 19% annual rate in the second half of 2020, recovering from the spring shutdown – forced by Democratic governors, for the most part. The unemployment rate was shrinking fast in late 2020. All those “new” jobs were not “created” – those “new” jobs were almost all workers coming back to the same jobs vacated because of Democrat Party governors like Gavin Newsom in California or Andrew Cuomo in New York. As for those 800,000 manufacturing jobs, the total is well under 200,000 jobs in the 4.3 years since the COVID crisis began.
President Biden, who said to great applause the next day that he “doesn’t lie,” said that President Donald Trump’s tax cuts “cost $2 trillion,” but economist Art Laffer – who is three years older than Biden, and a tax expert – told David Asman on Fox Business News on July 1 a different story. He said the tax cuts under Donald Trump not only paid for themselves, but tax revenues were up for the first two-year period after the tax cuts (2018-19) and up by more than the previous two years, and GDP soared. The current economy, under Biden, benefits even more from the Trump tax cuts than Trump did, with much higher tax revenues than Biden would have had without the tax rate cuts enjoyed by small businesses and taxpayers at all levels, not just the rich.
President Biden also said the tax cuts were “only for the rich,” but Asman quoted a New York Times article from April 14, 2019, headlined, “Face It: You (Probably) Got a Tax Cut: Studies consistently find that the 2017 law cut taxes for most Americans.” And now, Biden is promising to raise everyone’s taxes! That was a strategy Walter Mondale used in 1984, leading to the biggest Republican landslide ever!
In fairness, both candidates were loose with the facts, exaggerating their records in many cases. However, despite claims by liberals that nearly everything Trump was a “lie,” some of the biggest falsehoods came from the mouth of the current President, just ask the Gold Star Families, who lost their loved ones under Biden’s reign. Sadly, he forgot about those brave soldiers, who sacrificed their lives for America.
ALERT: Be sure to read next week’s Metals Market Report as we will share some exciting news about our company!
