Central Banks Cannot Hold Gold Down Forever Next Run Will Take It to New All-Time Highs: L. Lepard

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

This is part 2 of an exclusive Fringe Finance interview with fund manager Lawrence Lepard, where we discuss the state of the economy, gold, bitcoin, catastrophic outcomes for the market, the supply chain in the country and more. Part 1 can be found here.

Larry manages the EMA GARP Fund, a Boston based investment management firm. Their strategy is focused on providing “Monetary Debasement Insurance”. He has 38 years experience and an MBA from Harvard Business School. On Twitter he is @LawrenceLepard.

Q: Despite all our crowing, the price of metals still seems to be the only commodity that hasn’t caught the inflation bug yet. Why is that, do you think?

The metals were early to the party and are now taking a breather while all the other commodities catch up.

Gold was up over 50% in a two year window. It is down 15% in the past year. It is crazy and partly due to price suppression by the Central Banks, but they cannot hold it down forever and the next run will take it to new all time highs quickly in my opinion.

What crypto-linked US equities do you own or will you keep an eye on, if any?

That is not really something we focus much on. We do hold some of the better Bitcoin mining operators like Hut 8 and Bitfarms.

At times we have traded GBTC to add to your Bitcoin exposure when the discount makes it even more compelling than just buying more coins.

Have you looked at the uranium space at all? Do you own anything in the space? Why or why not?

I think uranium is very interesting and is clearly in a bull market. Having said that, we do not own any because it takes 100% of our effort to stay on top of the precious metals miners and Bitcoin.

If we had more bandwidth we would look at it.

What do you think about energy? Oil has skyrocketed and is now firmly over $80/bbl. Do you have any exposure to oil/energy? What’s your outlook on the space for the near and long term?

We like energy and oil a lot too. Like uranium, they are in a bull market. But again, we do not own any due to time constraints and bandwidth. We stay in our sound money lane.

In general if we were looking to go elsewhere, we would focus on commodities all of which in our view are undervalued and attractive.

Oil, uranium, softs, they will all work well in an inflationary environment and we are definitely in an inflationary environment that we believe will last for years.

Ultimately, do you see all commodities trending higher to a place where they could NEVER return to previous lows? Is that the kind of inflation we are experiencing now?

Yes, that is how we see it.

We think the commodity cycle bottomed in 2019/early 2020 and we will never return to those prices in our lifetimes. 40 years of deflation is over given what we see.

Congrats on recently getting some love from @jack on Twitter for your views on hyperinflation. Do you think Jack is right, is hyperinflation here? How did you get @jack to notice you – have you spoken to him directly?

Nope, never spoken to Jack directly or interacted with him. I think I got lucky because he likes Marty Bent and Marty had me on his podcast.

As to hyperinflation, yes, I think he is ultimately right but the time frame is tricky.

They may be able to hold this thing together for 5 more years, perhaps even 10. But I kind of doubt it. It is all about trust and faith. When people fully lose that the dollar goes to zero. My working estimate is 3-4 years we will have a currency reset or hyperinflation (effectively the same thing). Could happen sooner but I think it will take a few years to unfold.

We are in the early days of that Weimar chart. 1919, 1920 and the Deutschemark did not fail until 1923.

Thanks Larry.

Thanks Chris for having us as part of your show.

Part 1 of this interview can be found here.

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Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/commodities-will-never-return-2020-lows-lawrence-lepard