-- Published: Monday, 21 April 2014 | Print | Disqus
Source: JT Long of The Gold Report (4/21/14)
Willem Middelkoop and Terence van der Hout of the Netherlands-based Commodity Discovery Fund believe that when the world's reserve currency is reset away from the U.S. dollar in the next decade, gold prices will rise and mining equities will follow. Van der Hout and Middelkoop tell The Gold Report that by focusing on producers, near-producers and turnaround stories, they plan to capitalize on the opportunities in North America, Africa and beyond.
The Gold Report: Willem, your first book predicted the collapse of the global financial system a year before the 2008 fall of Lehman Bros. In your new book "The Big Reset: War on Gold and the Financial Endgame," you're predicting the demise of the dollar as the reserve currency by 2020. You said it can occur as a carefully planned event or as the result of a crisis. What would these two scenarios look like?
Willem Middelkoop: Authorities always prefer to act within a well-planned scenario. The U.S. and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) understand that the U.S. dollar has to be replaced one day. It could be 2020. It could be 2018. It could be 2023. It has to be replaced by another anchor to support the worldwide monetary system.
Both the U.S. and the IMF will try to stay in the driver's seat as they propose the transformation of the worldwide financial system. They could introduce special drawing rights (SDRs), an international reserve asset created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries' official reserves. Its value is based on a basket of four key international currencies, and SDRs can be exchanged for freely usable currencies. The U.S. and the IMF could propose that the SDRs be used to replace the dollar as the anchor for the worldwide financial system.
However, the IMF and its partners, the central banks around the world, will need at least five more years to prepare the system for such a change. A crisis of confidence around the dollar could occur before the IMF and its partners are ready for a reset operation. If a crisis of confidence occurs, the IMF would have to mount a rescue operation to save worldwide trade, as we saw in early 2009. We had some similar, but smaller, resets following the crisis in Germany after the Weimar hyperinflation in 1923 and, more recently, in Cyprus.
The SDRs could act like a monetary umbrella and consist of dollars, euros, British pounds and Chinese yuan after a monetary reset.
TGR: A lot of this plan is going on backstage. Most people don't know about it. What signs should we look for to signal the shift so we can adjust our portfolios?
WM: This is a very important question. Investors need to understand that such a transformation in our monetary system might be introduced over a weekend. In Cyprus, there were not many warning signs. That's why I started a new blog called thebigresetblog.com, where I follow the latest information, and I'm publishing the latest signs pointing toward such a reset. On March 17, I published a story that was based on an interview with George Soros. In that interview with The Financial Times, Soros said the system is broken and needs to be reconstituted. I also published an interview with Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF. She used the term "reset" multiple times in interviews during the World Economic Forum.
Another important sign is an editorial by the Chinese state press agency recently saying that the time has come for a new international reserve currency to be created to replace the dominant U.S. dollar.
Both East and West sent out specific signals pointing toward this transformation. Of course, it's important to watch the gold and dollar charts on a daily basis, because when a reset is close, you can expect major moves.
TGR: What does this mean for gold? The signs are out there—why is the price hovering around $1,300/ounce ($1,300/oz)?
WM: It's quite easy to understand why central banks would like to revalue gold to devalue the dollar at a certain stage of this reset. The U.S.'s official gold reserves, which are still 8,000 tons, are valued at the historical cost price of $42/oz. A revaluation toward $4,200/oz would grow the value of these gold reserves from the current $11 billion ($11B) to $1.1 trillion. Without such a revaluation, gold prices will have to rise as well given the structural deficits in the gold market. Worldwide gold production can't keep up with the growing demand for physical gold. Recent figures by the World Gold Council show a deficit of 700 tonnes physical gold.
We have seen lots of manipulation of the gold price, similar to the 1960s when the London Gold Pool was keeping gold prices at $35/oz. Central bankers have done this for a number of years by selling large amounts of gold from the official reserves of Western central banks. We've seen another round of manipulation of the gold price in the last few years. This can't go on for another 5 to 10 years.
TGR: If the gold price went up, would the precious metals mining stocks follow or, because of the manipulation, would there not be a connection?
WM: The gold price started to rise at the end of December. When the gold price went up 10%, precious metal mining stocks went up sometimes as much as 30%. Investors will come to understand that the gold price might trade higher in the following weeks and months, and precious metal mining stocks should also go higher.
Countries like China and Russia are also growing their gold reserves enormously. With estimates for yearly deficits in the physical gold market up to around 1,000 tons/year, more investors see precious metal companies as the only ones that own huge amounts of physical tons still in the ground. When they can be sold at higher prices, these companies will become hugely profitable.
We've seen that in the past. In the 1970s, we had the last gold rush and lots of free cash flow was generated by gold and silver producers. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, these amounts were enormous. Senior producers had gains of 200–300% in the last two years of the gold bull market. The junior producers and the exploration companies showed gains of more than 1,000% on average.
TGR: What markets do you think are good right now? What commodities do you like?
WM: We still have 60% of our equity investments in gold-related equities, 20% in silver-related and the last 20% in base metals and specialty metals. The only change in the last two years has been that we decreased our investment in exploration companies and increased our investment in royalty companies and senior producers.
TGR: Why was that?
WM: Because of the low valuation in the correction since the middle of 2011. The valuation for gold producers became almost laughable. Of course, a producer, which is creating cash flow and is still profitable at these prices, has only upside in the current market. It was a defensive move.
Terence van der Hout: Technically, an exploration company that has no assets can just go to zero—there are a number that are doing that—whereas producers will always be worth something, even at fire sales.
That's another consideration that we've been looking at on the downside. Very recently, we've been subtly shifting from producers and near-producers to advanced developers. We see a turn in the markets. Those companies are well leveraged to the gold price and have a fairly extreme undervaluation to catch up with. Normally, they will be revalued to something relating to the amount of resource they produce.
TGR: A number of the companies in your fund are in Africa. How do you assess risk for a given region in Africa?
TvdH: There are various types of risks in Africa. There is a cost risk in West Africa because power is expensive and infrastructure is lacking. South Africa has energy issues and social and labor unrest. We have 70% of our portfolio invested in less risky areas, like North America. We used to avoid South Africa entirely, but something has changed in the way that we look at platinum.
For one thing, we very much like the future for platinum group metals (PGMs) given that the Chinese automobile market is exploding and will need all the PGMs that the world can provide.
TGR: Considering South Africa has posed risks in the past, what do you look for in a successful miner?
WM: A strong, proven, successful mine manager or entrepreneur can build companies time and again. The longer we are in this business—we're investors for more than 10 years now—the more we try to follow the good management teams.
TvdH: That's a derisking aspect of the business: management. Management is one of the prime parameters for us.
WM: However, we're quite fed up with the high salaries being paid to executives running companies that don't perform. The industry has to understand that investors are taking these compensation packages into consideration when they decide if they should invest or not.
TGR: Do you predict an impact from the conflict in Russia as it is a supplier of PGMs?
WM: Only if more sanctions are applied. Russian President Vladimir Putin understands how vulnerable the U.S. and the U.S. dollar have become. If strong sanctions were applied against Russia, it would be very easy for the Russians to stop selling oil in dollars and start selling it in yuan, rubles or even in gold. The U.S. knows it should be careful not to make Putin too mad because the dollar is too vulnerable. This is why no strong sanctions have been implemented until recently.
TGR: Any final advice for our readers as we're going into this shifting world?
WM: I would like to talk a little about silver. We talked a lot about gold, and gold is very important. It's my opinion that gold will come back in the monetary system. I don't expect a full gold standard, but gold will become more important. But silver is poor man's gold. When the gold price goes up too much, more people start to buy silver instead. However, there are no large, above-the-ground stockpiles available anymore. Silver was still used to produce coins until the 1980s. These above-the-ground silver stockpiles are almost completely gone. We're very interested in great silver companies with lots of ounces in the ground.
TGR: Thank you both for your time.
Willem Middelkoop is a successful entrepreneur and publicist from The Netherlands. He is a former market commentator for Dutch National TV, founder of Amsterdamgold.com, a web shop for gold and silver bullion that was sold in 2011, and founder of the Commodity Discovery Fund, where he is currently the principal. Middelkoop is a member of the Advisory Board of the London-based Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF). He is author of several books covering financial markets and the economy. His most recent book, "The Big Reset," his first book in English, was published at the end of 2013 and will be published in Chinese later this year.
Terence van der Hout is a senior researcher at the Netherlands-based Commodity Discovery Fund. The fund focuses on investing in world-class natural resources discoveries in precious metals, base metals and specialty metals, as well as undervalued start-up producers. Van der Hout also distributes Strategic Metals Bulletin, a free, monthly commentary on developments in the world of critical metals. To subscribe, please send an e-mail to: terence@cdfund.com. Van der Hout has a background in finance and holds a master's degree in administration in political science from the University of Leiden.
DISCLOSURE:
1) JT Long conducted this interview for Streetwise Reports LLC, publisher of The Gold Report, The Energy Report, The Life Sciences Report and The Mining Report, and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee.
3) Terence van der Hout: I was not paid by Streetwise Reports for participating in this interview. Comments and opinions expressed are my own comments and opinions. I had the opportunity to review the interview for accuracy as of the date of the interview and am responsible for the content of the interview.
4) Willem Middelkoop: I was not paid by Streetwise Reports for participating in this interview. Comments and opinions expressed are my own comments and opinions. I had the opportunity to review the interview for accuracy as of the date of the interview and am responsible for the content of the interview.
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-- Published: Monday, 21 April 2014 | E-Mail | Print | Source: GoldSeek.com
