gold hitting a new record high above 4,0008 royals for the first time ever driven by investor flight safety also amid uncertainty over the economy as well as global stability.
Now central banks around the world have been buying gold for over a decade, pushing it to become the world's second largest reserve asset.
September seeing record inflows into US gold-related. pouring in around $33 billion.
So from Costco aisles to London vaults and Wall Street screens, the gold rush is apparent while gold mining stocks have soared.
Joining me to weigh in this morning is Will Rawling, founder and CEO of Granite Shares, and Granite shares recently reaching $11 billion in 8U.
Will, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you so much for being.
Yeah, well, we continue to see gold clear new record highs right now.
We are above 40, 70.
So tell me about what's driving this price.
Well, I think one of the things you just mentioned is absolutely on point for gold at the moment, which is it's really become the de facto reserve asset around the world, so recently surpassing the euro officially and becoming that first asset as an alternative to the US dollar.
Yeah, it's really interesting because when you take a step back, we continue to see the S&P 500 hit new record highs yet again today.
And given some of the volatility we saw earlier this year, we're at an interesting place heading into the final months of 2025, and gold is outpacing the major equity averages, even Bitcoin, although silver did hit a new record.
So going forward, what are the catalysts that you're paying attention to and what about monetary policies?
I think that there's a lot of the same factors in play for gold that have been in play over the last couple of years.
We've got geopolitical uncertainty which remains out there.
We've got inflation which remains higher than where the central banks both in the US and around the world would like it.
We have a policy now, official monetary policy that is in easing mode as opposed to tightening mode, and then we have the fact that markets are at all-time highs, people looking for alternatives, people looking for diversification and gold fulfills that role.
If you look at the amount of debt that's been held by governments around the world, we're at record highs in terms of debt, deficit levels, and major Western economies.
That debt level is going up.
The amount of money supply that's been created to support that is also going up, and this all correlates to a gold price at $4000 an ounce all-time highs.
Yeah, it's hard to believe that we've skyrocketed to these levels in such a short amount of time, but you mentioned something interesting, and of course diversification is key, but we're also looking at gold mining stocks now.
These are particular names and they are outpacing some of the mega AI names that are driving the tech trade.
So why is this happening?
I think this is something that we see when gold prices go to all-time highs, the mining companies sometimes lag that trend, and you know mining companies, particularly in the gold space, have been in the doldrums for quite some time and have lagged the pace of gold itself.
So we'll see whether this time is any different, but The challenge in previous cycles has always been the ability for gold mining companies to control the costs, and so typically what stopped gold mining companies outperforming gold in the past has always been that companies have not been able to control their costs and certainly keep inflation in check.
Well, while I have you here, granite shares has been growing exponentially and across the Atlantic as well.
So tell us why there is this growing demand when it comes to options-based ETF strategies.
I think that right now, a little bit like we were talking about gold, albeit differently, people are looking for alternative income sources in their portfolio.
So what options based ETFs do, and particularly yield boost ETFs and granite shares, these are very high.
Income paying ETFs, so we're talking 100%, 150% in some cases more north than 150% per annum in terms of yield, so very, very high numbers.
The reason why this is important to people is that markets are at all-time highs.
People are now saying, well, how far can the market go from here?
And maybe I should focus on turning some of that potential future growth into income today and that's what these options ETFs do, so they pay weekly distributions which for people managing bills, etc. can be important, and they're really, you know, supporting a lot of demand at the moment for this type of investment.
And so for viewers out there who are watching American retail investors who are saying 100, 150%, that sounds great, especially given where we are for some of the major US stock averages, gold, Bitcoin.
So can you simplify this?
Give us an example of one of your.
Yeah, so we have the most popular one is TSYY ticker, and that is the Yield Boost Tesla ETF.
And so what that does is sell options, put options in particular, on a 2 times leveraged Tesla ETF.
So that.
Selling of the option generates what we call the premium.
That's the payment that is then used to distribute to investors.
So that's where the income comes from.
And then there's downside protection because we buy put options as well, which help insulate if the underlying asset price was to go down.
That's distributed on a weekly basis.
And finally, well, before I let you go, what are you paying attention to when it comes to macro as well as catalyst as we head into your end?
I mean, I think the big thing at the moment.
Is the inflation fed story still and so how many rate cuts we're going to get between now and the end of the year and what those inflation numbers do.
I think a little bit of an X factor in terms of the employment numbers in the economy.
Obviously with the shutdown we didn't get that payroll's report last week and so indications of whether the economic data is starting to soften or not will be key.
OK, well, always great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sharing your insights and perspective.
Thank you, Rey.
Appreciate it.
