Transcript was automatically generated.

Frank Curzio 00:00

Hey, what’s going on out there? It’s Monday, June 15, and welcome to this special edition of “Wall Street Unplugged.” And it’s special because I’m going to interview the GOAT, the absolute GOAT of the resource industry. 50-year vet, someone who I learned an incredible amount from over the past 15 years. If you haven’t guessed it, the person is Rick Rule.

Frank Curzio 00:22

If you’re not familiar with Rick, Rick started Global Resource Investment in 1990, which was then acquired by Sprott in 2021. Over that time, probably financed billions and billions of dollars into resource companies. In 2021, he retired from Sprott, which is going to tell you he’s terrible at retiring. Because today, the guy is more busy than ever.

Frank Curzio 00:42

You see him every place, and you’re going to see him in a couple weeks because he’s hosting his annual Rule Symposium in Boca Raton. It’s going to take place from July 6 to the 10th, which I’ll be speaking at, which I’m honored to be speaking at. Now, this is a really good interview, and it’s not that all my interviews aren’t awesome.

Frank Curzio 01:05

I hope a lot of them are. I really do. I do a lot of research behind them, but you’re about to get some incredible insight on how Rick feels about gold, silver, uranium, oil, and gas, the sector Rick cut his teeth on before becoming one of the most influential financiers, analysts, experts in the entire resource sector.

Frank Curzio 01:27

If you own or if you’re thinking of investing in any stock within this sector or within these segments of the resource industry, this interview is a must-listen-to. And here’s that interview with the one and only Rick Rule. Rick Rule, thanks so much for joining us again on “Wall Street Unplugged.”

Rick Rule 01:46

Frank, I’m delighted to be back. I’ve enjoyed all of our conversations over, by now, many years.

Frank Curzio 01:52

Many years. We’re talking probably 15 years, and I always love that about you because even when I was first learning about the resource sector, you’ve always given me time. You sat with me. I asked you a million questions. Probably annoyed the hell out of you. But you were always there, even at conferences and stuff.

Frank Curzio 02:05

And now, speaking of conferences, usually when I do these formats, I’ll get into the conference afterwards, but it’s so exciting because you have the 2026 Rule Symposium that’s absolutely sold out, which is, I mean, it’s incredible to see the demand, and it’s sold out. Just to let you guys know in person, you can register online.

Frank Curzio 02:26

We’ll give you all the links and stuff like that still, which is really exciting. But I’m seeing you work harder than ever. I’m seeing you on all podcasts. At this stage, you’re the GOAT in the industry. I know you won’t say that, but I’m going to say that because I think a lot of people believe that in the industry. It really is incredible to see how strong you’re still going. How do you do it?

Frank Curzio 02:45

I mean, is it the passion? Do you love what you do? Because I see you working harder now than I saw you 15 years ago, and it looks like you’re having a lot of fun.

Rick Rule 02:52

I’m having a ball. Thank you. Work is, as you suggest, a passion. I considered retiring, and I failed retirement completely, and I’m delighted about that. With regards to the conference, it’s been about 30 years, so we’ve been doing it for a very long time.

Rick Rule 03:13

I’m delighted that you will be a part of this year’s conference.

Frank Curzio 03:18

Well, thank you.

Rick Rule 03:18

As you suggest, the live portion of the conference is sold out. It sells out fairly quickly these days as a consequence of a very large number of returning attendees, many of whom sign up right at the conference for next year’s conference. We have, however, made substantial investments in live stream,

Rick Rule 03:40

so you can still enjoy the conference from the comfort and convenience of your own home. We have a dedicated live stream host, Paul Harris from the Mining Journal. I also need to say before we go on with the interview, just by way of commercial, that if any of your attendees attend the conference,

Rick Rule 03:59

either live or live stream, unlike any other investment conference that I’m aware of, our conference comes with an absolute money-back guarantee. If anybody attends our conference and they think for any reason that they didn’t get their money’s worth, they simply email me and I give them their money back.

Rick Rule 04:19

In three decades of unconditional money-back guarantees, I’m very proud to say that our content has been so good that we’ve had to refund less than one-tenth of 1% of the tuitions that we’ve charged. But that guarantee is your listeners’ guarantee that our content absolutely can make them money.

Frank Curzio 04:41

That’s a really good statistic, and I’d be really pissed off at the person who actually asks for their money back. And by the way, you’re seeing a price here. We’re going to provide a link that’s going to give you a discount because you listen to this podcast. And again, I’m going to be on a panel there as well, and I appreciate you asking me to go. I want to stay in the conference here because I know it’s hard for you to pick and choose,

Frank Curzio 05:01

and you probably can because you have tons of sponsors for the event. But from an investor point or someone that’s going to attend this event, whether it’s online or virtual, who do you think they should be looking forward to the most? So, I mean, you have Brian Lundin, you have Grant Williams, Frank Holmes, Keith Neumeier, Amir Adnani, Robert Cordermain, Robert Dickinson, Frank Trotter.

Frank Curzio 05:21

I mean, you have the low-end guests like me who’s on there, but I mean, you have a superstar lineup going from silver to uranium to gold to oil. I mean, it’s so jam-packed. I feel like people might get overwhelmed. There’s a lot of exciting stuff.

Rick Rule 05:37

I think that really depends on who you are. You know, Frank, one of the things that I do that a lot of people don’t do is I record every exhibitor before the conference. You can go to the Rule Investment Media YouTube website, and you will see interviews with every exhibitor and many of the speakers before the conference.

Rick Rule 05:58

If you devote enough time and attention to it, you can decide who your best speaker will be. My favorite part of the conference, and by the way, the attendees’ favorite part of the conference for about 20 years now has been the living legends.

Rick Rule 06:14

Living legends is a feature where we invite four or five people who have built multi-billion-dollar natural resource companies from scratch, telling you how they did it, telling you how the process made them better investors and the lessons that you can learn to make you a better investor. And then the favorite feature,

Rick Rule 06:34

frankly, telling you precisely what they’re invested in now. This year, we’re taking that forward, which is to say, for the last 20 years, the living legends have been people my age or older, people who have built companies over the last 30 years.

Rick Rule 06:50

This year and next year, we’re venturing into what we call the future legends, people in their 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s who have already enjoyed enough success building companies that we’re confident that they will be future living legends.

Rick Rule 07:08

The idea is not merely to get the people of my generation who have built companies in the past, but rather the people of your generation or younger who the audience will be able to invest in and with for the next two decades. I think that’s going to be a very,

Rick Rule 07:28

very, very important feature of the conference. Of course, we always have a great lineup of global macro speakers. The idea is to bring you the sort of information about the real state of the world, not the state of the world that Fox or CNBC might propose.

Rick Rule 07:47

And we always try to have players. Last year’s example, we had David Stockman talking about why DOGE would fail. Why would he know? Well, he ran the prior effort, the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan. He talked about the derailment of smaller government via politics. The point is that he wasn’t a third-party journalist.

Rick Rule 08:08

He was a player. This year, we have Nomi Prince talking about the corrupt nature of Wall Street. How might she know? She was a partner at Goldman Sachs. She was in the belly of the beast.

Rick Rule 08:19

You know, that sort of thing is important. We have Daniela DiMartino Booth talking about the Fed. How would she know about the Fed? Well, because she began her career as a Fed researcher. So we try to have different types of macro thinkers, but we try to have macro thinkers who aren’t necessarily journalists, but rather players.

Frank Curzio 08:43

Yeah. You know, one of the things that you said is so important, and I love that you’re going there, because when it comes to the resource market, especially gold, right, I feel like it was such a popular asset 20 years ago compared to today where people still own it.

Frank Curzio 08:59

And I feel like the younger generation, well, maybe they say Bitcoin stole its thunder and it has volatility and went up a lot. Now it’s down a lot. But I feel like there’s no education to the younger generation here. And I feel like, in a bad way, and excuse my language here, I feel like people shouldn’t these kids that are buying Bitcoin and saying, “What are you buying Bitcoin for?

Frank Curzio 09:18

You’re an idiot,” instead of buying gold, instead of educating them and having that part of your conference of the next generation of showing these are the guys that have already established great track records, but that’s the next generations of the next you.

Frank Curzio 09:34

I don’t know if there’ll ever be a next you or just whoever it is in the industry and all legends. But that’s really important because I think the education part and getting excitement into the gold industry, it’s so important these days because people want to buy exciting stuff. And I feel like that’s always lacking. How do you make this more exciting? And just talking about the current state of the environment,

Frank Curzio 09:55

have you ever thought of focusing on that? Because I look at Frank Ducer, there’s always fighting with the Bitcoin guys. I’m like, maybe try educating them of why gold is better than Bitcoin because that’s the next generation of buyers, isn’t it?

Rick Rule 10:08

Well, I think you made a couple of points there. I don’t try to educate outside my sphere of expertise. I know about natural resources and I know about conventional financial services. I don’t try and educate about Bitcoin because I’m uneducated myself. But education is a key part of what I do,

Rick Rule 10:29

really for two reasons. The first is that I believe I owe a duty to those who educated me. I benefited in my teens and 20s from an incredible collection of mentors. I have no idea to this day why they spent so much time with me so generously, but they did.

Rick Rule 10:49

And if I didn’t attempt to educate, I believe that that would be the equivalent of disavowing the debt that I owe those who educated me.

Frank Curzio 10:59

That’s cool.

Rick Rule 11:01

And that would be unacceptable to my vision as a human being. Separately, I enjoy the process. We have a couple of features, Rule Investment Media, where on an ongoing basis, we educate a subscriber community that now exceeds 70,000 people,

Rick Rule 11:21

and the Rule Classroom, ruleclassroom.com, where we have over 300 hours of recorded educational programming. And that’s absolutely for free. Both of those services are absolutely free.

Rick Rule 11:35

When you come to our conference, Frank, I don’t think you’ve been for a couple of years, you will be surprised at the changing demographic. You will be surprised how many younger faces there are. Ten years ago, the conference all looked like me, old, fat, bald, white guys.

Frank Curzio 11:54

If you’re not fat, you’re not bald, you’re fine. You’re great. Don’t stop it.

Rick Rule 12:00

Whoever your optometrist is, I got to get him for you. Anyway, now you will see a very, very different audience. I’m not suggesting that there aren’t people of my generation there, but there’s lots of younger people there. There’s lots of women there.

Rick Rule 12:20

The truth is that the educational effort by Rule Investment Media and the Rule Classroom has, in terms of the conference, changed the demographics of the conference pretty substantially. And I’m happy about that.

Frank Curzio 12:35

Yeah. That’s really cool. That is really cool. You know, I mean, I can’t wait until it’s end. Thank you so much. And just because I learned so much at these conferences. Before we move on from this topic, explain why this is different because there’s a key element here where not everyone could show up to this conference, right? I mean, be a sponsor for this conference, I mean.

Frank Curzio 12:55

I mean, go into that part where, I mean, these are companies that you’ve done due diligence on. I mean, go to that part where you’re not just, “Hey, you want to come to my conference? You want to sponsor?” It’s not like that.

Rick Rule 13:05

Well, I think three parts to it. The conference is three decades old. It’s been getting a little better every year. And what that means is that there’s a huge coterie of existing investors who come to the conference. The idea that all of the knowledge at the conference should emanate from the dais to the masses is ridiculous.

Rick Rule 13:25

You get a large group of intelligent people trying to better themselves financially. The conversations that you have at the bar, at the coffee breaks are intelligent. The point that you’re making is, I think, critical. Every single exhibitor at this conference, public company exhibitor,

Rick Rule 13:45

has to be owned in the accounts of the conference sponsors.

Rick Rule 13:50

If they aren’t owned, they aren’t admitted on the floor. We will have 70 exhibitors this year. We turned down over 130 companies, not because they were necessarily bad companies, but because we didn’t know them well enough to have invested our own money. There’s no guarantee,

Rick Rule 14:09

unfortunately, Frank, because I own a stock, as an example, that it goes up. But there is a guarantee that I have employed the lessons of the Rule Classroom. I have vetted these companies. We have done a lot of work on these companies. And in addition, as I say, unlike any other conference I know,

Rick Rule 14:30

we interview every one of these companies and post those interviews at the Rule Investment Media YouTube channel before the conference. That allows our more serious attendees to arrive at the conference much more fully prepared.

Rick Rule 14:48

But nobody that I know of in the conference business goes to that much time and that much trouble to guarantee a profitable attendee experience.

Frank Curzio 14:59

And I could tell you that investors love when you’re eating your own cooking because some people in the industry, they don’t. They’ll tell you, “This is the greatest company in the world.” They won’t own it personally. And I’m sure if that stock does go down or things don’t work out, you’re going to lose a lot more money than the people investing in it, which is, I think that’s really cool. I think people, investors really want that,

Frank Curzio 15:19

which is definitely different from what you see at other conferences, especially in the resource sector. Let’s get to some of the stuff like gold. I saw you at the New Orleans conference. I believe that was in October. You were shouting, “Kind of take profits because everything was skyrocketing. Silver just skyrocketed.” I mean, the demand at that conference was massive, right?

Frank Curzio 15:40

There were so many people there. And you were like, “Listen, you know, for someone that’s been there that long, you were pretty much saying, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m taking profits.'” I think I’m pretty sure I was profits in a lot of junior miners. And the market has come down since then. Are you seeing opportunity now with gold prices coming down? Some of the stocks aren’t really performing as well.

Frank Curzio 15:59

Just over the past few months, again, it’s volatile. Everyone wants to make money tomorrow in today’s market and very short-term thinking. But what’s your thoughts on gold right now going into, say, the next 24 months? Are you buying here? You think it’s a great buying opportunity? Or just it was a great call in New Orleans.

Rick Rule 16:20

At the New Orleans conference, it was fairly simple. There was a melt-up chart, a parabolic chart to the upside in Canadian parlance, a hockey stick chart. I’ve learned in 50 years in markets that parallel, pardon me, parabolic charts correct in the opposite direction.

Rick Rule 16:40

Or in Canadian parlance, the backside of a hockey stick is just as steep as the frontside, but much less fun if you’re long. So I will always be a seller into a parabolic chart. And I will always be a buyer into a parabolic down chart. I’m not a trader, but if the market gives me something that is certain and easy, I’m old enough and greedy enough to want to take it.

Rick Rule 17:04

In the case of the juniors specifically, I was able in October last year to sell a little less than 25% of my junior stock positions, positions that I’d built up over five or six years. And with the sale of less than 25% of my positions,

Rick Rule 17:23

I was able to recapture all of the capital that I had invested in the sector and pay the capital gains tax on the recapture, which is to say that I got the entire rest of my portfolio for free, risk off. I’m known as a patient investor.

Rick Rule 17:42

One can be extraordinarily patient when one has no cash left in the game. Since then, two things have happened. As you suggest, equity prices have moderated and sometimes declined. The other things that happened is that some of the companies have made material advances,

Rick Rule 18:04

which is to say, not only are their market caps lower, but their value, not valuations, but rather the value of their assets has gone up in some cases materially.

Rick Rule 18:19

I, too, have changed just in the last two weeks in the sense that as a consequence of the Gulf War, I built up some liquidity in case we would enter a market that had a really ugly liquidity squeeze.

Rick Rule 18:35

I have already personally established very large positions relative to my ability in the largest and finest weighing and oil and gas companies in the world. So my personal allocation for the next month or two is going to be very much a risk-on allocation. I’m going to be returning,

Rick Rule 18:55

I would say, aggressively into the juniors in two categories, maybe three, value or deep value, which is to say where I think the enterprise value is less than half of the net asset value. An overlapping universe, which is to say takeover candidates,

Rick Rule 19:14

particularly companies where their ore bodies are in proximity to infrastructure owned by bigger and wealthier companies where the takeover would be both strategic and tactical. And then finally, successful efforts exploration.

Rick Rule 19:33

There have been in the last five or six weeks, as an example, two of the most extraordinary discovery drill holes of my career. And while the market has taken note, the market hasn’t, I think, taken sufficient note.

Rick Rule 19:52

And so I am aggressively back in the exploration space because I’m starting to see results, results like I haven’t seen for a very long time that absolutely, just to put it bluntly, fuel my greed.

Frank Curzio 20:11

Why do you think that? Results that you haven’t seen in quite a long time. Is it technology getting better? And I know you might not be able to share some of these situations, but maybe even the bigger question is the last couple of years, technology has really changed even in the resource industry.

Frank Curzio 20:27

But is it because they underspend so much for such a long time and now they’re spending more and just more shots on gold? But why do you think you’re seeing it more now than, say, five years ago, ten years ago?

Rick Rule 20:39

I think it’s a consequence of two things. I think geophysical technology, not just in oil and gas, but now increasingly in mining, is getting much better. And probably more importantly, we have been utilizing that new geophysical technology for ten years. So we’re coming to learn what the signal means.

Rick Rule 21:01

It’s one thing to be able to generate the data and to process the data. It’s an entirely different thing to learn how to interpret the data. And we, and by the way, when I say we, I don’t mean 73-year-olds.

Rick Rule 21:16

I mean 30 or 40-year-olds have now had 10 years interpreting data that is of much higher quality than the data that I would have been exposed to 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and 40 years ago. So that’s the first thing. Technology, especially geophysical technology,

Rick Rule 21:37

is changing too. Technology around raw prospecting is changing. As an example, Astroimaging, which is reprocessing spectrally differentiated photographic images from space, literally from space, looking for alteration, looking for structure.

Rick Rule 21:57

That doesn’t find you a deposit, but what it does is take 2,000 square miles and it eliminates 1,980 of them so that human beings have to spend time on 20 square miles as opposed to 2,000 square miles. This works well in any arid terrain.

Rick Rule 22:17

The third factor, I think, is that after a very long period of drought in exploration spending, the last two and a half years has seen much more generous budgets for exploration. So I think it’s this combination of technology, experience with technology, and simple budgets.

Rick Rule 22:38

By the way, with regards to names, these aren’t investment recommendations by any stretch of the imagination. But drill holes like the Mogotes drill hole in the Vicuña district of Argentina or the much more recent Arras,

Rick Rule 22:59

that’s A-R-R-A-S, I think, drill hole on a copper porphyry in Kazakhstan. These were extraordinary drill holes.

Rick Rule 23:12

They were also extraordinary drill holes in the first case, Mogotes, in proximity to probably the most important copper discovery made in the last 50 years. And in the case of Arras on a geophysical target, that is a monster. I’m not trying to say that the whole thing is mineralized.

Rick Rule 23:32

What I’m trying to say, though, is that you have proof of concept by way of a long drill hole that’s also high grade on a geophysical target that if the mineralization proves to be pervasive, will absolutely positively be tier one.

Rick Rule 23:53

It’s early on. And I’m not suggesting that people listening to this run out and buy these stocks. I’m using them to illustrate the reason why, in a very, very blunt sense, my greed is overwhelming my fear.

Frank Curzio 24:10

So great. Thanks for sharing. So let’s change to oil. And I know you’ve been very bullish on oil. You say, I heard you say in a previous interview that oil, the upside is inevitable. What are you hearing from the offshore market in particular? Because you know oil and gas is a fragmented industry.

Frank Curzio 24:31

We can go anywhere, right? It’s offshore, onshore, Permian, US, global. But offshore, and because of my network, just people have been alerting me to this pretty much the last nine months or so. And offshore Africa, all the majors, I mean, you usually follow the money, even AI, just follow the money.

Frank Curzio 24:50

And you can make money in a lot of the suppliers and nuts and bolts. It’s amazing how much money is going into offshore Africa right now when I started doing the research on it. I was wondering if you heard anything. Is that an area within oil or are you looking at some of the biggest oil companies, whatever, the biggest in the world? The Exxons, Eniz, Totals, Chevrons, BPs?

Frank Curzio 25:09

Or do you look as more, okay, what are these guys doing? Is it offshore? Because it seems like the technology there has gotten amazing where it’s a lot cheaper and the economics are better, obviously. But also it seems like lower barriers of entry for the bigger guys anyway, where the governments are more friendly. But I couldn’t believe when I started looking at the stats of how much money is going into offshore.

Frank Curzio 25:29

Even Paulson just took a huge position in RIG. I was just surprised to see that. We haven’t seen that in offshore in a while.

Rick Rule 25:35

Well, it’s a very pressing question. As I think you know, I cut my teeth in the oil and gas business. And as a consequence, I’m quite fond of it. It’s an interesting topic on a lot of levels.

Rick Rule 25:51

The first level is that we as a society, and I mean worldwide, have been underinvested in sustaining capital in the oil and gas business for a substantial period of time and for a very large amount of money, which is to say in excess of a billion dollars per day.

Rick Rule 26:12

That underinvestment in sustaining capital may not penalize you in the near term, but in the intermediate term, it lowers your ability to produce. Two reasons for this, I think. The first is society, the big thinkers of the world, Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau,

Rick Rule 26:31

Joe Biden, that noted energy physicist Greta Thunberg would have you believe that peak oil demand was going to occur in 2030. And that was wrong. I mean, it’s just plain wrong. I’m a healthy 73-year-old. Peak oil demand will not occur in my lifetime, probably not yours, Frank.

Rick Rule 26:53

So that part was wrong. The second thing was, and possibly it was related to the first, Wall Street began to reward companies that increased the distribution of cash flow back to shareholders immediately,

Rick Rule 27:13

higher dividends, higher share buybacks. And by the way, this occurred in a much more pronounced fashion in the state-controlled firms where they diverted free cash flow from their oil business to politically expedient domestic spending programs. The same sort of thing. What you do when you do this is you cannibalize your future dividends.

Rick Rule 27:35

If you defer sustaining capital investments in favor of buybacks and dividends, you make the shareholders happy at the expense of future shareholders. And the fact that we were underinvesting to the tune of a billion dollars a day made me believe that the oil prices that we’re seeing today were inevitable. Now, I didn’t foresee a war.

Rick Rule 27:55

So when I said inevitable, I thought inevitable in 2029, 2030, not 2026. By the way, I wasn’t prescient about the war. The second comment that I would make is the accuracy of what you had to say with regards to offshore.

Rick Rule 28:13

The money that has been invested in the oil and gas business in the last 20 years has been largely basin-centric around tight gas or tight oil, in effect, oil manufacturing as opposed to exploration and production.

Rick Rule 28:32

There have been spectacular successes in seismic and geophysics, in directional drilling, in measurement well drilling.

Rick Rule 28:43

And the consequence of that is that while all of the money has been focused on shale basins, particularly North American shale basins, our ability to explore conventionally offshore has gotten better and better and better. And the results as a consequence of that have gotten better and better and better.

Rick Rule 29:03

Despite that, global drilling budgets have been going down.

Rick Rule 29:08

I would suggest that for risk-oriented investors, the best opportunity in the oil and gas space is in the junior companies who are exploiting their ability and willingness to go into frontier basins,

Rick Rule 29:29

negotiate with host governments,

Rick Rule 29:33

do the front-end work of exploration, the geophysical work, and then likely bring in a major. And the Atlantic margin, both West Africa, but also importantly, the outer continental shelf and the subsalt basins in Brazil are really where the action is.

Rick Rule 29:55

And naked commercial for my conference, this year I’m having Keith Hill come speak. Keith Hill, for those people who don’t know, was with Shell Offshore until he was recruited 35 years ago to the Lundin family, where he made literally billions of dollars for the Lundin family and for some of their investors,

Rick Rule 30:18

notably myself, before he retired. Like me, he failed retirement. The opportunities that he saw in micro cap prospect generators in oil and gas, offshore Africa and offshore South America were so great that he has, in fact, come out of retirement.

Rick Rule 30:38

He’s not running companies anymore. He’s just identifying companies, taking positions, taking directorships himself. And I have enticed him to come speak about this very topic at the Natural Resources Investment Symposium. I can tell I’m hugely excited about that.

Rick Rule 30:58

I’ve invested in the last six months now in five names in the space after reviewing a list of 31 companies. And I’m absolutely confident. Now, listen, this is wildcat exploration. You can be sure that you’re going to fail occasionally.

Rick Rule 31:14

But what we’re learning statistically is that if you employ high quality amplitude versus offset seismic in basins that already have commercial production, your odds of success are about one in three.

Rick Rule 31:35

When I was a youngster in the business, your odds of success were more like one in 10. So let’s look at my universe of five companies. The probability is that I get one or one and a half successes. On my failures, I lose between a third and a half of my money. On my successes,

Rick Rule 31:57

I enjoy 10 baggers.

Rick Rule 31:59

So if you do fairly simple math, which is to say 3.5 times 0.5 on the negative side and then 1.5 times 10 on the high side, the probabilistic success

Rick Rule 32:20

is spectacular. It’s truly, truly spectacular. And literally, nobody gives a damn.

Frank Curzio 32:29

Now, they will, though, just like nobody gave a damn about the next subject, which is uranium. And I think there’s one person that’s very happy to see the decline in stocks, and that’s you. Because I know you’re very bullish on this sector. I know you love this sector. It makes a lot of sense here. What are your thoughts on uranium? Because a lot of people are throwing their hands up going,

Frank Curzio 32:49

wow, this whole AI thing was supposed to be so big. And you’re seeing uranium prices. I mean, they were off their highs, but now they’re starting to go a little bit higher here. But the stocks haven’t really performed. You’ve been really bullish on uranium. And I heard you say on other podcasts and the research that I’ve done that you hope they come down further this way you can buy more. What do you think of the uranium space, I guess?

Frank Curzio 33:09

And it’s just surprising to me too that we’re not seeing the stocks gain a little bit more momentum here.

Rick Rule 33:15

Well, I think the easy money has been made, first of all. The easy money in any commodity is when it’s hated. You and I have talked over the years. I remember, oh God, I don’t know, six or so years ago, social media was full of hate for silver at $17, $18.

Frank Curzio 33:32

Yeah.

Rick Rule 33:33

The youngsters that participated in the silver squeeze and got their asses kicked, they wish they never learned how to spell silver. And it seemed to me with that much hate that once gold started to do okay, that when the general investor came into the space, that silver would outperform. And it did.

Rick Rule 33:51

Uranium was an even more astonishing example of hate. You’re old enough, although barely, to remember a move in uranium from $8 a pound to $130 a pound. That got people really excited. Then Fukushima happened. Now, the market had already corrected,

Rick Rule 34:11

frankly, from $130 a pound to $85 a pound. When Fukushima happened, it cratered the uranium price all the way to $16 a pound.

Frank Curzio 34:20

Crazy.

Rick Rule 34:20

Now, speaking of hate, you know if you got long at $135 and you were facing it at $16, you were not a happy camper, right?

Frank Curzio 34:29

Yes.

Rick Rule 34:31

At $16, there was just compelling math. It cost the industry, if you include their cost of capital and social theft, that’s my way of saying taxation, it was costing the industry about $40 a pound to make the stuff.

Rick Rule 34:44

And they were selling it for $16, losing $24 a pound and being dumb miners doing it 150 million times a year. But the calculus was simple. Uranium is a critical component in power generation worldwide,

Rick Rule 35:05

including countries like the United States and Germany that thought they were too rich to need it. And the calculus was this. Either the price went up or the lights went out. It was that simple. Truly was that simple. And guess what? The lights didn’t go out. The price went up. So that was the easy money. When the commodity went from being hated to being tolerated,

Rick Rule 35:27

the sure money, Frank, not the easy money, the sure money is ahead of us. The sure money is ahead of us for four principal reasons. The first is that the world needs more kinds of power of all kinds.

Frank Curzio 35:42

Absolutely.

Rick Rule 35:42

Of all kinds. It’s not just AI. It’s a billion people on Earth have no access to primary electricity. Wind, yep. Solar, yep. Oil, yep. I hate to say it because we’ll get hate. Coal, yep. And uranium.

Rick Rule 36:00

Nuclear power is unusual in that it’s reliable 24/7, unlike wind and solar or batteries, base load power. And more importantly, for many people, it generates no carbon whatsoever.

Rick Rule 36:15

That last feature, no carbon, has caused it to be it being uranium increasingly acceptable to a crowd that has traditionally been anti-energy. Even the co-founder of Greenpeace is now a nuclear power advocate.

Rick Rule 36:33

So there’s this groundswell of popular and social support for uranium,

Rick Rule 36:40

which brings us to what’s changed this year. And that has been the conflict in the Gulf. Let me take you back 50 or 60 years. In 1973, there was an event many people don’t remember or never heard of called the Arab oil embargo, which changed literally the face of the planet.

Rick Rule 37:01

And it brought to the forefront energy security on a national basis. The consequence of that 1973 embargo was a rash of nuclear plant construction worldwide, but in particular in two countries, France, which built the fourth largest nuclear fleet in the world, and Japan,

Rick Rule 37:20

which built the third largest nuclear fleet in the world. The period 1973 to 2026, nobody was concerned about energy security. The events in the Gulf recently have caused everybody to be concerned about energy security. The lessons that we unlearned in the ’70s we’re relearning today.

Rick Rule 37:43

And the only fuel that’s dense enough to provide real energy security for countries that don’t have domestic energy sources, the only one is uranium.

Rick Rule 37:54

It was pointed out in the Japanese Parliament that uranium’s energy density would allow Japan in one fairly small warehouse to store enough fuel to generate enough electricity to keep Japan operating for five years. That lesson is not lost on Korea. It’s not lost on Taiwan.

Rick Rule 38:14

It’s certainly not lost on Japan. It’s even amazingly now not lost on Germany, a country whose energy policy formerly was to rely on solar where the sun doesn’t shine.

Rick Rule 38:28

But the truth is now that the reality of carbon-generating base load power that gives a country total energy security suggests that the next 10 years will be the period of sure money as opposed to easy money in the uranium space.

Frank Curzio 38:51

Love it. I love it. And yeah, if someone is saying, hey, I hope uranium prices go not even prices, but I hope the stocks come down further because you’d want to add, I know how bullish you are in the sector. So I appreciate you sharing that. And the last thing here is Battle Bank. I mean, I know the struggle that you’ve been through with Battle Bank. I love that you wear the shirt.

Frank Curzio 39:10

I’m sure you have at least 20 of those because every single time I’ve seen you in the past three years, I think you’ve been wearing them. I think you thought you’d get approval for the bank a lot quicker, but it seems like things are moving along. How are things at Battle Bank? And it was so nice to have Frank try to speak at my conference, which was awesome. But how are things going on Battle Bank?

Rick Rule 39:28

We had a board meeting for Battle Bank this morning, and I was struck by how much fun it is. It was fun because we’re actually banking. You’ll recall that for four and a half years, we were stuck in the regulatory morass trying to start a bank. We did this year what we should have done in 2021.

Rick Rule 39:49

And we bought a little bank. And we asked the regulators to give us permission to over-capitalize it, which they generously did. So now we’re banking, which is really fun. You may recall, Frank, although many of your listeners won’t, that the same group of cohorts founded something in 2000 called Everbank,

Rick Rule 40:09

one of the nation’s first online banks. We grew that bank very successfully from zero to $28 billion in deposits before we sold the bank to TIAA CREF, a fine organization, but an organization whose client base was very different than ours. And so they abandoned our clients,

Rick Rule 40:31

which caused us to come back and start a new bank. Why a new bank? What is it that we do better than other people? Several components. The first is that we don’t have 15 or 20 deposit products designed to trick you. We have one high-yield money market fund. If you want to write a check, that’s fine.

Rick Rule 40:53

There’s $3 trillion on deposit in the United States right now that earns no interest, mostly checking accounts. So if you’re interested in interest and you’d rather learn about one deposit product as opposed to 16, think Battle Bank. The second involves IRAs.

Rick Rule 41:15

At most banks, your IRA is really a repository. I’m tempted to say a toilet, but we’ll say a repository for their products, their annuities, their ETFs, their mutual funds. It exists in order to scrape fees from you for their proprietary products.

Rick Rule 41:37

At Battle Bank, your IRA is your IRA. Your IRA establishes an LLC, which may conduct any legal business. President Trump was saying not too long ago that he thinks that he should change the legislation to make IRAs able to invest in private equity. At Battle Bank, they can right now.

Rick Rule 41:57

Mr. Trump’s got nothing to do with it. Your IRA could buy crypto right now. Your IRA could buy a duplex that you operate or an Airbnb that you operate. It could buy a subway franchise that you operate. Your IRA can do any legal business at Battle Bank.

Rick Rule 42:18

Your IRA becomes your IRA. I didn’t think this was legal when we were forming Battle Bank. I actually had my lawyers visit with Battle Bank’s lawyers to make sure that I wasn’t going to go to jail for some fantasy about IRAs. It never occurred to me that Frank Curcio’s IRA could actually be Frank Curcio’s IRA.

Rick Rule 42:37

That’s way too generous for it to be legal. But it turns out that it’s true. Another thing is, and this was integral to our success at Everbank, at most US banks, your choice of savings instruments is US dollars, US dollars, or US dollars. But that’s not the world we live in anymore.

Rick Rule 42:59

I believe that currency turmoil will be a feature of the next decade. And we will allow you to save and invest in 20 currencies, FDIC insured. Let’s say you’re a first-generation business person, Canada, United States. You need to bank in two currencies. At Battle Bank, done.

Rick Rule 43:19

Let’s say that you are bullish about resource businesses. So you want to own Australian dollar or you like the fiscal conservatism of the Swiss government and you want to save in Swiss francs. Done. 20 currencies, federally insured CDs, your choice.

Rick Rule 43:41

And then on the lending side, this is where we’re truly different, I suspect. Most banks in the United States, for some reason, I can’t fathom, think that gold, silver, platinum, and palladium are bad collateral. I don’t. They’re highly liquid. They trade 24/7. And should someone not pay us,

Rick Rule 44:01

frankly, we can liquidate that collateral in a nanosecond with a click of a mouse. So we have something that is, in effect, a margin loan. It’s called a MELOC, a metals equity line of credit, where our borrower will deposit their metal with us and we’ll issue them a line of credit against it.

Rick Rule 44:20

You don’t need to borrow money that you don’t need, but you have the availability of the credit on your signature when you do need it. I’ve been doing this business privately myself, Frank, for 10 or 12 years. And what I discovered is something I should have known to begin with.

Rick Rule 44:38

People who save in gold or silver or platinum and palladium tend to be fairly cautious, fairly prudent people. In other words, they pay you back. They are ideal people to loan to against ideal collateral. There are several hundred thousand Americans who, like me, save in gold.

Rick Rule 44:58

Those people have built up substantial capital in their gold. They don’t want to sell it and pay the capital gains. But from time to time, they have needs to access the capital that they have tied up in their gold. Perhaps there’s the opportunity to put down a down payment on a summer home for your family. Perhaps there’s a distressed real estate opportunity.

Rick Rule 45:18

Perhaps there’s some other opportunity. You need to access the capital that you have in your gold or silver, but you don’t want to pay substantial capital gains tax. And besides which, you don’t want to deplete that part of your savings. Bring that metal to Battle Bank and we will establish a line of credit secured by your bullion.

Frank Curzio 45:42

You know, it’s funny. You were talking about you didn’t know a lot of this stuff was legal or everyone’s waiting for Trump. It probably took you so long. That’s the reason why it took so long for you to get your licenses, right? Probably because the rants that I have on my podcast, people are going to identify with against big banks.

Frank Curzio 45:59

And I think it’s more closer to $5 trillion that people will not generate any interest on $5 trillion that they lend out and make a fortune on. It’s probably why they might have been a little bit longer to approve you. And that’s just speculation. But it’s great to see that because the advantage that they’re taking of so many people and what you did with Everbank was incredible.

Frank Curzio 46:19

It’s the reason why it was so successful. It was great with Frank and Frank Trotta. So I’m really excited. I know how hard you worked. I talked to you about it for so many years, but to see you and Frank have taken this and now you’re ready to rock and roll. It’s really, really exciting for you. So I just wanted to give you a chance to talk about Battle Banks. It’s really exciting. But with that said, I was going to try to keep this to 25 minutes.

Frank Curzio 46:39

But man, the wisdom that I get for you, and I really mean this, Rick, is I’ve been doing this for 30 years. And for me, I always want to learn. You always want to learn. And when I have you on, I’m always learning. You’ve been there for me just to learn about the resources where it’s not so much getting winners, but it’s also reducing your risk, what to look for and what to stay away from.

Frank Curzio 46:58

And you’ve helped me, which in turn helped my audience, which has been building and building. The podcast goes out to 130 countries now that it’s been incredible. And you’re one of those people that has really helped me, been a mentor, and helped me understand this. So I just want to say thanks a lot. Thanks for coming on. And 2026 Rule Symposium, I can’t wait. Thank you. I’m honored to be speaking there.

Frank Curzio 47:18

And last thing here, guys, before I give you the last second here is here it is, Rule Symposium. I’m going to set up links for you guys. You could see right here where you could register. And you’re going to be getting a discount for the registration here when you look at it. And I really can’t wait to attend. It’s going to be really exciting. So I’m really looking forward to it.

Rick Rule 47:38

Well, Frank, it’ll be pleasant for me. I’ve enjoyed watching you mature as a spokesperson. I also enjoy the fact that you’re the second generation of Curzio that’s been in the same business. Thousands of people benefited from your father’s wisdom and advice. And this is strangely and in a very satisfying way circular to me.

Rick Rule 47:59

I benefited from his advice. You’ve benefited from me. Younger audiences will benefit from you. This is the way the world is supposed to work. This is precisely the way the world is supposed to work. So I’m delighted that you’ll be at the conference.

Rick Rule 48:15

And I’m satisfied in a way that you may never know about this sort of continuum from your father to me to you to others afterwards. So thank you for carrying on that tradition. And thank you for your sponsorship and support of our educational activities, in particular the conference.

Frank Curzio 48:35

All right. Well, listen, Rick, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on. I can’t wait to see you in a couple of weeks at the conference. All right. Great stuff from Rick. And I truly meant what I said. He’s been a huge influence to me along with Merrick Gaddouza, Jeff Phillips. I mean, these are guys that put me in the circle of the resource industry,

Frank Curzio 48:54

which in order to do that, I had to go to Vancouver five, six times a year. That’s pretty difficult when you live in Florida. That’s a far trip, especially in Jacksonville, where you got to take at least two flights. They helped me navigate one of the most shadiest industries. I mean, junior miners on public crypto in terms of risk and people trying to take advantage of you.

Frank Curzio 49:15

And I’ve made my mistakes early on. These guys just helped me and said, “Hey, these are the guys you have to follow. This is how you get into some of these things early.” And it’s helped me incredibly, which has helped you in a lot of these stocks where I think I have a very good track record resource stocks. Like Rick said, he went over it. He’s like, “Look, I have five. I need one to one and a half to work out.

Frank Curzio 49:33

And I’m great.” And it just goes to show you that it’s very difficult. It’s risky. Even if you have the right management team, you have the right geology, the cost, there’s so many things that can go wrong when it comes to discovering a mine where it’s one in 3,000, I think, from the time you plant a flag in the ground to actually producing. And some people say that’s more than one in 5,000.

Frank Curzio 49:54

So think about that when you go to junior miner conferences and there’s 3,000, whatever. There’s not 3,000, probably three, four, five hundred companies. Sometimes there’s a thousand in VRIC. But just think about most of those guys that are pitching, “Hey, we did this and we’re going to do this. This is going to be a mine.” A lot of it’s bullshit. You really have to know who to invest behind. And I remember at the Stansbury conferences where we had these,

Frank Curzio 50:15

it was called the Editors Conference. All the editors went. We’d pitch our best ideas to the marketing teams. And they’d have special invites from Rick Rule to Cactus to Meb Faber, who I’m going to have on this podcast pretty soon. I love Meb. Good golfing buddies. Used to be good golfing buddies anyway. And Doug Casey, Maren Gaddouza.

Frank Curzio 50:34

I got to meet so many great people at these conferences. And we just learned a lot from each other and picked each other’s minds. And for me, I just did the good thing. I just shut up and listen. And maybe not shut up all the time because I asked a lot of questions. But for me, even at this stage, I always want to learn. And Rick’s one of those guys that I learned from. And he’s helped me incredibly. He really has. And he’s always given me time.

Frank Curzio 50:53

And that’s something you don’t forget. It’s why I do that too when I’m at conferences. If people are asking questions, even younger people too, I’ll always go up to them and give them some time because at the end of the day, I never understood that. If you’re an athlete and you’re in a professional ranks and your fans come up to you, the reason why you are where you are is because of the fans.

Frank Curzio 51:14

If the fans aren’t there, you don’t have businesses. You don’t have anything. And you should give your time to that. It’s a very, very big deal. And it’s always paid me back where some of these young people grow up to be great in their industry and they remember you helping them out, just like I remember Rick and stuff like that. And now anything in the resource sector, anything I can call him immediately and say,

Frank Curzio 51:32

“Hey, what are you hearing about this?” Like the offshore industry, what are you hearing about that? And I’m really looking forward to presenting at his conference. I think I’m on a panel on July 10th, but I’ll be on the conference floor pretty much, I think, the 8th, 9th, and 10th. I think I’m going to get there at the 7th. It starts on the 6th. I just have to travel before that. I’ll also be on his cruise or the yacht, whatever it is for VIP members.

Frank Curzio 51:52

But definitely stop by, say hi. I’m going to be working the floors and everything. I love learning, trying to find new ideas for you guys. And if you’re looking to stream the event, please use the links below. There’s several of them since I’m offering a discount for anyone that signs up through Wall Street Unplugged. So definitely use our link and you take advantage of that. Last note,

Frank Curzio 52:11

I love the fact that Rick is so bullish on oil and gas. I heard some of the stuff he said on silver in other presentations and he was bearish. And he always said, “I speculate in silver. I invest in gold.” So he’s not bullish on everything, but he’s bullish on oil and gas.

Frank Curzio 52:26

And I was not surprised to hear him say that you should focus on companies that sign deals and junior miners that sign deals with governments to buy blocks offshore and partner with majors. And that’s Blue Energies, right? That’s the company we’re working with. And the reason why I’m working with them is because of the stuff I’ve learned from Rick. I mean, this is a company that I laughed when I first heard about it.

Frank Curzio 52:45

I’m like, “Wait a minute. These guys are a total partner with them?” His buddy Aaron Telfer along with Craig Stenke, are co-founders, right? So they have huge blocks off the coast of Libya in the Harper Basin where Total just signed a major deal, 65% stake, 35% stake for Blue Energies, which is really cool because it lowers their risk profile tremendously.

Frank Curzio 53:06

And now you just saw Petrobras buy blocks really close, Shell buy blocks really close. I mean, it’s really amazing when you go down this rabbit hole. But the reason why I could choose to work with anyone and a lot of people and companies want to hand you a check just to market them, we don’t do that. And that filters down to me picking Blue Energies and having worked with them is because of the stuff that I’ve learned from Rick.

Frank Curzio 53:25

So just hearing him say that and being like, I don’t want to say, “Hey, your buddy Aaron Telfer, that might be one of the five companies he’s invested in.” And he said 5 out of 30, but that checked off all the boxes, right? So it’s this trail. When you’re in the industry for 20, 30 years and people look up to you, for me, I’m always trying to learn. And the people you learn from,

Frank Curzio 53:45

it’s amazing to see what he said and how it filters into what I’m doing right now today. And that’s just one sector, right? That’s just in oil and gas where you have great contacts across all industries. Again, this goes out to 130 countries. And a lot of people email in who are in a lot of the industries that we cover. They know a lot of stuff. And it’s incredible when you have that kind of network, but it was just really cool to see.

Frank Curzio 54:05

I was like, “Oh,

Frank Curzio 54:05

man.” You forget stuff like that sometimes, I guess. And just when you put it in perspective, you think about it, you’re like, “Wow.” Just like he said, he used to listen to my dad and then filters down to listen to Rick and stuff like that. And I hope there’s a lot of young people out there that I’m helping too. And it’s great. It really is. I mean, that’s a driver for me.

Frank Curzio 54:24

You could tell that’s a driver for Rick when you go to conferences and you help people make money and they say, “Hey, you know I’m an accredited investor because of you and I followed you for 15 years.” And yeah, you’re going to have losers sometimes and stuff like that. But I think we’re pretty good while we’ve always been out there telling you what to do with the losers when we have them. We don’t run away from them. But you always have to have more winners than losers. If you don’t, then I promise I’ll find another job or retire,

Frank Curzio 54:46

which I’ll do a bad job of as well. But another serious point is look at Rick’s energy. Look at what he looks like. He looks younger now. And I don’t know if I remember talking about after the interview or I think it was after the interview, after we finished. And I said, “You look great.” And he’s like, “I feel great.” And it’s just because he’s working. He’s using his mind and he’s having fun.

Frank Curzio 55:07

And just because you’re an expert or something or if you make a lot of money in something, be careful retiring early. I mean, you can retire, but if you’re really great at something, be a consultant and just keep your mind moving. There’s a lot of statistics behind how the brain deteriorates as you get older. And some people just want to sit home and not really do that much.

Frank Curzio 55:27

And maybe they’ll exercise a little here and there. But Rick is everywhere right now. He’s all over these podcasts. And I always do research on everyone I interview. I do a ton of research on him. And there was like 20 podcasts that he’s been on. I’m like, “Man, this guy’s like everywhere.” I remember you just on my podcast. So it’s really cool to see. And just having that mind and keep working and stuff and look at him.

Frank Curzio 55:48

He’s having more fun. He’s enjoying life right now. And it’s really cool. And kind of like me, I really love what I do. I really do. And it’s really exciting. So really great stuff from Rick. Always enjoy interviewing him. And I really hope you enjoyed that interview as well. So that’s it for me. And as always, I’ll see you guys on Wednesday. Take care.