PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Good afternoon, my name is Brian Hicks. I’m one of the co-founders here at Angel Publishing, which, as you may know, is the publisher of Outsider Club and its premium services.
Today, I’m pleased to announce the addition of a new contributor to the Outsider Club team. His name is Luke Burgess.
Luke has been with me since the beginning of Angel Publishing. Seventeen years ago when Angel first started out, our office was a 600-square-foot converted efficiency apartment with about five people (including myself) working out of it. Of those five people, three are still with me. One of those guys currently acts as our CEO. Another is Jeff Siegel, content provider for multiple free and premium Angel services. And the third is Luke, who is a writer for free and premium Angel services.
Ever since joining Angel all those years ago, Luke has been incredibly passionate about investing in gold and precious metals. He has contributed his knowledge over the years to our free publications Wealth Daily and Energy and Capital, as well as to many premium publications, including his current venture Junior Mining Trader.
Not only is Luke among the most experienced members of Angel Publishing, but he’s also part of the foundation on which this company sits. So I’m completely confident you’ll be in good hands.
With that, I’ll let Luke speak for himself.
Thank you,
Brian D. Hicks
Co-Founder, Angel Publishing
Dear Outsider Club Reader,
Please let me introduce myself. My name is Luke Burgess, and I am very happy to begin contributing to Outsider Club.
As Brian mentioned, I have been studying and investing in the gold and precious metals markets for most of my adult life. My interest in precious metals and finance, however, actually goes back to childhood.
Warren Buffett famously made his first investment at 11 years old, buying six shares of Cities Service, an oil service company, through his sister at $38 a share.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the means to do that myself. And even if I did, it’s unlikely my parents would have allowed it. But I was still interested in the markets and investing as a young child. So I did the next best thing: I paper-traded stocks.
When I was about 11 years old, I had one of those black-and-white composition notebooks in which I kept track of a portfolio of stocks that I pretended to own. You know, the ones with the multiplication table on the back inside cover. These…
Of course, there was no real research involved in picking the stocks for my portfolio. They were simply stocks of companies I was most familiar with (or interested in) as an 11-year-old boy. They were companies like Hershey (NYSE: HSY), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), and Playboy (NYSE: PLA, now defunct)… which, come on, I was 11 years old. Give me a break.
When I would come home from school, I’d watch cartoons like most other kids. But I’d also click on CNBC to check the stocks in my composition portfolio as they crawled by on the bottom of the screen. If you were around back then, you’ll remember it looked something like this:
Even as a young kid, I had a passion for the markets. There was even a Nintendo video game all about stock investing that I spent countless hours playing.
I guess I was what you’d call a nerd. The point is investing and trading stocks is more than just a job for me. It’s a passion that’s been with me for most of my life. Some people love teaching. Others love making music. I love investment markets.
But that’s really only half of what drives me. I have also had a longtime interest and passion for gold and precious metals.
Like my love for investing, my passion for gold and silver goes back to my childhood with an interest in coin collecting. And yeah — coin collecting, watching CNBC, playing video games about stock trading — I was a pocket protector away from being a character from the Revenge of the Nerds film.
But precious metals and numismatics go hand in hand. That’s simply because of gold’s and silver’s historic relationship to money. Every coin collector on the planet knows a little something about gold and silver.
Early in my career with Angel, I pursued this interest in precious metals by learning about the exploration and mining of the minerals. I studied. I read. I traveled the world to visit exploration and mining operations, setting foot on every continent except Antarctica. I got my boots on the ground. I got my hands dirty. I made countless contacts in the mineral and finance world.
Over the following few years, the price of gold advanced, reaching a peak in 2011. And the real-life stocks I owned at that point in my life absolutely exploded.
As gold prices were approaching $2,000 an ounce, I wanted to cash out.
I had watched gold run up to that point from about $400, and our stocks were absolutely killing it. And the truth is the market was hyped to all hell. Why get greedy?
So that’s what I did: I cashed out. I sold all of my gold stocks and bullion, shut down the newsletter, and completely walked away from the precious metals sector.
It was a good call. Because following that big 2011 gold rally were years of declining prices.
Gold Price — 2009–2017
Then in summer 2015, I got a phone call that told me it was time to get back into gold and precious metals.
The call was from a gold stock promoter in Vancouver. This guy was one of the sleaziest and slickest market makers in the junior gold sector. During that phone call, I asked him, “So how’s the gold market treating you?”
His response: “F*ck the gold market.”
I knew right then and there that all the hype that had previously existed in the gold market had been drained out. And it was time to get back in.
So that’s what I did: I got back in. I reopened my first gold position in November 2015 with gold trading at just around $1,000 an ounce.
Again, it was a good call. Because that was the bottom.
Since then, we’ve watched gold prices exceed $2,000 an ounce.
Gold Price — 2009–Present
But I don’t think we’re anywhere near the top of this rally.
In fact, I see a truckload of factors signaling gold prices could easily fly north of $5,000 an ounce in the near to medium term.
Shortly put, I believe that after two decades of extremely loose monetary and fiscal policies by the world’s central banks (especially the U.S. Federal Reserve), the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic has now put gold prices in a position where they can absolutely soar. Honestly, I’m being conservative with my $5,000 target.
In upcoming Outsider Club articles I plan to explain more about why I see the price of gold heading much higher from here. And I’ll be bringing you ideas on how to leverage those soaring gold prices.
Let’s make some money together.
Until next time,
Luke Burgess
Editor, Junior Mining Trader
