What this hour covers
- The war, the gas pump, and the grocery bill
- Why gold fell when the shooting started
- Where things stand now that August has closed
Full transcript
welcome to the Gold Hour. You know, Sunday night started something over in the Middle East again. Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, who knows what's going to happen tonight? But our military on Sunday hit two Iranian rocket launchers. And then Monday morning, I saw the price of oil jumped. And what happened to our gold? Gold went down. And now most people would tell you that's backwards. War breaks out and gold goes up. Well, it didn't. And I'm going to tell you why in the first ten minutes and playing words. Because once you understand it, you're going to understand how this whole market works better than most people who do it actually for a living.
Now, here's the hour. First, the war and the gas pump and what both of them are doing to your grocery bill. And second, why gold fell when the shooting started? And this is the part that I really want you to understand. I want you to get it. And third, where things actually stand now? Now that August is completely over, it's closed. And then the lucky drawing. I've done nine weeks, nine words, and today I'm going to grab and pick a winner out of the brown bag. So pour your coffee and let's get into it. Here's what happens Sunday night. On Sunday, American forces struck two Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hamas.
And the military said that Iran was getting ready. Our military said that Iran was getting ready to fire rockets that were carrying sea mines into the waterway. Now think about that, sea mines in a shipping lane. That can't come out well. And this was the first military action in about a month. Before that, things had been considered quiet. In fact, just days earlier, the administration actually had eased off on the military side. And they switched to squeezing Iran's money instead. We call that sanctions, meaning penalties on any country or company still doing business with Iran. And then Sunday happened, bombs started bursting in air.
And our money and drone started flying. And on Monday, one of the Gulf countries said that it shot down on Iranian drone over its own waters. And an Iranian official came out and told the new service that for every American strike, they're going to answer back many times over. Well, it's tipped for Pat and it's been going on since Sunday now. And let me back up and say what this war even is. Because a lot of you may not even understand it. And we've been at it now with Iran. Do you know we've been at it for more than six months now? Six months. And it doesn't even lead the news every night anymore. War stopped being news after a while, but it's still going strong.
And the fight keeps coming back to that one strip of water. You see, Iran sits on one side of it and they've made it clear that if things go badly for them, they can make that water dangerous. And that's not by sinking ships with our Navy. They don't need to do that. They just have to make it risky enough that the insurance companies won't cover a tanker going through it. Think about that. And that's all it takes. A ship that can't get insured, believe me, doesn't sell on the waters. So one country with rockets and mines can actually slow down a fifth of the world's oil without even winning a single battle. And that's why this keeps landing right on to your grocery bill.
Now, let me tell you why all of this lands on our kitchen table. It's because of the straight of our moves. And if you ever, or if you've never heard of it, here's all you need to know. It's a narrow stretch of water at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. And about one out of every five barrels of oil in the world goes through that stretch of water. One in five, through a channel that you can actually just see straight across. This war has been going on now, like I said in the beginning, for more than six months. And for most of that time, ships have had actual trouble even getting through. So what happened this past Monday oil went up more than 3% and the world price closed at about $90 a barrel.
And to give you a sense of the way it swings, that price went between 72 and $102 just last month. And here's the number I want you to hold on to. In the month of August, the average price of gas in this country was about $4 a gallon. And according to the folks at AAA, that's never happened before in the history of this country, not even once. So gas was over $4 a gallon every day in August and they say that's the first time ever. And I'll tell you something else about that $4 number because it's worse than it sounds. $4 is the average across the country, which means a lot of you, like myself, are paying even more than that.
I mean, here, I saw it today. I was out early this morning gas over $7 a gallon in Los Angeles, over $7 a gallon. And you don't actually see, how do I say this? So gas is one price that everybody sees, it's the point I'm making. You don't see what the store paid for the milk and you don't see what the trucking company paid. But the gas price is on a sign 20 feet tall and you just drive past it at least twice a day. Now, some of you are thinking, all right, I know I fill up once or more per week. But I want to walk you through where else this actually goes because most people only think about the pump when they hear about gas.
But it goes way further than that. Oil is in the fertilizer that grows our food. Oil is in the plastic that your food comes in. Oil is in the truck that hauls it to the store. Oil is in the diesel that runs the tractor and the train and the ship. So when oil goes up, it doesn't just hit your budget in one place. It seeps into everything. And over about six months and one day, while you're standing at the register, that same cart now costs you $12 more. And you can point to that day it happened. And that's why the gas price matters even to people who even barely drive. And the part that I promised you, war got worse on Sunday.
Oil went up on Monday and then our gold went down. So let me take that apart because it explains almost everything about this market. And I'm going to do it in three steps. The first step one, we all know gold pays us nothing. A savings account does. And you've heard me say it and I'm going to blab or more about it. Step two, when the bank pays more, gold costs more to hold. And every year you hold it, you're passing on what the bank would have paid you. So when interest rates go up, gold usually goes down because the thing gold competes with just got better. That's the rule, simple as that. And I'm just being frank with you, telling you the truth.
And step three, here's where the war comes in. Oil going up makes everything cost more. We just talked about that. Everything costing more is inflation. And I've told you this and I've been talking about it. I spoke to a gentleman this week. We talked about this as well. When inflation goes up, what does the Federal Reserve do? They raise the interest rates to fight it. That's their main tool and it's just about their only tool. So follow the chain. War gets worse. Oil goes up. Prices go up. The Fed is more likely to raise rates. And the higher rates, well, we all know that's bad for gold. So the war pushed gold two different directions at the same time.
It made people nervous, which helps gold. And it made a rate increase more likely, which hurts gold. On Monday, the second one won. It made a rate increase more likely, which could possibly hurt gold. Now, I want you to sit with that for a second because it's worth more than any price that I could give you. Anybody, and I mean anybody who tells you war is automatically good for gold, don't listen to them. Don't listen to them at all because they have not really thought it through. It isn't simple and it's never been that simple. And you just watched it not be simple in real time on Monday. You know, there's someone out there on the radio somewhere right now telling people the war means gold is going to go to the moon.
Or somebody's going to call you and tell you that the war is going to make gold go to the moon. Well, it didn't. It went down. So when somebody gives you a rule that has no exceptions, be careful with that fellow. That's all I want to say. And there's a second thing pushing on gold this week and I'll be straight about it. The head of the Federal Reserve gave a speech this past Friday. And his he said inflation isn't coming down fast enough and that rates may need to even go higher. Well, gold dropped about 3% the day he made that speech. So gold got hit Friday by a speech and again, Monday by the war. Two hits, four days apart from what look like opposite kind of news.
But here's the thing, they weren't opposite. They were the same story, both times, both of them made an increase, a rate increase, even more likely. And that's the thread. If you follow nothing else this month, follow that one because that's very important. Now I've said the Federal Reserve about eight times already. So let me stop and explain it because not everybody knows and nobody wants to actually admit it. But you're going to get it straight from me. The Federal Reserve, we all know, if you don't, is the central bank of the United States. And the main thing it does that touches our lives is set one interest rate.
That's one number. And that one number ripples out into everything. What your savings account pays you, what a car loan cost, what a mortgage cost, and what a business pays to even borrow. So when a dozen people are sitting in a room in Washington and move that number, it reaches into every single house in this country. And nobody voted for it. And that's done on purpose. And there are good reasons for it. And there are people who don't like it. But that, that's just the facts, that's the setup. Now they've got one main job, keep prices steady. And they put a number on what steady means. And that's two percent a year.
And that's the promise. Prices go up two percent a year and everybody can plan around it. Well, where are we now? We're somewhere between three and four. So prices are climbing at close to double what they promised. And they've been like that for a while now. So when the head of the Fed says rates may need to go higher, he's not being difficult. What he's doing is he's looking at a promise his own institution made and hasn't kept. Makes sense? Of course it does. And let me be fair to the man in the chair because fair matters. Whoever runs the Federal Reserve right now, they've got a rotten job. He didn't run up forty trillion dollars in debt.
Congress did that over forty years with both parties helping. And he didn't start the war in the Middle East. He actually walked into a room where prices are too high and the government owes more than it can comfortably pay and he has one lever. He has just one. I hope you're understanding where I'm going with this. Anybody who struggles with that, I would you would. So I'm not here to tell you he's a villain. I don't want you to have any kind of picture of that at all because I don't think he is. I'm here to tell you what the situation is so that you can begin to arrange your own house accordingly. And that's a different thing than being angry at someone.
I want to come back to something because it sits under everything else that I've told you. Last month, this country's debt crossed forty trillion dollars. Forty trillion. And I know what happens when I say a number that big on the radio. Your brain here is big and just moves on. I know mine does when I hear these big numbers, so forget the forty. Look at the speed. That's what I'm looking at. Look at the speed instead. It hit thirty eight trillion last October. Thirty nine in March and forty in August. So one trillion dollars about every five months. And it took this country nearly two hundred years to borrow its first trillion.
Two hundred years for the first one, a hundred and fifty days for the last one. Think about that. Now, here's the part that actually matters and it's not the size. It's the interest. The government is borrowing around six billion dollars a day. And more than half of that is just interest on money that's already borrowed. So over three billion dollars a day buys nothing. Not a road, not a soldier, not one social security check. It's just the cost of still owning what we owe. And you put that together. Interest on the debt now costs this country. We've heard me say this over and over more than the entire United States military.
Every base. Every ship. Every plane. And every paycheck. The interest is bigger than all of that. And we now spend more on interest than we do the whole military. And that's why the interest rate question isn't just about your mortgage. Every time rates go up, the bill goes up too. So the Federal Reserve is stuck between prices that won't come down and a government that can't afford higher rates. And whichever way that gets settled, it just gets settled with your money, our money. Not because anybody's out to get you. It's just because that's where the money is. And I want to show you something from Monday that tells you more than any speech actually did.
Monday was the actual last trading day of August and Wall Street closed the month down. The Dow fell 374 points. And almost everything went down with it. Nearly every part of the market finished in the red, but not everything. And I'll put your ears on listening ears on. Energy went up. Exxon rose almost 3% and Chevron rose over 2%. Now stop and think what all that means. On a day when the whole market fell, the oil companies went up. That's the market telling you in plain language what it expects to happen next. So it expects oil to stay expensive. So on a day, everything fell. Oil companies rose and that's the market betting that the field bill is going to stay high.
And there's one more piece of that day worth knowing. Even with Monday's drop. The month of August was up for most of the market. July was down, June was down and August came back. So you've got a market that had a good month closing on a bad day with the oil companies in the lead. They're leading. And that's a market that isn't sure what it thinks. And when a market isn't sure what it thinks, it moves hard in both directions on just very little news, which is exactly what you saw happen to gold on Friday and again on Monday. Now here's something that also happened Monday that nobody covered, but I'm going to. And I think you ought to know about it.
There's a group called the Financial Stability Board. Never heard of it. Most of you probably haven't. So here's what it does. Or here's what it is. After we had our crash in 2008. The biggest countries in the world decided somebody ought to be watching for the next one. So what they did is they set up this board. And this board's job is to look at the whole world's money system. And say when something looks dangerous. And every so often it writes a letter to the finance ministers of the 20 largest economies. Those ministers met Monday and Tuesday in a Asheville, North Carolina. And our own treasury secretary. He was the one that hosted it.
And he picked Asheville on purpose to show the world how that part of North Carolina has come back since Hurricane Helene. And the letter went out ahead of the meeting. It went out ahead of the meeting. I want you to understand that. And the man who wrote it, his name is Andrew Bailey. Now Andrew Bailey runs the Bank of England. And here's what he told them. He said markets could break and break badly and that it could spread from one country to the next like a pandemic. That's the warning plain as that. And he actually gave three reasons why he stated that the markets could break and break badly and spread from one country to the next.
Here's reason one government debt. And believe me, that was right at the top of his list, which is the same $40 trillion that I've been talking to for about the last 10 minutes or are talking about for the last 10 minutes. And the reason two, private lending, there's a whole business now of lending money outside the banks and it's grown very, very fast. And reason three, the prices are too high overvalued, especially around the new computer technology that everybody's excited about, meaning AI. I've added one more thing that I want you to catch. He said people have been borrowing money. Listen to this, people are borrowing money to buy stocks.
They're borrowing money to actually buy stocks and a lot of it. Now think about what borrowed money does when prices fall. So if you paid cash for something and then it drops, well, you can wait it out. You don't have to do anything because you paid cash. But if you borrowed the money to buy it and it drops, well, you can bet the man who lent you the money can try to want his money. So what do you have to do? You have to sell whether you want to or not. And when everybody starts to sell at the same time, prices don't drift down, they fall. So borrowed money turns a bad week into a bad month and that's the whole reason he's worried.
And one more line from that letter because it ties right back to where we started this hour. Here's what he said. He said the war in the Middle East has made prices worse. So there it is again. The war we talked about at the top of this show is the same war showing up in a letter to 25 finance ministers. Everything in this hour is one story. Think about it. It just wears different clothes dependent on who's telling that story. Now I'm not telling you the sky is falling. I want to be careful here. The board sends letters like this out fairly regularly. That's their job. Warning people is what they do. And I want you to understand they were not saying anything is happening right now.
They were saying that it could possibly happen. There's a big difference and I won't blur it. But I'd note who's saying it. That's the point I'm talking about here. This isn't a fellow on the radio. This is the head of the Bank of England writing on behalf of an international board to the finance ministers of the 20 biggest economies on earth. And what was the first thing he put on his list? Government debt. And there's a piece of the letter that I skipped and it's worth a minute because most people have never even heard of it. He weren't warned about something called private credit. And here's what that is in plain words.
It used to be that if a midsize company needed to borrow money, it went to the bank. And the bank, it looked at your books, made the loan and regulators then watched the bank. Now, there's a whole business of lending to those companies now outside the banks. Investment funds do it. And that business has grown to somewhere between a trillion and a half trillion to two trillion dollars. Now, that is that bad? Not by itself. Companies need to borrow. Somebody has to lend. But here's what worries the man who wrote that letter. Nobody really knows what those loans are worth. A bank loan gets looked at by regulators. These, on the other hand, often don't.
Definitely not in the same way. So, when things go bad, the loss doesn't show up in an obvious place. It shows up later somewhere where nobody's even watching. And that's the kind of thing that turns a bad quarter into a crisis. It's not the losses. It's just the big surprise in them. Well, we made it through another month. Like I said, August is over. Gold finished the month up about 10%. And that's the best month gold has had since February. Silver, you've heard me talk about, did better. Silver finished up around 17%. So, both metals had a strong month. And that's real. And I'm not going to talk it down, but I want to show you the shape of it.
Because the shape matters more than the number. Gold spent most of August climbing. By the fourth week, it was near $4,700 an ounce. And then in the last three days of the month, it gave a big piece of that back. So, a man who might have looked at his statement on the 25th felt one way. And the same man looking on the 31st felt another way. Nothing about the country, by the way, changed in those six days. So, let me tell you where August ranks because I found this and it literally stopped me. Follow me on this. In 1971, this country cut the last tie between the dollar and gold. And before that, the dollar was actually tied to the metal.
And after that, it then floated on its own. So, gold has been trading freely now for about 55 years now. And all 55 of those years, August of 2026 was one of gold's best months. So, depending on how you count it, right around the sixth best month gold has had since 1971. And every month that beat it happened before 1982. Before 1982, that's the last time gold had to run like the one we just had. And I want to be careful with that because a fact like that can be used to sell somebody something. So, here's the other half of it. I want you to understand this. Big months like that usually happen because something's wrong, not because something is right.
1979 and 1980 were tremendous months for gold. They were also miserable years to be an American with the savings account. So, when I tell you gold just had one of its best months in 55 years, don't hear that as good news. Hear it as a measurement of how nervous people are. Now, let me put a little more on that month because I think it teaches us a lot. Gold started in August around $4,000 amounts. By the fourth week, it was near 4700. And it finished the month down near 45. Now we're at around 43. So, it went up $700 and then it gave back 200 of it in the last few days. Now, imagine this. Imagine two men who owned the exact same amount of gold.
The first one checked his account on the 25th and he felt like he was a genius. The second one didn't look until the 31st and he felt like he had missed something. Sound familiar? Same man could be both depending on the day he happened to look. And nothing about this country changed in those six days. Not the debt, not the deficit, not the war. Only the day on the calendar changed. And most of what people feel about their money is decided when they happen to actually look. I know that hits home, right? Now, here's something else from August that I found interesting. Gold mining stocks went up 43% last month. 43% their best month on record.
And I want to be careful how I say this next part, a gold mining stock is not gold. That's a company. It has a boss. It has a payroll. It has equipment that breaks and it can even have a strike as well as have a fire. And it can be in a country that changes the rules on it. The metal has none of those. The physical gold has none of those problems. The metal just sits there being metal. So when you see mining shares jump 43%, that's not a report on gold. It's a report on how excited people got about gold companies. So those are two different things and people lose money confusing them. And let me give you two numbers on who's been buying because I want to be specific instead of just saying central banks.
Poland bought 51 tons of gold in one quarter this year. They now hold 632 tons and they've said publicly that they're headed for 700. They're buying more. So that's a country in the middle of Europe with a written target working toward it. And China, let's not forget them. They added 33 tons in the same quarter. They're biggest quarterly purchases late 2023 and they've now bought gold 21 months in a row. 21 months without a break through the high prices in January and through the drop in the spring. They didn't stop. They didn't stop when it got expensive and they didn't stop when it fell. That's not trading. That's a policy.
And let me give you the outside view of this. Goldman Sachs just put out a forecast. They think gold's going to $5,000 an ounce by the end of this year. And their reasoning is the central banks around the world. They just keep buying it. And the people may pull back on how many rate increases they expect. But now hear me on this. That's not a forecast. Forecast are wrong all the time. Goldman Sachs is wrong sometimes. Everybody is. And I'm not telling you that because I think they're right. I'm telling you because you should know that a firm with no interest in selling you a coin is looking at the same picture I am.
Now, some of you have heard me say all of this before and you're wondering what a person actually does about it. So let me say the practical part plainly and then I'm going to just move on. You are not going to fix the national debt. Neither am I. Nobody listening to this program is going to change what Congress does. So the only question worth your time is a smaller one. If the dollar buys less and less over the next 10 or 20 years. What in your house is set up to handle that? Cash. Cash isn't. Cash is exactly the thing that gets hurt. A CD isn't. It pays you back in dollars. A bond isn't. Same reason. And I'm not telling you to get rid of any of those because I own some of them myself and most people should.
I'm asking a narrower question. What percentage of everything you have is protected against that one specific thing. You know what I'm talking about. And for a lot of folks, the answer, the honest answer is nothing at all. That's the conversation. That's the whole conversation right there. Now, let me give you something about silver because it's the most interesting that I've read all month and nobody is really even talking about it. We've already talked about silver goes into solar panels. I've set it on the show. Solar's been the single biggest industrial buyer of silver in the world. Well, here's the news. And the news is, is that demand is falling.
The people who tracked this expect, track all this, expect solar's use of silver to drop about 19% this year. From around 186 million ounces down to about 151 million. That's the biggest signal, single drop on record. So the biggest buyer just pulled back hard. Now, what would you expect to happen to a shortage when the biggest buyer pulls back? You'd expect it to go away, right? Less demand, problem solved. It didn't, it didn't go away. The shortage just got bigger. And last year, the world came up 40 million ounces short. This year, even with solar buying a lot less, the shortfall is running around 46 million ounces.
So it's widened. And here's why. And it's a simple reason. The supply is shrinking faster than the demand is. There's less silver coming out of the ground and out of recycling than there was. So demand fell and supply fell more. The biggest buyer of silver cut back 19% and the shortage still got worse. Think about that. And I want to tell you why that number is stuck with me. Because most stories about metal are about what people are feeling, the excitement, the fear, whatever the move is that week. Well, this one isn't. This is a counting problem. It doesn't care about Jackson Hole. It doesn't care what happened Sunday night in the Strait of our moves.
It's just a number of ounces coming out of the ground against the number of ounces getting used. And that gap has been there six years running now, six years. So since 2021, the world has pulled roughly 760 million ounces out of storage just to cover those gaps. That's close to a full year of everything the world minds produce. So this does not mean silver goes up next week. It doesn't mean it goes up next year. Silver hit what $121 in January and then fell to the 60s. The shortage didn't stop that for one minute because the price on the screen. We've talked about it set by the traders and the shortage is a physical thing happening in the warehouses.
Those two can point in opposite directions for a long, long time, and this year has proved it. What it does mean is narrower than that. There's less metal on the shell than there used to be and every year there just becomes a little less. That, my friends, is not a forecast. That's the inventory. So where does this go? Well, let me tell you what I'm watching and it's short. The Federal Reserve, and you should be watching it as well, meets in about two weeks. And right now, a good many traders think there's a real chance that they raise interest rates before the end of the year. Not cut, but raise. And I want you to notice how strange that is because most folks haven't caught up to it yet.
For three or four years, every conversation was about when we get rate cuts. When does it get cheaper to borrow? When does the mortgage rates come down? Blah, blah, blah, blah, the conversation is over now. The conversation now is whether it's about to get more expensive. The question in this country used to be when rates come down. Now, the question is whether they go up. And here's the box everybody's in. Everybody, and I want to lay it out plain because it's the whole thing. On one side, our prices are still going up. The war is pushing oil, oil is pushing everything else. That says, raise rates. And on the other side, follow me, the government owes 40 trillion dollars.
And every time rates go up, the interest bill on the 40 trillion goes right up too. That says, don't raise rates. So they can't do both. Somebody has to lose this argument. But I'd have you think about which way a government usually leans when it owes a great deal of money. I'm not going to answer that for you. I'm just going to leave that question sitting there for you. And one more thing to watch. And this one's free and you can do it yourself. Watch your gas pumps. And I'm very serious about this. That's the best inflation reading for a family than most of what comes even out of Washington. If gas stays above four dollars, prices at the store, they're just going to keep climbing.
There's no way around it. If it comes back down, then we'll fill some relief in about six months. You don't need a subscription to anything. All you need to do is just drive past a sign. Make sense? Okay. 1240. We're finally here. And this is the one you've been waiting on. Nine weeks ago, I started giving out a word on the show, one word, each show, and a lot of you wrote them down. And I know because I've been receiving them. And today, I'm going to pick a winner. And for anybody who's new here, here's what we've been doing. This is the silver lining giveaway. There are two full rolls of silver, 40 ounces of silver, no purchase, no obligation.
And nobody even called you afterward trying to sell you anything. It wasn't a pitch to get your name or anything. And I do this drawn the way I've always done it. Live on this air, a real bag, a real paper brown bag, and a real hand mind reaching into it. Same as July when Mr. Willard won the gold American buffalo right here. I'm about to go into it right now. Let me draw. Let me pull it in. I love it. I love doing this. The more you put in, the more chances you have. All right. I've got one here in my hand. Now, before I let this go, I want to say something about those nine words. But here we go. I'm going to pull this up.
Wow. This one, the word was thrift. And boy, is there. I'm going to let her. This is by Shirley Anderson. The word is thrift. And she says thrift is how my parents lived through the World War II, but practiced even when the good times set in the war. We were always a two car family, always a two home family, a summer home that we all enjoyed, especially when we lived there for the entire summer. And my dad commuted the 50 plus miles to work at Kodak every day in his little VW bug. There's more here. I'm going to, we're going to read more of this on Sunday. You know, I want you to look at the list. Work, grit, thrift, honesty, family, promise, duty, trust and patience.
There's not one financial word in it, not one, not rate of return, not strategy, not no product, nothing you read in a brochure. Nine weeks of a money program and not a single word about money. And that wasn't an accident because here's what I've learned in 40 years of doing this for a living. I've sat across from people who had a great deal of money and were miserable. And I've sat across from people with very little who slept just fine. And the difference between them was almost never the number. It was whether they'd been honest with themselves about what they had. Whether they kept their word to people who were counting on them and whether they could wait.
And if you read that list again, those aren't money words. And one of them is about how a person behaves. And I tell you what I've come to think about after 40 years of this. That side of it decides more about how a family ends up than any advice I could give them about a coin or a bond. I will call you. Well, I will call you after the show. And we will discuss about getting this silver to you as well as I'd like if you're listening, I'd like to have you on the show Sunday. So you can explain what this thrift means to you. You wrote a pretty good story here. I want you to say it out loud. So congratulations again to our winner.
And I want to thank you to every one of you who played along for the nine weeks. I promise you we'll do another one and I'll tell you when I've got to put it together. And I want to say one more thing about that because I think it's the most useful thing I know. Most people think the hard part of money is picking the right thing. Well, it isn't. It's not even close. The hard part is holding on to a decision you already made on a day when it feels wrong. And one more thought about those nine words before I move on. A few people wrote in over the week asking why I do the word at all on a money show. And here's why. Because I've watched a lot of people handle money over 40 years, like I said.
And the ones who did well were almost never the smartest ones in the room. They were the ones who could stick to something. Who told the truth about what they had even when it wasn't even much. Who kept the promise to somebody when it got expensive to keep it. You can teach a person what a bond is. I can do that in about two minutes. I just did it. But you cannot teach a person to keep their word. That comes from somewhere else. So the words weren't a break from the show. To my mind, they were a point of it. Let's see. I got some MEL here. I could read this. First one. This one came in Monday afternoon. Okay. A gentleman writes, the war gets worse and gold went down.
I don't understand it. I don't understand. Isn't gold supposed to protect me? Well, that's the best question I've gotten all month and I'll build. You know, I built the first half of this show actually around that question. So let me answer it a little differently than I did earlier. First of all, gold's not a fire alarm. It doesn't go off the day. You know, something bad happens. Gold is more like. The roof on your house. The roof doesn't do anything on a sunny day. It doesn't do anything on most rainy days either. It's just a roof. It matters over 30 years and it matters. Most in a storm that you didn't see coming.
You have to have a roof over your head. So if you're checking on Monday, whether your gold reacted to Sunday's news, you're asking it to be something it isn't. It isn't a reaction. It's an arrangement. Makes sense. Here's another one. A lady writes that. Okay. Here we go. Her husband wants to put half. This is a lady who wants to put half of everything they own in gold. And she thinks that's too much. You're not, you're going to believe when I say this, but you're right. I'll tell you, you're right. Half is too much. That's not close. And you'll notice I'm a guy who actually. Trade school for a living telling you not to buy that much of it.
Here's why. You know, look again. People have their own community. I've got guys that have purchased most all of their retirement with it because that's what they want to do. Then I've got people that do 10%, 15%, but remember, gold's job is to protect part of what you have from one particular danger. And that is the dollar losing value over time. It's not a plan for your whole life. It doesn't pay your bills. It doesn't send you a check. And it can go down for years out of stretch and it has before and who knows it could again. So, yeah, I mean, it's all on you. It's your and we can talk about it. You know, you know who I am.
You've emailed me and I've got a lot of time in this industry, 28 of them and precious metals alone. And you know, like I've said before, I've worked for big companies. And the reason I left is they just, they have too many people involved and then it hits the premium on the metal. With me, you have a shot at going ahead. You're looking at like 5% over spot value. No one does that, but I do. And I do it because I know what it takes to make it go. I started buying gold. Listen, I started buying gold no three at $380 an ounce. And I still have that gold and I still have even more gold that I bought when it was over $5,000 an ounce and I'll continue to keep buying.
The reason because if you look at the numbers, gold has outperformed every single major asset class in many, many years and it will continue to. Now, here's what I'd like to do like for you to do. If you've got a 401k sitting at an old job or an IRA somewhere and you've been wondering whether what part of it belongs in real metal, give me a call. And I'll personally walk you through the entire process of setting up a gold IRA for you. The whole thing, I'll tell you what it costs, how long it takes, what the rules are and what can go wrong if anything can go wrong. And if at the end of the conversation you decided it isn't for you, it's okay for me.
I've told people not to do it and I'll tell it again. There's also a kit that I put together, it's free, it's called the gold IRA explained to honestly. And I've got every fee and plain numbers, every rule put in there and plain English, including the parts that don't make gold look that great. And if a company won't show you its fees, then you already know what kind of company that is. You can always call me, let me give you my phone number, it's 833-577-4653. That's 833-577-Gold or 4653, it's just one phone, one person, that's me. Or go to HeritageGoldPartners.Gold and you can even ask for the kit there and it automatically sends it right out to you.
Or write to me personally, I'd love to get these emails every week. And you can write to me at hello@heritageGoldPartners.Gold. It takes 15 minutes, no pressure, ask me anything you want. I talked to a gentleman just a while, the other day, who's heard me on the radio here for a long time, even with Clyde. And he mentioned that he wanted to do something for his grandkids. And that's all the more reason. Because you think about it, I asked him, I said, how old are your grandkids? He had one that was 12 and I think the other was 17th. And I'm thinking 12 years old, let's say they have X amount of dollars in gold and waiting for them, waiting for them.
Well, Golly, 12, let's say 12 more years from now or 10 years from now, even 9 years from now, look at what gold will possibly do. We've got people saying gold could go to $50,000 an ounce, $20,000 an ounce. Well, with everything that's happening right now is very likely. All right, friends, that's the hour. We hit Iranian rocket launchers on Sunday. Oil went over $90 on Monday and gold went down, not up. Because the war made a rate increase more likely and higher rates are hard on gold. Gas was over $4 a gallon every day in August, first time this country's ever seen that. August finished up about 10% for our gold, best month since February.
And we got a new winner in the drawing, Miss Shirley Anderson. She did it. Nine words. Not one of them about money. We're getting closer to the hour. I know I got five more minutes. I can blab on. I'm about blabbed out, but surely if you would, give me a call after the show and we'll make arrangements to get this out to you. It's heavy. Silver is heavier than gold. That's for sure. And we will also look for you to be on the show on Sunday. All right, folks. I just want to say, take care of yourself. Take care of your family. God bless you. God bless your family and God bless America. And I'll see you again on this Sunday.
And remember, you can always go to Facebook and find us on ground zero plus. Say hi, say it or go to Heritage and co-partners on Facebook as well. This is also going to be, it's being recorded right now and will be again on Friday. You'll be able to hear it again on Friday. And then remember on Sunday, you can always hear it again, I think on Monday. I think that's right. Yeah, the producer just said yes. So yeah, so you can hear it again on Monday. And remember, if you have any questions at all, feel free. I didn't take any calls this time. I'm not going to block the calls, but feel free to call in anytime that you want.
Speak your peace. It doesn't always have to be about gold and finance. I was talking to the producer before we came on the show. And we were talking about what Russia is doing right now with the missiles that they're given to Iran and that everything that's happening right now, people are saying we're in a lot of trouble, that the world is sitting on a keg of dynamite right now, ready to explode. Just anything can happen. I mean, look at what's happening over in the Middle East. Look what's happening in Russia. Look what's happening in Europe, in the UK and all of these places right now. It's not good. It's not good at all.
And that's why I always end the show saying God bless you, God bless your family, and God bless America. And again, I'll see you real soon, guys. Take care.