At the beginning of the year so many people have started to write reports about the surprise of 2017 and projections of 2017, so everybody has a view, nobody knows precisely and the lot will depend on central banks’ monetary policies. I don’t believe central banks can tighten meaningfully, maybe optically they do some, but in general I think they’ll keep money printing on the table as far as we can see, in other words, for the next few years. And eventually it will be friendly for precious metals and hard assets.
Number two, hard assets such as precious metals are at the historical low point compared to financial assets, so I think that’s going forward there’s a huge discrepancy in the performance between financial assets which has been very good since 2009 and gold which has been more mixed… it’s also up but it’s been more mixed especially after 2011… that these hard assets will come back into favor.
So, if you’re asking what is my expectation for the rest of 2017, I think that gold shares are an attractive asset class. I think precious metals can easily move up another 20, 30 percent, possibly 100 percent or so. In general, I would say American investors should take the opportunity that the dollar is strong and that asset prices, in other words stocks and bonds in the U.S. has been strong to reduce their positions in the U.S. in terms of equities.
