INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT BELOW
The Canadian Securities Exchange presents your go-to source for trends in junior and small cap markets. Each month, join host Anna Serin and financial expert Bruce Campbell, in a partnership with Stockhouse.
ANNA:
Hi, my name’s Anna Serin. I’m Director of Listings Development with the Canadian Securities Exchange. You’re joining us for the September 2025 edition of The Market This Month.
Gold has truly broken out to all-time highs, with estimates suggesting it could surpass $4,000 an ounce. Just this week, the spot price hit over $3,500, continuing a steady upward trend that’s seen its climb nearly a third this year alone. This remarkable rally is unfolding amid ongoing global economic uncertainties, geopolitical tensions, inflation concerns, and a changing interest rate environment, making now a particularly intriguing time for investors.
[This article is being disseminated on behalf of The Canadian Stock Exchange, a third-party issuer and is intended for informational purposes only.]
Gold’s long history as a store of value is deeply rooted in its unique characteristics: its scarcity, indestructibility, and tangibility. Unlike currencies or stocks, gold cannot be printed or created out of thin air. When confidence in paper assets or fiat currencies falters, gold tends to rise, acting as a hedge against inflation and economic instability.
Looking back at its price history, gold’s modern era began after the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. Since then, its price has been highly responsive to global events. 1970 saw a dramatic rise during stagflation, peaking in 1980 around $3,300 in inflation-adjusted terms. The 1980s and ’90s experienced a prolonged decline, bottoming out near $253 in 1999 as global stability took hold. But the 21st century has been marked by sharp rallies during crisis, spiking during the 2008 financial meltdown, the European debt crisis, and most recently during the pandemic-era inflation surge, reaching over $2,900 in early 2025. If you compare gold’s performance over the decades, a $100 investment in 1972 would now be worth around $4,500, a remarkable return. Yet, interestingly, if you had invested the same $100 in the S&P 500, the return would be over $18,500. This highlights gold’s role as a non-correlated asset, one that often moves independently of equities, especially during times of crisis.
Looking ahead, there are several key themes to consider. Seasonal patterns can influence short-term moves: what has historically worked, what hasn’t, and whether investors should sell out early or ride it out for the longer-term trend. We’re also potentially witnessing a rotation between value and growth stocks. Could this signal the start of a broader shift where commodities like gold begin to perform even better relative to high-flying growth stocks? In addition, as the economy continues to evolve, we might see a performance broadening across different market caps—small, mid, and large—giving all sectors a chance to benefit. The Federal Reserve’s next move will also be critical. Its rate decision on the 17th could determine whether interest rates hold steady, pause, or start to cut, with major implications for risk assets across the board. And finally, the US dollar’s recent movements beg the question: has it bottomed? And what does that mean for gold and other risk assets? A weaker dollar generally supports higher gold prices and broader market rallies, but the story is still unfolding. All these factors are interconnected and will shape the markets in the months ahead. As we explore the historic gold breakout today, we’ll also look at how these broader themes could influence exploration, investor sentiment, and the global economy moving forward.
I’m, of course, joined by my wonderful co-host, Bruce Campbell with StoneCastle Investment Management. Thank you for joining me, Bruce.
BRUCE:
I’m excited to be here, Anna.
ANNA:
It’s September. The kids are back in school. The weather is great, and gold is at an all-time high. It’s not a bad way to start the fall, is it?
BRUCE:
No, it’s fantastic, especially if you’re an investor in the Canadian markets.
ANNA:
Absolutely, it’s about time. It’s our time, Bruce.
BRUCE:
It’s been a while, so it’s good to have our time back.
ANNA:
Okay, we’re going to dive right in. One thing that you’ve talked about several times over the years is seasonality. We’re going to talk about kind of what’s working, what’s not, but can you just remind our audience what seasonality is and how you use it?
BRUCE:
I mean, if you look over shorter periods like two or three years or you look over longer periods of 20 or 30 or 40 years, there’s patterns to the market as to when individual stocks perform, when different commodities perform, when different markets perform. That’s something that investors have to look into their playbook and figure out what they’re going to do with that. There’s the old saying of “sell in May and go away,” which was effectively from the day when everyone used to head off to their summer homes in May and they wouldn’t be back until into September. The thought was that you would sell your portfolio because nothing really happened during the summer, and obviously that’s changed a lot now. We all have remote access and can access markets and look at portfolios from really anywhere. But when you look at seasonality, there still tends to be a theme that happens there, and we know that September tends to be one of the weaker months of the year. So as an investor, you always have to determine, “Do I try to take advantage of that, or do I try to protect myself from that? And what difference does it make from year to year?” That’s one of those things that’s fairly important. One of the things that we think about when we think about that seasonality is it’s almost like the climate. You go away to Mexico in what’s supposed to be the best time of the year, and it can rain even though it’s supposed to be sunny that time of year. That’s looking at the climate versus the short term. Right now, we’re about to head into that seasonally weakest period, but does the market behavior and current situation have a plan on that? What you want to take into account is what you’re doing with your portfolio. Do you try to take advantage of that by buying any dips? Do you sell out now to go back in in the beginning of October? Those are things that as an investor you have to think about.
ANNA:
Absolutely. Another side of that, and I’m just curious to your thoughts on this, is that another reason that we see it especially in the more junior markets with the explorers is that quite often in May they’re heading out to the property to do a drill program for the summer. There’s a lot of properties that you can only access in summer months. By September, we’re still waiting for their drill results, and those press releases to come out. Is that another element that we see on the more junior side of the markets?
BRUCE:
It would be for sure. A lot of them tend to go through that same cycle where they raise money at the beginning of the year, then they take that money and go drill, and then those drill results start to come out in late summer, early fall. Then you get news there which, in a lot of cases, if it’s strong news, then it’s going to push stock prices a lot higher.
ANNA:
Do you think that there’s a position or a possibility that with gold prices as they are and some good drill results, we might have ourselves a nice little resource market this fall?
BRUCE:
Well, we certainly have. I mean, if you look at what’s gone on this year, you’re starting to see that trickle down. It started as normal in the larger caps and now is starting to work its way down cap for sure. We haven’t seen it as much as you probably would have expected from the pure explorer companies that are out there. That’s what a lot of people are looking at and anticipating. We could see this this fall and into the winter, especially given that investors are always looking for where the next opportunity lies. Certainly if you look at some of the resource companies, gold companies, they’re not at historic highs as far as their price to their net asset value goes, if you look at it from an aggregate, but it’s getting more expensive. Anytime that happens, investors tend to look for where the deals and the bargains are, and now that means going down cap. If we start to see some more M&A activity, which we’ve seen a little bit of, but if we see more M&A activity, then that also is an area that a lot of the juniors and explorer companies then start to really come to life given that there’s an opportunity for them to get potentially taken up in a merger.
ANNA:
Absolutely. The other thing I’m kind of seeing is I’m seeing some decent financings happening for CSE issuers in the resource sector by some of the producing mining companies. The producing mining company, larger companies, actually participating in the private placements of the juniors. So we’re starting to see a bit of that trickle.
BRUCE:
That’s just the slow creep into positions, right? They participate in the financing, and then they own a piece of that company, and it gives them optionality to whether they want to buy a bigger position or buy the whole project if they decide that they like it.
ANNA:
Absolutely. Okay. So you’re always obviously looking at deciphering whether you’re going value versus growth. Obviously, two ways to approach investing in a stock. What are you seeing right now?
BRUCE:
If you look at that, really coming out of the bottom of 2022, it has been a growth market, and it has really been led by technology. If you look at the earnings that we saw, and especially coming out of a lot of the big US companies, it has been all US, all big tech, all earnings strength in those sectors. Now we’re starting to see that change, right? We’re seeing these gold companies that had been really… They didn’t really do much for the last part of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. Well, now they’re starting to really increase, and of course you’re seeing earnings there. I mean, they would be considered value. You’re seeing other commodities right now. Oil hasn’t really produced much gains. There’s been sort of spotty areas there. But if we see an economic pickup, that can be more of a traditional value area. And then even if you look at financials, in Canada here, the banks are usually considered to be value in that they have a fairly decent yield, and they don’t trade at a super high multiple. They’ve been starting to pick up as well. So if you look at longer term relationships between growth and value, Canada, US, it doesn’t really matter, you are starting to see where it looks like there could be some rotation now where it doesn’t mean that growth dies or drops. It just means that potentially value outperforms, from a relative standpoint, the growth investments. That’s something that investors have to be cognizant of. If you look at most institutional portfolios, what they do is they have a mix. So they have a growth portfolio, they have a value portfolio, and they have both those in their portfolio at the same time because they know that they ebb and flow, and that it generates longer term results. That’s something good that the average investor should be thinking about as well.
ANNA:
Absolutely. From my brokerage days, asset allocation was the pinnacle of investing, right?
BRUCE:
Yeah, it has always been. It probably always will be.
ANNA:
It helps when you have professional guidance to build that out properly. So keep that in mind. Let’s talk about size factors. Could a broadening of the economy see other market caps begin to perform?
BRUCE:
Yeah. This is almost along those same lines, right? If you look at where their earnings were coming out of 2022, it was all large cap technology and it was very focused. As a result, the markets were very focused and now we’re starting to see that broadening out. So you went from where you saw what I would consider to be an earnings recession in small and even some of the mid-cap areas, to now where those companies… We’ve just come through the earning season and a lot of the numbers were very strong and we’re seeing that pickup and we’re seeing earnings revisions and earnings momentum build in a lot of the smaller and mid-cap areas. At the same time, the larger caps that have had all that momentum, it’s not that the momentum stopped, but that’s been priced in. So you think about the biggest of them, Nvidia, they had good numbers, but the stock really hasn’t done anything off of those numbers. Is that because investors have already baked in everything that’s happened from an earnings growth perspective and now are starting to look at other areas? It doesn’t mean that Nvidia doesn’t still go up, but it just might mean that some of these smaller companies that are growth-oriented or value-oriented now start to have earnings acceleration that’s going to drive their stock prices as well.
ANNA:
Are we seeing a shift in the earnings, whether it be in the US or in Canada, that is different than what we might have seen 12 months ago due to the tariffs? Are we seeing better earnings for Canadian-focused companies because we’re encouraging to buy Canadian, or are we seeing less earnings because we’ve lost some revenue?
BRUCE:
We haven’t really seen a big effect yet from earnings. There’s certainly companies where there were opportunities where people tried to jump out ahead of the tariffs actually going into place. They really pushed a lot of orders through in a quarter in anticipation of that. But with the on-again, off-again of the tariffs, it hasn’t had as big of effect as I think the market certainly worried about. That’s why we’re approaching highs in the US or just off the highs in the US and at highs in Canada, is because it hasn’t been investors’ big concern. They recognize that tariffs are there and that they’re being taken up. It’s going to be a longer term scenario where you probably have to look out into early 2026 before it might have an impact as far as economic growth goes. But right now, we’ve actually seen fairly good earnings from a lot of companies that initially were worried about what would happen because of the tariffs.
ANNA:
Interesting. Okay. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. We have a potential rate cut coming up. On the 17th of September, the Fed will meet and we will find out. There’s several possibilities here. What are you thinking?
BRUCE:
If you go back to the beginning of the year, there was a lot of rate cuts that were built into the market. Most investors were anticipating that we would see multiple rate cuts into this year. And that just kept getting backed away on two fronts. One is the uncertainty of the tariffs and what potential inflation could be created, and then also the inflation numbers. While we’ve seen those inflation numbers drop down a little bit, they might spike up a bit here in the August number that’ll be reported in September and then October, November numbers based on what we’ve seen. But now after the Jackson Hole meeting that happened in August, it sounds like the Fed is in a position where they want to lower rates and they’ll do it in the September meeting. That’s what the market’s really got its hopes on right now. If the Fed was to disappoint, I think you’d probably see a little bit of volatility in the market because it’s around 80, 85% probability that they’re going to make a 25 basis point cut on their September 17th meeting right now. That’s what’s priced into the market.
ANNA:
And that rate cut will help propel the market. Is that what the thoughts are?
BRUCE:
Well, some of it’s already built in. We saw a really strong month and quarter for small caps, both in Canada and the US, and they do better when rates are lower because they tend to borrow and it provides that leverage to their business. So that’s already started to be built in for sure. If they didn’t do the rate cut, that is a potential negative. The second part of that will be what happens as far as further rate cuts. Right now, both the market… If you look at a two-year yield, it tends to telegraph where they think the fed rate is going and they only really have that one cut priced in right now. Also, if you look at what sentiment surveys of what the market and what investors think, then they’re also pricing in just that one cut. If there were more cuts down the road, then that would actually be positive because it means that there’s alternatives for investment, that rates aren’t as high. It also means that operating leverage is higher because companies’ borrowing costs are less.
ANNA:
Right. And is it safe to say that the Trump administration would prefer lower cost of capital as well as a lower valued US dollar, because it makes it cheaper, easier, and more efficient to build internally in the US companies? Is that kind of accurate?
BRUCE:
100%. And they’ve been… Trump has been leaning really hard on Jerome Powell, calling him names.
ANNA:
Trump calling someone names? No.
BRUCE:
I know, it’s a shocker, isn’t it? It’s actually quite interesting to see, that’s for sure. But there’s been a fair bit of that. They’re just rolling out where they’re going to start interviewing because Jerome Powell’s term is done in May of next year. They’re starting to roll out who they’re interviewing for that position. That’s going to have an impact on market sentiment as well because if it’s someone who’s really positive for lower interest rates, then the market’s going to anticipate that and feel that that’s going to happen. At the same time, the US government has hinted at having some master plan to deal with the housing crisis in the US and the affordability of housing. That’s supposed to come out here over the next couple of weeks. That really is going to have to depend on where interest rates are because right now, you’re not seeing a lot of changes in housing because most people have locked in rates that were locked in at much lower rates than where they are now. If they move, they can’t take those mortgages with them. So their financing costs go up, so there’s got to be some type of workaround from that perspective to get the housing market more affordable and also to get it going because it’s such a big employer as far as job growth in the US and in Canada.
ANNA:
Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. Okay, well, we’ll see what happens there. And on that note, let’s talk about the US dollar. The US dollar is low right now. It’s potentially bottomed, do you think? Or do you think that there’s still further for it to go?
BRUCE:
I mean, longer term, when this government first took their term in the US, they said that they wanted a lower US dollar, and that’s certainly what’s happened. It’s now pushed to a fairly far extreme. So, just from a technical standpoint, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a little bit of strength. But that’s also going to be dictated by what happens with interest rates. So, if they cut interest rates and they’re also anticipating they’re going to cut interest rates more, then there’s a flow of capital out of the US to other areas purely on what rate they can get on the money that they have invested. There is potential that it sort of goes sideways before if they start to accelerate the pace of lower interest rates, that it then starts to decline again as money moves out of the US.
ANNA:
Okay. Now remind us. A lower US dollar, how does that affect gold typically?
BRUCE:
Normally, there’s a fairly strong inverse correlation to the two. If you look at what’s happened over the last nine, or even 12 months, that’s really been the case. The US dollar started to strengthen last fall, and gold had been doing really well. It’s not that it did poorly, but it just consolidated. And then in February when the US dollar peaked out, you had already started to see gold move. It had a fairly strong move in January and in February. And since then, it’s just continued to work its way higher. In the last few months, the US dollar’s been weak and gold’s continued to appreciate.
ANNA:
Interesting. So, let’s talk about gold. I mean, it’s pretty amazing the run that it’s had this summer. What are your thoughts there? How does this affect the general market? I also want to ask you, how is this correlated to some of the crypto momentum that we’ve seen over the past summer? What are your thoughts?
BRUCE:
I mean, as far as gold and what’s happening there and what the opportunity is, it’s really fascinating because if you look at retail holding of gold, it isn’t actually that high. It’s relatively low from a historical standpoint. So, you would have anticipated that there’d be more retail investors getting into gold. It looks like it continues to be a lot of central banks that are buying gold and a lot of institutions that are buying gold. You haven’t really seen the retail get in yet. So that’ll be interesting to watch and see if we start to see that accelerate. And then as far as the relationship between gold and Bitcoin, it has been ebbing and flowing, back and forth. It probably depends on the week that you review it, but they’ve both been going up and they’ve both been consolidating, and not necessarily always at the same time. But they tend to be stores of value. They tend to be a form of currency. A lot of people will argue that that’s not the case with Bitcoin, but I think that that’s where it’s going. I don’t necessarily think you can say it’s the new gold, because gold’s done really well. But it’s certainly a way that investors are looking at a store of value from a currency perspective, where they can go into Bitcoin and it’s held its value as the US dollar has been depreciating. And even when the US dollar was appreciating, it still was doing well.
ANNA:
Let’s get into some CSE issuer news. We have some new issuers again this month. Welcome Super Lithium Corp, Aventura Resources, and Gold Cana Resources. This is not a new trend, Bruce, that we’re seeing new issuers come to the CSE that are all resource-focused companies. Is this something that you think we’ll continue to see, or are there other sectors that you think will become more positioned? Or are we kind of entering that phase of the market?
BRUCE:
Well, it’s good to see for sure because it was such a logjam. Well, maybe not logjam, frozen up is more what it was for a couple of years there. So it’s great to see these issuers coming to the market and having the ability to raise money and get a bunch of new listings. We should probably start to see other areas as well, especially as the economy continues to broaden out here. There’s always smart entrepreneurs looking to grow businesses and raise capital. They need to do that through the public market, so I would anticipate that you’re going to continue to see that. In the case of Canada for sure, there’s a constant theme there of our mid-caps get hollowed out, and even some of our large caps. So we have to continue to regenerate with new companies that start off as small caps and work their way up. That’s where you start to see those listings.
ANNA:
Yeah, it’s just great to see. I’m seeing a lot of great financings in the resource sector, and I’m seeing a lot of new companies in the resource sector. So there is money out there that is going towards that side of the market which shows that there’s good sentiment, I would imagine, towards that. I think on a global scale as well as Canadian, it would be great to start seeing some money flow towards there and start seeing some new discoveries come to market. I think that also helps build the momentum. So it’ll be great to see some of that coming this fall. A few headlines I wanted to mention. Pacifica Silver closed the second tranche of their private placement. It was a $10 million private placement. They welcomed renowned investor Eric Sprott to the private placement. And as we were talking about earlier, some pretty big silver companies invested in this private placement as well. So I thought that was interesting that we are starting to see, like you said, that creep and trickle down effect from producers down into the explorers, which is exciting to see. They’re eager to launch an initial 8,000-meter drill program in their Claudio project in Mexico this fall. They listed with us about a year ago and their chart looks amazing. It’s nice to see a company do well like that. Another one to mention, the Canadian Chrome Company announced proposed $25 million financing for a winter drilling program at Blackhorse Chrome Discovery in the Ring of Fire and confirms continued support for commissioning the Mukurti Airstrip for Marin Falls Logistics and other First Nation initiatives. So an issuer that is working very closely with First Nations on their project. But it was, again, interesting to see such a nice healthy financing. Do you feel these are all North American based projects, do you feel like there’s a sentiment more towards North American projects right now? Or do you feel like the world’s our oyster?
BRUCE:
I mean, it seems like the world’s our oyster for sure. Even with what’s happened with tariffs, there’s continued globalization all the time. You even look at a lot of the resource companies that trade on the Canadian exchanges. Their projects are outside of North America for sure. So that’s always going to be a trend. We’re known for that here in Canada.
ANNA:
Yeah, absolutely. On that note, next week the CSE team will be at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit, which I think is an unbelievable curation of great resource companies, great resource bankers from all over North America and abroad. So very excited to be participating in that as a sponsor again this year and hopefully learn some more. Is there any advice that you have for us going into October, Bruce?
BRUCE:
The thing that we’re looking at is from what we look at, we continue to see economic numbers strengthening over the next probably three quarters. At the same time, a lot of the longer term technical indicators that we follow are also continuing to accelerate. So we look at right now, there’s a real strong opportunity. If we do see that weaker seasonal period here in September, we would definitely take advantage of that knowing that we have a bit of a tailwind both from the economic and technical factors.
ANNA:
Interesting. Well, if all goes well, Bruce, I can get you over to Vancouver and we can do this face-to-face next month. In the meantime, it’s always a pleasure to get your insights, and very much looking forward to following up with you in October.
BRUCE:
That’ll be great. Yeah.
ANNA:
Thank you, Bruce.
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