David Morgan Says Gold Is Gaining Ground in the Fight for Monetary Trust

Gold and silver have moved sharply higher, but veteran precious metals analyst David Morgan said the larger story extends well beyond the latest price gains.

Speaking with Money Metals podcast host Mike Maharrey, Morgan, publisher of The Morgan Report, argued that investors are watching a growing contest between precious metals and the credit-based monetary system. With gold trading above $4,500 per ounce and silver approaching $69 at the time of the interview, Morgan said the market is increasingly reflecting a loss of confidence in government debt and fiat currency.

(Interview Starts Around 8:56 Mark)

Gold and Silver Have Broken Out

Morgan said both metals have already moved through important technical levels.

In silver, he had previously argued that prices below $60 would not last long. Once silver rose above $60 and held that level, he viewed the move as a genuine breakout rather than a temporary spike.

Gold showed a similar pattern. Morgan had been watching the $4,000 level, but with the metal rising to around $4,500, it had moved more than 10% above that threshold in just a matter of weeks.

Morgan has not ruled out a sharp correction. A bond-market disruption, an interest-rate shock, or some other unexpected event could produce what he called a sudden "spike low."

Even so, the strength in precious metals during August, typically a seasonally weak period, led Morgan to revise his expectations. He no longer believes such a selloff would necessarily push gold back to $4,000 or silver below $60. Instead, he suggested a sharp drop might take gold from around $4,500 to roughly $4,200, while silver could retreat toward $62.50.

Building Wealth One Coin at a Time

Morgan urged investors not to become fixated on daily price swings.

His preferred approach remains dollar-cost averaging. Rather than trying to time every rally and correction, investors can steadily accumulate physical metal and remove some of the emotion from the process.

Morgan described that approach as building wealth "a coin at a time."

The goal is not to get rich quickly. It is to preserve purchasing power and gradually build wealth with money that required real work to earn. Morgan noted that many people who become rich quickly also lose their fortunes just as quickly.

A Battle Between Gold and Government Debt

Maharrey noted that geopolitical headlines, including developments involving Iran, have created short-term volatility in gold and silver. But beneath those daily moves, he said, the fundamental forces supporting precious metals remain intact.

Morgan extended that argument further.

He said the world may be nearing a tipping point in a much larger contest over which assets deserve monetary trust.

For decades, U.S. Treasuries and other sovereign debt instruments have been treated as among the safest assets in the financial system. Morgan believes gold is increasingly challenging that assumption, especially as investors and central banks weigh the durability of claims on future currency against assets that do not depend on repayment.

In his view, the choice is becoming one between gold and a promise to receive currency at some point in the future.

A $1,000 bond may eventually return its principal, but Morgan noted there is no guarantee that the dollars received five, 10, 20, or 30 years later will have the same purchasing power. Gold, by contrast, carries no counterparty promise.

Morgan pointed to central-bank reserve holdings as evidence that this transition is already underway, arguing that gold has overtaken credit instruments as the leading reserve asset held by central banks.

Mining Stocks Could Provide Confirmation

Morgan said one important sign of this monetary shift could come from institutional investment in major precious metals mining companies.

He specifically pointed to Newmont, Barrick, Wheaton Precious Metals, and Franco-Nevada.

If large institutions begin allocating significant capital to major mining companies, Morgan said it could indicate that sophisticated investors are recognizing the same shift toward precious metals.

After studying the silver market for more than four decades, Morgan acknowledged his natural bias toward precious metals. Still, he said the market is increasingly supporting his thesis.

Treasury Buybacks and the $40 Trillion Debt Problem

The discussion then turned to the Treasury Department's decision to double its buybacks of longer-term government debt.

Maharrey described the move as an effort to suppress troublesome long-term interest rates. Morgan largely agreed.

He explained that Treasury auctions normally allow investors to determine the yield required to compensate for inflation and other risks. If investors are unwilling to buy a long-term bond at a given yield, yields rise until buyers step in.

As yields rise, existing bond prices fall.

Morgan said government intervention through expanded buybacks disrupts that price-discovery process. In his view, it amounts to an attempt to control the yield curve rather than allowing the market to determine the true cost of borrowing.

The stakes are significant. Maharrey noted that the federal government is carrying roughly $40 trillion in debt and already faces annual interest expenses above $1 trillion. Higher yields would make that debt increasingly costly to finance.

Could Silver Reach $100?

When the conversation turned to silver, Maharrey asked Morgan whether $100 silver could become a reality before the end of the year.

Morgan said it was possible, though not his base-case forecast.

He has generally expected silver to reach somewhere around $78 to $82. At the same time, he warned that silver has a long history of surprising even experienced analysts.

The key variable is monetary demand.

Industrial demand has grown sharply over the past 25 years, rising from about 35% of total silver demand to around 60%. But Morgan said industrial demand usually does not change enough from one year to the next to create explosive short-term price moves.

Investment and monetary demand can.

When industrial users and investors compete for the same available 1,000-ounce silver bars, the market can move quickly. Morgan said that dynamic helped drive the dramatic silver moves seen during the later months of the previous year and the first month of 2026.

He expects silver to keep grinding higher through the rest of the year, although sharp corrections could periodically shake investors out of the market.

Morgan said he does not believe the ultimate highs are in. He expects new record highs in both gold and silver, though he sees the larger move potentially unfolding in 2027 or 2028.

Silver's Industrial Demand Keeps Growing

Rising silver prices inevitably raise questions about substitution.

Solar manufacturers and other industrial users have an incentive to reduce silver consumption or replace it with cheaper metals such as copper. Morgan said copper could reduce silver use in solar panels, but he does not believe it eliminates silver entirely.

Durability could also matter.

If a cheaper copper-heavy solar panel lasted only five years compared with 25 years for a silver-intensive alternative, the apparent savings could disappear when measured over the full product life cycle.

Even if technological advances sharply reduce silver demand from the solar sector, Morgan said other emerging technologies could make up the difference.

He pointed to batteries, semiconductors, artificial intelligence infrastructure, electrical expansion, and robotics as possible sources of additional demand.

Could Robots Become a Major Source of Silver Demand?

Robotics could eventually become a particularly important source of silver consumption.

Morgan said his ongoing research suggests robots could contain roughly 20 to 30 grams of silver each. Thirty grams is approximately one troy ounce.

That leads to striking theoretical numbers.

If global production eventually reached 100 million robots a year and each contained about one ounce of silver, robotics alone could theoretically require around 100 million ounces of silver annually.

Morgan emphasized that he is not predicting 100 million robots will necessarily be produced each year. The figures are speculative, and the industry is not yet large enough to provide certainty.

His broader point is that robotics is an emerging source of silver demand that barely exists today.

What Is Behind Asian Silver Premiums?

Maharrey also asked Morgan about reports of unusually large silver premiums in Asia.

Morgan cautioned against treating the full difference between Asian and Western prices as a pure physical-metal premium.

Several additional costs can be embedded in the final Asian price. Tariffs can add expenses. Currency fluctuations between the Chinese renminbi and the U.S. dollar create hedging costs. Shipping physical silver across the world is not free. Trust and other market considerations can add further costs.

Once those factors are included, what appears to be a multi-dollar premium may actually consist of several different costs, with perhaps only about $1 representing the true premium on the metal itself.

That distinction matters because arbitrage is not simple. Shipping multiple 1,000-ounce silver bars across the ocean to capture a relatively small price difference may not make economic sense when silver itself can move sharply while the metal is in transit.

What If the Stock Market Does Not Crash?

Morgan also offered a reassessment of the U.S. stock market.

He has long considered American equities extremely overvalued and once viewed a major correction as nearly inevitable.

He still considers a correction the most likely outcome, but no longer sees it as certain.

Inflation can distort nominal asset prices.

Morgan pointed to Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Argentina, where stock markets can keep rising in nominal currency terms even as the currency depreciates faster than stocks appreciate. In that environment, an investor's brokerage account may show a larger number while the investor becomes poorer in real purchasing-power terms.

Morgan stressed that he does not expect the U.S. dollar to enter hyperinflation. But he pointed to a reported 9% monthly increase in beef prices as an example of the kind of sharp price pressure consumers can feel even without economy-wide hyperinflation.

Inflation Can Ultimately End in Deflation

Morgan then raised another idea that may seem counterintuitive.

"All inflations end in deflation," he argued.

He said the monetary system can continue inflating as confidence deteriorates, but he believes some form of reset eventually becomes necessary.

Morgan speculated that a future monetary structure could involve digital units, blockchain technology, or even a universal basic income. As a hypothetical example, he imagined a system that provides people with 2,000 digital units per month.

But the number of units someone holds is not the same thing as wealth.

The key question is what those units can actually buy.

Wealth Is About Choices, Not Digits

Morgan said living standards provide a better measure of wealth than bank-account balances.

Real wealth means having choices.

Can you afford transportation, housing, food, or entertainment? Can you buy the products you want when you want them?

A person can have more nominal dollars while experiencing a lower standard of living if goods become more expensive, scarcer, or unavailable.

Morgan pointed to food as a clear example. If higher grocery prices force a middle-class household to cut entertainment or other discretionary spending just to maintain its diet, its real standard of living has fallen even if its nominal income has increased.

Maharrey expanded on that point by noting that inflation does not show up only in consumer prices.

Monetary inflation can also flow into stocks, real estate, and other assets, creating what looks like greater paper wealth. But if the amount of goods and services that wealth can buy has not risen accordingly, much of that prosperity may be illusory.

Ultimately, Maharrey said, an economy is not about paper units or account digits. It is about real goods and services.

Physical Gold and Silver as Monetary Insurance

Morgan closed the interview by returning to the main reason he believes people should own precious metals.

Investors do not need to predict the exact date when the monetary system will change.

They need to be positioned before confidence changes.

Morgan believes that shift in confidence is already happening and is accelerating.

His framework is simple: gold provides monetary insurance, while silver provides monetary insurance with industrial leverage.

For investors interested in precious metals equities, Morgan believes selected mining companies can offer additional opportunities. But equities also add more risk.

That is why his preferred starting point remains physical metal.

"The least risk take is physical metal," Morgan said, describing it as the foundation of his approach to precious metals investing.

For Morgan, the surge in gold and silver is not just another commodity rally. It reflects a deeper question facing investors, institutions, and central banks alike.

When confidence in promises to pay begins to erode, what counts as real money?

Morgan believes the market is increasingly offering its answer.

About the author

Money Metals Exchange is an online bullion dealer that has been in business since 2010 and has been voted the Best Overall Precious Metals Dealer by Investopedia. Its website is MoneyMetals.com .

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