Central Banks Buy While Others Sell

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The biggest buyers of gold on the planet just made their largest purchase in three years. And they did it while everybody else was panic selling. Right now, there is a quiet war happening between governments and everyday investors over just one single asset. And most Americans have absolutely no idea they're on the losing side of it. The last time a shift like this happened, the NASDAQ crashed 78% and it took 15 years to recover. 15 years. And the setup today, it looks almost identical. So by the end of this video, you'll understand a simple three-signal framework that I used to read what central banks are actually doing with gold and how to position yourself before the next major move, whether that is up or down. My name is Felix Preen, I'm an ex-investment banker. This is Winston here, who's our gold analyst, you know, golden retriever and all that. And we're also the founder of the GOAT Academy. We've taught over 20,000 students over the last six years. And one thing I'd like to know about me, I accept no sponsors. I'm not here to sell you a fund. I'm just going to give you the financial education that I believe you deserve. And today I'm going to show you what the smartest money on the planet is doing right now and why it should fundamentally change how you think about your portfolio. So this video is going to be information dance. And to make sure this really lands for you, I'm going to give you a full bonus research report. Well, Winston's going to have to write it, aren't you? Are you going to write the report? I think he will. And you can download that report for free at phoenixfriends.org slash gold guld. Links in the description is also in the comments down below. So let me paint you

China’s Buying Streak Changes The Story

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a picture. Gold hit its all-time high earlier this year, right? And then corrected about 30% down. And what did most retail investors do? Exactly what they always do. They panic. Investors pulled about $18 billion out of gold ETF since the peak. 18 billion. And most of that was late money. People who bought piled in during the frenzy and then bolted the moment things got a little bumpy. Now, here is what's fascinating about that. On the exact same day that Bloomberg published a headline saying gold's bull market has ended, you know what the People's Bank of China did? They made their largest monthly gold purchase since 2023. 15 tons in a single month. That's a lot of gold. And that wasn't a one-off, by the way. That was month 20 of a continuous buying streak. 20 straight months of buying gold every single month, no matter what the price did. That is the longest streak we've seen since 2015. And it isn't just China. The first quarter of this year, central banks around the world bought net. So we've taken away, you know, what Turkey sold, for example, just net. 244 tons of gold. That's well above average. Faster than the previous quarter. We're talking Poland, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Czech, they're all buying. But the part that should make you pay attention is this: Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Uganda, Kenya. What do these countries have in common? Well, they've never ever bought gold before. And they're now buying for the first time ever. But let me ask you a question. What do you think is the biggest index fund? Put it in the comments. You'd think it'd be a stock fund, right? That's where your mind goes, right? It's going to be something tracking the index. Well, China's largest index fund used to also be a stock fund that tracked their index. Not anymore. It is now a gold index fund. About $13 billion are sitting in that, bigger than their biggest stock ETF, which is about 12 billion. So that means the world's second largest economy. In that economy, more retail money is now flowing into gold and into stocks. At the central banks, you know, the people who actually manage and print the world's money, 74% of them. So three out of four said they expect the dollar share of global reserves to be lower five years from now. So these are not conspiracy theorists on the internet. These are the treasurers and the reserve managers of actual nations telling you on record that they are moving away from the dollar. And here's the takeaway from signal number one.

Signal One: Price Versus Value

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It's very simple for anybody to understand. Price and value are not the same thing. A trader who bought gold near the top and is now down 28% is a problem. If their goal was to make a quick profit. But a saver, someone who's accumulating gold for the next decade or two or three, they just got a 30% discount on what they're going to buy this month. And that's how central banks think. They're not traders, they're savers. They slow down when gold is expensive and they speed up when it goes on sale. The question is, are you thinking like a trader or like the people who actually run the global financial system? And by the way, both is completely fine. You just need to understand who you are. And if you're still thinking why, like why are the central banks doing it? What do they know that we don't know? Well, let me ask you something. How much of your money is in the stock market right now? Because the numbers are staggering. American households have never, and I mean never in history, been more exposed to the stock market than they are right now. Over a quarter of total US household net worth is tied to stocks. Most of it

US Households Are All In Stocks

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will be in the home that they live in, but 25% is huge. It is higher than during the dot-com peak. Yeah. It is higher than 2008. It's the highest ever on record. And the concentration is insane. The five largest companies in the SP 500 now make up 30% of the entire index. 30%. So you own an index fund, which most 401k plans do. Nearly one-third of your retirement is riding on five companies. They're all tech and AI companies, by the way. Meanwhile, the US national debt has crossed 39 trillion, 40 is coming very quickly, and it's growing at 8 billion a day. $8 billion a day, right? Congress has no plan, there's no serious budget proposal. There's no path to paying it down. The only plan is borrow more and stay popular. And then on top of that, we're in what might be the biggest speculative bubble since the year 2000, when I started investing. I don't know, let's go timing. The AI bubble. Big tech is going to spend $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year. And 95% of companies investing in AI have not seen a positive return on it yet. Now maybe you're thinking, hey, Felix, AI is real. It's not like the dot-com nonsense. And you're right, AI is real. But you know what? The internet is real too. The internet is arguably the greatest technological invention of our lifetime. And the NASDAQ still crashed 78%. It took 15 years to recover to its previous high. 15 years. Imagine you're 55 years old right now, or whatever age you are, and you're planning to retire in 10 years, right? Maybe you're just planning to retire in 10 years anyway. And you're 401k. Now, the average 401k size of someone who's in their 50s is about $100,000 right now.

AI Boom Echoes The Dot Com Bubble

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Imagine that gets cut in half, or worse by 78% like it did during the dot-com bubble. So you go from 100 grand to $22,000, and it does not come back for 15 years. So you'd be 70 before you're back to where you started. And I'm not trying to be a fear-mongerer here. It is actually what happened to millions of people in 2000. And the setup today, the concentration, the speculation, the valuations, they are worse than what we had in 2000. So what do you do? Well, gold might be maybe part of the answer. But how do you protect your 401k, your pension, your retirement from the crash that history says is coming? I think this is the most important question, not just of the year, but probably of the next 20 or 30 years. Because that's how long this could impact people for. And that's exactly why Winston and I, we're gonna run a free life training, something we've never done before. I call it survivethebubble.com. And by survive, I mean thrive. I mean not just like come out, oh my God, I just made it, but like, brilliant, I had a plan, I slept through it like a baby, I'm coming out shiny. So go to survivethebubble.com. There's a link down below. Grab your free ticket. It's completely free. Show up live and bring your questions. There won't be a replay, so don't ask me for one. You can watch this if you're in the US or North America, in your Europe

Retirement Math After A 78% Drop

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time zone, or even if you're an Asian or Australian time zone, it'll work for everybody. That's why I scheduled it like that, because it's that important. We're gonna run this once and never again. Because hopefully we're never gonna have another bubble like this again for 20 or 30 years. Survivethebubble.com. Okay, if you're gonna show up for yourself, write show up in the comments down below, and I know you'll be there. But there is another signal here that I want you to understand. Signal number two is about understanding why the United States government is making the moves it's making right now. Because once you see that pattern, you will never look at the economy quite the same way again. So let me take you back a long way back to 1791. America was a baby country, just free from the shackles of its British oppressors. I just had to say that for our British viewers. Um, it grew tobacco, you know, cotton, wheat, all that sort of stuff. And it was basically a giant farm and it imported almost everything it needed from Europe. A man named Alexander Hamilton, yes, the guy from the musical, uh, he wrote a document

Free Training: Build A Crash Plan

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called the Report on Manufactures. And his argument was very simple. A nation that cannot make its own stuff is never truly independent. So his solution had two parts. Part one, put taxes, so tariffs, on foreign stuff so they become more expensive. Part two, use that money to subsidize American factories so domestic manufacturing becomes cheaper. And guess what? It worked. It turned the United States from a backwater farming colony, yeah, sorry, but it's true, into the most powerful industrial nation on earth. Only took about a century, which is actually really quick. But here is where it gets really interesting and really relevant for your money today. There's a pattern that every dominant economy in history has followed, and it goes like this. Of course, on the screen here for you. Step number uno, you protect your industries, you build factories, you make things, you get rich, right? Check. Step two, you win, you become the

Signal Two: The Empire Playbook

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dominant economy, and now you think you're so far ahead that you do not need protection anymore. So you switch to free trade, right? Check. Step three, other countries with cheaper labor, fewer regulations start making things cheaper than you can. Your factories close, your workers lose jobs, but it does not feel bad at first because cheap imports mean cheap TVs, cheap clothes, cheap electronics, right? Check. Step four, your economy shifts from making things to trading paper. Stocks, bonds, fake gold, mortgage-backed securities, right? The country looks really rich on paper, but it's lost the ability to produce. Check. Step number five, decline. The British Empire. It's a case study. Because this isn't theory. Let me show you how it played out with the British Empire. Sorry to my great Britain uh viewers. Britain used something called the Corn Laws. Trade restrictions have protected British farmers and manufacturers. And it worked really well for them. They became the most powerful economy on the planet. And then in the mid-1800s, they said, we're so far ahead. Let us open up to free trade. They repealed those corn laws, tariffs, basically. So what happened? Over the next several decades, Britain's share of global manufacturing collapsed. Other countries. You Americans, Germany, which is where I'm from, they started out producing them. And by 1931, Britain's industrial base has basically disappeared. So the entire cycle from peak to decline took 85 years. Now here's the part that should make you sit up straight. The United States started its own version of its decline in 1971. When Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Once the dollar was no longer backed by anything physical, no gold, no hard assets, something changed. The economy shifted from making things to financializing things. What does that mean? It means Wall Street figured out how to take real things, mortgages, car loans, student debt, bundle them and sell them as financial products. They call it securitization. The economy started looking richer and richer on paper, but underneath it, the ability to actually produce was rotting away. And this is what hit regular people. Since the year 2000, the cost of things made overseas, your television, your phone, you know, your kids, toys, dropped dramatically. But the cost of things that cannot be imported, things that have to be made or done right in America went through the roof, right? Hospital services are up 280%. College tuition is up 200%. Childcare is up 150%. So yeah, your TV got cheaper, but the things that actually determine whether you have a decent life, healthcare, education, taking care of your kids, became completely unaffordable for millions of families. And that is what happens when a country stops making things and starts trading paper. And now, and this is the crucial part, the US government has essentially announced we're going back to Hamilton, you know, the chap with the musical, the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessant, published a piece in the Wall Street Journal laying out five principles for what he called a new American statecraft. One, economic security. It starts with national capacity, which means we need to rebuild the factories. Two, openness must be matched by reciprocity. So if you put tariffs on our goods, we put tariffs on yours. And three, the US dictates the rules of the next economy. Four, financial leadership. The dollar, treasuries, stable coins are the new weapons. And five, it must serve the American people, not just Wall Street. And you might not agree with this politics. It doesn't really matter. It's going to impact your money.

1971 And The Shift To Paper Wealth

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So the United States is officially reversing 50 years of globalization. And that changes everything about how you should be invested. And it brings us to what I call the impossible triangle. It's what ties everything together and it's what most people miss. The US government wants three things right now. I put them on the screen here for you. Number one, rebuild American factories, reindustrialize, bring manufacturing home, create jobs. Number two, protect Main Street, so keep prices from going through the roof, you know, because inflation crushes the lowest income people. Number three, keep the dollar strong. But there is a problem. You can only pick two. Think about it. If you slap tariffs on imports to rebuild factories, prices go up. Hurts Main Street. If you keep the dollar strong, American exports become more expensive, it makes it harder to rebuild factories. If you weaken the dollar to help the factories, inputs get more expensive, hurts mainstream. It hurts Main Street. So no matter how you arrange it, one of those three things has to give. So who's going to be the sacrificial lamb here? Well, I can tell you, it's going to be the dollar. Why? Because the dollar doesn't vote. So they're weakening the dollar deliberately. Who benefits from a weaker dollar the most? Well, gold. Because gold is the one major asset that is nobody's liability. It is not controlled by any government. It can't be printed, it can't be frozen, it can't be sanctioned. And it's priced in dollars. So for all the foreigners, gold gets cheaper when the dollar goes down. And at the same time, China is doing something very significant. Four of China's largest banks announced they're closing retail trading services for precious metals. So they're shutting down paper gold trading. You can still buy the real stuff. So China does not want its citizens trading gold on an app like it's a stock. They want people buying the real physical thing. So they're moving back from the paper crazy world to the physical stuff. Why would

The Impossible Triangle And The Dollar

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they do that? Because paper gold and physical gold are very different things. Paper gold is some sort of promise. The banks make money out of it. Nobody else seems to. Physical gold is a thing itself. And when the trust in the system breaks, it always does eventually, promises are not worth a lot. And look at the US. Look at the amount of gold, physical gold leaving the US. Starting in late 2025, it hit the highest level recorded in history. Gold is physically moving out, other financial vaults, out of paper systems, and into the hands of governments who plan to hold it for decades. So what does it mean for you? Well it means dollar-denominated assets, your savings accounts, your bonds, even your stock portfolio, face a headwind here. Not because of a recession, not because of a crash, but because of the deliberate policy of the United States to weaken the dollar. At least that's my opinion. So here's the key insight. Let's bring it all together and put it on the screen so central banks are not buying gold because they think it will go up next month. They're buying it because they know from centuries of history that when empires restructure the economies, and that's what's happening right now, the currency must take a hit. Every single central bank that is loading up on gold right now is essentially making a bet that the dollar will be worth less in 10 years than it is today. And these are the people who manage the money. So let me be brutally honest with you for a moment. You've got 25% of your net worth in stocks, maybe more, right? Put the percentage in the comments if you wish. It's more than ever in history. Those stocks are concentrated in just five companies that are spending hundreds of billions on a technology that 95% of businesses have not made money on. And it's a brilliant technology, but it doesn't mean people are going to make money on it. Your government is almost 40

Paper Gold Versus Physical Gold

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trillion in debt, adding more every single day, no plan to stop. And the US, the most powerful economy in the world, is structuring the world, right? Reversing 50 years of globalization. And the most likely casualty is the strength of the dollar, that everything in your portfolio is denominated in. So I'm not telling you to sell everything and buy gold power. That's not me at all, right? I believe actually a stock portfolio is going to be very, very helpful, even through the crash. Because gold is part of the answer, but isn't the entire answer. You're still going to want to own stocks. You're actually going to want to own some tech stocks too. And you already do because your 401k does, your pension does, maybe your kids' college fund is in the market, right? Your house is priced in dollars. So the question you need to answer is not next year, not when the crash happens, but right now, while you still have time to plan, how do I protect all of that that I've worked all my life for? So I'm going to have the second half of my life the way I want to. Because what I've learned over the last decade or two in the market is that it's not the crash that ruins people. It's being unprepared for the crash. The people who got destroyed in 2000 were not idiots. They were regular, smart people who just assumed everything would keep going up. They didn't have a plan. The people who got destroyed in 2008, again, they were not simpletons. They were homeowners, retirees, parents, people who trusted the system and didn't have a plan B. And I don't want that to be you. So that's why we're going to run this free life training this Saturday. I call it SurviveThebubble. You can go to survivethebubble.com, you can grab yourself a free ticket. I'm going to teach you for about two hours. Show up live, bring your questions. And I'll walk you through how you can stress test your portfolio, how to hedge your downside, how to position yourself so that whether the market goes up or down, you're protected. It's going to be life. It's not going to be on replay. So

What To Do With Your Portfolio

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you've got to show up for yourself because it's the only way I believe you can really learn and you can ask me questions. And if you know somebody who might also benefit from that, share that link with them. Just put it on your X or your Facebook or wherever you put stuff on social media, survive the bubble.com, because this is too important for people to miss out on. If you got some value from this video, share this one as well. I wish you all the best.