Live Q&A with Rick Rule and Albert Lu

Rule Investment Media Apr 2, 2026

Summary

Rick Rule sees his undeployed cash as a defensive edge as Iran-Israel conflict drives oil scarcity and bond volatility.

Private credit is showing strain as Blue Owl caps redemptions; veteran lenders survive while newer entrants face covenant trouble.

Gold's recent pullback is healthy and historical; Rule welcomed the decline and used it to add to his physical gold.

Rule favors quality juniors and intermediates down 45-50% as a coming M&A cycle arbitrages the valuation gap upward.

B2Gold CEO Clive Johnson retires in June; Rule expects Gramalote feasibility work to advance under successor leadership.

CEO Clive Johnson is retiring in June after roughly 40 years with B2Gold, and the guest argues he is handing the company off at a good time with B2Gold in very good condition
The guest credits Clive with personally flying to Bamako to negotiate the Mali/Fekola shake-down directly with the government rather than through the press, resolving the dispute before it became a crisis
Clive guided B2Gold through end-of-construction in Northern Canada to economic completion (not yet nameplate capacity); the stock sold off by half on cost overruns and delays, and the guest expects an Equinox-style share-price rebound once nameplate is hit
Clive had always intended to put Gramalote into production — the guest was in favor and the market was opposed; how successor management treats the Gramalote opportunity will be telling, and a sell-off on a feasibility decision would likely make the guest a big buyer
The guest has known Clive for 40 years and says losing direct access to his frank concerns and hopes will limit his ability to learn more about B2Gold going forward

Referenced only as the seller of Canadian assets that Discovery Silver acquired — the guest calls refurbishing those Newmont assets before mining them a 'brilliant' move by Discovery

The guest calls himself a 'long-term Tony Machuche fan boy' — he's done business with the Discovery Silver CEO for three decades and says Machuche has always delivered for him, calling him 'a super mine builder'
Discovery Silver's purchase of Newmont's Canadian assets and insistence on refurbishing them before mining is described by the guest as a brilliant move, as is the further consolidation at Kidd Creek
The guest says he understands six foreign-controlled mines in Mexico will receive operating permits this year and Discovery is one of them — he expects overwhelming political support post the tragic narco-trafficking events in west Mexico's Sierra Occidental, where mining and narcotics are the only two economic options
The Mexican president is on record as mostly opposing mining but has signaled that personal opposition is of no consequence when miners develop real local consensus about the mine's benefit, which the guest says Discovery Silver has done

Top takeaway The guest describes Ross Beaty as one of three operators (alongside Clive Johnson and Bob Quartermain) whose confidence you gauge through conversation — he recalls Ross moving to Santiago for six weeks to personally beat ministries until a Lumina Copper acquisition was approved in Chile
When pressed about construction delays at a Northern Canada project, Ross candidly admitted they had 'screwed this one up', proposed a new timeframe before the board had come around to it, and stayed focused on the solution — the guest says that sang-froid is why he has always had confidence in him

Top takeaway Clive Johnson is retiring in June after roughly 40 years; the guest says Clive is in his early seventies, no longer as vital as he was, and made the right call to hand B2Gold off while the company is in very good condition
He credits Clive with personally flying to Bamako to negotiate the Mali/Fekola shake-down directly with the government rather than through the press, resolving it before it became a crisis
Clive guided B2Gold through end-of-construction in Northern Canada — economic completion was reached though not nameplate capacity, the stock sold off by half on overruns and delays, and the guest expects an Equinox-style share-price rebound once nameplate is hit
Clive had always intended to put Gramalote into production — the guest was in favor and the market was opposed; how successor management treats Gramalote will be telling, and a sell-off on a feasibility decision would likely make the guest a big buyer
On a Refugio site visit in Chile, Clive's engineer stepped up and noted the layout lets trucks and trommels run downhill rather than uphill, saving energy — the guest says that sort of candor from the person who must keep the promise is very useful

Top takeaway The guest is firmly bullish on gold over the long term despite the pullback — he expects US-dollar purchasing power to decline roughly 75% over 10 years, gold to hold its purchasing power, and the better gold miners to outperform the metal; he welcomed the pullback and bought more physical gold
He sees the Iran conflict and resulting energy and credit shock as making his slow deployment over the prior six months an advantage — he says he's financially and psychologically prepared, and treats negative real yield on cash as an option premium for liquidity
He expects a credit contraction to follow war-driven economic slowdown and warns that a run on high-yield ETFs holding illiquid over-the-counter bonds could resemble 2008 — he calls this his number-one market concern
He is positioning for an M&A cycle two to three years out and concentrating new buying on higher-quality juniors and intermediates that have fallen 45-50%, on the view that valuation gaps will be closed by the cheaper companies re-rating rather than the big ones getting cheaper
He is cautious on private credit where tourist capital drove yields uneconomic and weakened covenants — veteran lenders like the David Gladstones will be fine, but the new Wall Street entrants face 'hell to pay', and he is wary of asset-light software collateral

Top takeaway The guest invokes the 'Casey dogma' — that the US dollar is the worst currency in the world except for all the others — to explain the DXY's recent strength and the foreign capital flood into short-term US dollar instruments
Albert notes that Doug posted on LinkedIn that day and recommends viewers check it out

Top takeaway Albert Lu co-hosts the live Q&A on Rule Classroom, fields community questions, and teases the next one-day Copper Bootcamp on April 18 — he ties the long-term copper thesis (underinvestment for 30 years, growing demand from a billion new consumers) to current slowdown-driven price weakness
He drives the discussion toward credit by flagging Blue Owl's 5% redemption cap and the 'limited-partner bank run' framing, and presses the guest on the SpaceX IPO's confidential filing and unusually high 30% retail allocation