Rule Symposium 2026: Rick Rule interviews Adrian Day, President of Adrian Day Asset Management

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[00:00:02]This is Rick Rule for Rule Investment Media and the Rule Classroom, sponsors of the 2026 Natural Resources Investment Symposium in Boca Raton, Florida, held July 6th through 10th. Also available, or really primarily available, via livestream from the comfort and convenience of your own home.

[00:00:22]A few things you need to know about the conference.

[00:00:25]The first is that we're going to give you more content in four days than you can absorb in four days. And to that end, we make your life easy. We interview every exhibitor and every speaker before the conference, so that you can, uh, for yourself determine who it is that you're interested in hearing more from, and arrive at the conference better prepared to allocate your time and resources.

[00:00:48]The second thing that we do is re- we record the entire proceedings, uh, including all of the breakout sessions, so that you have the ability to to replay the recordings, learning more about topics that you need to know about more about, refreshing your memory where you need your memory refreshed. I humbly believe that we have the biggest, the best big picture faculty, uh, in the resource in the resource conference field, and you'll hear more about that in just a minute. But note, too, that every public company exhibitor at the conference must be owned in the accounts of the conference sponsor.

[00:01:23]That's your guarantee that these companies have been very thoroughly vetted, unlike other conferences. And also, unlike other conferences, this conference comes with a no-conditions money-back guarantee. If you think for any reason, whether you attended via livestream or live, that you didn't get your money's worth, no problem. I give you your money back. In 30 years of money-back guarantees, I'm delighted to say that we've had to refund about 1/10 of 1% of the tuition charged.

[00:01:52]That notwithstanding, that guarantee is your guarantee that we have confidence that our content will make you money.

[00:01:59]So, let's begin the process. I have the good fortune today of interviewing a friend of very long standing. Adrian and I go back in my memory to 1987. A period long enough ago that he and I both had hair.

[00:02:12]We've appeared at many conferences together. We've gone on many trips to many parts of the world together. We've had some fine dinners together.

[00:02:19]And I dare say made a lot of money and had a lot of fun together. Adrian, thank you for four decades of friendship.

[00:02:26]Well, Thank you, too, for your ongoing efforts on behalf of the Real Classroom and my conferences.

[00:02:32]Well, thank you very much for asking me, Rick. And I wouldn't do it if I didn't really like what you were doing, so it's two ways.

[00:02:40]I appreciate that. Adrian, tell us a bit about who Adrian Day is. Tell us why you are invited to speak at the conference and why people should care about your questions your answers to the nosy questions that follow.

[00:03:00]Okay. Well, you know, I was born in London, humble background.

[00:03:04]In fact, I guess poor, but let's just say humble, it sounds better.

[00:03:08]Um, went to the London School of Economics, well, graduated from the London School of Economics.

[00:03:14]Um, first person in my family actually to go to university.

[00:03:17]Um, and I moved over here, oh gosh, in my mid to late 20s and started the money management firm in 1981.

[00:03:27]Uh, I've written four books, two on global investing, one on resources, and one on kind of financial planning.

[00:03:34]Um, and and one thing I will say, Rick, uh, when you're look looking at who I am and what drives me, I I like to say I went to the London School of Economics and everybody is impressed or should be. I actually did history. And I find that having a subject other than economics or an MBA actually helps people get a broader perspective uh and a better understanding, frankly, on markets. History can teach us an awful lot about how markets uh are likely to react.

[00:04:12]Adrian, I would add, frankly, uh having watched you for four decades, that your background at the LSE, but also your back back back background from London, made you much less ethnocentric than most American financial commentators. Americans have been spoiled in that our economy has been so large and so vibrant Yeah.

[00:04:34]For a Californian as an example, uh Alabama is exotic terrain.

[00:04:38]But you have done business in Africa, you've done business in Asia. Could you talk something about your background and your global as opposed to domestic bias?

[00:04:50]Yeah, um so I you know, I when I came over here for the first time, I mean, I lived in the Bahamas for a while, I lived in Nassau, I lived on Abaco for 2 years, which is one of the islands, I lived in Turks and Caicos. When I came to the US, yeah, I was I was truly struck at uh I was truly struck at how ethnocentric the US is. And as you say, it's not just US and the rest of the world, it's you know, California versus Alabama. I I wrote I was a reporter on a newspaper, daily newspaper in Georgia, and I mean, if it happened in New York or or or Chicago, it was kind of on the foreign news page.

[00:05:34]And I only exaggerate slightly, but that carried over to investing. And so, what I found I mean, you had a few people like John Templeton, obviously, who I met many, many times and was really a hero of mine. You had a few people like Templeton who did invest globally, but for most people in the US, if they didn't follow the Warren Buffett idea at the time, Warren Buffett said there's so many opportunities in the US, why do I need to look outside?

[00:06:04]Um he's changed a little bit since then, but if they didn't do that, they had a sort of allocation. They thought they were being aggressive a very very avant-garde and aggressive and saying, well, I'm going to put 5% of my assets into foreign markets.

[00:06:19]I don't look at it that way at all. I look at it as a global investor. So I look at the US, Brazil, Switzerland, which one's better, which one has a discount, which one has more growth. You know, it's just where can you find the best values at the best prices. Um and I guess I'll finish on this. I guess in a way that comes from being Britain British because Britain not only is such a small country, uh it's just natural for a for an Englishman to invest outside of the US just as it is for a Swiss or a a Dane.

[00:06:56]It would be difficult to restrict yourself just to uh British stocks, but also of course we had an empire, so we just have a history of interaction and and knowledge of um and dealing with other countries.

[00:07:12]You know, I found myself, Adrian, in extractive industries that if I don't pay attention to the city of London, that is to say the financial services industry in London, uh I don't learn enough about Africa, about Europe, or about some parts of Asia. Uh I think yours is the least ethnocentric capital market on the planet, so I applaud that.

[00:07:37]Before we go on, uh you provide a variety of services at present, which is one of the reasons that we have you at the conference. So, can you tell me something about what you do for a living now and how you might benefit our attendees separate and apart from the information that you seek to impart at the conference. Yeah. Well, um you know, I run a money management firm that I started in 1991 and that is you know, my main my main occupation, the main the main uh the main source of uh bread on on the plate.

[00:08:13]Um and it as you know, managing money just takes an awful lot of time. Um and so that that's a full a full-time occupation. I also have a newsletter that I write and to be honest with you, Rick, to be frank, it's it's something I just like doing and I would hate to give it up, but it's very much at this point for me, it's like a weekend hobby.

[00:08:36]So, I always do it on weekends.

[00:08:38]Um but I hope it provides good information for people. So, I have the two services and they're distinct services uh you know, for compliance reasons they're they're distinct, but I'm I'm doing the writing and I'm doing the managing.

[00:08:53]So, Adrian, we've now touted you as an as an expert on finding opportunities in various industries around the globe.

[00:09:00]Uh who knows what opportunities will be present 2 and 1/2 months from now?

[00:09:06]Uh but where, very broadly, are you finding value? What countries, if you will, what industries are you will if you will? What attracts you at the current price place at the current time?

[00:09:18]Yeah, no, good question. And and I should say I am very much a generalist.

[00:09:23]So, I think I know a little about an awful lot, but I don't pretend to be a specialist on this that or the other.

[00:09:31]Uh there's always someone who knows a lot more about anything than than I do.

[00:09:36]Um even royalty companies. And I first invested in Franco in 1985. So, I've been around the royalty business a long time, but I'm I'm a generalist. And And the good thing about a generalist, there's two good things about being a generalist. One is it enables you to look at a lot of different opportunities and kind of look at relative value. If you're simply a gold investor, and there's nothing wrong with that, sometimes I find this difficult if you're people who are only one thing, um, don't always see when their sector is particularly undervalued or particularly overvalued. They're always looking for well, what's the best relative value within the biotech space or within the Asian emerging markets, but you don't see whether you should be looking there in the first place.

[00:10:27]So, that's that's one thing. And I'll also say that having been in this business for so long, obviously, I've got an awful lot of contacts. So, if I want to know about, you know, an open pit or a a placer in the Yukon, I've got two people I can call right off the bat who've been there, who've been on the property, and know it. If I want to ask If I want to learn about, I don't know, Thai banks, which of the Thai banks is better, I've got a couple of people I can call who live there, uh, who can tell me or don't touch that one, and but have a look at that one. So, that's always very helpful, but sorry, to get to the question, um, I do that a lot, don't I, Rick? To get to the question, I could not be more bullish on gold over the next 3 to 5 years than I am. On a risk-reward basis, a risk-reward basis, I think that gold is probably still the best asset class out there. And right now, we're not talking necessarily today or yesterday, tomorrow, but right now I think is a good opportunity with the correction we've had, the pullback we've had with the Iran conflict is a good time uh you know, to add to positions, no question. But having said that, Rick, you often get a situation where gold leads at the beginning of a commodity bull cycle, and then it lags in the middle, and it leads again right at the end. Gold and silver will lead at the end.

[00:12:03]Gold and silver will lead at the beginning, but in the middle, it might be other commodities. So, right now I would say that things like copper, certainly oil and gas, uh uranium, agricultural commodities, all of those I think are significantly undervalued relative to gold and silver, and have more upside than gold and silver. So, that's the first thing I would be looking at other commodities, including agriculture, within within the uh broad commodity space. And then outside of that, I think um people need to be looking right now at international investing as international stocks.

[00:12:48]As I've said, we're global, so unlike Templeton, we've had as much as 80% of our assets in the US at different times.

[00:12:55]That doesn't mean you're not a global investor, it just means that's where you're finding the best value.

[00:13:01]Right now, we've had 15 years where the US market, until last year, the US market outperformed the world ex-US.

[00:13:10]That's a long period of time of significant outperformance, and these periods of outperformance and underperformance tend to last a long time. The period before that was about 10 years when the foreign markets outperformed the US. So, I I we are entering a period, multi-year period, when the foreign markets will outperform the US market. Doesn't mean the US market will collapse. Doesn't mean the foreign markets will go up a lot. But if you look at where we are right now, even over foreign markets, world ex-US, world ex-US, basically doubled the performance of the S&P last year.

[00:13:48]And this year they're already moving they're already have greater performance this year on average in aggregate, I should say. But despite that, the foreign markets are now trading at 50-year lows relative to the US. Foreign markets would have to move by 20% a year for the next 5 years, outperformance of 20% for the next per year for the next 5 years, outperformance of the US, just to get to their last cycle low.

[00:14:21]That shows you how dramatically underperformed underperform under under under valued the foreign markets are relative to the US. So I think that's a good place to look.

[00:14:33]Can we refine that a little bit? I I'm getting greedy. Any particular foreign markets that you think are particularly attractive? Yes, but I'm a bottom-up investor. So that means I don't start by saying, "Oh, I think Sweden's cheap.

[00:14:46]Let's let's buy some stuff in Sweden."

[00:14:49]I I'm a bottom-up investor. But as Warren Buffett like to say, um he does say good stuff from time to time. Um I like to fish in well-stocked ponds.

[00:14:59]And so I think the British market is a very well-stocked pond. Up until last year, the British market had basically gone nowhere for 20 years. While the US market roared ahead and even the global markets moved ahead. There's some very, very good companies in in US that are very, very undervalued. And um uh value investors, global value investors as well as uh M&A, uh private equity is beginning to take a look at that market. So, that's one sector. Another country, another one would be Hong Kong. A lot of very, very good quality companies in Hong Kong that are very undervalued. And again, until last year, that market did not really It had gone up and down, but it really was basically the same place it was 20 years ago. Brazil would be another another country. And if you look at all three that I've just mentioned, you might get a connection that they're not necessarily all doing particularly well at the moment. And of course, as we know, that's where you find opportunities.

[00:16:13]That's an important note, Adrian.

[00:16:15]Uh you're not making a macro call.

[00:16:17]You're not suggesting that there's a political turnaround underway in Hong Kong or Great Britain or Brazil for that matter. What you're suggesting is that a decade of underperformance has meant that there are some attractive companies, perhaps despite the political outlook, that are simply too cheap and too globally competitive to ignore. Is that Is that a correct summary?

[00:16:36]>> Absolutely. Absolutely. And another point, if I may, Eric. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:16:41]I think there's a misunderstanding about people who manage money or in the investment business. People seem to think that we're in the business of making predictions. And we sort of encourage that, frankly, because making predictions is fun and being right is fun. And you can talk about it when you're right. But we're not in a business of making predictions. We're in the business of looking, in my view, of looking, assessing, assessing the risk and the reward in a particular asset or stock or what have you security at a given starting point.

[00:17:14]Now, that starting point may be a very high starting point, and you love the company and you think they'll continue to do well, but from this point where you're starting, there's just too much risk. On the other hand, you may be starting from a very low point where yes, there's there's problems.

[00:17:32]Yes, there's risks. You can see it all, but on a risk-reward basis, it looks attractive.

[00:17:39]Adrian, um the point of these interviews is to introduce our attendees, and frankly, those people who are onlookers who don't attend, uh to the speakers and the exhibitors at our conference. We want our attendees to show up at the conference with foreknowledge so that they can allocate their time and attention at the conference more efficiently.

[00:18:08]Who at Adrian Day Asset Management or at your publication does someone contact to learn more, and how, specifically, do they contact that person?

[00:18:21]Well, we like to we like people to contact us the way they want to contact us. So, if they want to send an email, it will be [email protected].

[00:18:30]Um if they want to call, it's 410 224 2037.

[00:18:39]Uh some people just like to go to the website first and learn about us, uh which is fine. Adrian Adrian day asset management.com, and then just send an e- send the request through. So, however people We're we're a personalized firm, Merrick, as you know, and um you know, we don't tell people what form they've got to fill out to request information. However they want to do it, they can come and knock on my door if they want to.

[00:19:06]Uh unless they work for a federal agency, if I remember correctly. Well, then I ask for a what for a for for a um subpoena, yes.

[00:19:15]Adrian, I want to genuinely thank you for four decades of friendship for working aside alongside you for four decades for many wonderful trips, many wonderful dinners. I want to thank you specifically for your efforts at the real classroom where you've been a stalwart performer and I want to thank you for appearing at my conferences including my local conferences for 30 years. Thank you for that. I look forward to hosting you in Boca Raton.

[00:19:42]Well, thank you very much Rick and I look forward and it genuinely is you put on the very best conference without a shadow of doubt and people should attend.

[00:19:52]A very wise statement. Thank you, sir.

[00:19:55]Thank you.