The com­pound poly[2-hy­droxy-N-methyl­ethan-1-aminium [μ3-cyanido-κ3C:C:N-di-μ-cyanido-κ4C:N-dicuprate(I)]], {(C3H10NO)[Cu2(CN)3]}n or [meoenH]Cu2(CN)3, crystallizes in the tetra­gonal space group P43. The structure consists of a three-dimensional (3D) anionic CuICN network with noncoordinated protonated N-methyl­ethano­lamine cations providing charge neutrality. Pairs of cuprophilic Cu atoms are bridged by the C atoms of μ3-cyanide ligands, which link these units into a 43 spiral along the c axis. The spirals are linked together into a 3D anionic network by the two other cyanide groups. The cationic moieties are linked into their own 43 spiral via N—H⋯O and O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, and the cations inter­act with the 3D network via an unusual pair of N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds to one of the μ2-cyanide groups. Thermogravimetric analysis indicates an initial loss of the base cation and one cyanide as HCN at temperatures in the range 130–250 °C to form CuCN. We show how loss of a specific cyanide group from the 3D CuCN structure could form the linear CuCN structure. Further heating leaves a residue of elemental copper, isolated as the oxide.

During evaporation of natural and synthetic K–Mg–Cl brines, the formation of almost square plate-like crystals of potassium carnallite (potassium chloride magnesium dichloride hexa­hydrate) was observed. A single-crystal structure analysis revealed a monoclinic cell [a = 9.251 (2), b = 9.516 (2), c = 13.217 (4) Å, β = 90.06 (2)° and space group C2/c]. The structure is isomorphous with other carnallite-type com­pounds, such as NH4Cl·MgCl2·6H2O. Until now, natural and synthetic carnallite, KCl·MgCl2·6H2O, was only known in its ortho­rhom­bic form [a = 16.0780 (3), b = 22.3850 (5), c = 9.5422 (2) Å and space group Pnna].

Video of the B9 robot from "Lost In Space" and his most famous catchphrases.; Credit: timtomp (via YouTube)

Robert Kinoshita, the Los Angeles native who designed the iconic robots from "Lost in Space" and "Forbidden Planet," has passed away. He was 100 years old.

Konishita died Dec. 9 at a Torrance nursing home, according to the Hollywood Reporter, citing family friend Mike Clark. His creations included "Forbidden Planet's" Robby the Robot, the B9 robot from "Lost in Space," Tobor from "Tobor the Great" and more. Kinoshita also created "Lost in Space's" iconic flying-saucer-shaped Jupiter 2 spaceship.

Kinoshita built the original miniature prototype of Robby the Robot out of wood and plastic by combining several different concepts, according to the Reporter; the Rafu Shimpo reported that he struggled with the design.

"I thought, what the hell. We’re wasting so much time designing and drawing one sketch after another. I said to myself, I’m going to make a model," Kinoshita told the Rafu Shimpo in a 2004 interview. "Then one day, the art director sees the model. He says, ‘Give me that thing.’ He grabbed it and ran. ... Ten minutes later, he comes running back and puts the model back on my desk and says, ‘Draw it!’"

Watch Kinoshita and his colleagues talking about the construction of Robby the Robot:

Robby the Robot's construction

The 1956 classic sci-fi movie "Forbidden Planet" — based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" — went on to be nominated for a special effects Oscar.

Kinoshita later served as art director on the 1960s sci-fi TV series "Lost in Space," creating the arm-flailing robot — named B9 — who delivered the classic line "Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!" That robot received as much fan mail as the actual humans on the show, according to the Reporter.

Watch the robot's feud with "Lost in Space's" Dr. Smith:

The robot vs. Dr. Smith

The "Lost in Space" robot even inspired a B9 Robot Builders Club, featured in Forbes. Kinoshita sent a message in 2000 to the club, thanking them for their support for the robot he originally nicknamed "Blinky."

"I'm truly flabbergasted and honored by your support for 'Blinky!' It's a well-designed little beauty," Kinoshita wrote. "Your thoughtful remembrance is something we designers seldom are lucky enough to receive."

Kinoshita described the thought process behind its design in a 1998 interview.

"You're laying in bed, and something comes to you," he said. "Until, finally, you get to a point where you say, 'This could work,' 'OK, let's see what the boss man says.' And you present it to him."

He told the Rafu Shimpo that he tried to create his robots to disguise the fact that there was a person inside. "I tried to camouflage it enough so you’d wonder where the hell the human was," he said.

Both the Japanese-American Kinoshita and his wife, Lillian, were sent to an Arizona internment camp during World War II, though they were able to get out before the end of the war and moved to Wisconsin, according to the Reporter.

While in Wisconsin, Kinoshita learned industrial design and plastic fabrication, designing washing machines for the Army and Air Force before returning to California, according to the Rafu Shimpo.

Kinoshita said that he had to overcome racial prejudice to break into working in Hollywood.

Kinoshita attributed his long life to clean living — along with daily doses of apple cider vinegar, family friend Clark told the Reporter.

Kinoshita also worked as a designer and art director on numerous classic TV shows, including "Kojak," "Barnaby Jones," "Hawaii Five-O," "Bat Masterson," "Sea Hunt," "Tombstone Territory," "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry's "Planet Earth" and more, according to his IMDB. His last TV show was 1984's "Cover Up."

Kinoshita grew up in Boyle Heights, according to the Reporter, attending Maryknoll Japanese Catholic School, Roosevelt High School and USC's School of Architecture. His career began with work on 1937's "100 Men and a Girl." Kinoshita graduated cum laude from USC, according to the Rafu Shimpo.

Watch Kinoshita speak at his 95th birthday gathering with the B9 Robot Builders Club. He said he hoped to make it to 100, and he ended up doing so.

Kinoshita's 95th birthday speech

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The backdrop of the stage with the Oscar Award is seen onstage during the 84th Academy Awards announcement held at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Samuel Goldwyn Theater on Jan. 24, 2012 in Los Angeles.; Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The Academy Awards have made history with breakthroughs for minorities in the past — but with this year's nominations, observers are noting how white the Oscars are, with no actors of color nominated in any of this year's acting categories.

It marks the least diverse nominations since 1998. People have been speaking out about this disconnect, with films like "Selma" being shut out of the acting nominations (though it did pick up a Best Picture nomination).

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

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On August 17, 2017, scientists made history with the first direct observation of a merger between two neutron stars. It was the first cosmic event detected in both gravitational waves and the entire spectrum of light, from gamma rays to radio emissions. The impact also created a kilonova -- a turbocharged explosion that instantly forged several hundred planets’ worth of gold and platinum. The observations provided the first compelling evidence that kilonovae produce large quantities of heavy metals, a finding long predicted by theory. Astronomers suspect that all of the gold and platinum on Earth formed as a result of ancient kilonovae created during neutron star collisions. Based on data from the 2017 event, first spotted by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), astronomers began to adjust their assumptions of how a kilonova should appear to Earth-bound observers. A team of scientists reexamined data from a gamma-ray burst spotted in August 2016 and found new evidence for a kilonova that went unnoticed during the initial observations.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/E. Troja

Source: Michael Ballanger for Streetwise Reports   05/04/2020

In March 1967, for most of the adult population in North America, the most popular comedians were almost all television series personalities, such as Carol Burnett, Buddy Ebsen and Dick Van Dyke. These stars were the softcore comics enjoyed by the parents of the Boomer generation, whose appetite for laughter was sated by inoffensive gags, slapstick and one-liners.

For my crowd, however, the sanitized, Wonder Bread content of the '60s could not survive the onslaught of underground, drug-fueled witticisms of people like Lenny Bruce, whose outrageous anti-establishment rants resulted in him being blacklisted from Hollywood and banned from television.

As the '60s wore on, the underground mantle was passed on to comedians like George Carlin and Richard Pryor, who were able to present two completely different acts, with the heavily censored TV versions violently contrasted with their nightclub acts, which were obscene, politically charged and outright raw. Sitting in the high school cafeteria every Monday morning, my friends and I would always get into a critique of whichever corny stand-up comedian wound up as filler on the Ed Sullivan Show, where such notables as Bill Cosby and Godfrey Cambridge would appear regularly until their careers took off.

One such morning, after doubling over with laughter the previous evening for a solid 8-10 minutes, I asked if anyone had seen "this guy from New York called Rodney Dangerfield," to which they all said "No." I raved about his self-deprecating "schtick," filled with one-liners like "I don't get no respect. My son takes his mother to a father-and-son banquet!" or "My wife only has sex with me for a purpose. Last night it was to time an egg!" or my absolute favorite: "I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it." All were followed, at one time or another, with two words "No respect."

Dangerfield's show-stealing routine that night on Ed Sullivan was repeated again a month later, and on the following morning, my classmates absolutely chastised me, using descriptives for Rodney like "ridiculous," "so unhip," and "outright disgusting." But to no one's surprise, it could not deter me. For the next two decades, I never missed a chance to see him perform, his live show insanely off-color and riddled with four-letter words, but never with one shred of political satire or innuendo. The crescendo performance of Dangerfield's career was as nouveau-riche businessman Al Czervik in "Caddyshack," where he dominated every scene with lines like, "He called me a baboon; he thinks I'm his wife!" and "Last time a saw a mouth like that it had a hook in it!" He got a lot of respect in that film and deserved it.

Whenever I look at the gold market these days, the only words that come to mind are "no respect." Trillions of international currency units created out of thin air to rescue the global bull market in stocks, with Wall Street and Main Street the main recipients. What is interesting is that since the Fear-Greed Index hit the famous "1" mark in mid-March, when the Fed announced intentions to buy every single security found in all hedge fund portfolios regardless of name or location, including junk bonds, stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the evidence shows that they actually have not purchased any of the said securities, as the chart below would confirm.

Once again, the brain surgeons over at the Fed talked a good game but that is all it was—a game designed to stem the panic that was threatening to (and did) derail the bull market. I believe that what happened by the end of the week was that Wall Street suddenly woke up to the realization that the Fed had shifted loyalties from Wall Street to Main Street, largely due to the public perception that they were, once again, exactly as happened in 2008, being picked over by the bailout kings in favor of foreign banks and elitist-owned corporate America.

Whether or not the Fed was "politicized" after mid-March is a moot point; the S&P 500 stopped dead in its tracks a hair below the 200 daily moving average (dma) at 297.47. It also reversed just after the April 29 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) testimony by newly appointed hero and soon-to-be-announced "Man of the Year" for 2020, Jerome Powell, the "serial printer of last resort," whose remarks were focused primarily on Main Street as opposed to Wall Street. This, in an important election year, is good for the incumbent and not so good for political donations from the white gloves gang in New York.

As for gold, I have the distinct impression that after the normal first-of-month institutional flows are spent with a distinctly newfound bullish bias toward gold and the miners, a more meaningful correction, not unlike 2009, could get rolling. On Friday morning (May 1), the flows have taken gold and the miners from deeply negative on the opening to positive on the session, which suggests that the generalists have made the move to own precious metals. Since the generalists tend to be late to the party, it is bearish near term but undoubtedly bullish longer term, as global allocations are less than 0.5% and at the end of 2011, they were nearly 5%.

Having navigated through numerous bull and bear markets with varying degrees of success (and failure), the key to survival is once again found in the preaching of the late Richard Russell, who always claimed that "the winner in a bear market is he or she that loses the least." In bull markets, the victory lap specialists always make the mistake of confusing bull markets with brains, and it is this misplaced complacency that arrives as your arch enemy. Hubris is the harbinger of failure and one way to sidestep that trap is to keep preservation of capital as your primary objective in times like these.

I always keep a large cash position in place, and certainly until the evidence clearly indicates that the global economy can recover. Even the gold and silver markets, as ridiculously undervalued in U.S. dollar terms as they are, cannot withstand the impact of a deflationary wave that totally swamps the efforts of the Fed and its money-printing brethren around the globe. Safety over stardust; caution over calamity; modesty over hubris. . .

Speaking of "no respect," I always know when gold is in trouble because my trusty canine compadre "Fido" is usually not to be found within a hundred feet of me and my sailing quote monitors and Jim Cramer dartboards. The only dog in history truly clairvoyant, he gives me a hint that gold is due to bottom when I see him peering into the den to see if it is "safe," sniffing the floor in search of broken shards of wine bottle glass and or ill-targeted beer tankards.

Well, this week I went out to his tool shed "hiding hole," forgetting that I was wearing my virus-preventing surgical mask (made from an old hockey sock and some tie-downs) and when he saw me approaching, he went into full "attack mode," chasing me to within one arse-bite of an outcome as I scampered through the garage door to the sounds of primal growls and gnashing fangs.

No respect, indeed.

Originally published May 1, 2020.

Follow Michael Ballanger on Twitter @MiningJunkie.

Originally trained during the inflationary 1970s, Michael Ballanger is a graduate of Saint Louis University where he earned a Bachelor of Science in finance and a Bachelor of Art in marketing before completing post-graduate work at the Wharton School of Finance. With more than 30 years of experience as a junior mining and exploration specialist, as well as a solid background in corporate finance, Ballanger's adherence to the concept of "Hard Assets" allows him to focus the practice on selecting opportunities in the global resource sector with emphasis on the precious metals exploration and development sector. Ballanger takes great pleasure in visiting mineral properties around the globe in the never-ending hunt for early-stage opportunities.

Disclosure:
1) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of Michael Ballanger and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. Michael Ballanger is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. Streetwise Reports was not involved in any aspect of the article preparation. Michael Ballanger was not paid by Streetwise Reports LLC for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article.
2) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.
3) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases.

Michael Ballanger Disclaimer:
This letter makes no guarantee or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the data provided. Nothing contained herein is intended or shall be deemed to be investment advice, implied or otherwise. This letter represents my views and replicates trades that I am making but nothing more than that. Always consult your registered advisor to assist you with your investments. I accept no liability for any loss arising from the use of the data contained on this letter. Options and junior mining stocks contain a high level of risk that may result in the loss of part or all invested capital and therefore are suitable for experienced and professional investors and traders only. One should be familiar with the risks involved in junior mining and options trading and we recommend consulting a financial adviser if you feel you do not understand the risks involved.

Source: Streetwise Reports   05/07/2020

Streetwise Reports: Let's start with gold, which has seen an impressive rise in the last few months as the broader markets have declined on the back of the coronavirus pandemic. What do you think is ahead for the metal?

Frank Holmes: There is a short-term view and a long-term view. What's really hard for so many investors and asset allocators to recognize is that gold bullion since 2000 has far outperformed the S&P 500. In fact, of the last 20 years, in 16 of those years gold has been positive. So if we look at the numbers, it's double what the S&P 500 has done for the past 20 years.

With gold, there's the fear trade and the love trade. The love trade is 60% of the demand and it is long-term demand. The fear trade is short-term demand, and it's about 40%. Right now, we're living with fear that's really dominating the markets. The two factors that go with that are negative real interest rates and the amount of debt being printed by the government. So whenever you have the combination of a rising Fed balance sheet with Quantitative Easing 1, 2 and 3, buying junk bonds, whatever they're doing in the stock markets to try and provide liquidity, as that flows dramatically so does the price of gold.

Typically and most significant, in every country in the world we have found that when you have negative real interest rates, gold goes up in that country's currency. Take the yield on 10-year government bonds and subtract the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) number; if it's a positive return, gold is not attractive as an asset class. But if it's a negative real rate of return, gold appreciates in that country's currency.

When gold went to $1,900 in September of 2011, the 10-year government bond had a negative real rate of return of -300 basis points. Then five years later, the price of gold went down to $1,100 and real interest rates were +2% over the CPI number. So you had a variant swing from -3 to +2, which is 500 basis, and that's why gold corrected. Since then, we've had these periods now, and particularly in the past year, of negative real interest rates in America. That's how gold started staging a rally, which started about this time last year, peaked in August, sold off and now it's coming back again.

The Federal Reserve said recently it's going to keep rates basically at 0. The CPI is still running more than 1%. In fact, we could get big food inflation, the way it looks, for beef, chicken, etc. Inflation could have a big impact on negative real interest rates, and gold is moving higher.

So short term, it's all about real negative interest rates. As long as they stay negative, then we're going to see gold go up in the U.S. dollar. It could go up against the euro, against any country's currency.

I mentioned earlier that 60% of gold demand is love, and it predominantly comes from China and India. China and India are 40% of the world's population, and if you throw in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, we're now talking about 50% of the world's population. They give gold for weddings and for birthdays, and there's a strong correlation of rising gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in those countries for the past 20 years, and rising gold consumption.

China and India comprise approximately 50% of the world's gold demand GDP per capita. Indian women wear six times the amount of gold on their bodies than what is in Fort Knox, and they predominantly wear 24 karat, minimum 22 karat, gold jewelry. It's protected them from bad governments and bad government policies.

SR: What do you see happening with silver?

FH: Silver has more industrial applications than gold, so silver is like a warrant on gold. If a stock takes off and there's an option or a warrant in the money, it explodes and goes up much more percentage-wise. It has greater volatility. Every 10% move in gold usually translates to a 15% move in silver, up or down. And with this fear that's been taking place with negative interest rates and the calamity of money printing around the world, what we see now is that silver didn't move at first. Silver has always lagged.

SR: Do you recommend that the individual investor hold gold bullion?

FH: Yes. I think the easiest way is the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD). Or if you want to buy the physical gold insured, go to a reliable site like Kitco, and you can take physical delivery.

There is a company called Mene Inc. (MENE:TSX.V; MENEF:OTCMKTS) at mene.com. It sells 24-karat gold jewelry with only a 10% markup. And it will buy back your gold jewelry at a 10% discount to the price of gold if you ever want to sell it back. That's the business model. It will deliver throughout the U.S., I think using Brinks for delivery of simple gold jewelry.

SR: Let's talk about bitcoin for a moment and how that fits into a portfolio.

FH: I am the chairman of HIVE Blockchain, which became the first real cryptomining company. We are mining using green energy, surplus energy in Iceland, Sweden and now Quebec, which sells electricity to New York state. Quebec has a surplus of it. So we started mining these coins.

What I found is that the Bitcoin is very different than Ethereum. Bitcoin is going to become, to me, like Andy Warhol's art. If you look at the original paintings of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley, when he came out with his prints in different colors, they came out at $1,000, went up to $10,000, fell, went up to $50,000, fell, went up to $100,000 and went to $125,000—because there are just more people, widened GDP, over time, and then they become art collectors. I think that if you have an original Bitcoin that's never been traded, it's going to be in that space.

The other part is that cryptocurrency is very new, and digital money is going to only grow. Blockchain technology is a superior piece of technology. What we saw was that Bitcoin bottomed a little over a year ago. Then it rallied, it went up to $14,000. All the central banks got worried. They knocked it down, and it's making a comeback.

Bitcoin, in mid-May, is going to halve production. There's a limited number of Bitcoins allowed to be ever created. The methodology when you mine them is you get new Bitcoins. They're called genesis or virgin coins. The number of coins you get every time you mine is going to halve. So the supply is going to shrink dramatically. A thought process with that is that Bitcoin will trade higher, probably above $10,000. Bitcoin is very speculative, just like buying Andy Warhol's art early.

I think that anyone who looks at Bitcoin or Ethereum must recognize that the daily volatility is four times the S&P 500 and gold. Thirty percent of the time gold or the S&P can go up or down 1%. For Bitcoin and Ethereum, it's 4–5%. Cryptocurrency is a huge secular trend, but it's going to be volatile.

SR: How do you feel about gold stocks? Are you looking at seniors or juniors or both? What should investors be looking at?

FH: For the first time in a long time, I'm becoming very bullish on gold stocks. I've been very negative on gold mining companies for over a decade now, for raising capital and actually destroying value per share. But over the decade, new boards of directors and new chief executive officers have come on, and there's become a greater discipline on cash flow returns rather than on cash flow, revenue per share growth, cash flow per share growth, rising dividends, all the normal things you buy a Starbucks or any great company for. It's the capacity to have revenue growth. Mining companies did a lot of silly mergers and acquisitions work, with which they destroyed capital, but that has changed.

During this past decade I've been a big advocate of royalty companies, such as Franco-Nevada Corp. (FNV:TSX; FNV:NYSE), Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (WPM:TSX; WPM:NYSE), Royal Gold Inc. (RGLD:NASDAQ; RGL:TSX). These three had the highest revenue per employee in the world.

Franco-Nevada has a royalty on Newmont Goldcorp Corp. (NEM:NYSE) and Barrick Gold Corp.'s (ABX:TSX; GOLD:NYSE) joint venture assets in Nevada. The revenue per employee at Franco-Nevada is over $20 million. For Barrick or Newmont, it's $500,000 of revenue per employee. Goldman Sachs has $1 million of revenue per employee. So these royalty firms are very efficient companies. If you look at the past decade, Franco-Nevada has far outperformed Berkshire Hathaway. It has far outperformed any gold stock. It's because it's showing revenue per share growth, cash flow per share growth, over the rolling one year over three years on a consistent basis.

What's now happening is we have new management for these other gold stocks. The big move in gold stocks occurs when the generalists start to buy the sector. They've not been owning the underweight gold stocks because of the bad discipline by management and boards or silly acquisitions. Now what we're seeing, for the past three years, through the end of March, we're going to see the one year revenue growth over two years strong. Now you get 36 months of a strong growth in revenue and cash flow from the industry, and all of a sudden, generalists show up. When you start seeing more and more of the stocks in that industry showing free cash flow, the generalists start to show up.

The coronavirus this past quarter hurt the S&P 1500 stocks because the majority of them had free cash flow yields of about 4%, and they got evaporated, obliterated, because of this global shutdown. But the gold stocks didn't. They actually have rising free cash flow. They're going to show this quarter the price of gold is up, some of them had shut-ins for very temporary periods of time but their revenue, their cash flow, as a whole is going to truly outshine the overall industry. And when the quants and the fundamentalists start looking at where their growth is, these stocks are going to show up.

I did an analysis of only looking at free cash flow and picked the 10 gold stocks every quarter that had the highest free cash flow yield. And I sold them and bought them every quarter. I far outperformed any gold index. So that discipline shows up as a key metric to attract the quant fund or the generalist. When I look at my data—the two-year number is so important—I'm becoming very bullish on gold stocks.

When we talk about the names, my bias is U.S. Global GO GOLD and Precious Metal Miners ETF (GOAU). I launched this several years ago as a smart quant approach to picking gold stocks. It has three royalty companies that we talked about, Franco-Nevada, Wheaton Precious and Royal Gold. They're 30% of that ETF. They rebalance every quarter.

Then all the other names, they go down to a $200 million market cap but they have to be able to show the highest cash flow returns on invested capital. Once they do something silly or stupid, they're thrown out. Back testing, that model has outperformed the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) and the VanEck Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF (GDXJ) just on a basket of 60 gold stocks. This only has 28 names. Since I launched it, it's far outperformed on a rolling 12-month basis. It's smart data, and it dynamically recalibrates every quarter.

If you want to buy the individual names, then I would focus on those three big royalty companies. Thereafter, I would focus on those companies that have this metric I talk about, free cash flow yields. Out of the 100 gold stocks in the world that we follow, there are only about 14 of them that really have attractive free cash flow yields. What's interesting is that Barrick and Newmont—and Newmont's part of the S&P 500—does have a free cash flow yield that is positive, so you're seeing it has really done exceptionally well this past quarter because it has an attractive free cash flow yield and has not been hurt by the coronavirus.

SR: Let's switch gears for a moment. U.S. Global Funds runs the Jets ETF, an airline ETF. Obviously, the airlines have been battered. Do you see them coming back? Do you see bankruptcies?

FH: I think that the government agencies and the politicians have learned a lot from two big corrections: the 9/11 correction and 2008–2009. When you look at this industry, the Federal Aviation Administration says that 1 in 15 people is associated with the airline industry. That's huge. When you look at the multiplying effect of the airline industry, it's massive, just as housing is. One dollar for housing is worth $16 approximately. So when it comes to airlines, we're talking a double digit number of multiplying effect.

What's happened is that the government has been very smart this time to say we must make sure that we don't unwind this industry as we've done in previous times. So I think there's going to be a faster turnaround from the bailout policies.

What's happened with the airlines is they have ancillary revenue that has been very significant in the past five years. Some $20 billion of revenue then went to $100 billion of revenue, which covers a lot of costs. It aggravates you and me when we fly: change fees, baggage fees, but all these fees have let the airlines not be victimized by the price of oil because every time the price of oil went up, airline stocks fell. Every time oil went down, airlines went up. It was this inverse relationship that took place. Oil has represented less and less of ancillary fees. Now what's happened on this correction is not only the ancillary fees and everything have fallen, but oil has crashed. So airlines' biggest cost is way, way down. That means when they turn, and they come out of this correction, they have huge upside. Not only do they have the support of the government, they have the ability to start adding on these fees.

Because of the bailouts, airlines are not going to be able to buy back their stocks and they're not going to be increasing their dividends in this process. But that doesn't matter. Their revenue capacity per share is explosive. So I think that that's a very big difference.

SR: Anything else that you would like to talk to our readers about in this period of extreme volatility and uncertainty?

FH: Yes, bad news is good news. There's the optimism of trying to find who's going to be the solution to the problem. Had the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used Google and Amazon technology, they probably could've adapted faster to this coronavirus. Amazon hired 100,000 people. It's amazing that in all that negative news, it adapted the fastest. It's trying to understand how capital markets morph. There are certain industry leaders. I love Clorox. I don't think that stock is going to be given away. I think it's one of those just steady dividend payer and growing dividend stocks. So it's in the negative news where you can find opportunities besides airlines, besides gold. You can turn around and find these other pockets.

SR: Thank you, Frank. I appreciate your time today.

Frank Holmes is CEO and chief investment officer at U.S. Global Investors, which manages a diversified family of funds specializing in natural resources, emerging markets and gold and precious metals. In 2016, Holmes and portfolio manager Ralph Aldis received the award for Best Americas Based Fund Manager from the Mining Journal. In 2011 Holmes was named a U.S. Metals and Mining "TopGun" by Brendan Wood International, and in 2006, he was selected mining fund manager of the year by the Mining Journal. He is also the co-author of The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing. More than 30,000 subscribers follow his weekly commentary in the award-winning Investor Alert newsletter, which is read in over 180 countries. Holmes is a much sought-after keynote speaker at national and international investment conferences. He is also a regular commentator on the financial television networks CNBC, Bloomberg, BNN and Fox Business, and has been profiled by Fortune, Barron's, The Financial Times and other publications.

Disclosure:
1) Patrice Fusillo conducted this interview for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee. She owns, or members of her immediate household or family own, shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. She is, or members of her immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.
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3) Frank Holmes: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: N/A. I, or members of my immediate household or family, are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: HIVE Blockchain Technologies. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this interview: N/A. Funds controlled by U.S. Global Investors hold securities of the following companies mentioned in this article: Mene Inc., Franco-Nevada Corp., Royal Gold Inc., Wheaton Precious Metals, Newmont Mining, Barrick Gold Corp. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector. I had the opportunity to review the interview for accuracy as of the date of the interview and am responsible for the content of the interview.
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( Companies Mentioned: FNV:TSX; FNV:NYSE, MENE:TSX.V; MENEF:OTCMKTS, RGLD:NASDAQ; RGL:TSX, WPM:TSX; WPM:NYSE, )

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