The Digital Executive

Tarek Saab: Your Gold ETF's Metal Isn't in America | Ep 1302

The Digital Executive

Show Notes

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Tarek Saab, CEO of Texas Precious Metals, to explore why where your gold sits matters more than most investors have ever stopped to consider — and what it took to build the infrastructure to do something about it. Tarek opens with the founding story of Texas Precious Metals in 2011, when the precious metals industry was still largely offline and shipping high-value packages safely across the country was a logistical and insurance puzzle nobody had cracked. He traces the company's growth from a pioneering e-commerce model to one of the world's most technologically advanced depositories, with more than fourteen billion in assets under custody secured by SWAT teams, facial recognition, fog detectors, and real-time bar-level accounting that tracks every ounce like a seat in a stadium. The conversation then shifts to the central premise behind the Yall Street ETFs: more than ninety-five percent of the metal backing US gold and silver ETFs is held overseas, with the vast majority in London. Before COVID, geopolitical instability, supply chain disruption, and the 2022 removal of Russia from the SWIFT system, that largely didn't matter. Now it does — and Tarek spent fifteen months building out the depository network and bullion bank relationships needed to back ETFs with one hundred percent US-domiciled metal. He closes with a macro view of where precious metals are heading: what he sees as the early innings of a commodity super cycle, a financial world in structural transition, and gold that has quietly outperformed the S&P 500 total return by nearly two times over the last twenty-five years — with zero correlation to equities.

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