Whenever there's a big down day in markets, everyone looks at the same things. The S&P. The NASDAQ. The MAG7. What did Nvidia do. What did Tesla do. That's where the attention goes.

Matthew Piepenburg thinks that's the wrong place to look. Matthew is a partner at Von Greyerz out of Zurich, one of the most respected voices on monetary metals and macro risk that I've had on this show. And in our latest conversation, he made the case that the bond market is where the real danger lies, and everything else, stocks, gold, credit, currency, follows from it.

Here's the breakdown.

The Bond Market Is the Whole Game

Matthew said it plainly and I think it's worth repeating: the bond market is the broad market. It is the basis of all markets.

It's $145 trillion globally. That's $20 trillion larger than the entire global stock market. Bonds represent debt, and bond yields represent the cost of that debt. When yields rise, the cost of borrowing goes up for everyone. Stock buybacks, which are mostly funded by cheap debt, get squeezed. Capex gets squeezed. Private equity and private credit, both built on the foundation of low rates, start coughing. Even government spending gets squeezed when the interest bill on $40 trillion in US debt keeps climbing.

And right now, sovereign bond yields across the UK, US, Germany, Japan, Italy, France, and Canada are at their highest levels in decades. The US 10-year is currently sitting at around 4.56% and the 30-year is approaching 5%, levels not seen since the years preceding the financial crisis. That's not a coincidence. That's a global signal that trust in sovereign IOUs is the lowest it's been in a generation. Bloomberg's five-year annualized return on global aggregate bonds recently hit its lowest on record. That's not a fringe data point. That's a bond crisis.

Stocks and Bonds Are No Longer a Hedge Against Each Other

For decades, the playbook in a market selloff was simple: stocks fall, bonds rise, portfolio stays balanced. That relationship is broken.

Matthew pointed to three recent examples. In March 2020, before the Fed fired unlimited QE, stocks and bonds fell together. In 2022 under Powell's higher-for-longer regime, we saw the worst nominal returns in stocks and bonds since 1871. And on Liberation Day last April, when the tariffs were announced, stocks and bonds sold off simultaneously. There was no bid in the bond market.

Former buyers are now sellers. China held over $1.3 trillion in US treasuries at its peak. As of March 2026 that number has fallen to $652 billion, the lowest level since September 2008, and is down more than 14% just since the beginning of 2025. Japan, the largest holder of US treasuries, sold more US treasuries in the first quarter of this year than in the prior four years combined. They needed liquidity to support their own currencies. The pattern is clear: the world is not rushing into US treasuries as a safe haven the way it used to.

The Sell Treasuries, Buy Gold Trade Is Already Happening

Gold has officially surpassed US treasuries as the largest reserve asset globally. According to an ECB report released June 1, 2026, gold now accounts for 27% of global central bank reserve assets as of end of 2025, while US treasuries have fallen to 22%. That's the first time gold has led since 1996.

This shift didn't happen overnight. It starts in 2022 when the US weaponized the dollar by sanctioning Russia through the SWIFT system. Matthew called it one of the most important moments of the 21st century for the dollar. What it told every nation holding US treasuries was that their assets could be frozen at any time for political reasons. From that moment, dedollarization stopped being a meme and became a strategic imperative for dozens of countries.

What followed was predictable in hindsight. More than 40 nations started trading outside the US dollar. Russia began using gold as a settlement asset for global trade. Nearly 40 countries repatriated their physical gold. The BIS reclassified gold as a tier one asset, effectively putting it on equal footing with the US treasury. Central bank gold buying is running at five times the level it was in 2022. And the petro dollar is cracking, with roughly 20% of global oil sales now happening outside dollar-denominated systems.

Matthew also made a point I found striking: the conflict in Iran isn't separate from this story. Iran sells its oil to China. China is trying to buy energy outside the US dollar. That is a direct threat to the petro dollar, which is a direct threat to structural demand for US treasuries. He believes Iran's strategic interest is to drag this conflict out as long as possible, bleeding the bid for US treasuries in the process.

Silver at $300 and Why Supply Deficits Make It Inevitable

On silver, Matthew's view is straightforward: $300 is coming, and whether you buy at $70, $90, or $100 doesn't matter much if you're a long-term investor.

He made the supply deficit case as clearly as I've heard anyone make it. We've now had five or six consecutive years of 200 million ounce silver supply deficits. That's over a billion ounces of cumulative deficit. Silver lease rates, which spent most of Matthew's career below 1%, are now well above 8%. The ratio of registered or available silver on the COMEX versus open interest is, in his words, off the charts. He believes we're heading toward a cash-settlement-only COMEX, which he said as far back as January.

And unlike gold, silver production can't be turned on with a push of a button. It's largely a byproduct of base metals mining. You can't just drill for more silver when demand spikes. Meanwhile, demand is accelerating: solar panels, electric vehicles, military applications, and silver's designation as a critical mineral all add to a demand picture that was already structurally short of supply.

On the technical side, Matthew pointed to a pattern he's watching. The last time silver dipped below its 200-day moving average was April 2025, when it was trading at $27. What followed was a move of over 200% to new historical highs. The same signal appeared in 2020 at around $10 to $11, and again in 2022 at $17. Both times, the dip below the 200-day preceded a major run. Both metals are currently positioned near that level again.

The Mining Sector Disconnect Is an Opportunity

Agnico Eagle. Newmont. Record earnings. Falling stock prices. Matthew and I both see the same disconnect, and his explanation for it is worth understanding.

When gold takes a sharp 20% correction in a short period of time, the generalist investment community concludes the gold trade is over. The retail investor logs onto X, sees the panic, and sells. The miners go down with the metal. But here's the thing: the correction doesn't change the cost of production, which at a place like Agnico Eagle sits around $1,400 an ounce against a gold price still well above $4,000. That spread is enormous. That's a fat pitch, as Matthew put it.

He also pointed to royalty companies like Franco-Nevada as opportunities in the space when they're oversold. And for those looking to capture more leverage to the gold price, the math is simple: if gold is up 10%, miners historically move up around 30%. The secular bull market in gold hasn't really gotten started yet in Matthew's view, which means the equity leverage play is still in early innings for those willing to wait.

How to Actually Position in an Inflationary World

This is the part of the conversation I wanted to make sure got into writing, because it goes beyond just the metals trade.

Matthew's framework starts with accepting inflation as the endgame. Not debating it. The CPI, in his words, is grotesquely misreported. Since the Iran conflict began, diesel is up over 50%, gasoline over 50%, European natural gas nearly 55%, heating oil approaching 60%, jet fuel up 58 to 60%, and WTI crude up over 60%. Those are not transitory moves. And yet the official CPI and PPI numbers don't reflect anywhere near that magnitude.

In an inflationary environment, Matthew's preferred asset classes beyond gold and silver are agricultural farmland, real estate you can touch, apartment buildings and rental properties rather than REITs, cattle, and energy. In equities, he prefers consumer staples and healthcare over growth and tech.

His closing thought was the one I keep coming back to: patience is a skill set. Most people right now are shooting at the sky with a 12-gauge hoping to hit something. The better approach is to wait for the ducks. Understand what's actually happening. Position accordingly. And don't let a day's worth of price action in a social-media-driven market shake you out of a thesis that the long-term data continues to support.