A Primer on Converting an IRA or 401(k) To Gold to Hedge Inflation

A Primer

Peter here:

Below is the written transcript of a video interview I did with Andrew Sorchini of Beverly Hills Precious Metals. If you have been thinking about converting an IRA or 401(k) to gold or want to figure out how to protect and preserve your wealth in inflationary times, I offer this video purely as an educational tool.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON RUMBLE – ITS ABOUT 15 MINUTES.

If you would like a free consultation, you can click here.  Just tell them Peter Navarro sent you and you’ll get the full MAGA royalty treatment. No pressure. Just information.

Enjoy,

Peter Navarro

TRANSCRIPT: PETER NAVARRO’S INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW SORCHINI, BEVERLY HILLS PRECIOUS METAL

Peter Navarro:

Hi, Peter Navarro here with the Taking Back Trump’s America podcast and Substack. Great to have Andrew Sorchini, the CEO and founder of Beverly Hills Precious Metals who I'm proud to have  as a sponsor of this podcast and Substack. And what I thought we’d do today is talk with Andrew about what he does and how he might be able to help you to kind of give you a comfort level about his enterprise. So I want to welcome Andrew. How are you doing today, Andrew?

Andrew Sorchini:

I'm doing great, sir. Thank you so much for having me.

Peter Navarro:

Yeah, my pleasure. So let's start off with, tell us a little bit. You have kind of a unique story. You started out in this business of precious metals at an early age. Tell us a little bit about how you grew up and got attracted to this line of what has become your passion as well as your work sir.

Andrew Sorchini:

Well,  it started when I was about 12 or 13 years old.  My parents moved to a property that was across the street from a shopping mall and back in the early 80s back then all those young people used to like to play video games so I would hop over the back wall, go to the shopping mall, play video games, and when I ran out of money I’d go hang out in the coin shop for a couple hours and watch them transact in gold and silver. 

And eventually they started offering me a little job saying hey can you sort through these coins or could you go pick up lunch, here's a few bucks, get something for yourself. And when I was 15 years old, they brought me on as an employee, and I worked there for nine years after that and I never left the business.  I’ve been doing it ever since then.

Peter Navarro:

And what is the nature of the business? I'm an economist, not a financial advisor. I'm not giving people financial advice when we do these podcasts and substack. But what I am is an economist. And what I know as an economist is that gold, silver, and precious metals generally provide a hedge against inflation because inflation tends to erode the value of paper money. So, tell the folks out here in Trump's country what exactly you do? What is the nature of your business model?

Andrew Sorchini:

Okay, so what I tend to do these days is educate people on how gold and silver could be a great hedge for your portfolio. And it all goes back to my very first job when I was a kid working in that coin shop. I asked the boss there, I said, “why do people always come in and buy so many of those gold coins?”

And I remember one guy brought a stack of them back with dirt all over them. And I asked the boss “how come there's dirt all over those?” And he goes “well, Andrew, he buried those in his backyard.” And I said, well, why wouldn't he keep it in the bank. 

And he said “people don't trust the banks.”  And I said “why?”  And he said “a lot of bad things can happen.”

He didn't really break it down, but now in 2023, we see inflation [B-ROLL BREAK] we see that our dollar is buying less than it did a year ago; and we're not compensated for that.  What we make in our jobs and how we earn money typically is not going up fast enough to make what you're losing in depreciation of the dollar.  [B-ROLL BREAK]

So the hedge is to buy precious metals, specifically gold, because over time gold always goes up -- not in the short term, but long term, it's always up.

Peter Navarro:

And technically, when you talk about the word “hedge,” as an economist, I can tell our viewers and listeners, that what that means is that there's a risk out there that you want to provide a counterbalance against. And we know that economies are prone to inflation, and we know that gold, silver, and precious metals can help hedge against that because as solid money, as commodity money, they tend to hold the value better than paper money.

Now, Andrew,  you actually sell the real deal. You're not giving out certificates or selling stocks and gold shares or anything like that. What do you actually sell and how do you deliver it to people?

Andrew Sorchini:

So the way that that works is typically people will reach out to us through our website, which we can get into that part a little bit later. But once they submit a consultation request, then we will know at that point that we need to contact them, and we ask them what their goals for owning precious metals are.

For some people, there might be someone that just sold a home. Maybe it was an extra home that they had, and they just sold it, and they don't want to put a few hundred thousand [dollars] in the bank. They’d rather put it into gold and let it just sit in a safe at their home or office or even in a depository of our choosing.

So once they submit this information, we will call them and explain to them all of the different options. This isn't a high pressure deal.

We're never going to tell you that you have to do this today or it's not going be here tomorrow. Gold and silver have been around for thousands of years. They'll be here later.

It's just a matter of will you get the type [of precious metals] that you're looking for and how long will it take?

But we do send people the physical gold and silver. And that is important. You touch on a great, great point because there are certificates out there that people are investing into for gold and silver, and those are oversold many times over.

So, in other words, [with these oversold gold certificates], it's like a legalized Bernie Madoff where, if everyone sold [their certificates] on the same day, you couldn't be liquid.

Peter Navarro:

Now, if I'm ordering $100,000 of gold to put in my IRA instead of whatever stocks I might hold, that would make me nervous having that around the house. How do people handle that kind of risk?

Andrew Sorchini:

Okay, so that's how a big bulk of the transactions we do work. I would say about 60% of the people that reach out to us are rolling over an existing 401K or an IRA into one that holds gold and silver  And it is physical gold and silver, but one rule of that type of transaction is that we cannot send it to your home.

[Instead,] it’s held in a third party depository in Delaware, and you receive regular statements. So there's actually three entities involved. there's a custodian. So first of all, you might have a 401k with Fidelity. Well, Fidelity would then transfer funds to the custodian that we use, and then we're the broker. So, then once the funds transfer over, then we use those funds to purchase gold and silver  Then,  this gold or silver] has to be stored at the depository. And that's a third entity.

Together, [through your custodian, broker and depository,] that's how you're protected.  And it's ensured at the depository. 

Peter Navarro

And you have like full insurance at the depository, no matter how much is there. It's not like the FDIC [Federal Depositor’s Insurance Corp, which]  only insures up to $250,000. There's full insurance [for your IRA or 401K]. Is that what I'm hearing here?

Andrew Sorchini:

It is, and I’ve never heard anyone ask that, and everyone should be asking that.  It’s an excellent point.

I'm actually going to add that into what I talk about when I discuss retirement accounts because nowadays for people that might be working with seven figures, you have to spread out over a few different accounts to be covered under FDIC if those funds are really even there. So you're safe with the IRA, it's fully insured.

Peter Navarro:

And if I have to liquidate some or all of my gold, silver or precious metals, I come back to you?

Andrew Sorchini:

Yes, the way that works is the bulk of our inventory is stored at the same depository as where the IRA metals are being held at. So it makes the fulfillment and the liquidation process work very fluid.

So the way that it would work is, and this happens every week: Someone will call me and say “Andrew, I need $10,000 out of my retirement account.” And I say “Great, I'll go ahead and send you a distribution form.  You fill that out, and send it back to me. I'll send you an invoice to sign, and that's a purchase invoice .  And as soon as we get the signed documents back and the metals transferred from your depository account into mine, then I wire the funds to the IRA custodian and then they go and send them to you.

It's a very simple process.  It can take a week.

Peter Navarro:

One of the things that fascinated me when you and I first had a conversation about this, because of course I carefully vet all my sponsors, you made the observation that people tend to buy silver more than gold. And I was kind of surprised by that.

In terms of the amounts of gold versus silver you sell, what's roughly the percentage got of the total? And why is silver sometimes more preferred?

Andrew Sorchini:

Well, I think 80% of our transactions are silver, but dollar-wise, I think we're selling more gold than silver.

But people like silver because it has a better chance to double and triple in price than gold does. And the reason that we would actually have more dollars sold in gold, even though gold is only selling at 20% of the rate that silver is, is that silver is a lot cheaper. But people all tend to agree that silver can double or triple in the blink of an eye. But gold is the one that's really just solid always going up up up up.  Silver is volatile.  It's actually being manipulated by some of the big banks like even JP Morgan Chase.

Peter Navarro:

So the gold or silver, that comes either in bars or coins.  Is that correct?

Andrew Sorchini:

That's exactly correct.

Peter Navarro:

Yeah. And one of the things I'm excited about is that you and I are working together. You’re going to do a Make America Great coin. It's going to have my picture on it that's going to be available. Can you talk a little bit about that process and when that [silver] coin might be available?

Andrew Sorchini:

Sure, so we're currently arranging to have that coin produced. There's still a big backlog in coinage being made from the shutdowns of COVID. So there's a huge backlog and a big run on the available gold and silver. So with this, we could still be a couple of months away, but it's going to be a one-ounce silver coin. It'll be [Investment Retirement Account]   IRA acceptable, which is really important because IRA-acceptable meets certain [Commodity Exchange] COMEX guidelines which are [actually] above of what's acceptable for IRAs.

Peter Navarro:

And let me just stop you there quickly, because when you say IRA-acceptable, that means your Investment Retirement Account.  That's the IRA. And then the COMEX, what is that standard?

Andrew Sorchini:

[COMEX], that's the exchange of what some of the commodities trade on.  So the IRA custodians need for the gold and silver to really have a certain level of purity, or they won't accept them [the coins]. For example, a Krugerrand, a gold Krugerrand only has 0.987 purity. That cannot be in an IRA, even though that's a world-recognized gold coin.

Peter Navarro:

That's fascinating because the Krugerrand kind of cornered the market on name recognition, but you're saying that's not as pure as it needs to be for your retirement accounts. That's fascinating.

Andrew Sorchini:

Exactly. Your silver coin will get in and the crew around is out.

Peter Navarro:

So to be clear, if you want to go to your site, let me get it and see if I get this right. Your company is called Beverly Hills Precious Metals. So the website people can go to is bh-pm.com. bh-pm.com. What you can do there is you can go to the site and sign up for a free consultation. And please, when you do that, and they ask you who referred you, just put in Peter Navarro or Navarro, and Andrew will give you what I call a royal MAGA treatment. He'll take really good care of you. So that's bh-pm.com. The promo code for the consultation is Navarro. And let's finish this up just by maybe saying. simulating the process. As I understand it, people will go in and sign up for a free consultation, no pressure free consultation. And then what happens to that information down the line? Walk me through that process, please. Okay.

Andrew Sorchini:

Sure, so someone will go on our website and you just put in your first name, last name, email address, phone number, and just a couple sentences about what you're trying to accomplish. And you could start off by saying, I'm a newbie, I've never invested in gold or silver, please contact me. So I'm seeing these submissions come in all day long. I send them to my sales team and we've got 14 different reps that one of them will call you. They'll ask you what you're trying to accomplish specifically. People are trying to invest funds that they plan to use and then near future for other investments so with those we will handle those differently than say a long term investment. If you say this is my retirement and I don't think I'm going to retire for 20 years then we will set it up differently for you. But the most information that you can give me the better we can help.

Peter Navarro:

And if it's a short-term investment, how do you handle it differently? I understand with the IRAs, you go into the depository. What do you do if it's just kind of a shorter-term investment where people might need it three months, six months, or whenever? And that's what I do.

Andrew Sorchini:

Sure. So I had a lady the other day that, or a while back that said, I want to do a hundred thousand in silver. And I said, okay, how quickly will you need these funds? She said six months at the most, probably a lot sooner. And I said, Oh no, don't do the silver. And she said, why? I said, silver has 20% swings. You could end up selling it back to me for 20% more than you bought it for, but likely you will be selling it back for 20% less than what you paid for. And she said, well, then are you saying silver's not good. I go, no, no, it's just silver's a long term hold, two to five years minimum. She goes, then are you saying I should do gold? And I said, absolutely. She goes, well, I make any money on gold. I go, probably not. And she goes, well, then why would that be good in the short term? I told her physical gold and silver is not meant to be something that could generate a profit in the short term. It's more of a way to preserve your wealth. And and

Peter Navarro:

Yeah.

Andrew Sorchini:

that's what she wanted.

Peter Navarro:

Yes.

Andrew Sorchini:

she wanted to get it out of the bank until she could put that with other money to go into a real estate deal. And I insisted she do the gold. And she said she wasn't going to sell it in less than six months. And let me tell you, she did sell in less than six months. Had she done the silver, she would have lost like 20%, just like I told her she

Peter Navarro:

Yeah.

Andrew Sorchini:

would. And with the gold, she just broke even. And that's fine.

Peter Navarro:

You know, I'm so glad you made that point. I'm so glad you made that point because it's total transparency. It's golden silver or a hedge against inflation primarily. They're not these speculative instruments where you're swinging for the fences and expecting to get rich quick. So I'm really glad you pointed that out because I think that's what's the important part. People that are gonna be interested in this are going to be want to preserve their wealth in an inflationary time and that's exactly what we have and as an economist when I'm looking in the crystal ball it looks like that's going to go on for a very long time. But look Andrew I think you've done a great job. I want to thank you for being on the Taking Back Trump's America podcast and sub-stack. Please if you're interested in this go to BH-PM. That's Beverly Hills Precious Metals. BH-PM.com. Tell them Peter Navarro sent you. You get your free consultation. And that when it happens then is up to you and you alone. Peter Navarro out.