The Meb Faber Show · Friday, September 25, 2026
David Iben observed at a conference that while nearly everyone at a table claimed to like platinum, not a single person actually owned it. He uses this anecdote to illustrate that despite a general positive sentiment towards commodities, actual ownership remains very low, suggesting a disconnect between perception and action in the market.
“Yeah, people will say, doesn't it bother you that people like commodities? Well, yeah, it does, except for the fact they don't really like commodities. They don't own them.”
“If you have 2% of your money in gold, do you really love gold? If you have less than 10% in all energy and, uh, commodities put together, do you, uh, love them? I would say no.”
“As an aside, we were at a conference, uh, here ago with, you know, a table full of, I don't know, 30 people maybe, and we had talked about why we like platinum. And somebody said, raise your hand if you like platinum. Every hand went up. And we thought, oh, damn, you know, maybe we're wrong about this. And then they said, raise your hand if you own platinum. Every hand went down. Nobody in their room owned platinum.”