John Guralny was helping a customer near the front counter at White's Lumber in Pulaski, New York, on the morning of January 4, 2024, when a man walked through the door carrying a pistol.
The man was agitated. He raised the gun and began threatening the employees around him. He refused to leave the property when asked.
There was no security guard on staff. There was no protocol posted behind the counter for an armed man in the building. There was only the floor space between him and the customers standing nearby.
Guralny did not call out for someone else to handle it. He moved toward the man instead of away from him.
I told you so. $10,000 became $131,000 in two years. Here is what is next.
Right now, you can buy a dollar's worth of gold for about 36 cents.
That sounds impossible. Here's how it's real.
The major gold miners are throwing off record cash flow — even after gold's recent pullback. The four largest have never had this much free cash on hand. Ever. At today's gold price, they're running margins as high as 75% — the most profitable they have ever been.
Which hands them a problem.
When a major gold miner makes record profits, it does one of two things: hand the cash back to shareholders, or buy the best junior mining assets to secure future production.
And here's the piece the market is missing:
The best junior assets are still priced as if gold were stuck at $1,800 an ounce — not north of $4,000, where it trades today.
So the majors are staring at their own future production shrinking, sitting on record cash, looking at top-tier junior assets trading at a fraction of what that gold is worth at today's price.
They don't have a choice. They buy — or their output keeps shrinking until they're out of business.
The gap between what these assets are worth and what they trade for has a name. I call it the Golden Anomaly. It only appears early in a gold bull market, and it closes fast — usually the moment the majors start writing cheques.
So you can pay full price after the gap closes…
Or buy the dollar for 36 cents while the Anomaly still exists.
My name is Garrett Goggin, CFA, CMT, and it's why Porter Stansberry recently called me:
"THE most knowledgeable gold investor in the world."
He closed the distance before the man could aim the pistol at anyone in the store. He got a grip on the weapon and forced it down and away from the people around them.
The struggle ended with the man on the ground, disarmed. Guralny held him there.
He kept the man pinned to the floor of the lumber yard until Oswego County sheriff's deputies arrived and took him into custody. No employees were shot. No customers were shot.
The business manager, Tim Wise, said later that Guralny had been fortunate enough to be working that day, and that his actions may have saved multiple lives in the store. Four months later, the New York State Assembly recognized Guralny with a formal proclamation for what he did that morning.
He went back to stocking lumber. The gun did not go off. Nobody printed a number for how many people were in the building that morning, but the room was full, and every one of them walked out of it.
Guralny was not paid to stop an armed man. He was paid to help customers find lumber. The distance between those two jobs closed in about the time it takes to say a name.
Most men who carry responsibility for other people never test it against a loaded gun. They test it in smaller rooms, at kitchen tables, in decisions about insurance, savings, and who gets taken care of if the day goes wrong. The instinct is the same one Guralny used. Somebody else's safety became his problem, and he did not wait to be asked.
What are you responsible for that you would not step back from, even with a gun in the room?