It is with deep sadness that I share this notice of the sudden passing of 
Julian D.W. Phillips on the morning of August 26th. Julian was a much admired and a strong supporter of the gold and silver community, and a leading thinker who guided us for many years. His extensive work influenced tens of thousands of readers across the most recognized gold websites, media and subscribers and his passing is a big loss to many.
Over the past few decades, those who read Julian’s work know of his leadership in not just understanding the global gold, financial and monetary markets, but forecasting the major shifts to come. His work influenced many other precious metals commentators and assisted them to evolve their own understanding. His important work provided guidance to many thousands of investors.
I met Julian shortly after the year 2,000 and he generously agreed to share his financial and monetary knowledge on GoldSeek.com during the very early days of the gold bull market. Not many authors were even covering gold at the absolute market bottom and very few had his global perspective from having lived on different continents. Julian’s weekly articles, then written under the publication Gold Authentic Money, brought incredible depth and knowledge to readers from around the world. He quickly became one of the top and most widely followed gold analysts on GoldSeek, with his expertise being highly prized by investment funds as well as the international media.
In 2005 his co-contributing technical analyst retired from Gold Authentic Money and Julian approached me to join him on a new publication, resulting in our launch of The Gold Forecaster – Global Watch. I was in my mid-20s at the time and felt quite honored to have been even considered by Julian, whom I consider one of my mentors. I was reluctant but Julian encouraged me to share my decade long experience in precious metals with my focus on junior mining companies and my technical forecasts.
In this way, our collaboration began and together we provided subscribers with an in-depth weekly newsletter forecasting the fundamental and technical aspects of precious metals with regards to the many markets and influences on its price. We produced nearly 600 weekly Gold Forecaster newsletter issues over these prior dozen years, through both the good and the difficult times, guiding thousands of subscribers through this evolving bull market. Julian’s strong fundamental knowledge truly made up the core contribution of the typically 20-30 long page weekly publication and I remain honored to have been able to work with him for so many years and sharing his insights with so many through GoldSeek.com.
Together we actively managed a multi-million dollar precious metals hedge fund for a wealthy family office, yielding millions in profitable returns in just the several months of management. But after our strong returns in the early phase of the bull market, the family office felt like gold was nearing its peak as it was running towards $800/ounce.
This then opened the door for Julian to create and develop an exceptional product for gold investors providing gold confiscation protection in the form of a storage fund. Using his experience helping families protect and move their wealth from Zimbabwe’s confiscation in the 1980’s, Julian spent the last several years creating The Ultimate Gold Trust with the assistance of skilled lawyers, bankers and bullion administrators. Now many years into its establishment, there still is no other product of its kind which provides such an exclusive gold protection structure against future confiscations.
The Ultimate Gold Trust has attracted numerous clients resulting in a large amount of physical bullion stored securely in Switzerland and all of the hard work Julian undertook to build this gold protection fund remains active today. Because of this, Julian’s legacy will endure for many years to come, providing critical confiscation protection to gold and silver investors.
Julian’s work is vast and he had an incredible amount of knowledge to share which included his daily Gold & Silver Market Mornings, the weekly Gold & Silver Forecaster newsletters, special feature reports, interviews, in addition to being an advisor to major investment funds from Hong Kong, London to New York City and not limited to organizations including GFMS. Yet unknown to most, over the past few years Julian had begun work on a book entitled “The Book on Gold” that was to “speak to all investors with a focus on the very basics of money.”
What is not known by most of the tens of thousands who followed Julian was the personal side of Julian. If you had the opportunity to ever speak with Julian, ever so generous with his time, you would quickly come to know Julian’s character. An honest man with such integrity, Julian had a wonderful wit and humor. He was a deeply caring man, a true gentleman with such class. He had such delightful analogies to describe not only financial concepts but also his perspectives on life, usually weaving his love of sailing into lengthy conversations I was privileged to engage in often over the many miles between South Africa and Colorado.
I feel honored and extremely blessed to have spent the past decade and half working with Julian. I hold him and his work in the highest regard. I will deeply miss our talks and his constant guidance which I was able to share with so many others. He was a wonderful person to have worked with and will miss him as dear, close friend as will so many.
I would kindly ask all those who were impacted by Julian’s work to please send us your messages to julian@goldseek.com
I would like to share them with his loving wife and daughters which he leaves behind.
Julian was a huge proponent of gold and a strong supporter of the gold community. In the coming months, I will be reviewing and releasing some of Julian’s vast and yet unreleased work and articles. Some of which was written for our Gold Forecaster subscribers, some of which was intended for his book, but much of it remains relevant to the gold community today.
You can subscribe to Julian’s email list here to receive them, but we will also publish and share them with the precious metals community on GoldSeek in the coming month(s).
Peter
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